A compliation of
short essays about
prison
The nightly journey to sleep frequently ends with the desire to throttle the evasive Sandman rather than travel with him through dreamland. If you consider that my day-time world is very similar to the Twilight Zone, you can understand the emotions involved in having my night-time world seem like a bad dream before I ever get to sleep.
My cell is one of thirty-two stacked sixteen on sixteen, lining two outside walls of a large triangular room, surrounding a large common area that contains steel tables and seats bolted to the floor, a television bolted to the wall, and a pool table too big and too heavy to need bolting to the floor. I am one of forty-eight men living in this space, and while I am blessed to have a cell of my own I am still influenced by the others who live here, especially around bedtime each night.
Some of the men, like me, work in Industries on a very regimented schedule. Still others have jobs beginning and ending in looser time frames at all hours of the day and night. Many, however, and it often seems to be the majority, have no jobs or schedules beyond their biological clocks, and the desire to have their waking hours occupied by time-passing activities.
Those activities in the late evening are the Sandman's jokes on me. Each night around ten-thirty I pull my door closed and it seems the volume of activity and noise doubles, as if the grating clang of my door locking closed is some kind of signal for the festivities to begin. Dominoes smash twice as hard onto metal table tops, the cue ball skips across the concrete floor from table base to table base after smashing the racked balls into random patterns across the pool table, and all the participants, and on-lookers too, 'play the dozens', as the shouting of poetic insults about one's nature, capacities or heritage is called. And of course, the television-watchers have to turn up the volume to hear over the shouting, the clanging, and the banging.
I usually begin the ritual of sleep-seeking with music or recorded nature sounds played just loud enough to cover the racket that assails my cell door. Headphones would be perfect, but years of living in unsafe places with dangerous people makes me unable to relax, much less sleep, if I can't hear what is happening directly around me. But with the sound of rain falling in a bubbling country stream spattering quietly over the vocal clamoring of one man decrying his fate at the hands of another man's mother, I crawl into my bunk to browse a magazine until the tension fades and my eyelids grow heavy.
Knock! Knock! Knock!! "Hey, bro," a neighbor hollers into the door jamb, "can I see that when you're done?" That bastard, no doubt returning to his own cell after an evening of 'dozens' and dominoes, has glanced into my window and seen the girl on the cover of the book I'm gazing at. Of course by the time I hear his voice the adrenaline is already blasting into my bloodstream and the look on my face is enough of an answer to clear his face from the glass. Eventually, though, 11:30 pm lock-down comes and all the noises fall into a silence that is nearly as loud.
Silence it is though, and I lay my book down. It's not that late, but I'm feeling that lazy-lidded, no-more-reading, drowsy kind of feeling. Sleepiness becomes a warm and safe and comfortable place, peopled by my wife and family, and friends who love me. I turn one hip away from the hard mattress and settle onto the other one. My hands fluff up my pillow, then come to rest before me and across my chest. And from far, far away, moving closer and closer, I hear him. The Sandman is coming. It's a sleepy sound that I can't quite recognize but hear better and better as the silence of the cell block draws it nearer and nearer.
Oh no, not again! It's not the Sandman at all. It's that 35 horsepower chain saw snore from my neighbor on the other side of the megaphone metal wall that my bunk is welded to. Is it any wonder that eighty percent of the people in prison come back? Each days' rehabilitative process is kicked back to square one each night as the desire to spill blood, even if only that of the Sandman, is kindled anew.
The conditions affecting the life of an Alaska State prisoner incarcerated under contract within the federal prison system, as opposed to imprisonment within a State prison, vary greatly, and often to the detriment of the rehabilitative process. One example of this detrimental variance is seen within the respective visitation programs. Prisoners in the federal system are permitted visits only from immediate family and friends known by the prisoners prior to incarceration. For an Alaska State prisoner this means that all visitors must travel several thousand miles at great expense. Opportunities for familial contact are, therefore, rare or nonexistent, and contact with the community into which he or she may one day be released becomes distant. Additionally, socialization adaptation which is often taken for granted, becomes withered and dysfunctional.
Within the State prison system however, prisoners may have 'secure visitation,' non-contact visits in glass booths with voice contact through a phone, with any free citizen. 'Supervised contact visitation' may also be allowed with any citizen after security background checks have been made. for the prisoner, this means that family relationships may be nurtured, community ties maintained, and social skills utilized and sustained. These factors make re-entry into the free world less traumatic, and more conducive to success. Above all other aspects of the consistent imprisonment of Alaska State prisoners in contract federal prisons, the area of visitation, and the limitations placed on family and community contact, opportune the greatest detrimental effect on successful rehabilitation.
