Prison's Perpetual Relocation Program

There stood the assistant warden, at the front of the wing, telling us the news. His presence in the wing was unusual. Ordinarily, the higher-ups don't visit the housing units of prison's unwashed masses. I suppose this was a display of personal concern, less offensive than a diktat from on high. He asked, not especially loudly, for everyone's attention, then told us that we're all moving. Again.

If this seems like a repost of an old entry from a year or so ago, you're not just experiencing déjà vu. The ERDCC administration can't seem to run things without shuffling the prison's whole population around every few months. In the last mass move (of which I, thankfully, wasn't a part), they consolidated the good-conduct wings from all general-population housing units — a move akin to hitting "Undo" on the chaos from the previous major relocation, which took place just a few months prior.

We should all have moving down to an art, yet some still have difficulties, both with the mechanics of the thing and with change in general. The noise level in the wing has been high ever since, as prisoners whose heightened emotional states struggle for any possible release. Most of these guys aren't so good at emotional regulation. That's what landed many of them in prison in the first place.

A generous neighbor asked if I wanted a box. He'd found several large brand-new unassembled boxes somewhere. He sneaked the cardboard contraband back to our housing unit specifically for today's move. I was the lucky other person to benefit from his find. My clothing, bedding, and canteen all fit perfectly. Without it, I'd have to just pile random stuff on top of my packed footlocker and hope it didn't fall during the long haul across the yard.

That's what we're waiting for now: the go-ahead to load everything we own into a canvas-sided laundry cart and push it to the opposite side of the facility, where an empty wing awaits. Then there'll be a day of cleaning in store. For how long will this residency last? Someone asked the assistant warden that yesterday, when he stood there delivering the news. "It's permanent," he answered — exactly what the administration said the last two, three, or more times.

The Pandemic Has Ended!

That, at least, is what the prison administration at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center seems to believe, as normal operations resume throughout most parts of the institution. It's weird to think that, as the spread of COVID-19 reaches new daily record highs in certain regions, the Missouri Department of Corrections and ERDCC's warden have basically stopped trying to protect the 2,800 prisoners here — but that's exactly what's happened.

Individual wings of housing units no longer have separate recreation times. The table occupancy at meals is no longer being limited. The rule about masking in the dining halls was rescinded after less than a week and a half. Even as the US president eases up on his longtime obstinacy and calls for Americans to wear masks, the guards here are still not being required, nor even asked, to do so at any time. Few — maybe one in thirty — do so by choice.

"They're not making the offenders wear them," a caseworker was heard complaining yesterday. "I don't see why I'd have to."

That same morning, another guard, a sergeant, poked fun at a subordinate whose face was appropriately covered. The only part of the mockery that I found remotely funny was, "That's gonna be a real problem once the tan lines start to show." Otherwise, this person just fed my disappointment with humanity.

If such maskholery is prevalent among "correctional" employees in general, it's no wonder that (according to the Journal of the American Medical Association) state and federal prisoners are 5.5 times more likely to become infected than the average US citizen. Prisons are petri dishes, ideally structured for maximum viral and bacterial spread.

Fun fact: according to that same study ("COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Federal and State Prisons," posted 8 July), regardless of age or race, we're also 300% more likely to die from COVID-19 complications. Thanks for that nifty opportunity, all you contracted for-profit medical care providers out there!

I wash my hands until the skin's tight and itchy. I wear a mask despite the jokes. What else can I do? I'm not worried about myself so much, but there are a lot of older, high-risk people around me in these close quarters, and I'd hate to think that I could be partly responsible for their contracting a potentially lethal virus. Someone should be concerned for their well-being.

The Game of Telephone, Prison Style

Seventy-two prisoners sharing four telephones seems like someone's idea for the setup for an ultraviolent action movie, but that's what we contend with at ERDCC. This makes an eighteen-to-one ratio of prisoners to phones. Someone's always waiting in line. You're lucky when it isn't you.

There's a system, of sorts. The phones, each one a tough black archaic payphone-style receiver attached via metal cord to a stainless steel box on a pole, flank the wing entrance, two on the left, two on the right. The unofficial waiting area is by the support beam between them. Those disinclined to stand sometimes sit on the footlocker full of games no one plays, up against the front wall. It's common courtesy to ask, when coming to take your place in line, who all is waiting on a phone. At a glance, you can't always tell the difference between those standing around bored and those standing around with purpose. The system works adequately, most of the time. Breakdowns are generally the fault of two types of people.

