Hamster on a Wheel

Many times I’ve used this blog to try and paint a picture of life in here.  Because, until you actually experience it, you can’t comprehend the bipolar nature of prison, it isn’t well-thought out; it’s like a hamster on a wheel, you go and go and you get nowhere.  In fact, for all the emphasis on security and structure and organization, it really is a disorganized mess.  In the midst of random chaos you try – if you’re lucky – to find balance.  A friend wrote me recently and asked how I did it, maintained myself and my outlook.  I’m not sure.  But putting this on paper may help explain.

Typical day.  There’s a fight.  Two guys throwing punches at each other over something important like:  they can’t agree on what to watch on the dayroom TV, or “dude disrespected me”.  And no one, absolutely no one, intervenes – unless of course one of the guys is being seriously pummeled.  The officers will sweep in.  Both guys are hauled out and end up in “7” building, a/k/a “the hole”.  Ten days for fighting.  No one sees physical confrontations as a problem.  And “old heads”, the guys who did some serious time at serious prisons, will tell you at a higher level it’s not punches, its homemade knives, and locks in socks.  And why not?  You give a guy fifty years, you set no structure in his life, you have no real security on the floor, and you create a “thunder dome” environment.

Is it right?  No.  Yet, when I tell guys “you can’t act like this in the ‘real world’ (you know, the world outside here)” they look at me like I’m from some other world.  Violence, physically redressing problems, is part and parcel of this world in here and prison officials either are unable or unwilling to fix it.

Then there’s the constant rumor network:  “inmate.com”.  You put one thousand men in cramped quarters, most of who lack basic knowledge – like reading comprehension and math, and watch how simple stories run like wildfire.  Guys lack knowledge of the corrections system, of the law, politics, economics, life in general.

Try this exchange the other night during the Vice Presidential debate.  Question from Guy one:  “Who pays for Medicare and Social Security?”  Guy two:  “The government.  It’s free.”  Guy one:  So why would we want to pay for it?”

I get a piece of paper out and I start with $1000.00 as wages.  And I deduct seven percent for SSI; then take two percent Medicare; then tax the wages at eighteen percent for federal income tax and four percent for state income tax and they both say “Where’s my thousand dollars?”  Simple lesson, right?  If you make (gross) $52,000 a year, you’ll be lucky if your net is $38,000.  I show this and guys look at me like I’m Socrates who just let them in on the meaning of life.

And then, there’s the time I arrived here three years ago.  Almost every guy here had been in the system for years.  They were “finishing their bids” – five years or more, especially guys higher up the security chain, knew how to behave.  They’d seen the stabbings and the rapes and the extortions.  “You do your time and you mind your own business.”  What do we have now?  We have dozens and dozens of guys coming from jails where they sat six months, then they head directly to Lunenburg.  They go into “fast track” receiving for three to five days in “7” building and push a cart up the boulevard, land in our buildings where they’ll stay for thirty days, sixty days maybe, and then they’re off to “3” building and re-entry where they do nothing other than the “word of the day”.  Why?  Because these guys are sentenced to one year or possibly eighteen months.  They’re young; their families send money so they buy loads of crap on commissary; and, they think they’re at camp.  What’s fourteen months to a twenty-year old who’s never had a job?  And guys doing real time, running all the programs that these knuckleheads get enrolled in, are pissed.  Because the young dopes are coming back.  We all see it.  And if we see it, why doesn’t the prison administration?

I’m not a conspiracy guy.  You can’t convince me a multitude of people can organize and carry out a project and – most importantly – keep it quiet.  Somebody always talks.  But watching the way prisons are operated, I have to wonder.  Because prisons are run, prisons are structured, for return business.  And all the talk about re-entry, second chances, and any of the other terms politicians like to throw around are just Orwellian clap trap.  The truth is, the system is structured for failure.

Back to why I’m writing this blog.  It shouldn’t be this way.  I had two strange moments this week, both involving people’s perceptions of me.  And both humbled me and made me think, why is it me they see like this?  Both a teacher and a college student pulled me aside and said “guys see you as a role model.”  And, my initial reaction was to laugh.  I’m doing time – more time than most of these guys – and I’m doing it for breaking the law which I knew was wrong, and I knew there were risks but my ego let me think the risks didn’t apply to me.  And I remembered hoop star Charles Barkley’s famous statement, “I’m no role model”.

Why do they think I’m a role model?  “You don’t sugar coat what you did.  You take responsibility for it, you own up to it and you structure your time to make this period of your life count.”  They both added, “You don’t think you’re better than any of these other guys.  But, you think you’re better than prison”.

I’ve thought about that a good deal.  My ramblings this week are so you can understand what a waste of time prison is.  They system needs structure.  The system needs discipline and organization and the goal that a person can be restored after going through this.

Prison shouldn’t be 24/7 of boredom broken up by fights.  Prison should be transformative – in a positive way.  Until politicians and corrections administrators are willing to admit the system they oversee is failing, until voters are willing to hold those same people accountable for the violence in here and recidivism rates once guys leave, this broken system will continue to eat up money and lives.

If I can see it from in here, theirs is no reason why those in charge can’t see it.

Another week down.  Two fights; seven guys with dirty urine; forty new guys pushing carts.  On and on it goes, like the hamster on the wheel.  Time passes, but you get nowhere.