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?

Letter from Long Ago

I found myself spending a good deal of time this week reading over the Apostle Paul’s letter to the citizens of Rome. Commentators note that at the time this letter was written it didn’t receive much notice. After all, it was a letter from a prisoner, a citizen of Rome, who in exuberance decided to explain to his countrymen what “God is up to.” Pretty heady stuff, even when ending a sentence in a preposition!

            Paul couldn’t shake the world-altering events from thirty years earlier when time – in his mind – went from “before” to “after.” It meant something profound, something life changing and he wanted to understand it; he wanted to explain it. He had quite literally, seen and talked to God. And that conversation, that moment on a desert road on the way to Damascus changed everything for him. This letter penned to his Roman compatriots was his way of explaining what that moment – that first Easter Sunday was to mean to every man and woman. What is God up to? Paul tells the Romans in passionate prose.

            As I said, I found myself thinking and reading Paul’s words a good bit this week. The A/C unit broke in our building last Sunday. Even with fans running 24 hours a day, it was hot and sticky. The temperature inside hovered near 90°. The air hung heavy with the smells of 76 men crammed together. And guys new to the system whined and carped and bitched. Me? It wasn’t as bad as receiving so I just took two extra showers each day and laughed it off. I learned early on in this adventure to laugh in spite of any of it.

            And a few things had me thinking. One, I was in a meeting with a college person I highly regard. We discovered a problem – VA benefit problem – that is – with a few of our students. I was explaining to her and her associate that men in prison believe the worst. Everything is a lie, a con, a plan to screw them. “There is no optimism in here,” I said. “There are a lot of injured, broken people in this place.”

            Her response caught me off-guard. In a soft voice, she said, “there are a lot of injured people outside.” I thought of Paul. People have a hard time. They screw up; they’re let down; life becomes disillusioning. Paul says, “Shake it off.” God pays no attention to what others say – or think (or even what you think) about you. He makes up His own mind and He always keeps His word, even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. “God,” Paul says, “always sets things right.”

            So often we focus on our failings, our hurts, our wrongs. Life seems hopeless. And the hopelessness, the hurt builds and breaks us even further. Paul says that isn’t what God sees. We criticize, we condemn, we suffer, and God still loves, God still saves.

            What’s all this about? I’ve been thinking a good deal about my future. What I’ve learned through all this is God got me out of the mess I was in. He didn’t do it in the way I wanted – the deus ex machina way where He’d show up and I’d be delivered without consequence – no, He broke me and then He restored me, and He put me where He needed me to be.

            Paul says we learn to shout praise even in the midst of our troubles and trials because we learn troubles build patience and patience forges virtue and virtue keeps us alert to God’s next message. And I get that; I get seeing the positive even in our difficulties.

            Like I said, there are a lot of injured people: people injured by others and themselves. Prison is a reality and a metaphor. The reality is, I’m in prison. I’m doing a sentence for breaking the law and I knew the ramifications of my actions and have to accept the punishment. Fair? Maybe, or maybe not. But, I did the crime, I must do the time.

            Prison, however, is also a mindset. So many are in prison due to hurts, wrongs, and regrets from before. And that prison overwhelms, and stifles, and destroys. The psychologist Viktor Frankl understood that. He saw it in the Nazi death camps; he saw who survived and who gave up. “Meaning,” he found, mattered. Find meaning in your life, in your suffering, and lift yourself beyond the prison. Paul – another Jewish intellectual – must have been smiling. After all, Viktor sounded like he’d read the letter.

            As I started this, the building had cooled. Things were back “as they were.” I was thinking about a picture of her. I haven’t seen her in almost six years. I’d been afraid to; I wasn’t sure how seeing a photo would tear at me. Then the photo came in the mail. She’d aged since we last saw each other (who hasn’t). But I looked and realized, it was ok. The hurt, the anger and frustration, it was gone. I saw a pretty woman and I was able to smile, say “Ok,” and move on. For the first time in years I felt good, just like Paul said I would once I understood.

            Almost 2000 years ago a Roman prisoner penned a letter about God being reliable, a message of hope in a time of despair and difficulty. This week, I finally understood what he meant.

Jeremiah Calling

            We don’t like bad news. We especially don’t like being told we’ve got it wrong. That isn’t some modern, twitter-age shortcoming of we humans. It goes back to the beginning of creation. We don’t like people to tell us our assumptions are wrong.

            So God approaches this guy named Jeremiah and God says, “I need you to tell my people they’re off track. I’m dropping the hammer on them Jerry. They’ll be over-run, exiled, and feel abandoned and hopeless …” And Jeremiah hears God but doesn’t say, “Whoa Big Guy. I’m not telling them that. I’m not gonna be the bearer of bad news.” No, he does what God tells him. He goes to the King and the leaders of Israel and delivers God’s message … and they throw him in a well.

