I Met a Guy in Here …

I met a guy in here named Gary from Southside Virginia. He’s in his thirties and has a high school diploma. Problem is, he can’t read, write, do simple math, or tell time. Some school district around here decided it was easier to pass Gary on than try and educate him. Now, he gets a guy he trusts to read him letters his mom writes and then write her back.

            

School isn’t an option. Spaces are limited. He has a diploma so he’s ineligible. If he was the only man I met in here who’d been mishandled in school I’d be concerned, but he’s not. He’s one of dozens of Jaspers, and Juniors, and Rickys, guys who come from families who generationally lack basic education skills and who likewise generationally know all about prison. That makes me angry. They are the outcasts. It isn’t a racial issue. All the names I just wrote are white guys.

            

I wondered, as I finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs – a guy who though caustic and intense saw a massive failure in America’s education system – how we expect people like Gary to buy into the “American Dream” myth when they are so far removed from it. There’s a whole lot of Garys out there, outcasts, and lepers, who are left out and they will eventually overwhelm the system. The answer isn’t to ignore them or shun them or worse, send them to prison. Am I my brother’s keeper? The answer seems obvious.

            

I met a guy in here named Dipper. That’s not his real name. It’s what the guys call him. Dipper stuck because he was known to take a dip of any drug. Crack or powder cocaine; heroin; PCP; crystal meth; embalming fluid laced joints. Dipper used them all. Don’t think that drugs have an effect on you? Talk to Dipper. He’s the embodiment of “this is your brain on drugs.” You know the old public service announcement where a guy put a frying pan on the stove and said, “This is your brain,” then cracked an egg in the pan and said, “This is your brain on drugs.” Dipper’s elevator doesn’t go to the top floor. He told me the other day, “I’m a frigment of my own imagination.” That’s right, a “frigment.”

            

It’d be hilarious except nothing in his prison experience makes him want – or need – to change. He is an addict and he will remain an addict. He’ll leave here in sixteen months and get high his first day out. And, he’ll stay high until he’s arrested again or worse, kills himself. If it was just Dipper you could say, “O well, lose one every now or then.” But Dipper is like most of the drug users in here. They just can’t stop.

           

I used to think (you know “BA” – before arrest) that drug addiction was just a matter of will power. Then, I spent three days watching a young man – a boy really, just eighteen – go through heroin withdrawal. His body craved the drug even as he convulsed and poured sweat; even as his bowels released and suffered from dry heaves. I realized it wasn’t will power. Will power is one of those self-righteous words we use when everything’s going right. Then, the storms of life hit and we come face to face with all our foibles and failures. Dipper’s an addict. Sending him to prison won’t change that. I don’t know what will, but it’s not this place.

            

I met a man in prison named Thomas. He’s a decent guy, the same age as my older son. The world didn’t deal him a fair hand. His father, a chemical engineer – was abusive. He told Thomas he wasn’t worth a damn. “You’re not bright. You're not motivated. You’ll never amount to anything.” It was worse for his younger sister. She was sexually abused. And no one paid attention. After all, they were a nice middle-class family.

            

Thomas became depressed and withdrawn. He started using way too many drugs. He started acting reckless, wanting to die. His sister quit eating and ran away more than once. Thomas landed in prison; his sister was given over to a loving aunt and uncle in Oklahoma.

            

Thomas’s time in prison wasn’t always easy. A young, skinny white kid makes a prime target for the predators. He fought a lot. But, he never lost hope; he never gave up. And his sister? She graduated high school and won a scholarship to a college in Oklahoma. Thomas leaves in thirty days. He told me he wanted to write me when he got out. I’m more of a father to him than his own dad, he said. I found that ironic. Thomas needed me in here to talk to as he struggled with his anger and hurt of his dad. My own sons go on without me.

           

“Get out and you lead a beautiful life. Be the man you know deep down you are.” I’ve told that to Thomas a dozen times. I’ve said it to other guys to get them to see they aren’t this place. Those are words I wrote to myself early on when life was crashing in on me in here. “Be the man you know you are.”

            

I have met hundreds of Garys, and Dippers, and Thomases in the past five years. Each of them has a story. I’ve met dozens of men who I don’t like, who have no remorse, take no responsibility for themselves or their actions, who have behaved in such violent, inhuman ways to warrant separation from society.

            

And then I’ve met others, those on the outside looking in. For them, prison isn’t the answer. It certainly won’t solve the problems that led most of them to end up in here.

            

I met a man in here … They’ve made an impression on me: their failures and their successes; their humanity. They shouldn’t be forgotten. They are the fathers, brothers, and sons of this nation.

Entrepreneurship 101

I voted my young Muslim friend Mustafa most likely to get his own infomercial. Mustafa is a wheeler-dealer. He’s constantly coming up with items – usually food – to sell. His first product – suckers made out of jolly ranchers with starburst centers – sold out as fast as he could make them. His cost: about ten cents per; he sold them for fifty cents.

            

Then he moved up to peanut brittle. One cup of peanut butter, twenty melted butter scotch candies and a box of peanuts. It cost him $1.00 but he sold a bag of brittle for $2.50.

