Stupid Is as Stupid Does

This blog was written in November, 2014. 

            Where’s good Ole’ Forrest when I need him? I’d love his take on the stupidity that passes for “rules” in here. At the outset, let me explain that I’m pro – “dorm” rules. There must be rules, a code of conduct that governs offender behavior. But, rules have to make sense and most of what this Major has put in force is nothing but silly, stupid rules which – candidly – piss guys off and make them more disrespectful of the system and larcenous. Worse, they do nothing to improve the facility’s safety or operation.

            Drugs are everywhere on the compound. Those in charge know who’s using; they’re getting positive drug tests every week. And, we aren’t talking tobacco (that’s all over the place too!). No, we’re talking heroin. More drugs are here than at anytime in the 5 years I’ve been here. How do you suppose all those drugs come in? There are only two ways things make it inside: snuck in under the noses of officers (bad police work) or with complicity of officers (dirty police work). Both are telling examples of fundamental problems inside the fences.

            Some officers – perhaps the majority – care. They don’t want any 23-year-old OD’ing in here. They want a clean compound. But, they’re told by the “program chief” to “tighten up” the building. Two book limit for your locker; all beds must be made with blue blankets tucked in. Then, search to make sure guys don’t have extra shoes, tees, or socks. After all, what’s a drugged out guy in the building compared to a man with 5 state t-shirts?

            This week the “Housing and Program” manager (hell of a title – like jamming this many men in such a tight confined space constitutes “housing” or interfering with education constitutes “programs”) put a new encyclical out. During “dayroom” quiet hours (11:00 pm to 5:15 am.) you are supposed to be in your bed area. This genius changed it to “on your bed.” We have 40 guys each taking upwards of 4 classes who can’t sit on their chairs and study at night. And, ironically, they are now allowed to have computers in the bed area – ever try writing or typing on a rubberized mattress with no backseat?

            Here’s how things work inside: you stress guys out over little things that don’t matter. Meanwhile drugs are everywhere; re-entry (good ole’ bldg. 3) is a complete failure, and fewer men have time to earn their GED. If I didn’t know any better I’d think that those in power were doing it deliberately.

            At the close of World War II U.S. forces poured across the German border; allied troops liberated Nazi concentration camps. Eisenhower and Patton, incensed over the horrific scenes their troops uncovered, ordered local towns people to walk through the camps. “We didn’t know what was going on in here,” the German civilians pleaded. “How could you not know?” Came Eisenhower’s reply.

            “How could you not know?” In his dire portrait of the corrections fiasco in America, researcher Robert Ferguson makes the same argument. Inferno details the violence, neglect, and outright stupidity that is mass incarceration in this country. Which is worse, he asks. Ignorance or knowing and not caring? Prisons are poorly managed with money being poured down a rat hole for stupid rules and little or no measurement of money spent to results achieved. It’s stupid and it’s obvious to anyone who cares. The question is – do you?

Plantation Life

           The Virginia Department of Corrections is the commonwealth’s largest state agency, employing over 15,000 at a cost of over $1.2 billion a year.  It is led by a director of public safety. The DOC director, I’m guessing, provides his boss with a department “tree” detailing his own department heads and regional directors and all the prisons which fall underneath. You look at the organizational chart and you think the department is centrally run. Consistency, you tell yourself, matters. And, you’d be wrong.

            DOC operates like the antebellum South. Each prison is its own plantation; all depends on who is the warden and who is the security chief. Prison operation is a bloated business. First, it’s labor intensive. You have to have a significant number of officers to man every housing unit booth and floor. You have to have officers in the towers and in the trucks circling the perimeter. Then, there are officers on duty at vocational and treatment, and in medical and the factory. You have to have “floating” C.O.s to relieve on-duty officers twice during their twelve-hour shift. That’s just line COs. Add a layer of sergeants, “Lts” (lieutenants), two captains, and your security chief and you have a huge officer staff twenty-four, seven.

            Modern technology? Yeah, they have electronically controlled doors for the buildings, but everything else is done with keys. Every classroom door, every cabinet, every drawer, has a lock. There’s one officer whose sole job is to walk around the compound and verify that the correct key goes with the correct lock. Everything is written down; paper is everything in here.

            All that waste of money and manpower would, theoretically, be worth it if (1) society was safer; and (2) going to prison stopped a person from reoffending. Neither statement is true. In fact, just the opposite happens. There is no correlation between “tough on crime” high incarceration rates and crime rates. Want to reduce crime? Have better schools. Make sure lower income workers have a chance to reach the “American Dream” with well-paying employment opportunities and access to both health care and decent housing.

