Reality Wins 5 to 4

This past Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court, in a far reaching decision speaking directly to the rights of those incarcerated, held five to four that living conditions in California’s prisons constituted a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  It upheld a lower court’s injunction requiring the release of over 30,000 California inmates within two years.

Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy noted that California’s prisons were built to accommodate 80,000 inmates; however the inmate population had swelled at one point to over 156,000.  For ten years, California’s inmates have successfully argued in court that the conditions in existence in the state’s prisons were barbaric.  The state knew this and ignored the ramification of policies that locked more and more people away for non-violent crimes.  Many of these people suffered from mental health disorders, alcohol and drug addictions.

The USA Today’s Wednesday rational editorial correctly stated the case:

“Tuesday’s 5-4 decision was humane and correct.  American prisons aren’t supposed to be some 16^th century version of hell where outrageous overcrowding and short-staffing mean that mentally ill inmates are confided in telephone booth size cages or left catatonic in pools of their own urine.  Prisoners shouldn’t be coddled, but they shouldn’t be treated like abused animals either.  California’s officials should be humiliated that it took the nation’s highest court to remind them of the meaning of ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’”

Then this:

“The state’s legislators allowed the prison system to fester for years as they wrangled inconclusively about how and whether to fix it …”

As Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project (www.sentencingproject.org ) noted following the decision, the court has now provided “state policymakers with the opportunity to correct misguided sentencing policies and, in the process, produce more effective public safety outcomes.”

While the decision only specifically applies to California’s “correction” system, commentators have noted the standard set out applies to all states – Virginia had better be listening.

People may not like inmates.  They may think – like my reader from Alaska – that we “get what we deserve”.  But, a state cannot, in the name of punishing a man for breaking the law, break the law itself.  Virginia DOC on a daily basis violates the law in the conditions they maintain in their prisons.  But, as I told a number of inmates who gathered around my bunk when the decision was handed down.  Bob Dylan was correct.  “For the times, they are a changing.”

I have been very reticent to discuss in great detail my experiences in DOC’s Powhatan Receiving Unit, a filthy dangerous, poorly operated unit where men new to DOC sit for months as they are “processed” and ultimately moved to an actual prison.  Men are housed in cells built for one with leaky toilets and sinks, heavily infested with roaches, ants and spiders.  Air circulation is virtually non-existent.  In the summer, the stifling heat and humidity climbs the temperature to over one hundred degrees.  In winter, a water pipe at the rear of the cell provides the only heat.  It is so hot that you can burn yourself making contact with it.

There are eighty cells to a tier with three tiers.  Four hundred and eighty men locked in small cells twenty-two hours per day.  The smell of blood, feces, urine, sweat and semen permeates the air.  Men scream and cry.  They fight, they bleed, they breakdown.  They abuse and are abused.  This is the system of justice, of corrections that is allowed to exist in Virginia.  It is barbaric.  It is criminal.  It is immoral.

Justice Kennedy, in his opinion, specifically detailed the dismal conditions in California’s prisons.  At one point he noted that two hundred inmates were housed in a gym with forty inmates sharing a toilet.  As I looked at the photo of the inmates lying in their bunks I had to smile.  An entire gym, I thought.  I live in the same bunks with 191 other inmates sharing roughly the square footage of half a gym.  Though, only twenty of us share a toilet.

The American Corrections Association sets standards for the proper number of inmates per building and what is considered adequate square footage of personal floor space.  These aren’t some “feel good stats” put together by an association.  They are based on standards enumerated in Federal law.  Virginia’s prisons violate those standards, violate Federal law.

As I write this blog early on a typical morning, there are two officers in this building, both female.  One is in the booth, the other watching TV on the “B” side.  Two nights ago a fight broke out in “1” building.  One inmate, tired of harassment from a younger, stronger inmate, took matters into his own hands.  He placed three padlocks in a sock and snuck up on his tormentor and struck him repeatedly in the head fracturing his jaw and leaving him a bloody mess.  Moments passed before an officer even arrived.

