Who's Calling?

Last Saturday, amid the suicide in building “7,” a new crisis broke out here. Over in building “2,” on a slow, rainy Saturday with the compound locked down as the administration dealt with the death of an inmate while in their isolation custody, an inmate decided to call his girlfriend. “No big deal,” you say. Except the guy made the call from his bunk. That’s right; the guy had a cell phone.

            Cell phones inside a prison are a major security breach. Get caught with one and it’s an automatic trip to “the Onion,” Red Onion – Virginia’s only supermax facility. The only way to get a cell phone in is through staff. Some DOC employee here is dirty. Pay him or her a couple of hundred dollars and the phone gets smuggled in with a charger and access card or number that lets you put minutes on the phone. Yeah, having a guy with a phone in the building is a big deal – bigger, in fact, than some inmate choking to death on a Styrofoam cup!

            So Einstein is waxing philosophical to his “boo” and an officer hears and sees it. A confrontation ensues and the inmate and his phone are placed in custody and taken to the hole. Two other officers remain in the building to pack Alexander Graham Bell’s belongings up. And lo and behold they find a pocket knife and a shiv (homemade knife). Things start to get real interesting in “2” building right about then!

            Building “2” – both sides – was immediately put on full lockdown. No one came out without escort; the building wasn’t allowed any rec on Sunday; chow calls came after everyone else on the compound ate and returned to their own housing.

            Monday morning brought shift change and the night shift was ready to head home for a five day break. Except they couldn’t leave. The night shift – about thirty of them anyway – stayed over and en masse marched into “2.” For six hours they ripped “2” building apart searching for anything else. One guy and his pillow left in handcuffs. At least thirty mattresses came out for x-ray. Just like everything else in here a few hours later it was over.

            What’s the result? Well, for one thing the investigators are demanding to know “Who brought you the phone?” The inmate is sticking with “A guy I didn’t know was going home and left it with me.” They know that’s a lie – and not a very good one – but a week or two from now, after the inmate is transported to Red Onion, this too shall pass. That’s prison, crazy behavior and even crazier responses.

            It’s been a heck of a couple of weeks in here, but you learn to roll with the punches.

 

 

Too Much Material/Too Little Time

The past few weeks I’ve been inundated with work – getting adult ed students ready for the GED; prepping and reviewing 30 guys’ college essays – and personal projects.  I set a goal for myself to get an e-book out on Amazon by September.  Stories and essays are written, cover art in process (thanks to a guy in here named “Troll”) and I’m trying to understand the whole process of e-publishing.  Still, life goes on in here.  And it’s not life like outside. In so many ways we are sheltered from the day to day stresses of the “real” world.

But, things happen each day that I jot down and think “I want to remember that”.  These little snippets form most of my daily journal entries as I continue trying to understand why we do what we do.  In reality, it’s more material than I can ever use.  Still, things stand out...

We never had a spring lockdown.  I know that sounds weird.  We usually have two per year.  They lock us down (restrict us from leaving the building) and building by building search everything, including us (you get used to strip searches after your first thirty days, that is if you every really get used to standing fully exposed before two or three officers).  They very seldom find anything of significance.  And why would they?  They can’t swoop in and hit every building, every inmate at once, so stuff gets tossed and hidden.

Instead of a general lockdown they now spot check us.  Two or three guys every day, make sure you really own the electronics listed.  And, they find stuff.  In my building four guys lost TVs (bought from other inmates).  There were knives, a little tobacco, and of course, fresh vegetables and fruit from the kitchen.  I’ve been through it and, living like a monk (my only “living on the edge item”, and extra set of sheets), five minutes flat I was cleared.

Prison is a constant battle between what you can have versus what they want you to have versus what you can get.  The simple truth is you can get anything inside.  Another truth is if you get caught, you lose good time.  And, a final truth, you’re better off without all the extras.

Some day they’ll lock us down for a full sweep.  But right now, it’s business as usual.

I got a new mattress the other day and it’s extraordinary.  For close to three years I’ve slept on a standard prison issued mattress.  Barely three inches thick and lumpy until the stuffing begins to breakdown.  But the other day, Mouse went home.  After ten straight years, Mouse walked out a free man.  He has already been admitted to school down at the beach, with financial aid, and Goodwill lined him up a job cooking at a beach restaurant.

