Chase to Freedom

            He didn’t look like the other IT students when he started back in late 2012. Back then we were operating under a special DOJ grant to provide college training to “at risk” offenders – guys who were classified as “likely” to re-offend after release. And you could spot those a mile away. They were young – mid-twenties mostly – with their state jeans sagging low, their language coarse, their attitudes arrogant. You’d look their name up on the admittance data sheet and see a compass score (recidivism likelihood test) of “9 out of 10” or even “10 out of 10.” You couldn’t make a bet in Vegas on these guys succeeding. They were all on their second – or third – two year bid, heading for twenty to thirty inside a few years at a time.

            But he was different. He was mid to late forties and quiet. He carried himself with a dignity you earn in a place like this over years of watching the system break so many others. He introduced himself to me in a soft voice, polite. “I’m not very studious,” he said. “But I’ve been gone so long I know I need this program.” He told me he never so much as turned a computer on, nor had he ever written anything other than his GED essay ten years earlier at a higher security level.

            I checked the sheet. First name, “Chase,” Compass score, three. He was an atypical student. Over the next six months he and I grew closer. When he started our intro computer class he typed ten words a minute, mechanically scanning the keyboard and plunking down his left or right index finger. He would read and reread English assignments; he’d write three, even four drafts of papers. Slowly each week there’d be improvement.

            And the two of us began to talk. He was originally from Baltimore, public housing that was gutted to make way for the hotels and tourists spots that became the Inner Harbor. He’d sold drugs, “managed” women (i.e. prostitution) and nearly killed a man. For that he got twenty years. And so, at age twenty-seven, after two short stays in the Baltimore City Jail in his late teens and early twenties, he started doing real time at a high security prison in Virginia.

            Here was the thing about Chase – he was real. He wasn’t some caricature of an inmate/rapper/future NBAer; he was a guy who lived – who survived – the worst of DOC and found his soul. A few years in, he converted to Islam. So many of the Muslim inmates, like so many of the Christian inmates, are civilly religious. By that I mean they love the trappings of the religion and the grouping participation gives you, without the responsibility. Chase, however, was devout in his faith. He wasn’t saying he was Muslim while gambling, stealing, and selling porn. He was peaceful; twice I saw him break up fights.

            Yeah, Chase is a good guy. He finished out IT program and stayed in the college building making candy – that’s right, he’s the resident candy-maker. About two months ago he started going to medical every few weeks. “I have a swollen saliva gland,” he told me. “The doctor said to suck on sour candy and that would clear it up.” Two months later and his neck swelled. Medical got a little concerned then. So they sent him to Southampton Hospital for tests. The results weren’t good. Chase has stage “2” Lymphoma. He begins chemo tomorrow morning.

            For six weeks Chase will be shackled and transported each morning to McV Hospital in Richmond. They’ll drive him back each night and lock him in an isolation cell. That’s cancer treatment in prison. I’m probably more upset about it than Chase is. “It’s all part of being locked up,” he matter-of-fact told me.

            Being locked up is always an excuse for bad treatment. It was Chuck Colson, who following his “Damascus Conversion” and prison stay wrote, “Prisons are evil. They don’t rehabilitate … when you send kids to prison already embittered and they are brutalized and ignored they don’t change. Jesus commanded us to be salt and light in the world.”

            Chase isn’t the first inmate I’ve known who’s gotten sick in prison. Ray – a 66 year-old Vietnam Vet – has fourteen months left. He takes nitroglycerin almost daily for his weakened attack-prone, heart. Why is he still in here? Surely the state can see the logic in releasing seriously ill offenders a little early. Unfortunately, in our “tough on crime” Alice-in-Wonderland state, you have to be within “90 days of death” to even be eligible for early medical release.

            Chase is prepared for chemo. And, he takes the misdiagnosis in stride. Still, I can’t help but wonder what it says about us as people that we tolerate what happens behind bars in the name of justice. Chase told me the other day, “Cancer or no cancer, I’m walking out of here in December.” I wouldn’t bet against him.