            Yeah, we don’t like being given bad news. We don’t like being told we aren’t “all that.” We like to think we are moral and just even as the evidence begs to differ. We react in outrage at cultural disagreements and demand “justice” – which really means punishment – for a host of crimes, yet we don’t consider the ramifications of our tough talk or tougher code of conduct. And then Jeremiah shows up and tells us we’re wrong and we get angry.

            Almost thirty years ago, a mid-forties, released Federal inmate began a second act in his life writing and speaking about the transformative power of God and the believer’s duty to minister to the outcasts and apply God’s principles to their lives. As long as the released inmate kept his words focused on the fallen repenting he was applauded. But, when he took on “conventional wisdom” on issues of wealth and law and order, well it was Jeremiah all over again. It’s always so much easier seeing the splinter in the eye of the poor, black kid charged with drug dealing or robbery than it is to see the plank in our own eye. Chuck Colson wouldn’t let people of faith do that. And, his words from the eighties are as relevant today as they were then.

            “The delusion which vote-hungry politicians perpetuate – that crime can be cured by simple panaceas – is dangerous. It diverts us from the real issue and makes the problem worse …

            The only way to combat the demagoguery … is for Christians to work for laws, which apply biblical standards to criminal justice issues. Though the Bible does not prescribe prison as punishment, restitution is called for often … And most important we must clearly discern the truth about the nature of man …”

            I work with prisoners as a prisoner. Yes, I broke the law, as did almost every other prisoner I have met. And people must be held accountable for their actions. Society cannot condone one who steals from their employer and violates work place trust. I broke the law, I am guilty, and I must be punished, I must be held accountable. But Colson asks, where is the correlation between holding me accountable and making my employer whole, and showing the sufficiency of the law. Prison does not do that. Anyone who thinks good comes from places like this is deluding themselves.

            Justice is not a tool which the majority – or the ones in power – can exert based on their own biases. Justice – true justice – is manifested in the righteousness of God. I say this without any reservation: “WWJD,” What would Jesus do? He would forgive the remorseful murderer and embezzler and say, as He did to the law-breaking adulterous woman, “go and sin no more.” But those who in their self-righteousness allow and support a soul-breaking, vile, violent system like the corrections apparatus in America, he would compare to the Pharisees who are still blind.

            Harsh words; harsh judgment. The truth is sometimes harsh. I’ve been in here almost six years. I’m not a “better” person because of prison, but in spite of it. I am the man God understood me to be all along. And my mistakes and my transgressions – while many – were not enough to separate me from the love and redeeming grace of God.

            Right now this facility is awash in drugs – any kind of drugs. You can buy weed, pills, heroin, and more on the yard. Does anyone with an ounce of sense think that volume of drugs comes in through the visitation room? No, they are brought in by dirty officers and staff supplementing their state pay on the backs of the incarcerated. It is a corrupt, dirty system and we hide behind words like “justice” and “corrections” when those words mean nothing inside prison.

            During the Second World War American General George S Patton’s Third Army raced across Europe and into Germany. It was elements from the Third Army who first came across the Nazi concentration camps. General Patton contacted the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, who personally viewed the atrocities. He then ordered citizens from surrounding German towns to walk through the facilities. “We didn’t know what was going on,” was a familiar cry from the German populace.

            “We didn’t know.” I know what that means. Until I found myself on the other side of the jail door I had no idea what prison was. Then I saw it first hand – the dirt, the violence, the waste of time and life. There is a reason, I am convinced, that Jesus included “you never visited me in prison” in His parable about the wise kind who divides His flock between those who minister to the exiled and those who don’t. He’s telling us “we didn’t know” is not an excuse.

            There are two college professors who come here each week to teach classes. Both are remarkable women. They could be on campus teaching. They choose instead to teach the men here. And it’s not easy. Teaching a class inside requires special preparations. Nothing comes in without prior permission. Then, there are the pat downs and the metal detectors just to get inside the fence.

            And their first few times in, they don’t know what to expect. There are men in class who 

haven’t been outside the walls for twenty or more years; there are men who have done horrendous things to land here. Still, these two women – and at least a half dozen other men and women from the local college – come here and teach; they educate men whom most of society has written off. They do it and they find meaning in their calling; and, they make a difference in spite of the walls.