Mouse had a Cadillac mattress, triple-stuffed and re-sewn (that’s the key; if it’s sewn its legit).  I spent a lot of time the past two years working with Mouse on his college classes.  He left as an honors grad.  The night before he left he gave me his mattress, close to seven inches thick!  I don’t feel the metal frame anymore.  What a way to sleep!

Randy – our fitness guru – wrote the other day.  He’s been home since January.  As I’ve written before, Randy earned his Associates Degree while locked up and became a certified personal trainer.  His last year here he put a business plan together to start a personal training business.

Randy joined a gym in the west end of Richmond and began signing up clients to train.  His goal was to gradually build his client base over eighteen months, then open a studio.

I’m pleased to report that on July 1^st, Randy will have his own gym.  His business is booming with more clients than he ever imagined.

Randy is one of the success stories from prison.  They’re few and far between it seems at times, but it is possible.  Prison can be transformational if you are willing to struggle and dedicate yourself to learning in spite of the circumstances.

I want to tell you about Dom, a/k/a “Fat Boy”.  He’s from Petersburg and has experienced the difficulties of life beyond his thirty-four years.  Given up at only eighteen months old by an alcoholic mother (his father was in and out of prison his whole life), he went from foster home to foster home.  Finally, at age six his grandmother was given custody.

His mom fought in court to get him back (“She wanted the state check”).  The courts returned him to his mom where he was routinely beaten by her (“I looked like my Dad; she just did to me what he did to her”).  He’s a large man – 250, 260 maybe, and 6’2” tall.  He was known by everyone in the projects of Petersburg.  He was the muscle for all the dope dealers.  You needed someone hurt, you called Dom (“It was the only time my Dad told me he was proud of me.  ‘They fear you son,’ he’d say.”).

That is not the Dom I know.  I see a gentle man who spends a great deal of his time counseling young “brothers” to give up violence.  The other night we were talking and he told me about an incident that still weighed on his mind.

“It was with a dope fiend.  He owed a guy money.  I saw him go through an alley and I followed him.  I had a baseball bat.  I caught him and beat him.  You never heard a bat hit bone did you Larry?  It’s a sound different from a ball.  It’s hollow.  Anyway, I did that when I was 19.  The guy was in the hospital for months; fractured skull, broken bones.  I didn’t even know his name.  I still see him at night.”

I’ve learned to take stories like this in stride as best I can.  I’ve learned not to react with revulsion – or judgment.  And, as Dom looked at me I saw the pain he felt for the things he’s done.

I realized at that moment how fragile our lives are.  We hurt people in so many ways.  We break their bones, their hearts, their dreams.  Somehow, God still loves us.

And I knew I’d done a lot of lousy, hurtful things in my own life.  I’d let down the people closest to me.  But, I knew in my heart that God forgave me and was giving me another chance.  And if God could forgive me, He could certainly forgive Dom.

It was reported this week that a number of inmates at Virginia’s Red Onion super max prison were on a hunger strike to protest the conditions at that facility.  Red Onion has been the subject of much negative press the last few months.  Approximately 400 inmates are kept in isolation at Red Onion; there are 1700 in solitary statewide in the Virginia system.

As I’ve quoted on a number of occasions in this blog, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said you can judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners.

America has lost its moral imperative.  This nation operates both at the Federal and individual state levels a barbaric prison system that lacks safety, rehabilitation and simple humane treatment.

This country spends approximately $70 billion each year to incarcerate and monitor close to 10 million citizens.  Approximately 25,000 prisoners are held in solitary confinement nationwide.  Thousands more work in prison industries for little – if any- pay and in unsafe conditions.  Even the 13^th Amendment to the United States Constitution which disallowed slavery in America still allows the incarcerated to be used as slave labor.

Violence, mental illness, disease and hopelessness are rampant in America’s prisons.  A prison – industrial complex has sprung up with corporations being granted sweetheart deals to provide products and services to predominantly poor, uneducated inmates at exorbitant pricing.  Fraud and price gouging is rampant.

Perhaps things are changing.  No less than conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson has now joined the chorus demanding a massive overhaul of “Incarceration Nation”. 

Can America do better?  What are followers of Christ called to do regarding law breakers and their confinement?  Is the answer punishment or justice?

As Medal of Freedom recipient Bob Dylan once sang, “The answer is blowin in the wind.”

And a final thought.  A friend recently sent me a quote from a well-known minister. 

“The blessings of God always override the curses generated in our lives.”