            And, going to prison doesn’t stop recidivism. It’s just the opposite. You send a low risk, non-violent offender into a prison and there’s better than a one out of three chance when they get out, they’ll break the law again. That’s prison. Even at low levels. They are zoos (perhaps zoo isn’t a fair word; zoos are much nicer). Drug use – heroin, pills, weed, you name it – is rampant. Violence is commonplace. There are health crises that brew like a toxic stew; Hep C, HIV, diabetes, not to mention staff infections (MRSA), rotten teeth, rotten skin, rotten psyches. The officers – not all, but a fair number – are corrupt. They are low-skilled, poorly paid minders who use their job to “get a little more.”

            All this goes on under the watchful eye of the warden and the chief of security, the facility major. They run the facility as they see fit, the hell with department policies or procedures. For example, DOC has specific regulations concerning facility operation. “DOPs” (department operating procedures) spell out everything from mail to visitation. And yet every facility enforces those procedures differently. Even going from one level “2” re-entry facility to another is like night and day. It all comes down to the whims and wills of the security chief. Most of the decisions that the major makes are petty and address neither safety, nor security.

            You learn which officers are straight-shooters and which ones are dirty. You watch as they create additional levels of bureaucracy which contribute nothing to the Department’s defined mission of successful re-entry of released inmates to society. Here, we have counselors who don’t counsel; they report to unit managers who worry more about the waxy shine on twenty year-old floor tiles than health and safety in the building. The three unit managers report to an  “evidence based program” manager, a fancy word for a man who should be pushing re-entry programs that matter (like real job training and drug and alcohol treatment), but instead has grown men sitting in a room every morning getting “the word of the day.”

            They have a grievance procedure in place. By law, a prison has to have a system in place that allows the incarcerated to challenge charges and arbitrary enforcement of rules (passed during the Clinton Administration to reduce the number of § 1983 Civil Rights suits flooding the federal courts by inmates). Here, the system is rigged. Due process is ignored. Officers – as uneducated as the offender population (you only need a GED to be a C.O.) – fail to meet minimum standards of evidence and fail to even correctly write charges. Still, the hearing officer almost never finds for the offender.

            All these circumstances breed a sense of victimization and contempt for the judicial system within the offender ranks. When you are in danger of being shook down or sent to the hole based on someone dropping a “note” on you; when most investigations are initiated by information provided by snitches who themselves are dirty (but their dirt is overlooked by the security apparatus), when officers are bringing in drugs and having sex with inmates and – when caught – are just “walked off” without facing prosecution, then you know it’s a rigged game. You are, to quote Bob Dylan, “workin’ on Maggie’s farm.”

            All that goes on here. And you know what – Richmond knows … they just don’t care. How else do you explain that wardens aren’t held accountable for the drug use, fights, deaths, and re-offending of those in their charge? How else do you explain majors getting inmates to wash their cars and playing favorites with snitches while limiting access to education programs?

            This isn’t a well-run department; this isn’t merely a poorly run department. This is a decentralized mismanaged rat hole where each prison runs as its own little fiefdom, its own plantation. It’s all that and it isn’t corrections. And, it doesn’t do a damn bit of good for anyone. Everyone pays for this failed antebellum plantation system: tax-payers, victims, and the families of the offenders. It is time to move corrections into the 21^st century. It’s time to clean up the prisons.

            

Lockdown Blues

After all the speculation, all the rumors, it finally hit. We went on “lock” last Monday. In truth, we’d been on lock the whole week before with the computer blow up. Still, lockdown – like the changing of the clocks in spring and fall – is a way in here to gauge the passing of the seasons. And, as with most lockdowns at lower custody levels, it’s more hype than help. Nothing meaningful – drugs, weapons, or cellphones – is ever found. That stuff all gets hidden or flushed with the first strains of the morning P.A. announcement “Attention, attention, Lunenburg is now on lockdown. Cease all movement.”

            Lockdown. Waiting for twenty officers and staff to come in the building and rifle through all your stuff. Waiting. Waiting. I got into a habit during the week of rising at my regular 4:00 am time. I’d do my morning scripture reading and devotions, meditate, pray, and write until breakfast. Then, after breakfast I would climb back in my rack (a nicer term than “metal bed”) with a book. I’d read and drift back off to sleep until noon count. I read three books that way.

            Lockdown here means nothing but time being stolen from you. It’s not that way at higher levels. Up there, you are locked in your cell 24/7. You come out once every three days for a five-minute shower. You also come out when they shake your cell down.

            Shaking down means something at a higher level. You’re handcuffed while still in the cell, then walked out the door. Two officers move through your cell. Everything is dumped on your rack and examined. With mirrors and metal detectors they search every crevice, every corner. Homemade knives, crack pipes, tattoo guns made out of electrical adaptors, all of it has to be found. They leave all your possessions in a pile and then they leave. And you are right back in the cell where you sit – and eat, and use the bathroom, and sleep – and wait, wait for the door to open and “chow call” or “rec call” or “school call,” anything that says normalcy, prison normalcy that is, has returned. That is a real lockdown. And they can last a week, a month, sometimes a year (like after an officer is assaulted).