            

This week he outdid himself. He started making granola bars. It’s an easy recipe with oatmeal, crushed up chocolate chip cookies and trail mix. He had pre-orders for fifty (at fifty cents apiece). He can’t make them fast enough to meet the demand.

           

Like the outside world, there is a huge economy operating off the books in here to meet the needs and wants of the population. And guys like Mustafa – even without any business education – understand basic economic principles better than most folks outside. He’s got a future in marketing. More importantly, he’s got a future.

KFC on the Compound

I had boneless Kentucky Fried Chicken Tuesday night, a five piece box, just chicken, and it was delicious. The college has done three inmate fundraisers in the past year: Krispy Kreme donuts; Dominos medium cheese pizza; and KFC boneless chicken.

            

Having a fundraiser inside is a big deal. For one thing, the average monthly wage in here is $40.00. Anything sold has to be priced to be affordable for a majority of the compound. Then, there are the logistics. Orders are placed six week in advance. Accounts are debited a week before delivery (right after monthly pay is deposited). Security is notified of the delivery date. The food shows up at the sally port and is inspected for contraband (drugs and weapons are big concerns). Movement is “stopped” while the forklift moves the pallet of hot pizza – or chicken – to the gym. Then, building by building, men are called up to get their order (the aides and teachers run a line service with officers observing).

            

Almost 1300 boxes of chicken at $8.00 a box were sold. Not bad for a compound with right at 1000 men (you were allowed to buy up to 3 boxes per inmate).

            

The three fundraisers have brought in close to $10,000 for our “Campus Behind Walls” scholarship fund, all which came from inmate food purchases. For every dollar spent on inmate education, tax payers save $5.00 in future incarceration costs. That makes perfect economic sense. In here, it also means something tasty.

Now People Pay Attention

So, I came in from running the other afternoon and turned my TV on to mindlessly watch as I cooled down. The crisis de jour (whether Syria, Miley Cyrus, or the Zimmerman divorce) gave way to a new phenomenon. Three different channels were airing stories on the new show, “Orange is the New Black.” All around me guys sat listening as Katie Couric – or some other vapid, pretty face – asked the writer “How did you survive?” How indeed. And then my young friend Mustafa – two bunks over – blurted out, “This chick’s been reading your blog!” It seems everyone is now paying attention to life in prison. If Hollywood finds a story, can the public be far behind?

            

For those who haven’t yet heard all the talk, “Orange is the New Black” is the TV/internet sensation about a woman’s three years in Federal prison on a drug/money laundering charge. Written by first time author Piper Kerman, it is her story of a middle-class, educated, white woman who finds herself behind “the walls.” The title paints out the difficulties convicted felons face. She compares us to blacks in the segregated Jim Crow South.

            

There is dark, gallows humor in her stories of life behind bars. It’s ironic. We laugh a good bit in here. As I tell guys who remark on my positive attitude, it’s easier to laugh about the insanity in here than to cry. It’s also ironic because most of Ms. Kerman’s experiences are the same issues I write about weekly in this blog. Neither she, nor I, are reinventing the wheel. The problems, the lunacy that is prison is as old as time. However, her story, complete with tawdry scenes of lesbian love triangles and violence, captured a director’s attention who turned the book into a show. And soon, everyone was talking about prison.

           

I thought about that as I watched one reporter after another fawn over Ms. Kerman and parade actors out who portray the inmates and guards in her prison story. They are all such beautiful, intelligent people. They aren’t real inmates, the vast majority of whom have lived lives without adequate medical care or educational opportunities, or safe, happy, well-adjusted homes. TV can’t accurately portray life inside because it’s too sanitized. There is nothing sanitized about prison. It is dirty; it is lonely; it is hell. That story unfortunately, doesn’t sell books. Two hot women in orange jumpers getting intimate does.

            

And I thought about the news that broke the other night on the Richmond TV stations. An inmate at Greensville Correctional Center (2-3 level prison with over 3000 inmates and Virginia’s death chamber) died after being attacked. He was a low-custody thief within a year of release. That’s real prison. Death, and dirt, and disgust, and yet it takes a Hollywood version to make people stop and say, “You mean that stuff really goes on inside there?” I laugh when critics of this blog write in and say, “We know prison’s bad.” My dear, you don’t – as they say in here – know “shit” about life in here until you’ve actually lived it. Oh well, just another felon dead means we don’t have to worry about his recidivism risk.

            

In August, I was able to watch the entire first season of the Sundance Channel show, “Rectify.” It is the story of a man who spent twenty years on death row until his conviction was overturned. What captured (funny choice of word isn’t it?) my attention wasn’t his innocence; no, it was his adjustment to real life. In here, it’s a warped “Alice in Wonderland” existence; or, as my friend Mark – who goes home Tuesday after eighteen years – told me, “I have to remember how to be human, how to trust, how to care.”

            

People are paying attention. Really? Is it TV shows that tell us something is horribly wrong with a system that costs American tax-payers over $60 billion a year and still more than one out of three released offenders will be locked back up within the year? Aren’t some things so obvious that we don’t need talking heads to tell us what is right? Apparently not.

            

Right now, prison is a hot issue. In politics, candidates on the right bemoan the waste of money and lack of results while those on the left see prison in terms of racial and economic injustice. Churches are remembering their obligation to minister to those “on the outside.” Authors and screenwriters get rich telling the story of life behind bars. Meanwhile, 2.3 million men and women go through another day inside.

