Prison Pathology 101

This blog was written in November, 2014.

            Webster’s defines “pathology” as “any abnormal variation from a sound condition.” Abnormal, off, something – or someone – not functioning as it should. You know the old riddle, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” I have spent the past few years wondering if prison makes you pathological (in so many dysfunctional ways) or it just allows the pathology to be out in the mainstream. My answer, and I’m upset concluding this, is that there are a fair number of sick, demented, evil people for which prison becomes an Eden. It’s a symbiotic relationship really with both participants – the sick, evil bastards and the corrupt, failed prison – flourishing and continually feeding off each other. And, like a cancerous tumor, it continues to grow and spread and take over all the decency and hope that is around it.

            Pathologic men. So my life has completely been torn apart. It’s early fall 2008 and I don’t know left from right. I’ve been told by my wife of 28 years that she’s “praying I die.” Friends abandon me. I’m trying to mount a defense to an extensive sentence (I’ve already plead guilty); and, I’m in jail, which for a guy like me is hell. I start reading the Bible (why not? God is, after all, the only One who could bring me back) and analyzing verses and syntax trying to divine real meaning for my circumstances and my future. I reach a conclusion – in hindsight, a wrong conclusion – that goes something along the lines that I’m reaping what I sowed and the only way to change my “harvest” is to atone. How do you atone? By seeing everyone I meet as inherently good. It’s their circumstances, their choices that were wrong. If I atone enough, I think, God will restore me, that my “works” will redeem me.

            I help everyone. Child sex-abuse? A misunderstanding. Break into a home and beating the occupants? Bad family upbringing. I befriend and counsel men who, looking back, were cold-blooded, predatory fiends who would have robbed from me, and beaten me if not for 2 things: (1) they thought they needed me because I had knowledge (and in here, knowledge really is power); and (2) God was looking out for me.

            I soon realized Rousseau wasn’t right. There is no “noble savage” who is turned evil by the world around. No, evil exists. It’s a disease and it flourishes in a place like a jail. No amount of “atoning” on my part would or could change that. And, even Mother Teresa, if in jail, would be sentenced to prison. That is the “system.”

            Pathological liar. There’s this guy in here and he tells the truth about absolutely nothing. Funny your life is an open book in the Internet age. Yet, he spins tales. He “owns” car dealerships and homes with his “wife.” Problem is, there is no wife, just an unhappy woman still married to another man who clings to that man’s pension. And the car dealerships? He owns – he has – nothing. He recently had a run in with the Feds and they exposed his lies – his “carnal knowledge” conviction from years ago; his lack of assets (he had to use a federal public defender); yet, he still clings to the lies.

            “My mother was a prostitute and I was raised in crack houses.” No, you actually came from a pretty normal, middle-class upbringing. “My wife and I know the senator from Maine.” No, she might; problem is, her family knew nothing about you. Now they worry, “what has happened to our daughter/sister? She’s involved with a habitual criminal.” A habitual criminal, who says he loves her yet would get her to sneak thumb drives in and operate a telephone number scam. Funny, he thinks he’s smart and slick and sophisticated. He isn’t. Everyone – the Feds, the staff at the facility; they all know what he is: a guy who details cars and now scams his way through his bid. You would think he’d get a wakeup call and say, “this will be the rest of my life unless I give up the lies.” But, pathologic people can’t see that.

            There’s the other guy, the arrogant prick with misogynist tendencies. “I’m not a misogynist. I like sleeping with women.” Idiot! He doesn’t know what the word means. Here’s a clue: you call every female a “bitch” or worse, chances are you’re a misogynist. This guy is pure evil. He’s racist, and he’s homophobic (which is ironic because even the college teachers see the way he preens and unbuttons his shirt that he has clear “latent” homosexual issues).

            The guy claimed he was a victim of molestation at his trial (public records are great!) to explain the dozens of restraining order violations he’s gotten. He tries to run a game on everyone – active in the Catholic group here; he’s the antithesis of what Pope Francis calls his flock to be. He betrays friends. He was close to a guy in here. Needed to find an “ex” (never mind the restraining order, he wanted to write her). So the friend gets his girlfriend (a police dispatcher) to look the woman up. Letter goes out and the “ex” freaks out – “how’d he find me?” He tells all to save his own neck. Confrontation on the weight pile. “I thought you were my friend?” His answer: “You know what I’m like.”

