Tattoos, and Pies, and Bunks, Oh My!

The new warden has gotten off to a lousy start. In only three weeks time, he’s managed to throw the compound in turmoil. Inmates and officers alike are “out of their square” (prison slang for “stressed”). Who would have thought a short, skinny, older white guy could cause such unease in so little time? He is, I concluded, like the Wizard in Dorothy’s travel to Oz. He is our Wizard of DOC.



“What has he done?” Two significant changes that are reverberating around the compound are being implemented on his watch. First, he has relocked the rec yards. For the past year inmates have enjoyed relatively easy movement from building ball courts to the large yards. On the eastside, guys moved freely between the ball courts on buildings 4, 5 and 6. You could come out on rec call, stretch on the ball court, head to the track or weight pile, get your workout in and then head back to your building. Or, if you lived in building 4 you could go to building 6 for a pick-up game of hoops.


The Wizard ended all that. Only building 4 guys can be on building 4’s court. Want to run? Head to the track and be locked out of the ball court until the next rec call when an officer has to come out and unlock the gate.


Why did he do this (and make movement more restricted than even at a higher level facility)? He’s short-staffed and the staff he has makes Saddam Hussein’s Revolutionary Guard look like Green Berets. The prison lacks sufficient staff to adequately patrol the rec yards. The yards (east and west side) are observed by one officer each sitting in a tower.


As I’ve written before, they don’t have sufficient staff to run the facility. Many days rec is called late because there aren’t enough officers to spare any for the towers. And the officers that do work here? They could film a season of “The Biggest Loser” with the present staff.


The vast (no pun intended) majority of officers on duty here are morbidly obese. We have one Sergeant (“Cheeseburger”) who is so large he can’t use the officers’ commodes. The staff is overweight, sloppy and dominated by African-American females who talk trash and have trash talked to them.


DOC sells the notion to the public that their prisons are highly secure. It is because the inmates themselves lack the motivation to react that keeps the lid on this place. This staff of officers are out of shape, unprofessional, poorly-trained, predominately female; they would lose control of this facility in a few moments if the inmates ever got angry enough.


Rec is the one bit of time guys feel some, albeit small, freedom of movement. The Wizard, in the words of one guy, “f’d” that up.


The Wizard also decided there’s way too much food leaving the chow hall and too many tattoos being done. Inmates are known to sneak fruit and vegetables out of chow. Technically, all food must be consumed in the chow hall. For a long time officers looked the other way when an inmate would grab an apple or an onion and put them in their pocket. The Wizard had other ideas. Officers are now patting down almost everyone leaving chow. Caught with food and you are written a series 100 charge. Series 100? Taking an apple is treated the same as murder or sexual assault (in the past, if a charge was issued, it was a series 200 charge).


Dozens of charges have been written, yet every night the smell of onions, peppers and apples goes through the day room.


Then there are the new middle row bunks. As I’ve written before, the buildings are overcrowded. Some bunks are actually in the fire escape route. And, there are insufficient numbers of officers to patrol the buildings. The Wizard’s solution – replace the middle rows of bunks with bunks from the recently closed James River Correction Center (the Wizard’s former prison).


The James River bunks are lower (the guy on the bottom bunk can’t sit up in bed and can barely roll over) and have no bookshelves. They are closer together meaning guys lose even more floor space (our facility already fails to comply with both federal law and American Corrections Association guidelines on minimum square feet for inmates). The bunks also have the lockers in the cut meaning inmates no longer have access through any bunk cut but must now proceed up and down the aisles.


Why’d he do this? He claims to cut down on the tattoo business prevalent in the buildings. Now, he claims the booth officer will be able to see the entire floor. No need to actually put an officer on the floor.


What the Wizard doesn’t want you to know is that under his watch at JRCC; drugs, tobacco, and cell phones were everywhere. That compound was off the chain. Heh Wiz, it’s not the bunks, it’s the staff!


What’s the result of the bunk switch? The tattoo artists are working like crazy and making a ton of money. Four guys in our building had full back tats done this week. Money ($300 to $500 for backs and arms) is pouring out of here and to the “artists” families. And, on a compound already riddled with Hepatitis C, the likelihood of new infected inmates grows each day.


So, in only three short weeks the Wiz has made his presence known. Which leads me to “Johnny Appleseed” a/k/a “Lil D”. Lil D is a great baker. Using crushed pineapple cream cookies and either apples or sweet potatoes from the kitchen he makes delicious home-made pies four nights a week. With about $10.00 of ingredients, he sells pies for $1.50. Most nights he makes $30.00.