As I’ve pondered those words I realized that isn’t a bad way to get through this sentence.

Peace.

Raising Caine

As usual, what happens in prison in the name of “justice” turns out to be a caricature of everything wrong with calling this place a “corrections” center.  The people who run this place, the people in charge of the Department of Corrections, cut corners, use threats of investigation and going to “the hole” to intimidate, and daily break the very rules they put in place to comply with constitutionally dictated minimum standards of conduct.  It’s all done in the name of corrections. It’s all done in the name of justice.  And, it’s all done wrong.

On Wednesday, “Caine” – named for his dealership expertise in powdery substance – was led out of the building in handcuffs and taken to the hole.  He’s under investigation for “inciting a riot”.  Next to murder or sexual assault, no charge in prison is as serious as inciting a riot.  But, inciting a riot doesn’t mean mayhem.  No, in prison-speak inciting a riot means attempting to organize any collective action on the part of the inmate population.

Inmates are prohibited from organizing.  There can be no petitions for redress of grievances; no hunger strikes, sit downs, work stoppages, collective requests to the administration.  Anyone caught engaging in that behavior is subject to immediate “isolation confinement”, having your good time taken, and seeing your security level raised to “max”.  In short, you end up at Red Onion (Virginia’s notorious level 6 Max security prison). 

So what did Caine do to incite a riot?  In January, the Warden sent out a memorandum announcing that inmates were no longer permitted to own weight lifting gloves.  “All gloves must be shipped home through property or disciplinary charges will follow.”  So Caine did the right thing.  He filed a grievance.  In it, he noted that the Constitution does not allow property to be taken by the Government “without due process granted and just compensation paid” (sounds like a lawyer wrote that doesn’t it?).  Caine pointed out that DOC’s own regulations require it to compensate an inmate when property legitimately purchased is later ruled contraband.

Thirty days after every inmate mailed their gloves home without compensation, the Warden found in Caine’s favor.  He was reimbursed.

Caine realized no one else had been paid.  So, he had a contact make dozens of copies of the grievance decision with his name blacked out.  And, he gave copies to guys in every building.  And just like that inmates around the compound began to request reimbursement.

“Where’d you get the copies?” they asked him as they were going through his stuff and hauling him away.  Making copies, you see, is also prohibited.  Information is power.  Information exposes the reality of this disgustingly pathetic, failed system.

Later that afternoon, I was assisting our computer class when the investigators came through.  They went back to the school office and pulled Craig in.  “You making copies for people?”  Of course Craig wasn’t.  Neither he, nor I, would jeopardize what we’re doing at the school.  Still, the heat Craig felt was real.  Get guys to snitch, tie the school in, ruin the educational opportunities being related.  It happens all the time.  It’s a constant battle.  Ignorance drives most of the criminal behavior evidenced by the inmate population.  Ignorance is job security for the rank and file who work at DOC.

As I write this Caine sits in isolation.  He’ll be fine.  He’s done twelve years already.  He knows in a week or two he’ll be back in college classes.  He didn’t incite a riot.

The same day Todd received his “update sheet”.  Update sheets are the summary of our annual review.  They are based on a 100 point scale.  Hold a job?  20 points.  Have a vocational/treatment plan and meet the terms?  40 points .  Stay infraction free?  40 points.  Everything included in the annual review, including the setting and awarding of security level and good time earning level is controlled by a department operating procedure, DOP 830.3.  Prisons may not arbitrarily act for or against any prisoner; that is a fundamental tenet of the law.  Depriving a man (or woman) of their freedom does not give the government carte blanche to do anything they want.  DOC must follow due process and 830.3 sets out specifically what must be done.

But rules are regularly ignored and violated by the administration.  In Todd’s case, last March he received two charges:  one a 200 series charge for crossing a restricted line.  The second charge was for taking an onion from the chow hall.  This was always considered a series 200 contraband charge until two days before Todd was caught.  Then, it was elevated to a 100 series “stealing charge” (question:  how do you steal food off your tray?).

So Todd wore two charges.  And 830.3 specifically states that a 200 series charge leads to a 10 point deduction and a nonviolent 100 series charge leads to a 20 point deduction.  And 830.3 further states you must have 85 points (minimum) to earn full good time (4.5 days per month).  70 points to 85 and you earn 3 days per month.  Under 60, no earned good time.

So Todd works all year; he becomes a certified dog handler; he completes the IT program with honors and becomes A+ certified (a national IT certification); and, he gets admitted to a four-year Virginia university on his release.

