Stunted Growth

There are so many tired expressions that you hear in prison. Day in and day out guys uniformly spill the same nonsensical, disjointed words. “What can you do?” “Let me do me.” It’s as if your incarceration takes you to a place with a language all its own, but the words mean nothing. Words, like most men’s lives in here, are empty. They are spouted forth by Aristotles to be and yet, they have no truth, no meaning no reality.

            That is one of the most challenging – and frustrating parts of prison. Words are supposed to matter. They are supposed to convey meaning and emotion. In here, they are used to help men feel better about themselves but they don’t. The words passed each day are misused, mispronounced, and misspelled. They are hollow.

            No expression conveys the futility of prison – speak as much as “I’m a grown ass man.” Every day at least a dozen times, I’ll hear different men utter those five words. “She can’t tell me what to do. I’m a grown ass man.” Or “I ain’t state struck. I’m a grown ass man.” The words are spewed with anger and disrespect aimed at the party to whom would dare request – or order – the speaking inmate to do – or not do – something. The words are uttered as though the speaker was imitating Patrick Henry and the speaker’s self-aggrandizement is on par with a moral oration on liberty. I hear it – over and over I hear it – and shake my head in disgust. These aren’t grown men. They are stunted and that will hold them back and keep them from overcoming the scars that are prison.

            What is a man? A man is simply one who does the right thing, the difficult thing, the sacrificial thing, when common sense and self-preservation tell you to do otherwise. It has nothing to do with how much weight you can lift, how many points you can put up in a ballgame, how many women you’ve “put a baby in.” It isn’t defined by the fear you generate because of your “rep” or the weapon you carry. Being a man is one of the most challenging tasks a male will ever face and it becomes virtually impossible in here.

            In one of the most simple, yet profound passages from the Old Testament, the Prophet Micah asks the question, “What does the Lord require of you?” His answer is a blueprint for a righteous life. “Seek justice, love, kindness, and walk humbly before your God.” Three simple requirements. Yet, living up to that standard is difficult, virtually impossible sometimes. Attempting to live that way in here is even more of a struggle because prison is built on control, power, and isolation. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Not in here.

            Prison teaches you to set compassion, kindness, and empathy aside, strong feed on weak. If you can do anything even remotely useful to pass the time, you turn it into a hustle and charge for it. No one does anything for free. And everything, it seems, is available. From new sheets and towels (laundry), to gambling (sports book on every basketball, baseball, and football game; NASCAR pools; poker and dice) someone is running it and in cold, calculated fashion, making a profit off it.

            Drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol are available. Then, there is the unspoken, the men who ply sexual favors for cash, drugs, or special food stolen from the chow hall. Men will walk around with puffed chests decrying homosexuality and those who engage in it. And in the quiet of the bathroom at night those same men engage in the acts.

            It’s a world based on lies. Every day, some inmate will come up and try and impress me with his exploits. To a man, they have a story that would make Tony Montana or Tony Soprano stop and take notice. Millions in cash, kilo upon kilo in drugs. And yet, their “sheet” (the DOC update sheet listing all convictions) doesn’t lie: Third time in for minor possession of crack or crystal meth. Their address indicates they lived in the projects. Their car – twenty years old – kept running on payday loans. They’ve never been beyond the East Coast, some not even outside Virginia.

            The lies. They lie about their women and their families. So many have children by multiple women. These children, raised in single-parent homes (many times by grandmothers because the mothers find themselves in prison) survive on government aid. Like their parents, they are consigned to an existence of unsafe, decaying neighborhoods, poor schools, inadequate nutrition and health care. They are living in the shadows of despair and failure, their futures seemingly pre-ordained to drugs, crime, and prison.

            And these children’s fathers, those men who have already lived it and barely manage inside prison – let alone in the “real world” – refuse to take responsibility for them. Instead, it is a daily narcissistic driven episode with these men wanting “what’s mine’s.”

            What is a man? It’s a question I ask these guys – my fellow inmates – repeatedly as they line up for advice or counsel on everything from discipline charges to women. I’m not the brightest man in the world (my arrest and conviction proves that) but in the land of the ignorant I become like a sage. My words are taken seriously (scary thought) as though my education and life experiences make me an authority on virtually everything. Over and over, however, the answers I give leave them disappointed.

            “Take responsibility for yourself,” I’ll say. “No one owes you anything. Respect is earned, not given. Treat others with dignity and respect. See the world through their eyes.” And that is only involving questions about this place and their views on school, work, and their dealings with officers.

            Discipline and self-respect. A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a young inmate. “Iggy” is twenty-four. He’s been in and out of jail – and prison – since he was sixteen. He is the stereotypical young, black inmate. He believes he’s been victimized by the system, that his race, not his crime, is the reason for his current ten year sentence.

            Iggy regularly gets caught breaking disciplinary rules. What little bit of good time Virginia inmates can be awarded (4 ½ days per month) Iggy gave up years ago. He will do his entire sentence. He wears his pants baggy; he refuses to line up for count; he routinely leaves the building. Every officer on the compound knows him.

            He wears his flaunting of the rules as a badge of honor, as though his rep as a screw up is an admirable quality. The continuing antics lead me to shake my head. Why, I wonder, would anyone want to stay here even one extra day? The worst part of it is, Iggy is a bright kid. He is redeemable. Yet, with current attitude, he is just beginning a life of more crime and more prison.

            Ironically, we get along. He comes to me for fatherly advice and I dole it out in pieces, usually rather bluntly. We were engaged in one of our regular “What the hell were you thinking, Iggy?” conversations when it hit me. “Have you ever seen ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai?” I ask him.

            I explain the premise. A senior British officer arrives at a Japanese prisoner of war camp deep in the Burmese jungles. He sees a complete lack of military discipline and order amongst the thousands of British soldiers held captive. Their Japanese captors are merciless and cruel. Men steal from each other and abandon the sick. It is a place of Darwinian survival as the strong prey on the weak and the captors slowly break everyone.

            “We need to behave like British soldiers,” the senior officer orders and immediately he goes about reinstituting military discipline. The reason? Their Japanese captors expect these men to behave as broken, weak, defeated men. “We will prove to them they’re wrong. We are British soldiers.” I tell Iggy all this to get him to see that he behaves exactly how the prison administration expects a street-wise , young Black inmate to behave.

            “You aren’t, you shouldn’t be, what they expect,” I tell him. “You are better than this place. Have pride and self-respect – real pride and self-respect – not this ridiculous street cred you try and carry.” He looks at me and smiles. “That may work in your world, but not where I’m from.” And I know until he breaks through that thinking, he has confined himself to a life of prison and failure. The cycle will go on.

            Stunted growth. That, unfortunately, is the world inside these walls. It leads to a viscous cycle of release and return. Recidivism rates will remain largely static because programs designed to equip inmates for their return to society don’t address this basic issue. For the vast majority of men in prison avoiding responsibility – for themselves, their children, or their families – is a way of life. And the cycle will be repeated to the next generation as those children grow up in poor, single-parent homes lacking responsible male adult role models.

            It’s sad because it’s so evident and because it doesn’t have to be this way. Character, is it said, comes forward in persevering through trial. We need a new paradigm for corrections. Long sentences – for most – are counterproductive. Smart sentences with training and programs that spur men (and women) to be people of character must be implemented.

            Without such change there will be no growth. That’s a price the taxpayers, and the inmates and their families, can no longer afford.