Swampland – PT 1: Drugs

            I have a special fondness for Russian authors I guess it’s the existential angst that permeates all their stories, but Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Solzhenitsyn speak to me in here. And so it was this week that I found myself flipping back through hand written notes I’d made years before about Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”

            In that novella, set in a Stalin-era Soviet prison camp – Solzhenitsyn explores the age-old theme of good versus evil. In this dreary tale, however, he asks how man can be good – and remain true to his moral code – when held in an evil system. And Solzhenitsyn’s answer is not simple. After all, he was a survivor of the repressive Stalin-era camps. He understood the magnitude of torment and fear present in those places and he knew there was no easy answer. As the main character realizes, sometimes the best we can hope for is survival.

            Prisons are evil places. Sometimes they are necessary. Some act in such horrendous ways that the only way to protect society is to remove those perpetrators. Those cases are few, however. A society that relies on the mass incarceration of a significant number of its citizens is itself evil. America’s love affair with prisons is wrong. It is an evil system.

            This prison, this “correctional center” is built on a swamp. I mean that both literally and metaphorically. In my six years behind bars I have never seen drug use at such epidemic levels as I see here today. Daily I see dozens of men completely obliterated from snorting heroin. The other night I walked in our building bathroom to a young man retching violently – the “afterglow” from getting high on heroin.

            Adderall, the ADHD drug prescribed to too many young American boys, can be bought in handfuls. Weed is so prevalent it has become commonplace. Any drug can be found here. The facility appears impotent to stopping it.

            Appearances can be deceiving. There is a new, relatively young, major in charge of security. He’s forcing building officers to “get tough” in the building with dorm rule infractions. Meanwhile, dirty officers are turning a blind eye to the flood of drugs pouring on this compound – some even bring the drugs in.

            An evil system. There are some decent officers here, men and women who do their jobs correctly, treat the population with respect, and genuinely believe – and hope – that those sentenced here will leave and not return. I am coming to believe that those officers are in the minority. The things going on inside the walls are a direct result of a broken, corrupt system. And the good, the decent, they quit or give up and turn the other way.

            I asked a young man – a kid really, 21, and in on heroin possession – why he would be so foolish and get high on heroin in here two, even three times a week. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “What else do I have to do?” Does anyone really believe that by sending this kid here at eighteen for heroin use and permanently labeling him a felon, will lead him to quit using drugs on his release? He can’t quit using in here. How does anyone think prison is a justifiable solution to the nation’s love affair with drugs?

            I expect one morning to walk in the bathroom and see this young man laying on the floor blue and foaming around the mouth – overdosing and near death. I’ve seen it before. It is a look I can’t forget. Yet, in our nation’s support of such an evil system the vast majority will not care. He’s just a drug addict, just a felon, just a prisoner; so what if he dies?

            This is a swamp. And the mire and muck sticks on you and clogs your pores and tries to drag you under. It is a problem of the ages. How do you stay good with evil surrounding you? How, Ivan Denisovich, do you maintain decency and truth in the face of corruption and lies? How do you save a kid from his own self-destruction when the method is provided by those in charge?

            “And their cry for help … rose up to God. So God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant … and God took notice of them.”

            It is the beginning of the Exodus story, an exit from another evil swamp toward freedom. I only hope my young friend in here lives to see it. 

Flat Time

A few years ago my friend DC explained how he came to do forty straight years behind bars.  Let me write that number again:  forty.  He was locked up in 1972 for an armed robbery.  Back then, with parole in place, a twenty year sentence meant eighteen months and you could get out.  Of course, if you’re a “difficult” inmate, if you break rules, you wait awhile longer.

DC was one of the worst.  From the moment he arrived at Virginia’s state penitentiary, a/k/a “the Walls”, he was a violent, brutal con; in a sea of Darwinian excess where survival of the worst played out every day, he was at the top of the pecking order.  Instead of eighteen months, he did four years.  Then, in 1976, DC made parole.  He found out on a Friday afternoon.  “You’ll be released Tuesday morning” he was told.

