The Business of Prison – The Profit of Despair

A couple of headlines caught my attention this week.  The CEO of Corrections Corporation of America, it was revealed, wrote to 48 state prison directors and made the following offer:  CCA will take over that state’s prisons if the state “guarantees 90% occupancy”, for 20 years.  States, caught in a deep budget crisis that will not let up (look at the soaring pension funding shortfalls in the states) and exploding corrections costs may be tempted to bite.  Not even considering the morality, the ethic, of a private firm holding people under color of law, imagine the effect this would have on prison reform.  States need to address sentencing, especially involving nonviolent felons. 

The truly ironic part of this story is that the CEO in question, Harley Lappin, was until a year ago the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.  He was forced out after his arrest for drunk driving in Annapolis, MD.  Funny, there are guys in here who did the same thing who weren’t named CEOs of any company.

The intent of the letter is clear:  CCA and the other companies who profit from the continued incarceration of people can see their blood money falling away.  As states grapple with the high cost of incarceration and end the three decade long “tough on crime” (“dumb on crime”) policies that led to an explosion in the number and cost of incarcerations, these prison profiteers see the writing on the wall.  Something has to be done to slow the spread of prison reform or their financial heyday is doomed.

Profiting from prisons is gaining a foothold as the moral issue of the decade.  Like divestment from companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa in the ‘70’s, divestment from companies profiting from the incarceration of men and women is a growing movement.

Known as the “National Prison Divestment Campaign”, this group seeks to not only convince ethical investors to divest their holdings in prison-profiteering companies, but also to raise awareness about an industry that not only profits from incarceration, but also drives local and national immigration and criminal justice policy.

In mid-February, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to sell nearly $1 million in stock from CCA and another prison profiteer, the GEO Group.

As the Pension Board’s Director of Communication so eloquently stated it, “We believe that profiting from incarceration is contrary to church values.”

And, as I have noted in this blog many times, it’s not just private prison ownership that needs to be challenged:  it’s any company that profits from providing a service with the prison.  Incarceration is a function of the state.  The state should not be allowed to outsource that function to avoid the actual costs of confining a person.

In Virginia, the GEO Group manages one prison – the level “3” facility at Lawrenceville.  How is it run?  It is over-run with cell phones, drugs and gang activity.  Prostitution rings operated by the female officers flourish.  Why?  It’s a private contractor with private employees.

Virginia DOC also outsources prison medical care.  If you incarcerate someone and deprive them of normal freedoms you are responsible for providing them a reasonably safe living environment, adequate healthcare, food and other daily essentials.  That’s not some “bleeding heart” theory.  That’s the law.  Private firms handling the state’s corrections responsibilities skirt that legal – and moral – responsibility.

Allowing states to outsource their responsibility is morally suspect.  Investing in companies that profit from the incarceration of fellow citizens is shameful and, in the long run, will not be financially beneficial.

It’s time to shed light on these profiteers and their blood money.

Dear Alaska

My blog manager forwarded your posting to me and I wanted to write back and give you my thoughts on the question you posed, “What do I do about my son?”

First, it’s nice to understand the connection you have to this place.  I didn’t personally know your son, but I know of him.  In fact, a couple of the college guys were close to him.  I also knew the story about him sitting in the building one day when the intercom announced “Pack up.  You’re free.”  The story made its way around the compound because everyone knows their release date.  “How did he not know?”  Guys would ask.  But, one guy in the college program who knew Sketch simply said, “That’s just him being him.”

As I’ve written in this blog numerous times over the years, I hate hearing about guys getting out only to turn around within days, weeks, months, and come right back in.  It is the height of narcissism, self-loathing and “coal bucket” stupidity to think after a prison bid you can play fast and loose with the law.  You can’t.  A released convict has a target on his back. It’s easy, way too easy in fact, for the police to pick you up and put you right back in.   You’d think guys would know that having seen chucklehead after chucklehead walk out one day only to be seen pushing a cart back up the boulevard the next.  But guys always think they’ll be the one to get away with it.  They couldn’t be more self-centered or wrong.