Before anyone reading this take the attitude “they are just a bunch of animals with their behavior”, ask yourself honestly how you would behave in this environment.  For four and a half months I sat in receiving hell praying that “God would lead me safely through”.  I walked over pools of blood left in stairwells after gangs brutally beat an enemy.  I saw and heard mentally ill young men cry out at night for help and have officers tell them to “shut the f--- up”.  I lived in an eight foot by six foot cell with a psychotic murderer who kept three homemade knives for protections and told me one night how he still saw his father lying in front of their home in a pool of blood, dead, the result of a gang stabbing.  He was eight at the time.

Some – perhaps like Alaska – would argue I deserved that and more for violating the law, for embezzling.  I disagree.  No person deserves to be confined like that.  Humanity demands more from us.

Virginia’s prisons, by DOC’s own admissions, are at 137% capacity.  These facilities are not capable of sustaining this population.  Any politician who tells you otherwise is a liar.

The times they are a changin:  Virginia can institute real prison reform, real sentence reform, real rehabilitation or they can continue on the path of California.  Reality came home this week, 5 to 4.  “The Lord sets the prisoners free…” (Psalm 146:7)  Perhaps Virginia will heed the call.

Memorial Day

It’s Memorial Day weekend, a time when the nation turns its thoughts to veterans, especially those who’ve paid the ultimate price on the battlefield.  Post 9/11 much has been made about the respect this country now shows those who served.  “The country has healed from Vietnam”, is a common refrain heard in the popular press.

Yet that perception doesn’t match reality.  It is a disturbing truth, but veterans of this nation‘s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have higher levels of suicide, homelessness, PTSDs, drug and alcohol abuse, than the general population.  And, they end up in prison and judges don’t care that they risked their lives oversees.

Of the 96 men in my side of the building, 34 served in the military.  Twelve of those served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Two older inmates are combat veterans of Vietnam.   For those fourteen who served in combat “defending this nation’s freedom” as so many commentators like to point out – meant little to them as they faced significant prison sentences.  Judges, juries didn’t care that they fought in Fallujah or Helmut Province.  But for some hardworking volunteers from the American Legion who come out and meet with these vets and assist them with access to benefits they earned, they are largely forgotten.  Like their homeless brothers suffering from PTSD and drug and alcohol problems, there are no thank yous for these vets.  America should be ashamed.

One of my students is a bright New Yorker named Pauly.  He served two tours with the Marines in Iraq and was in the bloody battle of Fallujah.  His photos of unit friends, two of whom were killed, line his locker.

Pauly returned to Virginia (his wife’s home) after his second tour.  He began taking pain pills (“help me sleep”). When he couldn’t get enough, he forged four prescriptions and four checks to cover the cost.  Convicted, a Chesterfield Circuit Judge told him “you survived two tours in Iraq; you can do three years in prison.”  Nice comment your honor.

There’s Rick.  His wife left him while he was in Afghanistan for a second tour.  He returned to Southwest Virginia with no job, no wife and a house he couldn’t afford.  He took an unloaded shotgun to a local bank and got $6000 (“I didn’t care if they shot me”).  The judge told him “a lot of men went to war and didn’t rob a bank” as he sentenced Rick to ten years.  I’m not sure what the judge knows about being in a combat zone; he admitted from the bench “he never had the privilege of serving.”

There are dozens of stories like that in here and hundreds of pages of trial transcripts confirming the words.  Then there’s Saleem.  He served as a medic in Vietnam.  He risked his life daily to save the lives of dozens of wounded men.  Why was he a medic?  Because he was a pacifist.  Rather than seek conscientious objector status, he agreed to serve.

Later, during a drug deal gone bad – a drug habit that began in Indochina in that war zone – Saleem killed a man.  He received a life sentence with parole eligibility after twenty years.  Every year, since his twentieth year in, he comes up for parole.  Every year, for twelve straight years, he has been denied parole.  It is possible Saleem will never leave prison.  That is wrong.

DC’s father served in Korea as a black infantryman.  He fought in some of the bloodiest campaigns there and endured terrible racial hostility.  “I went because that’s what I was supposed to do.”  DC’s older brother, a baseball star drafted by the Phillies, died in Vietnam.