            Prison has never made someone a better person. But, someone who’s willing to teach you – even in a place like this – they can, they do, make a difference, in spite of what prison tries to destroy. And what of the rest of us? In 1981, Charles Colson, went from successful White House lawyer to Federal inmate then lay minister and writer with Prison Fellowship wrote a stirring and controversial op ed piece on the public’s apathy toward the violence and degradation running rampart in America’s prisons.

            In the piece, he described in graphic detail the rape and murder of a young violent felon in Illinois. He marveled at the lack of interest this tragic story generated. Where, he wondered, were people of faith? He wrote this:

            “Our Christian conscience must force us to act. We must go to public officials – judge and legislators – and demand in the name of our Lord that reforms be made – jails cleaned up, sentencing practices changed …”

            Jeremiah ended up in a well for telling the people of Israel what they didn’t want to hear. And Jesus, well He was castigated by the religious elite in His society for associating – even seeking out – the thieves, harlots, and lepers. They tried to silence His voice with a cross. It didn’t turn out the way the elite expected in either case.

            Russian literary giant Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who chronicled his imprisonment in the Soviet Union in The Gulag Archipelago, wrote the following:

            “I can say bless you, prison, for having been in my life. For there I caught a glimpse of God’s view of His world and His passion for justice and righteousness.”

            There is bad news: Virginia is spending over $1 billion each year to imprison nearly 400,000 men and women, over half of whom are guilty of nonviolent crimes. Half of those behind bars lack even a high school education. One-third suffer from some sort of alcohol, drug, or mental health disease yet there is little to no treatment available behind bars. Of those who leave each year, one out of three will return within a year of release.

            Inside Virginia’s prisons every street gang has a presence. New members are recruited weekly. Drug use, theft, rape, and even murder occur with much too regularity. Bizarre, quasi-religions based on racial separation, flourish.

            It isn’t a pretty picture. But people still come out here and try to make a difference. People like the two teachers I mentioned. And there is good news. Prison will never help you succeed, but some people in here will succeed – in spite of this place. If you read this blog remember those men and women behind bars. Maybe they deserved to be punished; then again maybe the punishment doled out in prison isn’t deserved. What is the obligation people of faith have when they hear about life inside prison? Jeremiah’s calling with the answer.

The Bar Mitzvah

For a little while last week I thought about writing a piece about Lance Armstrong’s fall from public grace, our society’s insatiable appetite for details of the fall, and the equally insatiable debate that always rages between our demand to know if he’s really sincere (“Is he ashamed because he was caught or ashamed because he sinned?”) in his confession and our desire to give our fallen a “second chance”.  The topic of “second chances” intrigues me – as you can imagine – and I jotted down a fair number of notes, dialog really, about what I’d say to Mr. Armstrong if given the chance.

But, I was sidetracked by a documentary and it got me thinking a different way.  So, Mr. Armstrong will have to wait; but the idea, at least from my way of thinking, that “the truth will set you free”, applies here as well.

The story takes place in Bergen-Belsen, a notorious Nazi death camp.  The chief Rabbi of Amsterdam was there along with thousands of other Jews.  He maintained his faith and organized the prisoners as best as he could.  One day, he approached a young Jewish boy in the camp.  “I understand you will soon turn thirteen.  Would you like to study for your Bar Mitzvah?”  The boy, at first stunned by the offer, agreed.

Each morning the Rabbi would wake the boy at 4:00 and they would sit outside and read from a small Torah.  The boy learned his lessons in Hebrew.  Soon it was time for the ceremony.  But, the Nazi’s frowned on acts of faith.  In a bunkhouse, with the windows covered, the boy was led up to a makeshift altar.

Before he began there was a knock on the door and a lone woman entered.  It was his mother.  They had been separated on arrival at the camp.  The Rabbi, however, had found her and had her smuggled across the camp.

In those filthy, dismal conditions, with hundreds of Jewish people he did not know, the boy recited the text that had carried his father’s people forward from generation to generation.  Through slavery, freedom, captivity in Babylon, pogroms throughout the centuries, he repeated the same prayers every Jewish boy says at his Bar Mitzvah.  At the conclusion, with the ceremony over, the boy was handed a small piece of chocolate as a gift.

Weeks later, the Rabbi again pulled the boy aside and gave him the Torah.  “Keep this and tell the world what took place here”, the Rabbi told the boy.  The Rabbi would not see the end of the war.  But the boy - he survived and made it to Israel.  He would become a scientist and design an experiment that was carried into space on the Space Shuttle Columbia by an Israeli astronaut. 

And the Torah, that small Holy collection of the word of God, was also carried into space.  It was Columbia’s last flight, the fateful re-entry when the space shuttle broke apart over Texas.  The old man who’d been that boy once movingly said the Torah had been “From the depths of hell to the edge of space”.