Your son is that guy.   I wish I could tell you he isn’t, but that would be a lie.  He hasn’t grown up; he hasn’t accepted responsibility for himself and his actions; he just doesn’t give a damn.  Sorry to be so harsh, but guys like Sketch make it tougher on guys still inside who’ve turned their lives around and just need a chance to get out and get on with life.  Sketch, like so many others, plays up to the worst stereotype imaginable about a felon:  “Once a prisoner, always a prisoner.”

And I know from reading your posting you already know that.  But, I also know you’re asking me, as a parent, what do you do.  My answer may surprise you.  See, I don’t want you to give up on your son.  He may need to spend another bid in prison, but don’t give up on him.  Everyone, Alaska, is redeemable.  I accept that as a core principle of faith that a God who can create everything in the universe can most certainly open anyone’s heart.

Redemption doesn’t come without a price.  You can’t avoid the consequences of your actions, but you can get a fresh start.  I’ve struggled with that the last few years but have come to accept that there is a reason for all of this and a season – first of despair, then of hope.

So, I urge you to continue to hold out hope for your son.  Prison breaks you.  Don’t let him fool you.  It’s dehumanizing the lack of privacy, respect and dignity you encounter in here.  He knows it; he just won’t admit it to you.  I have yet to meet any man in here, from the petty thief to the murderer who won’t honestly say there haven’t been nights so lonely and desperate where your eyes well up with tears and you just say “I don’t think I can do this.”

But, holding out hope doesn’t mean you have to continue to support his reckless behavior.  One of my favorite Bible stores is the one about the prodigal son.  He tells his father he doesn’t need him; he takes his inheritance and goes out on his own leading a life of depravation and sin.  The interesting thing is, the father didn’t chase after him, didn’t search for him.  The father loved his son and let him go.  The son had to figure it out for himself.   And when he did, the father ran to him and accepted him back.

Alaska, no one is completely beyond repair.  If and when Sketch decides he’s tired of this place and the loss and loneliness that accompanies it, he’ll get it together.  Have faith.

Thanks for your posting.

The Great Escape?

The other day word spread over the officers’ radios that a possible escape had taken place.  It hadn’t of course, but the reaction and behavior of some officers shows how ill-equipped they are to work at a prison.  It also shows how unnatural the state of incarceration is.

Faheem is a 28 year old African-American, former Army paratrooper, doing seven years for drug possession and sale.  He’s also the building painter as well as a general fix it man here in the college building.  He does just about any job that needs to be done in our building.  He’s a bright, funny, young Muslim student who can always be found walking around with a paint brush or dust mop in his hand.

Last week during CO O’Tay’s shift the famous escape caper took place.  How do I describe CO O’Tay?  She is a morbidly obese sixty year old black woman who gets more grievances written on her than any officer on the compound.  She is loud, verbally abusive and very short tempered.  And, as long-time, serious crime residents here will tell you, her behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at a higher level.  “You tell a guy he has 75 years, even life and he’s at a level 4 and then subject him to her?  She wouldn’t last a week.”  Sounds harsh and brutal, but that’s prison.  That’s the reality of Virginia’s corrections system.

But here?  Here guys – out of their own ignorance – cuss her and yell back at her which just adds gasoline to the fire.  Its anger and ignorance running head-on into more anger and ignorance.  It’s toxic, it’s obnoxious and I sit on my bunk and watch it play out daily.

So, Faheem goes down to maintenance and retrieves a large folding ladder.  He brings the ladder back and moves around the building Windexing and wiping down all the large mirrors hung at the connection of wall and ceiling that give the COs views down every aisle and into most corners.  And the rag he’s using is thick with dirt and dust after only a mirror or two because we live in squalor and filth.  Dirt, grime, insects, an occasional mouse, they all become part of the 4A landscape.

The job completed, the mirrors sparkle, and Faheem folds the ladder, knocks on the booth glass and is buzzed out both doors and onto the boulevard.  The officer in the booth, however, isn’t O’Tay.  She was on break.  It was a “filler”, a roving CO who sits in when COs go on break.

Faheem walks the ladder back to maintenance.  No one’s in the shop.  He leaves the ladder, comes back and is admitted to the building and sees that rec call was just made.  Quick change and out the door goes Faheem which makes perfect sense because it’s 75° and sunny.