            

More than three years ago, I began this blog with the simple goal of finding out if anyone was out there. Did anyone care about life in here? There have been times when I’ve said too many personal things, where I’ve questioned aloud my circumstances while trying to make sense of life in here. I’ve always written with the idea firmly embedded in me that people are basically decent. They care what happens; even, as they – like me – do stupid, senseless things at times, they care and they feel compassion and empathy.

            

Piper Kerman and others are making people pay attention to what goes on in here. That is a good thing. But, it should not take TV to tell us things have to change.

No, But I stayed at Holiday Inn Express Once

You’ve seen the ad.  There is a dramatic moment where someone’s life or safety hangs in the balance – a snakebite, a shipwreck, in an operating room. Our hero suddenly steps forward. With calm and cool direction, the hero takes charge and offers precise instructions to resolve the crisis. “Are you a surgeon?” A thankful, awestruck crowd member asks. “No,” comes our hero’s reply. “But I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

            

The intent of the ad – besides humor – is to convey how intelligent and able you become after a night at the Holiday Inn Express. In a crisis, someone – it seems – always has the answer. And we’re quick to go along with that person because we assume he knows what he’s talking about. But what if he doesn’t? What if he’s full of it and just made the whole story up? That would be life in prison.

            

I am bombarded daily by guys that seek to impress me with their knowledge and life experiences. If I didn’t know any better, I would think every inmate doing a drug sentence was just like the infamous Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Every drug guy in here wants to have you think he was one brick shy of Jay Z. Forget the fact that Jay Z’s drug dealing days were not that profitable (his claim to fame – beating a drug stop on the Garden State Parkway on 4^th Amendment illegal search and seizure grounds occurred in an old, high mileage Nissan Maxima with the header peeling off the roof). No, Jay Z turned from low level drug dealing to Rap mogul the old fashioned way: He had an entrepreneurial idea and worked hard to make it come true.

            

The admen who brought you the Holiday Inn Express campaign can’t compete with the guys in here. Bullshit (pardon my language) is creative and artistic. The really strange thing is, most guys want you to think they are so smart, yet they buy almost any line thrown out. They are beyond gullible.

            

We recently had an inmate claim to be a thoracic surgeon. “Have you met the doctor yet Larry?” I was asked on a number of occasions. “Are you sure he’s a doctor,” I asked dozens of guys who were taking their medical records to him. “Of course he’s a doctor. We asked him and he told us all about medical school, and surgery, and his offices.”

            

The “doctor” was transferred last week but not before a little internet search by someone on the street confirmed he was an LPN who was locked up on a sex charge. “I knew he wasn’t no doctor,” was heard all over the compound from the very same guys who weeks earlier had bought into his story. Gullibility is alive and well inside the walls.

            

There are always one or two charlatans who hang out in the law library and convince men so desperate to get out that they’ll pay practically anything for a chance at freedom. The stories are always the same: your defense attorney screwed up – or worse, sold you out; the judge and the commonwealth attorney made a deal; there was no evidence to convict. And the self-described Clarence Darrow’s tell you they just got a guy off death row, or another guy released due to a “technicality,” and they have an old English writ that’ll work; “just give me $50,” they say.

           

I’m asked if it’s true and I tell them no, the law doesn’t work that way. “But he said,” I’ll hear and I’ll respond, “He doesn’t know the law. He doesn’t know the truth.”

            

Guys in here crave being in “the know.” They want the fictions to be fact. “The Governor just brought back 65%!” (Good-time earning so you only serve 65%, not 85%). And I explain that the Governor can’t bring back something that never existed (Virginia never had 65%; parole-abolished in 1995 – wasn’t on a 65% scale). Nor can the Governor arbitrarily, in the middle of August, change the Virginia Code. That’s not how laws are made in the Commonwealth.

            

One of the main driving forces in prison and a chief cause of the tremendous rate of recidivism after release is ignorance. Men in here know so little about so much. They lack basic skills in reading comprehension, math, science, history, and geography. That is a dangerous thing because an inability to discern truth from bullshit is at the heart of most crazy prison stories. It’s more important in here for a guy to say he drove a Bentley – even though he lacks basic education, has obvious health issues, and never made more than minimum wage – than to say he owned a 1980s Corolla and is back to prison for a third bid for dealing eight balls of crack in the projects.

            

Discerning the truth: I spend a fair amount of time each morning reading the Psalms and Proverbs. Over and over they speak about knowledge, truth, and wisdom. Can you cut the wheat from the chaff? Can you see through the racial ignorance peddled by Black and White alike in here to deny responsibility for our incarceration?

            

As I had to explain to a young friend in here that the guy claiming to have three associate degree and a masters is lying through his teeth, it occurred to me that prison mirrors the real world. We live in a world driven in large part by ignorance and prejudice. And we immediately fall back on an eye for an eye-revenge and retribution as the keys to justice. They aren’t. “Mercy,” the Apostle James said, “triumphs over judgment.”