You would think being that close to the front door and freedom would cause you to re-assess all you’ve done while inside.  After all, who would want to be locked up again?  That wasn’t how DC thought.  It was time to settle scores.  He grabbed his shiv (back then every con carried at least one blade) and headed across the compound.  There, in the stairwell of another cell block he settled a score, killing an inmate before that inmate had the chance to kill him.

DC didn’t leave the following Tuesday.  He’s never left.  Twice the state tried him for capital murder; twice they sought the electric chair; twice the case ended in mistrials.  They finally settled with DC.  “Take a murder two plea”, they said, “and we’ll give you thirty-five years.”  DC took the plea.  Problem was, the murder sentence ran first, and ran as “flat time”.  There was no parole, no good time earned during a flat time sentence.  You got thirty-five, you did thirty-five.  Then, you pick up your other sentence and start doing that.

Fair?  Just?  Hard to say.  DC took a life.  Thirty-five years may or may not be enough to make up for the murder of a fellow inmate.  But, it’s the idea of “flat time” that confuses me.  In reality, all prison time is “flat time”.  If you really want to address the problem of recidivism you have to change that.

Last week the re-entry building erupted.  Fights are pretty common here.  Pack almost eleven hundred men into space built for half that many , deprive them of basic living comforts, and the noise, filth, and despair cause you to blow.  But, what happened in “3” Building was different.  It wasn’t a one on one fight, it was more:  six to ten guys.  This on the heels of a beat down the week before that sent a half dozen from “3” to the hole.

So, the fight erupted, blood was spilled and then the ratting out began.  Inmates started telling on each other.  Soon “3” was locked down.  Drug dogs were brought in and the building searched while its residents were held in the gym.  Then, the shakedown of each guy.  By the time it was over, “7” building, a/k/a “the hole”, had sixteen “3” building offenders held in segregation.  Here’s the crazy part:  all the residents of “3” building are within six months of going home.  “3” building, you see, is the Governor’s re-entry initiative in action.  And, it is an abject failure.  Why?  Because prison – for all the self-aggrandizing speeches by politicians – isn’t about re-entry and rehabilitation.  It’s about flat time.  Flat time runs futures.  It doesn’t make any errant man – or woman – a better, productive citizen.  It just sets you up for failure.

There is a disconnect between what politicians say goes on inside prison and what actually takes place.  Here’s what I mean.  Politicians will tell you 90% of those locked up will find their way out to society.  They’ll tell the public “we have to be tough on crime” while at the same time “preparing felons to be productive citizens”, with re-entry programs focusing on education, job training and drug and alcohol treatment.  That all sounds good, but the programs don’t match the lofty goals.

The vast majority of those locked up lack basic skills.  It was easier to hustle drugs, break into homes or rob folks at gun point, than to find meaningful employment.  Few of us in here have college or advanced degrees.  Most were failures at school and were labeled “learning disabled”, ADHD, or a host of other problems.  They come from communities where poor schools and poor job opportunities are prevalent.  They come from communities where their friends and relatives have been arrested and imprisoned.  Many are the product of low income, single parent homes.  Relationships mean little; family is a distorted amalgam.

They come in and out of prison expecting the system to screw them.  So they grow callous.  They lack empathy.  They lack drive.  They lack hope.  How does the state, through their Department of Corrections, break this cycle?  They don’t. The “re-entry” initiative puts poorly trained, poorly educated, unmotivated “counselors” in charge of “group” meetings, where applause is directed for the “word of the day”.  Real focus on drug and alcohol abuse doesn’t exist, just “ten week” groups. 

And worse, there’s no motivation for change.  Guys inside are so used to the prison mentality of survival of the fittest or slickest that they thing everything is a scam.

Here’s what happens:  it’s all flat time.  Guys sit in groups telling themselves it’s a waste of time.  Arms folded, cussing, yawning, they think it’s just another stupid program cooked up by the then Governor in office.  He’ll leave and some new program will start.  They may be right:  “Breaking Barriers” (the program du jour was used in the ‘90’s). 