O’Tay returns from break and doesn’t see Faheem – or the ladder.  What does she do?  She hits the emergency button and radios the watch command office.  “There’s a guy with a ladder missing.  I think he’s gone over the fence.”

Within seconds of that transmission the loudspeaker begins blaring “4A, bed 25, Antony [note:  his given “birth” name] report back to your building immediately!”  A captain, three sergeants, and the unit manager hustle down the boulevard and into our building.  All three building officers (our two regulars and the “floater”) are huddled in the control booth.  “How longs he been missin?”  “How the hell did he get a ladder to the fence?”  And Faheem?  He’s out walking laps on the track on a beautiful, sunny, early spring day.

Faheem had no idea what was happening.  As he completed a lap he stopped at building 4’s rec gate and waited for an officer to open the lock.  “He gave me a weird look when he let me in”, Faheem told me later.

Five minutes of panicked questioning and then everyone realized the ladder was where it should be, always was, and so was Faheem.  And O’Tay?  Just a lot of muttering by officers about what an over-reactive idiot she’d been.
Here’s the serious side to the issue.  Escape is nothing to joke about.  An attempted prison escape carries an automatic loss of good time, a street charge which, if convicted under, carries a minimum of five years and you’re shipped to max security.

The problem isn’t O’Tay.  The problem, you see, is the system.  The system needs bodies – both inmates and folks who lack other job skills to watch them.  In most cases, the only difference between officer and inmate is the conviction.  The folks are from the same towns, same schools.  The officers lack professionalism and training because running a prison properly – safely, humanely, with appropriate programs for rehabilitation – can’t be sustained with 40,000 inmates. 

It’s the honest assessment of the prison system that escapes reality, not Faheem and his ladder.

Thomas

Thomas is a skinny, young white kid, barely 22, and two years into a three year sentence for drug possession.  It isn’t his first time locked up, just his first time in prison.  Thomas is one of those rural white kids scattered around Virginia who are from screwed up homes, with no sense of self, no hope in the future.  So they drink; they try all kinds of drugs, they do stupid things to themselves, all in the name of “getting high”, feeling better about their lives and their futures.

When Thomas first moved over to our building to join the new college IT grant class I couldn’t help but laugh.  In my mind’s eye I heard the words to the rock group Weezer’s song “Just like Buddy Holly”.  He looks just like Buddy Holly.

I want to write a positive piece about Thomas, something uplifting that will show a kid getting his head together and succeeding.  I can’t.  See, Thomas was dropped from the program yesterday.  He’s moving out of our building this morning.  It was the right decision.  Thomas bucked.  He’s a bright kid, getting A’s in our intro computer class and holding his own in math.  But English?  There were eight papers due.  Thomas did one and that was only because he’d been told a week ago (his third warning) “get your work all caught up or you’ll fail the class.  Fail and you can’t go on.  It’s a prerequisite for other classes.”

So Thomas only turned in the final essay, a self-reflective piece about you and writing.  Twice before, I’d begged and cajoled him to “do the work”.  DC sat with him repeatedly.  The English Prof kept him after class three times.  Thomas knew what was expected and he said “screw it”.  He was bucking authority, he told me.  He didn’t need to know how to write.  The truth is he couldn’t do the work because he couldn’t let go.

I read Thomas’s self-reflective piece.  It was disjointed and contained numerous grammar and spelling errors.  And it tore at my heart.  “I hate to write”, he began and then went on to describe punishments he’d suffered at home, in school and in court where he’d write over and over “I’m sorry”.  “My dad called me idiot all the time.  He said I was a piece of shit.  My mom said [when she wasn’t high or drunk] that she didn’t love me.  It was my fault she and my dad split.”

I read in broken syntax and subject-verb disconnect how his “behavior” outbursts in school led him to special ed classes and being called “retard”.  So he found solace and belonging with other misfits and outcasts.  And the anger, the self loathing, the loneliness festered.

After class yesterday he went to the English Professor with tears in his eyes and asked “can you just give me a D?”  Dr. Y is a sweet, wonderful woman.  And it pained her to say no, but he didn’t do the work.

