Shut It Down

            Back in my other life, I had a number of Johnny Cash albums and CDs in my music collection. Cash, “The Man in Black” was not just a country musician; he was a pop culture icon and his story – his rise, fall, and resurrection – was the stuff of Hollywood (“I Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon). Cash would perform inside some of America’s worst prisons. It was because he knew what it was like behind bars. He’d been there. He had a conviction on his record – possession of pills – and he did time. He never forgot.

            My favorite Johnny Cash album was one he recorded live from California’s notorious San Quentin Prison. During the show, he told the inmates he wrote a song about the prison. A line in that song came to the other night:

            “San Quentin may you rot and burn in hell

            May your walls fall and may I live to tell”

            I thought of those words as I watched Virginia’s Governor announce the closing of Powhatan Correction Center. My buddy DC smiled when he heard the news. He had been in there, in the hated “M building” solitary lock up over top of the boiler room. “F – that place,” was all he said. I nodded in agreement. “Shut it down,” I thought. “Do the right thing, Governor and shut most of this bloated corrupt system down.”

            That was my visceral reaction. See I was at Powhatan; I saw what a pile of rubble it is; I saw what the true meaning of oxymoron is – calling a place a “correctional center” when no “correcting” is contemplated by the process; how “receiving” and “classification” and “counseling” are terms which mean absolutely nothing positive or constructive in DOC jargon.

            I saw how low custody offenders were put in cells with high custody, anti-social, violent predators. I saw how obviously mentally ill offenders were overmedicated – that was medical care for DOC at Powhatan Receiving. I saw the packs of young gang bangers have virtual control of stairwells while officers hung near the booth. I saw fights, and beatings, and worse. It all made me question my notion of humanity; it made me question my notion of fair justice; at times it made me question my sanity.

            There was one day. I had received the final decree of divorce. For weeks I’d help out hope that somehow she would find it in her heart to forgive me and remember what was so long ago. That wasn’t to be. And the prison – like so much of its ineptitude – lost my legal mail and it sat in an office for over three weeks until it was delivered to me (“sign here”) at 3:15 am in my dark, rank cell.

            Like dozens of other days, I lay there and was convinced I needed to give up. Nothing would give me back what I’d lost. No amount of atonement would be sufficient. I made it outside for rec, and in my prison jumper and Velcro sneakers. I began running 1/10 of a mile laps around the dirt track. “This isn’t right,” I kept saying to myself. And I began to get angry – angry at all that was transpiring, all the hypocrisy that was prevalent in “corrections.” “Punish me?” I thought. I’ve punished myself by losing family, friends, social status. “Correct me?” I was a decent, compassionate, loving man who broke the law and I deserved prison, but this was beyond “justice.” I vowed then and there that I was better than that place and I would overcome what was dealt to me.

            I remembered that day and I muttered under my breath “Fuck Powhatan,” and I didn’t really care that 500 DOC employees were being laid off from this bloated, inept, money-sucking department. Like I said, that was my visceral reaction.

            But here’s the other side: First, there are a lot of decent people who work for DOC. I have met many men and women officers who are honest and treat those behind bars with dignity and respect. For all the bad in this corrupt, politicized system, the vast majority of officers I’ve met have always treated me (and others) fairly.

            Those men and women are losing their jobs because they were sold a false bill of goods by dishonest politicians who told them prison expansion (1) made their communities safer and (2) was a realistic economic plan for disadvantaged, rural Virginia’s arrogance about its “tough on crime” approach. Prisons – for the most part – don’t deter crime, nor are they a cost-effective means of dealing with most lawbreakers.

            Second, there are some who need prison. I have met men who are evil. They lack basic empathy, basic humanity. You see it in their eyes. They would kill you (or do something far worse) and never blink. They are, as my friend DC says, heart – dead sociopaths. They must be segregated from society.

            So the Governor announced cuts to DOC. I hope and pray more are on the way and this Governor has the courage to institute real prison reform in the Commonwealth. There are better answers than just locking people up. That is neither justice nor corrections. There must be real economic investment in Southside Virginia, not low-skilled, low-wage prison jobs.

            “San Quentin may you rot and burn in hell

            May your walls fall and may I live to tell …”

            Ol’ Johnny Cash understood. Yeah, I smiled a little bit when I heard they were shutting a few prisons down. And I hummed Cash’s song as I walked around the compound.