            Not so here. Here we have the same routine without school call and rec. We even kept our regular chow schedule. The only “segregation” (i.e. keeping us separated from other buildings) was between the “shook” and the “unshook.” Tuesday afternoon – it’s always Tuesday afternoon for us on lockdown – and 4A was shookdown. We started at 1:00 and were done by 3:00; sixty-three beds (that’s right sixty-three. It’s almost spacious in here!) all examined. Of course nothing of significance was taken. There was a collection of cracker boxes – for some strange reason, storing things in boxes inside a locker is prohibited – and the resold electronics (headphones, CD players and trimmers mostly). And there were the extra shoes.

            DOC allows one pair of boots, one pair of sneakers, and one pair of shower shoes. And most everyone has an extra pair of something. For five years, I’ve had two pair of sneakers – a workout pair and a clean, white visitation and work pair. My luck ran out on this lockdown. They found my second (size 10 Nikes). They’re waiting at visitor pickup – no sense disposing of a new pair of sneakers! In a few months, I’ll order a new pair and replace the set I gave up. That’s how it is in here. Everything can be replaced.

            Friday morning we came off lock. But, school was still closed, the aftermath of the factory computer bust. Here’s what we know: eight factory workers were fired. Six received series “100” charges for violation of DOC’s computer security regs. All six – currently still in the hole – are being transferred. Richmond sent a team of forensic computer techs up here to examine every inmate-accessible computer. The factory computers turned up porn and gambling; the kitchen computers: music videos and games. The school – with the exception of the library – was cleared.

            Friday afternoon I had to go to work – special request. See, the GED graduation is set for June 6^th and I’m responsible for invitation design and mailing, and visitor lists. And those things had to get out. “Your computer’s been cleared, Larry.” I was told. I did my work and headed back to the building. But, all the while I had a bemused smirk on my face. Come Monday everything will go back to the way it was. They’ll give us a new “contract” warning us of the repercussions of violating the DOC computer policy. We’ll sign and we’ll be back at work keeping all their programs running. And the guys in the hole? They’ll be transferred and a year from now during the next computer crisis or spring lockdown their screw up will be remembered in a different light.

            That’s prison. Lockdowns come, lockdowns go, but the cycle of life in here goes on. The faces and crises change but the song remains the same, the song is nothing but blues …

Wine, the “N” Word, and Blood

At any time, in any prison, you’ll have guys trying to make wine. It’s not a tough process: fermenting fruit, sugar, yeast and a container you can burp. The other day, three idiots in “5A” decided to drink their bagful. Given how things go around here, the stuff was probably no more than four weeks old. Anyway, these three Mensa members drink a gallon or so of the homebrew and start feeling good; and by good, I mean they start feeling like they’re Leonardo DiCaprio on the bow of the Titanic. They are “King of the World!”

            

Three stupid, drunk young white guys in a building racially mixed: Hello gasoline, here comes the match! One of the guys goes by the name of “Smoot.” He’s early twenties and thinks he’s a “bad man.” No. He’s another in a never-ending parade of redneck knuckleheads who keep getting busted for sniffing, or shooting up, anything they can get their hands on. This is his second trip to the rodeo (as they say), both three-year stints.

            

He thinks he’s a tough guy. And, the alcohol in his system tells him he can take on anyone. So, he walks up and down the aisle in “5A” laughing and carrying on and then decides to tell people what he thinks. “I hate livin with n-----s,” he starts shouting. “I hate n-----s.” Smoot, say goodnight.

            

A young black kid – Chris, one of my former students who earned his GED last year – stands up and tells Smoot to “sit your ass down!” Smoot says, “Make me.” They head into the bathroom and in less than five minutes, Smoot is a bloody mess, unconscious on the floor. A few minutes later someone alerts the booth, and officers respond. Medical is called and the bloody, broken, passed out Mr. Smoot is loaded on a stretcher. And his two friends? They’re suffering from “STD,” “Scared To Death” that the black guys will turn on them. Both walk up to the COs on the floor and confess - 1. That they’re also drunk, and 2. There’s another bagful of wine hidden in a locker. Those two are handcuffed and led out for resettlement in building “7,” a/k/a, “the hole.”

            

Smoot, on the stretcher, wakes up and is pissed. He does what any drunken idiot would do; he rolls off the stretcher, stands up and lunges at one of the COs, trying to land a punch. He is gang tackled, hog-tied and taken to medical first, then “7” until the next day when – with an assault on an officer charge in hand – he is shipped to a higher level.

            

And “5A” is torn apart. The COs and drug sniffing dogs swoop in and lock the building down. Every locker searched, every guy strip-searched. That’s what happens when knuckleheads carry on. For the rest of us, it’s just another day at LCC.