            

“Be who you are.” I tell that to guys quite often as they try and impress me with their stories of their exploits. There isn’t anything glorious in being busted with thirty kilos or losing your wife and family over embezzled funds. Discern the truth, show mercy and compassion. It doesn’t require a stay at a Holiday Inn Express.

Losing

I was reading the September issue of “National Geographic” the other night and found a story about failure. The author’s contention was that failure is a necessary part of life and ultimate success. There were photos of George Mallory (lost as he attempted to scale Everest), and Amelia Earhart, and Ernest Shackleton. The author summed it up this way, “Failure – never sought, always dreaded, impossible to ignore –is the specter that hovers over every attempt at exploration. Yet without the sting of failure to spur us to reassess and rethink, progress would be impossible.

            

In 1914, Irish-born explorer Ernest Shackleton led a twenty-seven man team on a trans-Antarctic journey in the ship “Endeavor.” His attempt to cross Antarctica failed when the ship became stuck in ice. Thousands of miles from help with no way to get word out of their predicament, Shackleton faced the real possibility that he and every man with him would die. It was one of history’s great exploration miscalculations.

            

But that wasn’t the end of the story, Shackleton refused to give up. He couldn’t change what landed the “Endeavor” on the ice, but he could bring the men home safely. Persistence, resilience, and adaptability. Shackleton exhibited all three characteristics and he turned his failure into success. In 1916, two years after leaving on his Antarctic exploration, Shackleton and all twenty-seven crew members returned home. Did he accomplish what he set out to discover? No. But what he did accomplish was as important.

            

Failure can define future success. Writer Pat Conroy’s non-fiction best-seller, “My Losing Season” tells his story as a basketball player on a very bad citadel team. Conroy was a student at the all-male South Carolina military college in the sixties as the school struggled to integrate and finds its way in the turbulence that defined the decade and the protests over America’s involvement in Vietnam.

           

Conroy’s attendance at the Citadel conflicted him. The son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot, Conroy always felt outside and apart from his father. He did what was expected and attended the Citadel, but he wasn’t the typical Southern cadet. And, as he details the losses, one after another, and the conflict surrounding him, you begin to understand where “The Prince of Tides,” “The Water is Wide,” and “The Great Santini” were born.

            

Conroy, for most of his adult life, struggled with depression. His books reflect human frailty, and pain, and failure. Now? Now, Conroy is happily married. He’s even penned a cookbook on low-country cuisine. While he’s never said so, I can’t help but think it was the losing, the struggling through the pain, that has made the happiness of his later years so much more enjoyable.

            

Failure, loss, it seems, is part of the human condition. How we persist, how we bounce back when “all is lost” ultimately defines who we are. I’ve thought a good deal about that the past few weeks as two friends left this place after lengthy terms of incarceration.

            

Dre (short for Andre) went home two weeks ago after ten years. For the past two years, he and I never missed an episode of CBS’s reality show “Amazing Race.” We decided some time ago we could win that competition. Dre was the fastest man on the compound. I have never seen a man run with such explosiveness and energy. And, he was fearless. Perhaps that came from negotiating his way as a 5’8” man through high custody prisons while avoiding gangs and other distractions.

            

“I’ll take on any heights,” he’d tell me. “You eat anything they throw at you.” (My “talent” or weakness – I can eat almost anything). Dre had been in the service at the time of his arrest. “It was 2^nd degree murder, and I’ve regretted every day since.” The jury must have believed him; his sentence was at the minimum level for the crime.

            

Still, twelve years (he did a little over ten) is a long time to be away, to think about what was and what might have been. You can’t help but think about it, you know, how different your life had been “if only.”

           

Dre came to this low-level facility in 2010. We hit it off almost immediately. He was a college student and in May earned his degree. Two weeks ago his father arrived out front and picked him up. They drove back to New Jersey and “home”. Dre has college and a job waiting on him. Prison was not a good use of those years, except … except look what Dre did with the time. Like Shackleton, he turned his goals in a different direction. He had to survive, overcome, endure. And he did. And he found his way home.

            

Then there’s Mark. Mark leaves in twenty-four days. Seventeen years and a little over a month after he entered prison, he’s heading out.

            

At age 26, barely able to read, living in one dilapidated trailer after another, Mark was arrested on a serious charge. “Testify against your co-defendant and you’ll get two years,” the commonwealth attorney told him. Mark wasn’t a snitch. “I took my chance in court, got convicted and they asked for life.” Instead, the judge gave him twenty years.

            

Mark was, as he put it, a trailer trash redneck, who read at a first grade level. He started out at Nottoway, notorious for stabbings, and gang violence, and death. “And you know what Larry? I never had a finger put on me. For some reason – I guess it was God – I came through this time unscathed.”

            Unscathed. Psalm 118 says “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.” It means simply, “that God is with me no matter what the circumstances may be. Mark told me that a few months ago and I smiled. It was that verse that helped me fall asleep each night as I struggled with the violence and mayhem of the receiving unit.

            

Mark had nothing when he was locked up. He lacked family support, job skills, even rudimentary education. Then his life took a turn. He was sitting in church one Sunday at Nottoway when an inmate he barely knew approached him. “My girl’s coming for a visit next Saturday and she’s bringing a friend. You seem like an alright guy. Want to visit with her?”