Thomas came back to the building devastated.  The kid has no one he can count on.  His mother and father, biological parents and nothing more, don’t even bother with him.  He hears from an aunt, a few “friends”.  The word friend is a strange one.  Thomas discovered something I learned early in this process.  We have few friends, people who will stand by you when everything has turned wrong. 

I told Thomas as gently as I could “you have to let it go”.  Let it go.  Those are three tough words, almost impossible words to grasp, comprehend and fulfill.  Let it go.  This kid was dealt a lousy hand.  But that lousy hand keeps tearing him down, keeps him locked up in despair and self-hatred.  That tough hand is destroying his life.  “Thomas, let it go.  You can’t let that stuff destroy you.”

Words come easy.  Living it is tougher.  It’s taken me a long time to let go.  Hurts sit inside of us and fester and ooze.  And the worst hurts are the ones inflicted on us by the people who we always hope love us, no matter what.

I’m not sure when it hit me that I needed to put the past, the hurt behind me.  I think it was rather recently when I heard from a dear friend shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer.  The cancer was advanced, the treatment painful and difficult, but the prognosis was cautiously optimistic. 

This friend, a minister, had seen me through some of the worst days at the jail and the receiving unit.  When he wrote, he surprised me by confessing that he’d been knocked off balance for a little while after the diagnosis, trying to figure out “why”, why was he going through this.

And I got that.  For years I wondered why was all this happening to me.  What was God doing?

 After getting his letter, I started thinking about the story in the Gospel of Matthew, the rich young man who had “followed the commandments” his whole life but wanted to know the key to heaven.  “Give away all your money,” Jesus told him.  “Let it go”.  I always thought that was merely a statement about materialism.  But, it was so much more.

We cling, we protect things – money, homes, jobs and hold on to stuff – even poisonous hurtful stuff like someone you love telling you “I don’t love you anymore.  There’s someone else.”  We hold it because we’re afraid, afraid to let it go.  And it imprisons us and eventually consumes and destroys us.

I realized reading my friend’s letter that God uses all this crap that comes into our lives – whether self-inflicted or thrust upon us – to liberate us and allow us to be, really be, His children.

That doesn’t mean you still don’t hurt.  The emptiness and the loneliness don’t magically disappear.  It’s just now you’re OK, OK with who you are because you trust God, in His time and His way, to make it all right.

Thomas hasn’t figured that out yet.  He’s still letting all that baggage define and damage him.  Hopefully, before it’s too late, he’ll let it go.  It cost him the college program.  The good news is, God gives second and third and even fourth chances.

Two Reentry Tales

This is the story of two different reentry experiences.  These are real men who did their sentence, “completed their bids”, and returned to society.  The conclusion, “how should we handle reentry?” will be apparent.  It’s a shame the politicians don’t see it.

Ten months ago “Wolf” left Lunenburg.  Barely thirty, Wolf was completing his third prison sentence, all centered around his drug use and his quest to find money to support his habit.  And it wasn’t one drug with Wolfe.  Though he used crack regularly, he also had a taste for ecstasy, crystal meth and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Wolf lived with his mom.  He couldn’t hold down work.  How could you when you spend your daylight hours passed out and your nights chasing a high?  He was barely literate having never completed his GED.  He’d be forced into a class for a month or two, quit, lose “good time” for a year and then repeat the cycle.  But what does good time matter when you’re only doing 36 months and you’re going home to the same life?

I met Wolf through Big S.  Big S had gotten him enrolled in a vocational program.  “You need job skills Wolf, a trade”, Big S would tell him.  Wolf, just a big, goofy looking white man-child would just shrug his shoulders.

He had artistic talent and was considered one of the best tattoo men on the compound.  But, could you trust him to do your tattoo?  He let a guy tat him up and didn’t even notice that his name was on backward (“Flow” instead of “Wolf”).

