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.

Another DOC Week

Time moves on.  Days roll into other days.  The world goes on and so does DOC.  This past week the Virginia Attorney General announced settlement was reached with a Muslim inmate at Greensville (a high level 2 and a low level 3 facility) to allow him to receive Islamic CDs.  For seven years this inmate fought DOC for the right to receive audio discs of Islamic services.  He continued to win and DOC continued to balk until finally, after expending thousands of taxpayer dollars defending an indefensible position, they settled and agreed to reimburse him for all his costs.  As I’ve written in here before, you take a man’s freedom and you force him to think, really think about everything.  And thinking can be dangerous.  Guys figure out novel ways to challenge the system.

Society wants to lock people up; that’s their prerogative.  But there is still a little document called the United States Constitution and little words like “due process” that dictate how government can treat people.  And those rights don’t all cease when you are incarcerated.  I never stop being amazed by the people that will wave the flag and tell you how great this country is, but forget the founding fathers were deeply suspicious of over-reaching governmental power.  And no power is more dangerous than the power to arrest and imprison a person.

DOC would rather fight inmate suits than admit their policy is arbitrary and bears no legitimate relation to security of the facility.  As I’ve written before, DOC has a sweetheart contract signed with Jones Express Music (JEM) that requires all CDs purchased by inmates to be purchased (1) through the inmate’s account and (2) from JEM.  The Muslim inmate has now won a battle against the JEM exclusivity arrangement (they don’t carry spoken word CDs or foreign language CDs or religious CDs).

This week, a relative sent me a CD from Barnes & Noble.  “Barenaked Ladies Live”.  Property advised me I couldn’t have the CD.  That afternoon, I filed a grievance challenging the department’s CD purchasing policy.  It’s a fight I’m willing to bring.  BNL tunes hit me emotionally.

Try this from their song “Adrift” about a broken relationship:

            Ever since we said our goodbyes

            The onion rings, the phone makes me cry
            Something isn’t right
            Like the Deep Blue without the Great White.

            In the morning open your eyes

            The waterfalls, the fire flies
            You’re an abacus
            And my heart was counting on us.

            Crescent moon sings me to sleep

            The birches bark, the willows weep
            But I lie awake
            I’m adrift without a snowflake.

Per instructions from DOC, disciplinary rule III (“stealing”) now includes inmates re-moving food from their own trays to take back to the building (this is to prevent fresh fruit and vegetables finding their way into inmate meals in the building).  This has always been treated as a 200 series contraband charge.  100 series charges lead to raised security level (meaning you are moved from a level 2 to a level 3 prison) and loss of good time. With a series 200 charge, an inmate who has never been in trouble before can receive an “informal resolution”, meaning a letter goes to your file.  Six months charge free and the letter is removed from your file.

But here at Lunenburg, the new Assistant Warden has decreed that informal resolutions can no longer be used even though they are a part of the DOC disciplinary process.  More significantly, he has decided to not consider charge reductions on appeal.  What does that mean?

Todd is a 28 year old white Jewish kid finishing an eight year sentence in 2012 for drug distribution.  He gets Kosher meals which include onions.  For his entire bid he has never had a charge.  Three weeks ago, he attempted to sneak his onion out of the chow hall to use in a Passover meal he was preparing with two other Jewish inmates.  He was caught and turned the onion over.  Todd was cited with a III and convicted.  His punishment?  A written reprimand.  Here’s the problem.  Three days before Todd’s incident, six black inmates were also charged and convicted of III violations.  They all appealed to the warden who promptly reduced the charge to a 224.

Todd appealed to the warden who rejected his request for a reduction.  “You know the rules”, was the basis for the denial.  So, Todd now faces transfer and loss of nine months of good time.

I filed an appeal for him and raised race and religion grounds.  The simple fact of the matter is the warden treated black and Muslim inmates differently.  If the prison wants to enforce this rule, the inmates can’t complain.  It’s in the disciplinary handbook.  But that doesn’t mean the rule can be enforced selectively.

Finally, there’s the story of “Zippy”.  I won’t use his real name to protect him from further embarrassment, but one of our “distinguished” college aides was tucking his shirt in his pants the other day at work when he hit a snag.

Craig and I looked over to see him doubled over.  “I’m hooked”, he kept saying.  And hooked he was.  He had to walk to medical, doubled over and climb on a gurney while the horse doctor and a cute nurse gave him an injection to numb the area and remove the zipper from the non-named portion of his anatomy.

Once he returned, standing erect (no pun intended) we named him “Zippy”.  Funny, but without telling the nursing staff they came up with the same name.  It makes a great story:  “so how’d you get your prison handle Zippy?”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A final, non-DOC thought –

            In the past few weeks I’ve been asked by guys in here and family outside, about my capacity to remember minute details of events in my life:  meals, outfits my ex wore, words spoken.  It’s something I’ve always been able to do.  But, this week, reading a book about a writer’s marriage, I came across an amazing quote by the Roman poet Ovid that helps explain it”

“Parsque est meminissee doloris.”

“It’s part of grief to remember.”