So guys lay around, gamble, smoke, steal, fight and waste days as the world goes on without them.  And, they’ll get out, and two out of three will come back.  The only sound you hear is the “cha-ching” of the cash register:  $25,000 per man (or woman) per year.  Just flat time – wasted time, wasted money, wasted lives.

One billion dollars a year wasted.  Forty thousand lives – not including children, spouses, family and communities suffering.  There are better ways.  Time isn’t flat; time matters.

A Tale of Two Todds

There are two men in here named Todd.  I deal with both and their circumstances have taught me a few things about myself and the world we live in.

“Little Todd” has been locked up on and off for twelve years.  This is his longest “bid”, seven years straight.  He did three in Tennessee and was then transferred back to Virginia to do his sentence here.  Todd comes from a “good family”.  His dad was an Air Force pilot who then taught at officer’s school in Northern Virginia.  His mother was an elementary school principal.  But, Todd sold drugs, got in fights, and in general came in and out of the juvenile system and later, jail.

Todd is, for lack of a better term, socially inept.  He finds it difficult to get along with people.  As a child he was diagnosed as ADHD and was medicated.  I met him when he started in the college program and I found him to be both bright and frustrating.  He couldn’t, it seemed, keep himself out of trouble.  Almost weekly he would have words with another inmate and threats of a fight would hang in the air.  I’d pull him aside; tell him to avoid certain situations and lay low, “thanks Larry”, he’d tell me.  Then, two days later, it would start again.

Todd was impulsive.  He’d do and say whatever hit him.  And, that almost always landed him in hot water.  He lost months of what little bit of good time we can earn after getting caught stealing from the kitchen.

I realized dealing with Todd he was a lot like my brother.  He just couldn’t get along with folks outside or in here.  And I try to help him – maybe because I know I didn’t do enough to help my brother – but I realize Todd won’t change until he “gets it”. 

What’s it?  He needs therapy when he gets out.  Todd is a high risk recidivism candidate.  He’s ill-equipped to deal with the day to day requirements of getting and keeping a job.  Nor is he ready for a healthy relationship and life with another person.

And the sad part is, Todd is just as he’s always been.  He is emotionally immature.  Nothing prison has provided has prepared him for life outside.  He’ll be back because what he needs isn’t provided in here.  He hasn’t grown, he hasn’t matured, and he is destined for more prison, more failure, if society can’t figure out how to break the cycle.

Then, there’s “Big Todd”.  He’s a forty year old black man from Hickory, North Carolina.  He’s bright, witty and … he’s gay.  He makes no bones about it.  He’s gay; not “flaming” girl gay like a certain group of inmates in here.

Todd taught school, sold drugs and fled the Commonwealth when the police came after him.  And that led to his friendship with me.  Todd went on the run to San Francisco.  Well-read and well-traveled, he & I discussed the City by the Bay.  We’d talk restaurants, and wineries and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Todd isn’t your typical inmate.  He has an education and is bright and well-spoken.  He also doesn’t carry the baggage most of the men in here carry from bad families, bad environments, bad opportunities.

Big Todd is finishing up his seven year sentence in 2013.  He’s at low risk to re-offend and has plans and ambitions for the future.  A lot of guys in here stay away from Todd.  “You know, Larry, he’s a homo”, I’ve heard on more than one occasion.  And the funny thing is “pre-prison Larry” may have cared, but I don’t.  He’s an alright guy.  His sexual orientation has nothing to do with the kind of man he is.

I’ve learned that we spend too much time labeling people and making them fit into categories.  As both Todds have taught me, your success, your future, isn’t defined by a label.  Big Todd is gay; that’s his sexual orientation.  But he’s also capable of successfully transitioning into “the real world”.  He’ll never see the inside of a prison again.

The same can’t be said for Little Todd.  His labels weigh him down.  He’ll drown in a continuous cycle of prison bids and failure unless someone gets to him and his core problems.

Two men with the same name, in the same prison building, yet their futures will be quite different.  What’s in a name?  What’s in a label?  You decide.