            

A week later he was sitting in the visitation room with Sharon. For the next year they exchanged letters and then phone calls and more visits. His friend stopped seeing the other girl; Mark and Sharon, however, grew closer. Two years later, with Mark still doing ten years, he and Sharon married in the Nottoway Prison chapel.

            

Mark started school and in less than eighteen months earned his GED. A year ago he joined our IT program and completed that. Along the way, he learned CAD (computer assisted design).

            

Mark’s whole life was one of disappointment and failure until he hit the worst he could imagine. “I never would have met Sharon, never would have gotten my education, if I hadn’t turned down that two year plea. God brought me through the valley.”

            

The past two months have been tough on me. Life in here ebbs and flows and during these few months I’ve been thinking a good deal about where I started and where I’m headed. And it’s strange. I struggle a good bit, feeling every bit the failure. Guys in here, however, view me in an entirely different way. I have everything – according to them – going for me.

            

So the other night Mark, who lives in the bunk right next to me, leaned over to say something. “I wouldn’t have graduated the college program if it wasn’t for you,” he told me. “You’ll never know what you being in here has meant to the guys until you forgive yourself and let God move you forward.” That’s what got me thinking about Shackleton, and Conroy, and failure.

            

I think what Mark was saying to me is failure is in the present. We miss out, we screw up relationships, and dreams, and assignments, and we face a crossroads. We move forward or we die. And you know, you can die without being dead. Or you can struggle and go on, and end up in a different place than you expected, but a good place none the less.

           

It took Shackleton almost two years to cross the ice; it took Conroy almost twenty years and a half dozen novels to sort through his depression; sometimes it takes the horror and waste of this place.

The Big Picture

It’s easy in here to think the whole world is contained inside these fences. Then, there are weeks where the news from the outside overwhelms the normal rhythm – if what goes on in here can ever be described as “normal” or rhythmic - of things. This past week was one of those times.  You realize how little guys in here actually know about life and history and – unfortunately – moral frameworks to operate through. Life in here tends to be a series of reactions, most not carefully thought out – to news and events beyond our control. But, it’s those visceral reactions that give me pause. How can a man expect to leave here and do well if he holds the same ideas that landed him in here?

            

A few weeks ago, much was made of the 150^th anniversary of the greatest battle to take place on North American soil. For three days in the heat of July 1863, the army of the United States faced off against their counterpart in the confederacy. It was a horrendous, bloody three days with deaths and wounded numbering in the tens of thousands. And, it was the pivotal battle of the Civil War. The future survival of this country was decided on the bloody grounds surrounding the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.

            

Most Americans know about the battle of Gettysburg. But, there is a little known post-script to the conclusion of the battle. It was a topic touched on briefly by Director Martin Scorsese in his epic “Gangs of New York.” On July 4, 1863, weary and bloodied Union troops were pulled from Gettysburg and sent by train to quell massive anti-draft riots that had turned New York City into a fiery hell. “Four score and seven years” (87 years, that is) after this country’s founding as a democracy crowds were rioting through New York City. Hundreds were killed and injured. Free black men were lynched at will or burned alive. Homes and businesses were looted and destroyed. It was, simply put, utter chaos.

            

President Lincoln rushed thousands of battle-worn troops to New York. Martial law was declared and troops fired at will on crowds. Arrests and detention without benefit of due process or use of the constitutionally guaranteed right of Habeas Corpus (suspended by Lincoln in a clear execution of dictatorial power) occurred. All of this was done in the name of liberty, in an effort by a president and a government to preserve a still fragile and new democracy in the midst of war.

           

I write this as more images of burning and chaos and soldiers in the street in Cairo, Egypt, or Damascus, Syria, or a dozen other Arab nations bombarded our airwaves. Because of the significant number of Muslim inmates in here, discussions – loud at times – usually degenerate into “what’s wrong with those Arabs?” or people will try and tell you the violence is just a by-product of a religion (Islam) that shows little regard for  democracy or peace. And, we tend to scoff at the notion of an “Arab Spring” where freedom and liberty take over. The Middle East, struggling to join the 21^st century with a ballooning population under the age of thirty, is in the throes of upheaval. But before we’re quick to draw conclusions from what we see, let’s remember our own past. The reason people like Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are so highly regarded by us is because they act contrary to what most of us would do. It’s an unfortunate fact but a fact none the less, that most of us would be with the rioters, and seeking revenge.

           

I told some of the young Muslim guys in here there is nothing anti-democratic about the Arab world. Just like this country in 1863, democracy is a fragile thing. Ultimately, good will triumph.

            

Then there was the Federal jury in Boston who convicted noted mobster Whitey Bulger of numerous crimes including murder. There’s no denying Bulger is a cold-blooded killer. He ran most of the organized crime in South Boston and was ruthless. His story, fictionalized somewhat in the academy-award winning movie “Departed” glossed over and glamorized some of the worst that was Whitey Bulger.

            

The most notable disclosures at his trial didn’t relate to his crimes. No, the most notable disclosures concerned the government’s willingness to get in bed with brutal criminals in their quest to catch other criminals. The government it seems is not above breaking the law in the pursuit of enforcing the law. If that idea doesn’t concern you, I’m not sure what does.