All these men who fought bled and in some cases died, did so because they believed in the ideals this nation espouses.  They deserve the same. They deserve second chances.

General William Tecumseh Sherman said “war is hell”.  So is prison.  These vets deserve our gratitude, our forgiveness for their wrongs, and their freedom.  

Tryin to Hang Touch - Think Baruch

I read an interesting piece about a little known Old Testament hero this week.  Baruch was secretary to the Prophet Jeremiah whose message was delivered at a time of extreme calamity for the people of Israel.  Their society was plundered and the populace exiled to Babylon.  Quite naturally, Jeremiah’s preaching, pointing out the sinful ways Israel had followed was not popular.  Jeremiah was beaten and thrown in prison. Jeremiah asked Baruch to record God’s words and read them aloud in the temple.  Baruch could have said “no thanks”.  He knew what the consequences of doing what Jeremiah asked would be.  In spite of that, he did read God’s words in the temple and there were consequences.  His hopes and dreams were shattered.  He was courageous but he to felt that he had reached the end of his rope.

In one of my favorite verses in Jeremiah (45:33) he cried out to God as all of us do when the trials we face overwhelm us.

“Woe is me! For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain, I am weary with my groaning and have found no rest.”

In one of those “twists” that only come through in the Bible, God asked him if he was speaking out to bring himself honor or God honor.  And then God promised him, though his life may not be as Baruch imagined it, God would protect him no matter what.

I sit in here and reflect on Baruch a good deal.  Every dream he had for his life – a home, a family, a career – lay in tatters, but God promised him “do as I command and I will see you through”.  No matter how hopeless our situation seems, God’s promise endures.

That is a message that resonates with me.  I can’t change the past.  I can’t make family love and forgive me or friends stand by me.  I can’t make the Virginia legislature reinstate early release.  I can’t make the Governor commute my sentence.

The day I was arrested I had simple decisions to make:  do I come clean and begin the process of getting right with God or do I play the system the way I’d been trained?  Do I contest a divorce and fight over property or do I just say “take it all, whatever you want”?  I chose to do what I thought God required of me.  For almost three years almost every piece of news I’ve received has been bad.  Not a week has gone by that I haven’t found myself, like Baruch, bemoaning my circumstances and asking “what else God?”

Yet if given the same choices today, I’d do the same thing again.  God never promised Baruch that doing the right thing would be easy.  He did promise him He’d never leave him.  And, God always keeps His word.

Bob at 70

This past Tuesday Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) turned 70.  There are three “Bs” that I consider life directing:  the Bible, baseball and Bob Dylan songs.

That he turned 70, that through almost my entire life I’ve found meaning in his words, is not surprising. Almost every day some lyric of his springs to mind as I live through this experience.

As I’ve written before, mere moments after both my sons were born I held them and gently whispered in their ears the words to “Forever Young”: 

“May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young.”

I sing those words to myself almost every day during my run as part of my daily prayers for my sons, so far removed from me.

“May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of change shift.”

It was a Dylan song that inspired me in 1980 when I realized I was hopelessly in love with a beautiful young college freshman.

“I came in from the wilderness
A creative void of form
Come in she said I’ll give you
Shelter from the storm.”

After hearing she had begun dating last January, I listened over and over to “If you see her, say hello”.  Every emotion I deal with finds meaning, finds substance in those song lyrics.

“I once loved a woman
A child I’m told
I gave her my heart
But she wanted my soul
Don’t think twice it’s alright…
I ain’t sayin you treated me unkind
You could of done better
But I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
Don’t think twice it’s alright.”

That song carried me through the misery of my divorce.  It would be our thirtieth anniversary this year.  Before my arrest I was attempting to get an original recording of “Emotionally Yours”, one of the most beautiful love songs Dylan ever wrote as an anniversary gift.  I sang that song often as I struggled in jail before the divorce was final.

Dylan understands my alienation and loneliness.  Listen to “Like a Rolling Stone”, perhaps the greatest rock song every written. 

“How does it feel

To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone.”