            Last week the guy feigned a reaction to peanut butter to get to go to “early – diabetic – chow call.” It was all staged – faked – so he can get out and back to the building like the others, this pathological demon thinks he’s getting away with something. But, everyone see it; the faculty, the officers, everyone knows he’s dirty and dishonest. Everyone knows he’ll be back.

            Pathology. It is fed and nurtured in here by the system. The system needs sick evil men like this to flourish. And, it’s frustrating. Guys think running game, lying, stealing, cheating; disrespecting themselves and others makes them successful in here. They are wrong. All it is is low expectations, low motivation, low self-discipline. It’s a toxic stew and it feeds on failure and pathological men use it to feel emboldened.

            Men accept this life, these lies, this behavior. They don’t get angry at themselves – or their circumstances – and shake their fists and say, “I am better than this!” Or “I will overcome my wrongs. I will be the man God calls me to be.”

            Nature versus nurture. It’s the age-old question. Are you destined by your genes, your makeup, to be, no matter what the circumstances? Or, does your environment make you? For a long time in here I thought all I had to do was care and I could change the world and with it, my own circumstances. I know now I can affect and effect men with my compassion, my dedication, my willingness to listen. And, the sickness that is prison can be overcome. But, it must come from within. You can’t make someone be decent. There is a reason Christian faith is built on a premise of the fallen nature of man and the understanding that works can’t save you. It is obvious. All you have to do is come in here and see the pathology behind bars.

Year-End Thoughts and Timely Rants – It’s All Words

Another year down. A lot has been going on the past few weeks in here and out in the “real” world that’s kept me thinking. For better or worse, there’s plenty of time to think while you’re in here. Funny, but most guys try and avoid thinking in here. Thinking is dangerous. You think and you ask yourself “why,” why did I ever let it get this far, why did I not properly account for the consequences, why did I not understand the hurt my arrest would bring? Guys try and avoid why; they try to avoid painful self-reflection and admit no matter how bad their lives were, how bad the hand they were dealt, they – and they alone – are responsible for their incarceration. Yeah, thinking is dangerous in here.
            I have a friend, a young guy I work with – only 36 and already he’s been in twenty-one years on a first degree murder charge. He killed a neighbor kid, a teenage boy just like him, and then casually left the scene, changed out of his blood-soaked clothes (stabbing someone to death will do that), and went to school. He was in the school cafeteria when the SWAT team came swarming in and with guns drawn arrested him.

            Every year since his twelfth behind bars he’s come up for parole (murder 1, old law, do twelve, then parole eligibility until you hit your “mandatory” release date – usually at 50% of your sentence). Every year at his hearing the parole examiner asks, “Do you know why you did it, why you killed that boy?” And every year he gives the same answer: “I don’t know. I haven’t given it that much thought?” What??

            I don’t get it. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about my selfish, stupid, reckless behavior. I can’t forget the call to my wife, her words in her letters telling me she was divorcing me. I can’t forget my parents’ faces in court as I was sentenced. I have a running list in my head of every person who in spite of my complete self-immolation of my life – has sent me a letter or card saying “you’re in our thoughts and prayers.” I remember to the millisecond that moment when I gave up and when God said “not yet.” My entire purpose for being now is to make right what I did wrong. I can’t help but think about it; and he says it never crosses his mind. Thinking.

            Nelson Mandela died a few weeks ago. He was – he is – a remarkable man. No one gave him much thought when he was arrested and imprisoned for having the radical idea that apartheid was evil. Mandela was no Gandhi. He was willing to use violence to achieve his goal.   The white government sent him to prison to silence him. They misjudged who they were dealing with.

            A writer noted that prison was “the crucible that formed the Mandela we know.” No matter what happened in prison the system could not take away Madela’s pride, his dignity, and his sense of justice. “He refused,” the writer said, “to be intimidated in any circumstance.” Mandela, talking about prison, simply said. “I came out mature.”

            I carry a Mandela quote with me. It goes:

            “Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying, one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.” Such beautiful words. Such powerful meaning.  Difficulties.