            

In the past few months we have learned the government can – and does – collect virtually every electronic form of communication we utilize. In one breath, we are lied to and told, “No, we don’t collect all that data,” and a day later that same senior administration official admits he lied but it was merely to keep the “terrorists guessing.” And that’s all it takes now. “We’re pursuing terror threats” or trying to break an organized crime syndicate. The ends – the government tells us – justify the means.

            

What does that mean? In Bulger’s case, that meant FBI agents tipped him off about other crime family activity. They shielded and protected Bulger from prosecutions for murder, extortion, and a host of other crimes. They were a party to much of Bulger’s wrong doing.

            

But it’s not just big criminals like Bulger. Daily, police use lies and deceit to “break a crime.” In my own case, the detective in charge couldn’t accept my conviction. There had to be others involved, he thought. There had to be an offshore account (this even as I provided full financial disclosure). So what did he do? He told my wife I “admitted if I made bond I was going to drive home, kill her and our kids, and dig up the money.” He used this lie about a guy who had never even spanked his children.

            

Why’d he lie? “I figured she’d show me where the money was. I guess I was wrong.” The problem with tolerating this sort of police behavior is that the power of government to deprive you of your liberty or property is a power that can be easily corrupted by unscrupulous, power-driven people.

            

The Bulger case should be a clear call to this nation to require government itself to live within the law. The ends do not justify the means. Government law enforcement cannot be allowed to get cozy with criminals – or lie, cheat, and steal – to get a conviction.

            

This past week almost every TV in the building was tuned in as Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department of Justice was going to push “significant prison reform measures,” immediately. As the A.G. ran through the litany of facts about the United States current mass incarceration problem:

-        25% of the world’s prisoners are locked up in the US though this nation has only 5% of the world’s population

-        $80 billion spent annually on prisons

-        Staggering recidivism rates even as violent crime rates plummet

I couldn’t help but smile when my bunk neighbor leaned over my way and said, “Hey, Holder reads your blog.”

            

The A.G. has just admitted what anyone who really examines the system already knew: prison wastes money, resources, and lives. That politicians on both sides of the aisle now agree with that premise should be enough to tell you it isn’t even a controversial position.

            

Too many people are sentenced to prison for far too long. For many of those inmates, their time in prison determines their future success and that of their children. No one with an ounce of sense will suggest that there shouldn’t be consequences for breaking the law. But, the consequences must be in proportion to the wrong committed and must always have as a goal the successful return of the lawbreaker to society.

            

The A.G. correctly pointed out that America’s reliance on prison fails that simple test. It’s now time for Virginia to follow the A.G.’s lead. Let’s get creative with sentencing. Reward inmates who truly seek to atone for their wrongs and be rehabilitated. Prison – when necessary – should be with brief stints unless the crime is so violent or the defendant so sociopathic that returning him – or her – to society is impossible.

            

The same day the U.S. Attorney General announced the Federal government’s prison reform push, a Federal judge in New York ruled the city’s “stop and frisk” program unconstitutional. The controversial program allowed police to stop and pat down anyone they wanted. Do you know who was stopped? Tens of thousands of black men, most with not even the slightest hint of any wrong doing or any suspicious activity.

            

I know how I feel being patted down every time I enter or exit a building and I’m in prison. To be subjected to that invasion of my personal space in the “free” world based almost exclusively on the color of my skin is abhorrent. American law, we tell our children in school, is color-blind. But, there are reasons expressions such as “driving while black,” resonate in the African-American community. For all its noble purposes, stop and frisk is simply an invitation to police harassment. The Federal Court correctly noted its unconstitutionality. It belongs on the dust heap of other failed police practices.

            

And finally, I reminded a group of students this week that we are approaching the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. With the exception of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, no other speech in American history so beautifully and lyrically portrays the ideals of this country.

            The most significant piece of his speech, the part where Dr. King rhythmically recited over and over “I have a dream,” and then spoke about children – black and white – holding hands, was not even in the original text. Dr. King, the Baptist preacher that he was, felt the pull of the Holy Spirit and went off script.

           

As I reread his wonderful words, I wondered what Dr. King, had he lived, would say about America today. At the time of his murder he had gone beyond a call for racial justice. He had denounced America’s war in Indochina. He was pushing the rights of the poor. He was preaching to the outcasts. And white America was made uncomfortable. We don’t like sitting in our fancy homes and churches and being told those material items aren’t God’s blessings. And Black people? They thought he was a sellout. Young Blacks demanded rebellion. Dr. King preached reconciliation.

           

I feel confident if Dr. King was with us today he would denounce drone strikes, NSA surveillance, and America’s obsession with material wealth. And, I think he would remind Christians everywhere of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:

            

“I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger and you did not invite me in; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick, or in prison, and you did not visit me … truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

           

Sometimes prison can be completely isolating. You forget there’s a world out there with people going through so much. Weeks like this come along and you’re reminded – for most of us anyway – this is but a stop along the way. And doing right, treating people right, seeing the big picture matters.

You Can't Spell it without D-O-C

You can’t spell “department outsourcing” without DOC. We learned that again this week when memos were posted from the central office advising that on October 1, 2013 facilities will no longer accept money orders for deposits to inmate accounts. All funds sent in after that date will have to be mailed to either “JPay” at a Florida lockbox address or submitted electronically to JPay.