Taking a shower should be a cleansing and invigorating experience which is anticipated with pleasure; however, the experience has become a necessary anguish and source of unavoidable discomfort for me. The shower room I use Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska. Just a few years from my cell, the entrance is nearly identical to all the others which line the walls.
The door is constructed of cold steel, painted a faded beige, with a window that is thirty inches high and five inches wide. The dull, brushed-chrome door knob is at waist height a few inches to the left and below the bottom of the window. The knob doesn't turn, nor control any latch or locking device. It is only a handle for pulling the door open, and it is mated on the other side with, instead of another knob, an angled piece of steel for pulling the door closed. The concrete block room measures about five by seven feet, and its walls are covered with cracked, peeling, institutional gray, and pastel blue paint. The drain in the center of the floor, lined with the sweat, grime, and fecal traces of eight thousand showers, give the room its most immediate, distasteful, and repugnant feature" the smell.
A transparent plastic shower curtain and a short step-over divider evenly separate the front and rear sections of the room. The front section is for undressing, drying, and dressing, whereas the rear is the actual shower stall. The entire room is bright to the point of harshness, and the light emphasizes the room's defects in the same way that the cement and steel enclosure make each sound reverberate sharply.
To the left, inside the door and at eye level, is a small, dark-blue shelf that has several metal hooks welded below it. These are furnished to hold one's personal effects. Inside the stall, below the spout, a single push button turns on the water for a measured period of time, but offers no ability to change the temperature, which fluctuates between uncomfortably hot and near scalding.
The walls of the shower stall tell the worst damage caused by moisture. Blistered and peeling paint provide dark places for mold to flourish, as do the angles and seams of the discolored metal soap dish and shower spout. Because the room is used continuously throughout the day and evening, humidity clings to all surfaces; therefore, they are cold, clammy, and uncomfortable to touch even without the knowledge that any number of bacterial forms call that moisture home.
Turning to leave, but before opening the door, the individual is struck by a most insidious and disturbing characteristic of this room. The window in the door, centered to look down the walkway before eight cells and a laundry room, serves to frame the occupant, whose activities are clearly visible through the transparent shower curtain. Any future desire to clean up after healthy activities is overshadowed by the humiliation, indignity, and embarrassment of "washing your ass and genitalia" in sight of any passer-by, including female correctional officers and homosexual prisoners.
It is in this way that a normal, pleasant, and invigorating activity is twisted to foster the demoralization and dehumanization of both the keepers and the kept.
Manufacturing a weapon in prison can be as quick and easy, or as time consuming and complex, as the need, materials, and available time allow. However, with a little advance warning, a toothbrush, a book of matches and a disposable razor or razor cartridge, a satisfactory cutting implement can be constructed in three easy steps.
Begin by removing the blade from the razor or cartridge. This is readily accomplished by either breaking the plastic surrounding the blade, or by using a match to heat the points at which the plastic is spot welded around the blade and pulling the pieces apart to free the blade. Great care must be taken during this process as these blades are thin, flexible, and extremely sharp metal strips.
Next, using several matches at a time, melt the toothbrush bristles into a glob on the flat surface of the brush handle. Finally, press the blade into the malted plastic, sharp side out, aligned with the handle, and with approximately one-half inch of the blade exposed beyond the end of the toothbrush handle.
The resulting weapon is sufficient to discourage, injure, maim or kill an attacker, and is also easily concealed and unsusceptible to discovery by metal detectors.
Having observed my friends both dying and being released from prison, I believe death and release from prison are much alike. The dying man leaves behind a world he has experienced to face the joyful or fearful, but always unfamiliar, possibilities presented by his belief system. The long term prisoner, too, leaves behind a known existence and customary activities for an unfamiliar world, at once hopeful and doubtful that he has the skills and knowledge to live in it.
The dying man becomes self-absorbed, as does the prisoner awaiting release. As their present commitments and relationships pale in the face of an uncertain tomorrow, they involve themselves in mind and time consuming activities with little consideration for the people they will soon leave behind.
Furthermore, the man, once dead, will not be seen or heard from again, except perhaps as a terrifying, unwelcome, ghostly apparition. Likewise, the released prisoner will not be heard from either , unless, like a reincarnation nightmare, the released soul suffers rebirth into this nether world as someone, or something, different from when he left; having relinquished this life as a check bouncer, car thief, or burglar, he rides the karmic wheel to reappear as a convicted dope dealer, armed robber, or murderer.