It was Dylan who wrote about friends abandoning you:

“You’ve got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there and grinnin.”

 It was Dylan who caught the nation’s conscience when he asked:

 “How many years must a mountain exist

Before it is washed to the sea
How many years must a people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free
How many times can a man turn his head
Pretend that he just doesn’t see.”

He sang about a post-apocalyptic world after nuclear war in “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall”, using references from the book of Revelation.  He spoke of the dangers of the military industrial complex in “Masters of War”.  There was a Dylan song for every issue.  It was Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom that many dissidents in Eastern Europe claimed gave them hope to overcome their totalitarian regime.  He told us “you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows”, a reference to public opinion.

Dylan conjured up images in his songs.  He drew pictures with his words.  In one of my favorite songs he sang the following:

“Man thinks cause he rules the earth

He can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon
He will
Man is inventing his doom
First step was touching the moon
And there’s a woman on my block
She sits there as the night grows still
She says
Who’s gonna take away his license to kill.”

I don’t know what it was about his songs, but I am drawn to the words just as I am drawn by David to his Psalms.  His songs spoke to me like they did for millions of others.  And I gained more respect for him after he said there was nothing special about what he did.  People tried to make him out to be a prophet.  “I’m just a troubadour”, he responded.

And his lyrics messed with people’s minds.  They tried to find deep philosophical meaning in everything.   “Experts” dissected “When the Ship Comes In” for theological messages.  But Joan Baez told us Bob wrote the song on a napkin after he was turned down for a room at a Holiday Inn while on tour for looking too scruffy.  When his ship comes in, he’ll be able to get his room.

Philosopher/writer Isak Dinesen said:  “All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story.”  I believe that that explains in large part why I write.  But I also think all my stories can find rhythms and melodies in Dylan’s songs.

My life is so much different than it was when I first heard Bob sing “Blowin in the Wind” and “Baby let me follow you down” when I was ten.  So much different from where I was as a 22 year old married law student thirty years ago.  Yet the songs remain the same.  He’s 70, but the words hit me just like when I was ten and he was in his late twenties.

As he said in “My Back Pages”,

“I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”

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?”

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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.”

What's He Thinking?

The assistant warden is at it again.  Every week this chucklehead does something else to upset the inmate population and make the lives of his officers that much worse.  And the warden, the actual guy in charge of this place, the guy that makes Barney Fife look like a Navy Seal?  No one sees him.  He’s nowhere to be found.  He’s turned operation of this facility over to an arrogant nitwit who hates inmates, hates educating inmates, hates any programs to rehabilitate inmates, oh yeah, and hates flowers.

This week’s latest pronouncement involved, among other things, the visitation room.  From the inception of the prison level system (low level 1 up to high security level 5) the policy has been more contact, more programs, more movement at lower levels.  In the “old days” there was really only one level.  You went to prison, did your sentence and made parole.  But back then only seriously violent criminals went to prison.  Now, you’ve got 40,000 men and women locked up at dozens of prisons.  At level fives, inmate movement is tightly controlled under officers in gun areas.  It’s called “moving under the gun”.  But, at level 2 – like this place – movement is less restricted.  At least it was until this clown showed up.

This past week a young guy – Brandon, age 22 – collapsed on the weight pile on our side.  He was in the dirt twitching violently.  The guys were screaming for an officer, any officer, to call medical.  No one could get to a building door because – per Assistant Warden Einstein – gates must be locked.  Even worse, there was no officer in the tower observing the rec yard (you would think placing an officer in the tower overlooking the yard would provide more security than locking fifty to four hundred guys behind multiple gates with no supervision, but that’s just my opinion.  I’m not a trained assistant warden).

Ten minutes Brandon was unconscious twitching on the weight pile before the officer on the boulevard saw the commotion and radioed medical.  Then, two nurses and an officer came casually pushing a stretcher to the yard.  By the time Brandon was finally loaded, unconscious on the stretcher and transported to medical, twenty-five minutes after the seizure began had passed.  Yeah, this new emphasis on security is making this place run much more smoothly!