I love that imagery.  Life is a very difficult proposition.  No one’s life is free of trials or difficulties.  Some, like the boy’s, are thrust on us by the evil that seems to permeate human kind.  He experienced more trial, more difficulty, more inhumanity, than most can comprehend. 

Others, like me, find ourselves in great difficulty and trying circumstances because of our own sin.  We struggle to come to grips with our behavior, our wrongs, and the consequences of our actions even as our lives go further astray.  And the consequences, we realize much too late, are usually beyond what we anticipated or deserved.

Life can break you; it can stretch you and wear you down.  Unless you learn a few simple truths.  First, you always have to have hope.  Without it, there can be no faith.  And faith can move mountains.  It can lead a boy from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany to a life of family, friends and science.

You also have to be kind, in spite of the anger launched against you.  The Rabbi understood that.  It is a lesson I teach myself over and over in here as I deal with a wide array of broken, angry, dysfunctional men and the program system that perpetuates the disgust of prison. 

Finally, you have to forgive and let go of the hurt and pain.  How do you forgive when you’ve been hurt so deeply?  I have spent literally every day of my confinement asking that question.  There isn’t any easy answer.  It’s like the Nike slogan – you “just do it”. 

The other day I learned a new reader – “Tonya” – popped up and was clearly not happy with me.  I wrote a number of witty replies down to “zing” her.  See, I know “Tonya” isn’t “Tonya”.  I know everything that occurred at the office for months after my arrest and my arrest leading to someone being fired did not occur.  But, I also know it’s easier to blame others when we find ourselves in situations we don’t like or understand.  As I’ve said many times on the pages of this blog, what I did was wrong.  But, what I’ve been through and what I lost does not balance with my sins.  And that, I’ve learned is alright.  So I keep hoping.  And I keep believing because my faith tells me that hope does not disappoint.

I had intended to write about falling and your chance at redemption.  Come to think of it, that’s what I wrote about.

The Governor's Incentive Program

Last week, Governor McDonnell announced an incentive program for state employees.  Come up with a money saving suggestion and get $2500.  I’m not sure if I’m a state employee.  The prison pays me forty-five cents an hour to educate inmates (where’s the public teachers union on that wage disparity).  Frankly, the Governor can keep his $2500.  Let me out early and you save the taxpayers $25,000 per year.

Here are a couple of “savings” ideas for the Governor to consider.  Frankly, finding wasted money in the DOC bureaucracy is about as tough as spotting the elephant in a ten by ten room.  Here’s a couple of “no brainers” –

·         VCE (Virginia Corrections Enterprises).  The VCE plant here has inmates building office and dormitory furniture.  We’re not talking hand-crafted, solid oak pieces. No these are pre-cut chairs, conference room tables and the like.  Labor costs are practically nil (55 cents to 85 cents per hour; remember, the 13^th Amendment outlawed slavery except as it applies to inmate labor).  These simple chairs are sold to Virginia’s universities for around $1500 a piece.  The same chair could be purchased on the open market for $200 or $300.  Virginia requires its universities to buy from VCE.  VCE makes a huge profit which is then used to prop up the staggering costs of its prison.  The universities, meanwhile, have to spend their stretched dollars on price inflated furniture.  Their cost is then passed on as tuition increases paid by; you guessed it, Virginia taxpayers. It’s a shell game, a Ponzi scheme.  There needs to be transparency in prison funding.

·         Taking the “shell game” concept further, my second proposal is to end the cozy relationships between DOC’s vendors and DOC.  Corrections Cable is a joke.  Why not let prisons negotiate cable deals with local providers.  It would generate work in the local community and save money.  Same with DOC’s sweetheart deal with Jones Express Music (JEM), Global Tel Link and Keefe Commissary.  These companies make enormous profits off inmates and their families.  Over and over we hear Governor McDonnell talk about private enterprise.  Just as President Eisenhower warned Americans in his farewell address of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex”, so to are the dangers of this adulterous relationship between DOC and its vendors.  “History repeats itself” is an often used cliché.  Think Krupp, Bremen Motor Works and the Nazi concentration camp system.  Transparency, Governor, transparency.

·         And finally, why spend $25,000 per year to house nonviolent felons who could be out working, paying taxes and supporting their families?  If the goal of “corrections” is to rehabilitate, then do so and send the rehabilitated inmates back to society.  Arbitrary sentencing doesn’t help rehabilitate convicts.  It only makes them bitter.

So Governor, that’s three good ideas that will save the Commonwealth millions.  I look forward to receiving your check.  Oh, I forgot.  DOC doesn’t allow checks.  You’ll need to run by the 7-11 for a money order!