            I have a friend in here named Chuck. I met him at receiving. Chuck’s an “old head,” sixty-five and four more to go in here. This isn’t Chuck’s “first rodeo.” He’s been in twice before. Chuck has a drinking problem. He also has a temper problem. Combing the two is like using a match around gasoline. Chuck was driving drunk when a cop pulled him over. “I just wanna go home,” Chuck sputtered and pulled a gun on the cop. Chuck then walked home and passed out in his yard.

            Law enforcement didn’t take kindly to Chuck’s gun waving – “threatening an officer” they called it and now he’s doing ten years. But, Chuck was there at receiving and he knows what a psychotic carnival DOC is.

            Anyway, Chuck’s been in visits a number of times when I’ve been up on my monthly visit with my parents. And Chuck always gives a wave and a “Hey counselor,” shout out to me. The other afternoon, I finished running and Chuck was sitting on the picnic table. He called me over. “Saw you in VI Saturday,” he said. “I wanted to tell your folks from the first time I saw them at receiving they never had to worry about you. I’ve seen you face down gang bangers and knuckleheads and never once back off from your convictions or who you are.” I thought about Chuck’s words that night. I feel alone and isolated much of the time that I’m in here. I frankly don’t get much of the behavior or bullshit that passes for being a “grown ass man” in here. There is nothing “grown” or “manly” about much of what guys do in here.

            At first, I think I was overly aggressive, overly blunt because I had some deep felt desire to get my ass kicked. See, I hated what I was outside; hated who I’d become; and I didn’t see any way of finding the real me again. So I was blunt and brutal and stood my ground and kept waiting to be punched or jumped or worse. And it never came. It never came because for all the bravado voiced in here, men in prison are basically cowards. They join gangs because they’re afraid to be alone. They talk of their gun exploits and their break-ins and beatings as evidence of their machismo. And I saw through it. I saw it was a bunch of lies and bullshit.

            Guys in here are afraid of me (funny, but my young friend Mustafa says I could be vicious bully if I wanted to be), afraid because I tell them the truth. Prison exposes a man’s weakness. It takes a lot to carry yourself with self-respect, pride, and dignity. I’ve come to realize the men who learn that overcome prison and all the other baggage they carry.  Self-respect.

            My friend Bob left the day after Christmas. In the past month four men who made prison livable have left: Scotty and Dave got home (and are doing great); Craig was transferred after his major screw up (and I still feel that loss); and Bob. Bob is a man of honor and courage. Bob came in very young in the eighties after committing a very violent crime. And he saw and survived the worst in prison: the racial animus, the stabbings, extortion, and rapes, and the drugs. He made parole before he defeated the demons he faced. And drugs and alcohol led him back here.

            Bob didn’t give up. He left the other day with a future laid out for him. He was a guy who in another time in my life I would have considered a friend. He was serious when need be, well-read, and loyal, characteristics sorely lacking in here. I will miss my conversations with him. I know he will do well. Friendship.

            A federal judge appointed by George W. Bush ruled that the NSA surveillance program was “most probably unconstitutional.” He asked, “What would our founding fathers say to our government’s massive snooping?” I wonder. We live in a nation of fear. We are afraid of “terrorists” and in the name of defeating them we sell our national identity of freedom. Meanwhile, more children die each year in this country from poverty, hunger, and neglect than all the deaths caused by terrorists in this nation’s history.

            In the name of law and order we’ve created a massive prison industrial complex that incarcerates more men and women than any country in the world; more behind bars than Stalin’s gulag purges in the Soviet Union. I live in a police state inside prison where I am constantly subjected to cameras, strip searches and questioning. And the officers are always right; the cameras conveniently turn off when a man is left to die from a heart attack or during a confrontation with an officer. If people outside don’t wake up and demand that their freedoms be respected, the difference between life inside the fence and outside the fence will only be the barbed wire. Freedom.

            I’ve spent a good deal of time this past year thinking about God. Funny writing that because I’ve come to believe God thinks about me all the time. Before my arrest, I was an ordained elder in my church and taught Sunday School and yet I learned more about the mystery and magnificence of God in a dark cell and even darker days in here than ever before.

            Here’s what I’ve realized. We talk a lot about God’s blessings when things are going great, but we don’t give Him much thought. And then our world comes crashing down and like Job we yell out, “Why” and we’re scared, and alone, and at the end of our rope and the time comes in the quiet and stillness of the night we know, we know we aren’t alone; we are loved. I believe the words of Pastor Rick Warren:

            “God can bring good even out of the bad in my life … God loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections.”