Back to the visitation room.  The ass warden (I’m not sure I abbreviated that correctly) has painted the visitor picnic tables.  One side is painted red and marked “offenders only”.  The other side is for guests.  Inmates can no longer sit beside family members.

In the visitation room, a red line has been painted three feet in front of the vending machines.  The red line states “No offenders beyond this point”.  Even when I was at Receiving with level 5 inmates there was no line by the vending machines.

Then there is school.  This coming Friday is graduation.  The principal here, Ms. C, makes a big deal out of GED graduation and guys completing vocational certification.  The Community College even participates and awards Associates Degrees as part of the ceremony.  Last year, over one hundred inmates received GEDs, another hundred vocational certification and three Associate Degrees.  As I wrote last year, with these men having family and friends present it was perhaps a more moving ceremony than my own high school or college graduation.  I knew I’d succeed.  For most of Lunenburg’s graduates, that ceremony marked their first academic success anytime in their lives.

And every year the warden and assistant warden show up because they know education matters.  That is, until this year.  The little weasel warden isn’t coming (sent his “regrets”).  And the assistant?  He remarked “why do I want to go to that thing?”

While Director Clarke is busy telling the press about his “mission” to rehabilitate Virginia’s inmates, perhaps he could take a little side trip to Lunenburg and kick these two losers in the ass.  This place is deteriorating.  Programs will suffer.  Both inmate and officer attitudes are souring and that’s a bad mix in a prison.  What, I am asking, is Director Clarke thinking putting these nuts in charge?

In the Company of Criminals

Prison life is a very weird experience.  It can be debilitating and transforming.  You have to struggle and find meaning, the reason behind what you’re going through, in order to come through without great emotional baggage.

I usually don’t discuss the truly evil side of life that I’ve experienced in here.  Something happened the other day that led me to write a letter to a close friend detailing how “things were”.  He’s a friend from home who hadn’t corresponded with me for over three months.  His letter was heartfelt:  “We (he and another close friend) figure you’ve had a very rough winter.”  He then went on to tell me I was making a difference in inmates lives with my tutoring and writing class.

I got hung up on the words “rough winter”.  I knew those guys had no idea how rough winter – my winter that has now lasted thirty-three months – has really been.  The guys in here tell me all the time to “keep it a hundred”.  That’s prison speak for keep to the truth, no holds bar.

So I disclosed some things I experienced during this journey, things I never told anyone.  I started each paragraph with “rough winter” and I set out some things about prison and the abandonment and rejection I received.  I told him about going to Powhatan Receiving Unit, a dilapidated facility (built pre-1900) where men are locked into stale, stifling hot cells twenty-two hours a day.  There is no hot water in the cells. The base around the commode is rotted out.  The toilet and sink are cracked and stained.  Roaches and ants roam the eight by eight foot space at their will.  The only light is a sixty watt bulb above the top bunk that has to be screwed in and out to turn the light on and off.  The cell was despicable and was, ironically, the most redeeming feature of the entire experience.

As bad as the cell was, the operation of the facility, the lack of security and control, was worse.  No person deserved to be treated the way Virginia DOC operates their receiving facility.  It is, simply put, immoral for society to claim legal justification (“they broke the law”) to subject people to those conditions.

I wrote my friend and described the fact that DOC places all offenders together regardless of crime, violence or history.  I was a nonviolent, fifty year-old offender and was placed in a cell with a twenty four year-old gang leader serving seventy-six years for a double homicide.  It was his third trip to prison.  He also suffered from psychotic episodes.  He asked me to review his appeal.  Included in that was a psychological profile.  He suffered from explosive anger syndrome and “heard voices”.  He deliberately refused to take his psychotropic meds (he’d sell them to other inmates) to be ready for “any gang fight”.  And, ironically, except for one day when he threatened to kill me, I got along with him.

What I couldn’t get along with was the young kid a tier below me who every night screamed in terror.  He was mentally ill and would have to go from 8:00 pm pill call until 6:00 am pill call without meds.  Every night he would hallucinate and scream “Oh Jesus! Help me!”  Guys in the cells around him would cuss and taunt him.  The staff did nothing.