But, his counselor and the administration change his good time level.  They don’t deduct 30 points based on his charges as DOP 830.3 requires.  No, they deduct 50 points.  Why?  The counselor told him, “we’re not gonna give you full credit for school because you pulled these charges.”  That’s not what 830.3 says.  Their response?  You’ll have to make Richmond tell us.”

Ironic isn’t it.  Governor McDonnell tells the press “inmates have civil rights” then his corrections department personnel act in illegal ways to “manage” the facilities.  Disrespect for their own rules breeds disrespect in the inmate population.  It’s time people outside demand better from those paid to enforce the law and guard the rights of citizens, even the incarcerated.  It’s time to “raise caine” for real justice, even in the prisons.

Just When I Thought You Couldn’t Get Any Dumber

One of my favorite movies of all time is the Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels comedy “Dumb & Dumber”. In one particularly absurd scene, Lloyd (Jim Carrey) having traded away the pair’s van for a moped to save money and fuel, comes rolling down a two lane highway where he meets back up with Harry (Jeff Daniels). Lloyd explains how he traded the van straight up for the moped. Harry then utters this amazing line:



“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any dumber . . . you go out an redeem yourself!”


That movie and that quote rolled through my mind as I read this morning’s Richmond Times Dispatch editorial praising then Governor Allen for implementing no parole.


http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/jan/18/TDOPIN01-results-ar-780195/

The editor then cites as “facts” a number of statistics that are contrary to DOC’s own data.


What was the main reason for his “love letter” to George Allen? Virginia has a brand new, $100 million prison in Grayson County sitting empty. Ipso facto (ain’t Latin a grand language) Virginia has plenty of bed space to lock up criminals. And, he concludes, Virginia’s inmate population actually shrunk 2.8% last year.


“Dumb & Dumber” should be the name of the Times-Dispatch editorial page.


Allow me to point out the facts for the editor. I would also challenge him to get off his ass and see what’s really going on in Virginia’s prisons.


In 1995, when then Governor Allen proposed, then signed, abolition of parole, there were approximately 9,600 inmates held by DOC. In 2010, there were approximately 37,000. That is a 400% growth in prison population in fifteen years. DOC’s budget exceeds $1 billion annually. The department employs over 13,000 people, the largest state agency in Virginia.


It costs Virginians approximately $25,000 per year to house an inmate. It costs about $25 million per year to operate a prison. Want to know why the new Grayson County prison isn’t being used? It’s money. Virginia can’t afford to operate more prisons. What the editor failed to recognize is that prisons drain money from other pressing needs, like education and medical care and help for the handicapped.


No less a conservative pundit than Newt Gingrich has spoken out about the excessive incarceration rate in the U.S. As this blog previously noted in his recent Op Ed piece in the Washington Post, contrary to what the editor wrote, states with aggressive parole and liberal release actually have seen greater reductions in crime.


If Allen was such a genius, why has the recidivism rate in Virginia remained relatively constant while the number of inmates and the cost to house them has skyrocketed? Good questions to ask Mr. Editor. It’s a shame you didn’t think of it.


Let me also say a brief word about the false statement the editor makes about “available beds”. Fact: Virginia’s prisons are overcrowded. Virginia fails to comply with ACA (American Correction Association) standards for inmates per officer and living space per inmate. In the dorm I live in, two officers (one in the booth and one on the floor) are responsible for 192 inmates. The standard is one officer for every 40 dorm inmates. Instead, 96 inmates are jammed into a building made for half that many with each man having less than ten square feet of living space, rather than the required 25.


Think it doesn’t matter? Tell that to the families of inmates murdered at Nottoway, Greensville and Red Onion prisons this year. Tell it to the thousands of inmates exposed to Hepatitis C and other diseases.


I challenge the editor to read DOC’s own December 2009 “Task Force Report on Nonviolent Offenders”.


http://www.justicefellowship.org/images/AlternativesforNonViolentOffendersReportfinal_3.pdf

Better yet, get off your ass and come out here and see the Virginia prison system in action.


I challenge the editor to invite George Allen to come with him and sit down with me and listen to what’s really going on in the “corrections” system. It ain’t pretty. In fact, it’s immoral and should be seen as an embarrassment to any semi-intelligent person.


Neither the editor or Mr. Allen will take me up on my invitation. It’s far too easy to hide behind the fiction than face the facts.