            

Who is JPay? It’s a stock company that’s part of the prison-industrial complex. Companies like JPay perform significant parts of DOC’s prison operation. They receive millions in fees from the states and the families of the incarcerated to handle many of the day to day functions inside prison. States will tell you its more cost effective. That would be a lie.

           

Like much that is wrong with the current state of government, so is DOC’s reliance on private contractors to handle prison-related work. The state prosecutes a person and then sentences a person to time in prison. The state is solely and wholly responsible for the inmate’s care and upkeep. Remember, it takes extraordinary effort to deprive a person of their God-given rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

           

But, in their rush to be tough on crime, politicians lie to the public about the true cost of depriving a man or woman of their freedom. In Virginia, it costs an average of almost $30,000 per year, per inmate. And the process is labor intensive. Add to that the condition of many of the inmates. A significant portion of the inmate population suffers from psychological disease or disorders. Take my bunkmate “Thomas.” “Thomas” suffers from schizophrenia. Every two weeks he gets an injection of Halcion, a very strong anti-psychotic drug to keep the “voices” still. By day twelve (of his fourteen day shot cycle) he begins to hear the voices again. Shot day and he is in full blown psychosis. The shot brings him back.

            

Mornings and evenings Thomas takes pills to assist him with his mental disease. Miss a day and he’s a mess. Thomas isn’t an aberration in here. He is one of perhaps two hundred men who daily take psychotropic meds.

            

Should prison be used to house the mentally ill? That’s another day’s blog. But, DOC has outsourced medical care inside prison. And, the medical care is abysmal. Medications routinely run out. The on-site physician serves as a “gate keeper.” He and he alone, decides who gets to see a specialist. That explains why young men with burst appendixes are returned to the building (only to be rushed later to the hospital); why cardiac distress is misdiagnosed until a massive heart attack occurs; and why cancer is not diagnosed until stage three or four.

            

Companies bid on the medical care. The goal is to see as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible, without sending them to a specialist. Under that arrangement quality medical care is sacrificed. Worse, the state still pays. Medical costs for inmates have grown dramatically since DOC began outsourcing care.

           

Back to the JPay money order issue. Here’s the socio-economic “reality” of prison life: most inmates come from lower socio-economic classes. America is a very class conscious society, contrary to what the politicians tell you. Poor people get poor legal advice; poor legal advice lands you in prison.

            

One of the main determiners of success post release is a support network of family and friends. Many of the incarcerated from poor families receive money: a twenty dollar money order here or there to buy hygiene products and stamps, or food. That little bit of money helps them survive in here. They lack the education – or skills – to earn forty-five cents an hour (top wage inside). They work part-time cleaning jobs at twenty-seven cents an hour, or ten dollars a month. Try buying deodorant, toothpaste, soap, and a razor on ten dollars. Try buying laundry detergent so your clothes don’t stink.

            

JPay charges three dollars on the first $50.00 sent in. There’s another three dollars on each fifty thereafter. For a family with limited financial means, those surcharges for the “privilege” of maintaining connection with your family behind bars, is a hardship. Unfortunately, it’s like that a lot in here. Phone rates are outrageous with huge kickbacks (aka commissions) being paid back to the states.

           

Companies in the prison-industrial complex make huge profits. They use those profits to contribute to political candidate campaigns who then vote in more sweetheart contracts. Meanwhile, the poor bleed more dollars; the taxpayers see more money wasted, money that could be used for better schools and better futures for the children of this state and nation.

            

Diverse groups, from the National Council of Churches and the ACLU to the “Right on Crime” organization and Grover Norquist’s tax reform group have united in their desire to see prison reform become a reality. For too many politicians, however, it’s easier to sign contracts with private contractors to carry out the basic responsibilities the state bears when it convicts and incarcerates a person.

            

Outsourcing prison functions is economic voodoo. It is also morally corrupt. It hides the true cost of sending a man or woman to prison. It increases the likelihood that a released felon will re-offend. Virginia DOC’s outsourced JPay plan is just another in a series of underhanded attempts by the department to sustain that which is unsustainable: $1.2 billion each year.

            

The actual cost of each outsourced contract should be publicly disclosed by DOC. And, no contract should be permitted that results in increased fees for the family and friends of those behind bars trying to stay in touch with inmates. Finally, companies under contract with state government agencies should be prohibited from providing “gifts” to politicians. Somehow I think if all that was implemented you’d see less outsourced contracts and less men and women behind bars.

Atlantic City

“Well they killed the chicken man in Philly last night

            And the DA can’t get no relief …”

            

So begins Bruce Springsteen’s soulful acoustic ballad “Atlantic City.” I’ve been thinking about that song a good bit the last few weeks. It’s a song about a guy who has to do a favor for a friend. He knows the favor will cost him… probably with his life. The singer is on the wrong side of the law. And, like most ballads, there’s trouble coming. He knows it’ll cost him his life. Still he has to do what he has to do. Then, the refrain:

            “Everything dies baby that’s a fact

            But everything that dies someday comes back

            Put your make up on

            Fix your hair real pretty

            And meet me tonight in Atlantic City”

            

I can’t get Springsteen’s lyric out of my mind. “Everything dies.” It’s the message of Ecclesiastes and the Book of Lamentations in the Old Testament. Everything dies. Nothing survives. It all ends. And. As I recently read, “nothing dies pretty: reputation, marriage, dreams.” Springsteen’s protagonist begins as a realist. He knows the score. He has a job to do and it can’t be avoided. And there’s a cost to what he’s doing; a dear cost; a cost so great that as you listen you hope he won’t do the “favor;” he’ll choose the other way. “Everything dies baby that’s a fact.”