Then, there was the evening my “cellie” decided another man disrespected him.  He pummeled him, then pushed him over the third tier railing, forty feet above the concrete floor below.  The man held on literally for dear life until “Lil P” relented and two other inmates drug the beaten man back over the rail.  He then “checked in” – had himself placed in the hole for protection.  Imagine asking to be placed in solitary confinement in a cell next to the prison boiler where the heat is unbearable, to save your life.

One afternoon gang members beat another inmate to a bloody pulp in the stairwell.  Two participants were hauled off to the hole.  Blood stains still remained on the concrete floor when we exited for chow that night.

A young homosexual inmate was viciously assaulted in the bathroom by a group.  He said nothing about his attackers.  He just went to the hole.

Receiving was a place of violence, degradation and inhumanity.  And it all occurred under the watchful eye of employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Almost every day I would look up at that third tier railing and think it would be so much easier to just take a dive.  But.  I didn’t.  Instead, at night during the screams from the deranged kid and his tormentors, I’d pray “God, give me back my family.”  God, I discovered, had a warped sense of humor.  While I was going through all that, my wife had already met someone new and my kids were choosing to treat me as though I never existed.  To the three of them, I was already dead.  I couldn’t have handled knowing that back in receiving.  Just keeping my humanity, just keeping my sanity, just staying off that railing, required me to believe my family loved me.  Rough winter.  I found out his past winter how truly rough it was.

As I wrote the letter I was overwhelmed with despair.  Not one prayer I’d prayed had been answered.  Actually that’s not true; I prayed every day after the divorce that my ex find someone she loved.  Leave it to God to answer that prayer!

So I finished the letter and I felt like crap.  I had tried to do the right thing every day, tried to treat people kindly and with compassion and mercy (the old heads tell me I’m a bad judge of character.  “These guys are scum.   You always give them the benefit of the doubt”), and not a single thing was going my way.  I frankly wondered why God was silent, why He said He loved me and let me suffer this way.

That night in my mail I received next month’s devotionals.  A second booklet was included “When God is silent to our Prayers.”  I read the thirty-four page booklet within the hour.  It quoted a Psalmist saying the exact words I had uttered as I thought about my situation, my rough winter.

I came away from my brink of doubt with renewed appreciation to the power and mystery of God.  Those whom I thought loved me may flee, but God doesn’t.

So what does all this have to do with the “company of convicts”?  I have spent the past three years questioning every decision I made as an adult.  Everything I held dear has been taken from me.  Every relationship that I believed was “forever”, unbreakable, has been cast aside.  There have been days when quite literally, if I ceased to be, only a handful of people would give a damn.  And yet, I’ve made it this far unscathed.  I have seen and heard horrible things but I am more convinced than ever that no one is beyond redemption.

I finished my letter telling my friend that at the end of all this, people will say “he never quit; he never gave up”.  That comes from 1Corinthians 13, where Paul explains God’s love for us and demands we do the same.  “Love never quits…love never gives up.”

Here’s what “company of convicts” means.  We’re all convicted.  Every single one of us does wrong.  In God’s eyes, we’re all sinners.  In God’s eyes, there is no difference between the church elder and the murderer.  Both fall short of His glory.

It is alright to hate the evil perpetrated by someone.  But it is never alright to hate the person.  In God’s eyes they, we, are all his children and He never gives up on any of us.  Too many of us think we deserve God’s love because we look so much better than “that guy”.

God loves all of us without condition.  Those are easy words to say, but a tough path to follow when you’ve seen some of what I’ve seen.  But it is the truth.  I realized each day I’m being led down a path that God intends me to follow.  I just have to keep going.

There is nothing wrong with the men in here.  In God’s eyes, they are His children and there is still hope.  Perhaps it’s time to look at not just the criminal justice system, but life itself through God’s transforming eyes.  We all experience “rough winters” and we’re all promised to be led through them.

A minister I know wrote me the following recently:

“We should be more concerned about showing God’s love to those who do wrong than about demanding our rights.”  That thought helps lead me to spring.