At Least This Isn't California

About a week ago, a riot broke out at California’s Folsom Prison (think “the Man in Black”, Johnny Cash) on a handball court. When it was over about 250 inmates were injured or charged with fighting. California has 155,000 men and women incarcerated in a system only built to house half that many. They are currently operating under a Federal Court order to release 40,000 inmates in the next 18 months to reduce their inmate population to 137% of bed capacity [Note: the inmate lawsuit over this issue took the Federal Courts 10 years to finally order the mass release. For eight years California operated under a consent order to either release or build more prisons. Oh yeah, they have a $19 billion budget shortfall so they can’t afford to build any new prisons.]



Things are so bad with California prison medical care that “Governor Aahnold” agreed by consent order to spend $150 million immediately to improve medical care for inmates when faced with “an alarmingly high rate of deaths of inmates due to poor care and suicide”.


At least Virginia doesn’t have the problems California has. Really? Last Friday, August 27th, one inmate was stabbed to death and three others seriously injured at the level 4 Nottoway Correction Center.


At Greensville, a massive 3,000 inmate prison holding level 2 and 3 inmates, since January two inmates have been murdered and one committed suicide. And, at Red Onion prison – the Commonwealth’s Super Max facility – two inmates have been murdered – by the same inmate.


But forget that. After all, those guys are felons. They deserve what happens to them (I wonder how many people dare say that while they’re sitting in their church pews on Sunday morning). Instead, think about the cost.


According to Virginia’s State Government website, there are approximately 38,900 inmates serving time in Virginia’s prisons. That does not include another 5,000 with DOC numbers awaiting transfer to a DOC facility who are sitting in regional jails, overcrowding them. The DOC website announces “fortunately, we don’t yet have an overcrowding problem”.


I guess it depends on how you define “overcrowding”. Having bunks sitting in fire lanes must not meet DOC’s definition of overcrowding. Having 200 inmates being watched by two officers must not meet their definition either. And, I guess being so understaffed that COs at Nottoway couldn’t search for “shanks” isn’t overcrowding, at least according to DOC’s spokesman, Larry Traylor.


Still not convinced, consider the other costs. As former Lt. Governor (and now head of Prison Ministries) Mark Earley recently said: “Virginia spends more than $1.1 billion annually on its prisons”. That’s more than is spent on education or healthcare in the Commonwealth.


Then there are the legal costs. In between filing lawsuits challenging the new federal health care plan, or going after a University of Virginia Professor who conducts research on global warming for fraud, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is responsible for defending DOC in a myriad of cases.


Each year, inmates file thousands of Habeas Corpus petitions in an attempt to get their sentences reviewed. Each case requires an Assistant Attorney General (and support staff) to defend the legitimacy of the incarceration.


Each year thousands of other suits are filed by inmates over violations of constitutional rights, such as religious freedom. Injured inmates or inmates denied adequate medical care sue.


Then, there are the major lawsuits brought by or on behalf of inmates. Currently, Troutman Sanders (a major Richmond law firm) is providing counsel to eleven inmates who have been denied parole (guys locked up pre-1994 are still parole eligible).


The National Lawyer’s Guild filed suit against DOC for refusing to allow inmates to order a legal self-help book. Prison Legal News filed a similar lawsuit over censorships of their paper, a monthly compilation of cases around the country involving inmates and prisons.


On September 2nd, U.S. District Court Judge James Turk, sitting in Roanoke, found “laughable” the Attorney General’s argument in an inmate censorship suit. In that case, the inmate sued because Augusta Correction Center refused him access, under Operating Procedure 803.2, to literary classics such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Nabokov’s Lolita (all three books appear on various “100 Must Read Books”). The reason for denying access to these books according to the Attorney General? Inmates read these books for the sex scenes depicted in them, then “barter” the books for goods and services.


The Judge – not a bleeding heart, a no-nonsense conservative – found the policy unconstitutional censorship. DOC has dozens of rules that are selectively enforced and/or vague and nonsensical that lead to litigation. Imagine the dollars Virginia taxpayers spend just on legal costs alone. Add that to the $1.1 billion annual budget and you start talking about “real money”.


In this case, Virginia DOC is well on the road to copying its neighbor to the west. Soon Virginians will be able to paraphrase President Kennedy’s famous words. When it comes to prisons, Virginians can say: “Ich bin ein Californian”.