The pies are amazing! The entire dayroom smells of apples and cinnamon. How does he get the apples or sweet potatoes? Right from the kitchen under the eyes of the staff (a number of whom have been known to eat one of his pies). Guys love Lil D’s pies because for the few moments you’re enjoying it, you’re not in this environment. You’re in a kitchen surrounded by family eating dessert.


In the “Wizard of Oz”, when Dorothy met the Wizard, she soon realizes he was just a little man. His entire rep was built with smoke and mirrors. It’s kind of the same thing with the people in charge at DOC.

Another Lockdown Goes By

Monday morning the announcement came. “The facility is on lockdown. Cease all movement.” Rumors had been swirling the entire past week that it was coming. Rumors in prison come at you by the dozens and they’re almost always wrong. This time they were right.



In the college building we figured it was a perfect week for a lockdown. Classes were on a ten day break. With the exception of the grammar review session I was leading, the guys were on break. Funny thing is, the prison system doesn’t care about scheduling around school. “Security trumps everything”, is the standard operating procedure. They’ve scheduled lockdowns during GED testing, college finals, anything.


The compound thought it was coming for other reasons. First, the new warden showed up a week ago. He’s the warden from the soon to be closed James River Corrections Center, a level 2 facility sitting on the banks of the James in rural Goochland County. That prison, built in 1896, was dilapidated and crumbling, a visible reminder of the “old prison” model: red brick and foreboding, not the new “kinder yet still behind wire” design so popular around Virginia’s correction establishment. James River was known as an “easy bid”. Tobacco was still plentiful; cell phones were all over the compound. Sounds like a perfect guy to take over this facility!


The assistant warden here, a round belly fellow who actually believed in rehabilitation, promptly stepped down. He wanted the warden’s job. Being turned down a second time, he finally decided to move on. His next stop: Mecklenburg, currently used for receiving. The assistant warden at Nottoway (a level 4 just up the road and the site of a significant stabbing incident six months ago – one officer seriously injured, one inmate dead, couple others seriously hurt) decided to come here. A former senior officer here, he loves buildings to shine. “Fresh paint is a must.” I’ve got news for him. Cologne on a turd doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a turd.


So, the new bosses are at work and a fresh shift began Monday. Perfect time to lockdown! The premise behind a lockdown is relatively simple. You hold every inmate in their building, limit access around the compound including access by inmates to guys in other buildings. You then swoop in with a sufficient force of highly trained officers to search out drugs, tobacco, weapons and assorted contraband. It should work, in principle at least. But principle doesn’t have much relevance in the modern DOC.


First, there are insufficient numbers of officers to conduct a fast-paced sweep. Lock down was announced at 8:15 am Monday. Our building wasn’t “shook down” until Tuesday afternoon at 4:00. E and I are bunkmates. We lucked into two female CO’s from our building. They knew we were “good guys” so our search (going through our lockers and personal effects) took less than five minutes. “We miss you guys over in 3.” Truth is, neither of us had anything (other than a few extra t-shirts and an extra pair of running shoes) but we could have hidden a kilo of weed in our lockers and it wouldn’t have been found. These two young female officers are good, hardworking ladies, but they lack the time to actually do the job properly. Instead, they play the odds “they’re cool; we can overlook them.”


Second, a fair number of officers are corrupt. They buddy up to the inmates and for “the right price” get stuff in. This compound is currently overrun with “spice” – synthetic weed that is undetectable in urine tests. The Virginia Legislature rushed a bill through – already signed by the Governor – to make the sale of “spice” illegal. Yet, here on the compound it’s everywhere. How, do you suppose it gets in?


Three days before we locked down, CO’s gave Big S and DC a “heads up” to move extra CDs, books and sneakers. Where does the extra stuff go? Vocational and educational buildings. They only run drug dogs through those buildings so, under the watchful eye of the building officer, bags of CDs and extra clothes are placed in cabinets in the school.


It’s all form over substance. The results from our building shakedown: about 30 empty plastic jars. All the extras are still in place. Meanwhile, the officers are exhausted. They’ve worked extra hours; COs that are off this week are called in and paid extra for additional shift work. The shakedown costs a great deal and accomplishes virtually nothing.


If that’s true, why do them? Great question with a simple answer: because that’s what’s always been done in prison. Why fix what hasn’t worked for decades? DOC is a tired, outmoded, outdated department still investing precious resources in a prison operation that fails miserably day in and day out. Shakedown’s just another example of that broken paradigm.


I sit in my cut. The sun is shining. I’m reading and writing and looking forward to a run at the end of the week. Meanwhile, the COs are struggling to finish buildings 5 and 6 before tonight. They could try a new approach, but they won’t. Six months from now we’ll do it all over again.