            Very hopeful words from a man dealing with the suicide of his oldest son. Faith.

            I love Pope Francis which is surprising coming from such an unabashed Protestant. But this Pope gets it. God is in the AIDS wards, and war zones, and prisons, and slums. He’s with those crying for help and out of loss or pain or fear. “Emmanuel,” “God with us.” The last few weeks I haven’t been able to get that Advent hymn out of my mind:

            “O come, O come Emmanuel
            And ransom captive Israel”

            And over Christmas I re-read Luke’s Gospel and remembered Jesus in the synagogue where He read from the Prophet Isaiah, “He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.” That is the God who kept me going when I made such a mess of my life. That’s the God who sees me though today.

            So it’s the New Year and things are good because I have hope. And as Andy Dufresne says in “The Shawshank Redemption,”

            “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing. And hope never dies.” Hope.

Pascua Mensaje

I’m learning Spanish, mostly by fits and starts. It’s a tough process for a guy my age especially in here with the never ending distractions of broken, stupid men doing foolish self-destructive things. The language is beautiful. There’s a reason it’s one of the romance languages; it just sounds beautiful.

            I find it easier to read Spanish than speak it. My accent isn’t great. The words on the paper, however, make sense. And, I read an Easter message – “Pascua Mensaje” in Spanish which made sense to me. It was about the three parables told in Luke 15 about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. The writer said the parables’ meaning is determined by where you’re sitting when you hear – or read – them. If you’re sitting with the Pharisees and scribe (i.e. the law-abiding citizens of the time) the “lost” stories will concern you (“why such a big deal about a lost, sheep, coin, or errant boy?)

            But, if you’re in the dirt, sitting with the sinners, the broken and disenfranchised fringe people, you see the message in a different way. Put another way, for those on the outside looking in, the three parables all point to a God who actively searched for “the lost” and rejoices when they are found. It is the ultimate message of God’s grace fully revealed on that, first Easter morning.

            And the funny thing is, the parables were told so that everyone would understand, “I’m one of the lost.”

            I know, you’re wondering what that has to do with prison? A lot. This is the world of the lost. Hundreds of the men here, roughly two-thirds, are on their second, third, even fourth trips to prison. To a man, they will tell you, “I ain’t never comin’ back.” Yet, they return to streets worse off each time feeling more victimized, less empathetic, less responsible. They return to the same lives they lived each time before. And, like a patient suffering from schizophrenia, they believe the results “this time” will be different.

            They are lost, hopelessly lost. Worse, they don’t even know it most times. I think that’s where the Pharisees and scribes (and most “good,” law abiding folks) were when they heard the story. “I’m ok; I’m not lost.” Been there.

            Monday morning, April 1^st, the day after Easter, my friend Gras will leave this place he’s called home since 1995. Seventeen years locked up. He came in as a young, Cuban-American, man the son of naturalized U.S. citizens – exiled from Castro’s Cuba – who was 26 when the gate closed and now goes out a 44 year-old man. Twenty gets you seventeen. Seventeen years, seventeen years in the wilderness that is prison.

            We said our goodbyes yesterday and he had the look of a man ready to live his life. He told me he “found himself,” in here. I knew what he meant. His seventeen years wasn’t wasted. He earned his BA, then went and earned a secondary college degree from a Mexican University. He became a licensed, master electrician, HVAC specialist, and plumber. “I was given a second chance,” he told me and I thought of the lost son. “Pascua,” he told: “Easter.” “My folks celebrated last week. My dad told me the line the father said in the parable of the prodigal son, “for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”

            The significance of the Pope’s Maundy Thursday trip to an Italian juvenile detention center didn’t escape me either. The leader of the 1.2 billion member Roman Catholic Church went and washed the feet of a dozen juvenile inmates. The church, the new Pontiff has proclaimed, must get out into the streets with the people. What better way to begin but in a prison. I pass no judgment on the problems facing the Roman Catholic Church, but it’s hard not to be awed by a man who would do what he did.

            Pescua Mensaje, an Easter Message, God gives second chances; God searches for the lost. It is a message that resonates with me, never more so, than in here.

            “Feliz Pescua. Dios liberar los presos.”