Over the years I have seen some of my friends die and others be released. My hope that they have found a better life beyond this one, and my grief at their passing from this world, is the same regardless the method of their departure.
With rare exception, citizen and criminal alike will continue to suffer the consequences of a criminal justice system scheme, fostered and peddled to the public by self-serving politicians. This plan addresses the problem of crime solely through lengthier prison sentences, instead of correcting the defects within the criminal that are the roots of criminal behavior. The public suffers because the un-rehabilitated and un-reformed criminal is repeatedly released from prison to ravage the inhabitants of the free world. On the other hand, the criminal is doomed to longer terms of imprisonment, during which his or her sickness festers, becoming more severe and hopeless of recovery. An example of such and exception, however, is the case of Roy Fagan.
Roy had previously been released from prison, raped yet another victim, was again convicted, given another lengthy sentence, and was then incarcerated at the Spring Creek Correctional Center. He was feared and loathed by society for his inability to control his own twisted behavior. Furthermore, Roy had raped his own sister at knife point. This act not only justified societal rejection, but was also the source of his own self-loathing, guilt, fear, and desperate desire to understand his deviant behavior. Roy saw the Classification Committee, those representatives for the System charged by law and Constitution to reform and rehabilitate, and asked them to allow him to participate in a sex-offender treatment program. He hoped that by understanding his sickness he might correct that twisted part within himself, bring an end to the fear that freedom would only mean more suffering for others and himself, and finally, prayerfully, stop the torment of not knowing if he had a mental illness, or was truly a monster in his soul.
The Classification Committee told Roy that he was not eligible for treatment programs because he had too much time left to serve. Simply stated, he would have to live with the sickness, the self-doubt, the fear, and horrendous guilt for at least a decade or more. In spite of their refusal, or perhaps because of it, Roy became an exception to the Systems' failure to rehabilitate, a sterling triumph of the politicians' strategy. My friend, Roy Fagan, was successfully reformed into a corpse when he hanged himself during the night for September 3, 1992.
Each of us was born a hollow vessel containing the seeds of potential qualities and attributes that, as adults, we admire in others: trustworthiness, truthfulness, kindness, compassion, generosity, empathy, loyalty, faithfulness, perservering strength and patience. From the time of birth until puberty, that hollow vessel is filled with the mixed brew of education and experience. While it's true that we never cease to learn, it is during those first formative years in our parent's care, under the family roof, that the foundation is laid and our direction is set as to the things we desire to learn and seek out to experience.
The degree that we develop these positive attributes to is dependent upon the level of love, nurturing, and support we receive, or do not receive, as children, and also upon the nature of the events we experience. Children who are given the advantage of loving, nurturing, and supportive parents will develop praiseworthy spiritual qualities to a greater level that those who lack that positive educational and experiential guidance. In either case, the level of development of those qualities, or the lack thereof, is readily apparent as expressed through our actions. For example, we may be honest and truthful, yet ruthless in our business dealings; faithful to our beliefs and compassionate with our friends, but intolerant of those who think or believe differently than us; loyal and generous to our families, yet dispassionate and unsympathetic to the suffering of those in distant communities. These contradictions do not make a person bad, but do demonstrate that we reflect the qualities and attributes we have developed through education and experience. The truth is that no one is perfect, and people generally have more praiseworthy qualities than blameworthy ones.
As adults, our lessons and experiences should enable us to live with a degree of contentment and success at facing life's challenges. But for some of us, our education and experiences have allowed us to develop attitudes and beliefs that make taking advantage of, stealing from, or even the killing of other human beings acceptable, justifiable, or rationalizable behavior.
I have not lived in the outside world for over 16 years because my lack of those spiritual qualities was expressed through my actions in a most tragic manner. Therefore, I cannot offer practical solutions to everyday problems living outside of prison, but I can tell you that an estimated 80 percent of the people who come to prison in Alaska return to prison after they are released. What this means is that regardless of the crime committed, the length of sentence received, or the type of incarcerating facility, 8 out of 10 of those human beings get a life sentence - some receive it on the installment plan, others with balloon payments. This cycle will not end until the importance of nurturing our children's potential is realized and the development of spiritual qualities is encouraged in all facets of our lived - at home, in our schools, and in our prisons.