No education, no job skills, Wolf resided in 3B, the “transition” dorm.  When he was in there they hadn’t completely instituted Governor Bob’s reentry regimen, the touchy feely “therapeutic community” program where guys are paid to be “cheer managers” and “word of the day managers”.  What, you may ask does that have to do with returning to society as a productive, rehabilitated citizen?  Only Governor Bob knows.  But, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he built the program knowing it would fail, just so he could say “I tried, but nothing will change these guys.”

Some people did care about Wolf.  The vocational instructor gave him the name of a man who owned a lumber yard in a rural county not far from Richmond.  “He’ll hire felons.  Just go see him and promise me you’ll work hard.”  And of course, Big S tried to keep him on the right path in here.  “You only get so many chances Wolf,” he’d tell him.

Wolf completed “transition”, was released and went home to live with mom.  He even got a job at the lumberyard.  So far, so good.  But drug addiction is an insidious devil.  And a ten week, feel good “drugs are bad” program put on by DOC and administered by one of their “treatment counselors” is doomed to fail.  Want a new oxymoron to toss around besides “jumbo shrimp”?  Try “prison counselor”. 

For nine months, Wolf kept his job and functioned.  He wasn’t drug free, just on the days he was urine tested by his probation officer.  Urine tests, drug treatment, costs money.  But prison costs more.  So why does Governor Bob – and all his predecessors – spend over $25,000 per year to keep a man locked up, but only $2,000 per year to ensure he succeeds?

Around Christmas the lumberyard told Wolf they were letting him go.  The economy was tough.  Wolf’s source of funds for his habit dried up.  Within a month the Richmond morning news had Wolf’s mug shot on air.  He broke into an elderly woman’s home, beat her, forced her to drive to an ATM and give him money.  He then pulled off to the side of the road and put her out, returned to her house and set it on fire.  A short while later, he was arrested, still driving her car.

Wolf is facing six felony counts.  Every guy in here knows Wolf will probably never see the streets again.  He’ll pull thirty, forty years maybe even life.  And, every reasonable thinking guy in here knows every time a released inmate reoffends it makes it that much tougher on the rest of us still doing time.  Recidivism, you see, plays to society’s base fears and prejudices.  “Inmates are vicious beasts, incapable of rehabilitation.  They aren’t like law abiding folks.”

As I have noted numerous times in this blog, the Governor’s reentry program, the very mission the Department of Corrections espouses, is doomed to failure because it addresses the wrong core issues.  Drug and alcohol abuse issues are not treated in prison.  Mental illness is even worse off.  And Mitt Romney and all the other political pundits are wrong when they tell you there’s “a safety net”.  Folks, the safety net has a huge hole in it.  You take people from broken homes, with parents having limited schooling, limited resources, you have them live in poor neighborhoods with inadequate housing, schools and access to medical care; and they pour through the huge holes in the safety net.  We have a society where there is a caste system with millions and millions of folks who don’t have a shot at “the American Dream”.  Instead, they cycle in and out of prison, feeding a corrupt system that lines the pockets of a select few while sapping $60 billion annually from the nation’s coffers.  And the politicians return to the same tired programs (Governor Bob’s reentry program is the same “therapeutic plan” used and discarded by DOC in the ‘80’s and the ‘90’s because it proved ineffective).

A nation that accepts 2 ½ million people behind bars, a nation that accepts 15% of its citizens living below the poverty line, is a nation on the cusp of collapse.  There has to be a better way, a saner way.  There has to be a way to break the cycle. 

Is it hopeless?  No.  Because as badly conceived as Governor McDonnell’s reentry program is, some good, some success is happening here.

Five men who’ve been educated under the IT grant program have been released over the last five months.  All five, with the daily help and encouragement of staff at Goodwill Industries, have found stable employment.  All five have residences that they are paying rent on.

Sure it’s so soon after they left.  But the key is they worked for a goal in here.  They believed education and community support would give them a second chance.  And isn’t that what “corrections” is supposed to be about?  Over 90% of the incarcerated are going to go home.  Society could shorten sentences and prison by prison set up programs like the “campus behind walls” community we’ve built here.  Let us earn our way out.  Inmates don’t need fancy brochures touting “reentry”.  Sorry Governor Bob.  What inmates need is education and a chance to succeed.  Do that and they’ll be less stories like Wolf’s.