            

But, I can’t mouth that first line without the second. “But everything that dies someday comes back.” And, I can’t help thinking Springsteen’s telling me something. There’s a season to mourn, but that season will roll forward. Like the tide coming in and going out, everything dies, but everything someday comes back.

            

I’ve been thinking about that a lot – the dying and coming back part – as I watch lives go on around me in here and outside. It’s a recurrent theme in literature, which means in life as well. The most critically acclaimed show on TV right now is “Breaking Bad.” The premise is simple enough. A high school chemistry teacher faces the news he has cancer. From the outside, all looks well in his life. It isn’t, his marriage – like his health – is failing. So he makes a deal with the devil. He needs to make sure his family is provided for, needs to make sure his family survives. He begins manufacturing crystal meth. And, the money pours in. What does he do? He lies repeatedly to his wife to cover up his wrong doing.

            

Here’s the funny thing: audiences pull for him. You know what he’s doing is wrong. And, you know that crossing the ethical line, the line that keeps you doing what’s right even when no one’s watching, can’t be uncrossed. And, you know that one ethical lapse makes the next one easier. Walter White, the protagonist anti-hero of “Breaking Bad” survives his cancer; but the cancer of selling his soul, corrupting the man he is, eats away at him worse than the disease ever could. We watch and we pull for him; we hope he finds his way out because we know what the story writers already know: we are all capable of crossing the line.

           

 “Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but everything that dies someday comes back.” Walter’s life dies in many ways. His marriage survives – his wife becomes a partner in his business venture. She devises the lies to hide the money, to keep their friends and family from learning the truth. But, she betrays him in so many ways. And the security, the future, that Walter sought when he made his deal with the devil can’t exist with drug manufacturing, and drug gangs, and killing. He can’t stay in and he can’t get out.

           

 Most of the guys in here watch “Breaking Bad” because they understand the drug culture. They understand the tweaked out junkies, and the guns, and the wrecked lives. I watch it because of the disintegration and transformation of Walter. I watch because I know what Walter is dealing with.

            

Atlantic City. I spent dozens of nights in Atlantic City. We’d go every month or so with friends, three and four couples. There’d be suites, and concerts, and spa treatments and shopping for our wives. Dinners were with wine and sixty dollar glasses of scotch. There’d be five hundred dollar crap tables, and cohiba cigars. We were living a fantasy life. In the back of my mind I always said I’d quit. But how? That’s the dilemma.

            

So one night we’re in our suite and the full wall length windows show off the lights up and down the boardwalk. You can see the white tops of waves crashing into the shore. She senses something isn’t right. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she says. And for an ever so brief moment I consider telling her. It flashes through my mind. I want to tell her. I want to leave the country and buy a small beach bar in the Caribbean and read and run and live with my soul intact. “I love you,” I tell her. “I always have; I always will.” I explain I’m stressed out at work. We dress and go to a late dinner with our friends. Two months later I’m arrested. “I haven’t loved you for years,” she says. “Everything dies baby that’s a fact …”

            

The “Boss” sings his soulful refrain and you know it won’t end well for his anti-hero. The funny thing is, you hope it does. “Everything that dies some day comes back.” Springsteen knew dying is just part of living. And living goes on. There is a tomorrow. There will be a second act.

            

So “Miko-bones” – a new reader: remember prison in many ways is a state of mind. Focus on the future. It’ll be different, but there will be a future. Springsteen was right:

            “Everything dies baby that’s a fact

            But everything that dies some day comes back.”

Two Thoughts

Friday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court, without opinion, rejected California’s final attempt to ignore implementation of a massive inmate release by year-end (9600 inmates) because of the state’s unsafe and unsanitary prison conditions. In 2011, the Court found the California prison system in violation of the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the release of over 30,000 inmates to reduce the state’s massive overcrowding to 115% of capacity.

            

For the past 2 years, California’s Governor and DOC director have refused to comply with the orders of the highest court in the nation and begin to operate constitutionally sound prisons.

           

How ironic that the department tasked with enforcing sentences against those who break the law does so in violation of the law. Who – I wonder – goes to prison for that?

            

And second, PVC Bradley Manning was court-marshaled this week for delivering millions of pages of documents concerning this nation’s war in Iraq to Wikileaks. He did so because he felt the nation was engaged in an immoral military action.

            

At the close of the Second World War the victorious allies prosecuted thousands of enemy officers for war crimes, crimes they defended on the grounds that they were following orders. The Nuremburg Court found that no soldier could lawfully ignore his conscience and simply “follow orders.” Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “letter from Birmingham Jail,” when man’s law conflicts with God’s law, you must nonviolently oppose it and accept the consequences.

            

You may not like what PVC Manning did, but at least you should respect him.