Saltine Boxes and Nonsense

It finally came around--"Lockdown." And for what? I'm not sure. So, last Monday morning--with just 4 days to go before the graduation and with a selected 10 guys in here studying like crazy to complete a national IT certification program, the security chief decides to put the compound on lockdown. As I've written before, lockdown at this level is nothing but a waste of time and resources--its money not well spent--to conduct quick searches of lockers and turn a building into total disarray.

What goes on? The officers come in and snatch any cardboard boxes they find--"contraband" they call them-- even though they are used to store pens, letters, everything we have that needs to be organized. And it pisses guys off--their stuff is pawed and dumped on their beds. Nothing of significance is found--no drugs, weapons, porn--that stuff can be easily hidden or flushed.

It's costly and it's wasteful and it accomplishes nothing. That's why at other level 2s the wardens (who have discretion to even hold lockdowns) waive them. But when you have a guy in charge of security who wishes he was running a Supermax (the irony of that is, if he acted at a Supermax like he acts here he wouldn't last a day) and you let him handle things, nothing good happens.

The officers get worn down; the guys lay around for a week, and programs--precious time for schooling--gets put off.
That's DOC--no one knows how wasteful and foolish so much of this is. It’s just the same thing over and over and no one--not the officers or the inmates--change.

Lockdown is necessary at some locations. Higher level prisons, after gang fights or deaths or stabbings, use lockdown as punishment or to find the remaining weapons. But here, that isn't going on. What is going on is a battle to get men ready for return to the real world. Only, it's a losing battle because the hearts of the people in charge aren't with fixing things; and therefore, the hearts and minds of those behind bars are still closed.

Why is it that this silliness continues? I'd like to think I'm wrong, but the sad truth is politicians don't give a shit. They talk big talk about being "tough on crime" and making people pay for their lawbreaking; but they don't have the foggiest idea what goes on in here. They create a political system that rewards incompetence with promotion and lets little prison fiefdoms grow; they pay little attention to actual programs that will help; they release inmates still bitter and resentful and lying to themselves about their own responsibility and need to change; and then they bemoan the fact that released inmates commit new crimes.

The crime is the way DOC is allowed to function without adequate oversight. The crime is the waste in lives which becomes generational. But what do I know, I'm just trying to find few new saltine boxes to pick up my letters and envelopes!