The first type is what I call the Camper, the man who, once he takes a seat on the stool in front of the phone, might just as well be readying the space for an overnight stay. He has his address book, his tablet, headphones, some photos, a notebook and pen, a batch of personal letters, a bowl of food, a mug of some colored beverage or other, a pitcher of ice water, a damp washcloth, and maybe something to pick his teeth with after eating his meal there. He turns his back on everyone waiting. He kicks up his feet. He holds his headphones up to the receiver, to share a song he recently downloaded. He pointedly avoids looking at the clock.

The other type of problem caller is what I've dubbed the Teleporter. This is the guy who tells the last person line, "I'm after you," then vanishes and does something else. The Teleporter might not be seen for a half hour or forty-five minutes thereafter, rematerializing only after what had been the last guy in line gets a phone, thereby taking the current line's constituency by surprise: Where the hell was this guy five minutes ago? And now he wants to jump in front of me? The Teleporter breeds discord and dissatisfaction, and we all wish he'd get off his high horse to wait alongside the rest of us.

For the many years I lived in good-conduct wings at Crossroads Correctional Center, the prisoner-to-phone ratio was a far more workable twelve to one — 50% better than at ERDCC. During peak hours at Crossroads, such as right after coming in from meals, someone might wait ten or fifteen minutes, a perfectly reasonable amount of time, before making their call. Here, there are periods of the day when one is lucky to get a phone at all.

Requests for additional phones to be installed in ERDCC's good-conduct wings, which are open and active all day long, meet solely with stonewalling. "A feasibility study would have to be done," said one official response, as if Crossroads' performance, and that of its sister facilities, was insufficient proof of concept. ERDCC could cut down on a great deal of tension if its residents could more easily contact the people in their support system. More importantly, though, is that mounds of evidence show outside connections being one of the most effective elements in prisoners' rehabilitation. If a correctional center wants to live up to its name, why would it hamper its own efforts at effective correction? Unless, of course, it's not really trying to correct at all....

Prison Race Relations in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter

As demonstrations sweep cities around the world, as monuments are pulled down, as rioters run roughshod and arsonists set buildings ablaze, as a dangerous pandemic sweeps through the world, as citizens sit at home, either out of work or working too much, and the grind of domesticity, of children, of spouses, of the hobgoblins of their own boredom and self-doubt, wears at the last shreds of their ability to cope, the message that penetrates prison's walls and razor-wire fences is this: it's bad out there.

It's bad in here, too — worse than usual. We worry about our loved ones, about their health and their jobs and their homes. Since most of the staff seem to care about their political alignment too much to wear a piece of cloth on their faces, we worry about getting sick ourselves. We worry about our neighbors' every sneeze or cough, about the general lack of adequate cleaning supplies, and about cohabitating, for an average of twenty-two hours each day, in a space the size of a home bathroom, usually with a near-stranger who likely committed some heinous crime and doesn't have our best interests at heart. We get few exercise opportunities, fewer opportunities to call the people we care about. We're afforded limited access to showers. And now we worry about racial tensions — a significant prison problem in even the best of times — flaring.

I wasn't at ERDCC in 2016, when riots rocked Ferguson, Missouri, fifty-odd miles north-northeast of here, but anyone who was could describe the tension that gripped the prison during that period of unrest. Any prisoner putting his hands up — whether or not he intended to signify "Don't shoot!" — was immediately whisked away to the Hole, under fear of him trying to incite something. Outside circumstances had the prison administration jumpy. What's discussed in meetings here now, I can only speculate. This climate of uncertainty at least has the prison population more sensitive than usual, particularly to matters of race.

On the yard last week, I heard a man preaching to several younger prisoners. He told them, "The white man is not your friend." He said, "The white man is pure evil." He looked right at me with such a look of unabashed hatred as he said it; although, I've only ever seen him around the yard from a distance. How should I feel about this?

Another person, a neighbor with whom I'd never spoken, let alone treated with less respect or cordiality than I give every other stranger, approached me, smiling like a child with a secret, to say, "You're a racist." With wide-eyed bewilderment, I asked, "What makes you say that?" His answer was a shrug as he turned and walked away. What would've been a more appropriate way of handling this exchange?

I hear racist remarks all the time, from prisoners of many races. Sometimes they're "jokes." Sometimes they're mumbled slurs. Sometimes they're aggressive taunts. I don't deal well with racial discrimination, nor hate speech. I speak out in criticism of them — I always have. My list of reasons for disdaining small-mindedness is decades long.

I've been mocked. I've been harassed. I've been discriminated against. I've been ostracized. I've been targeted by security guards and police. I've been physically assaulted. I've spent the last nineteen years of my life corralled, demeaned, and dietarily and intellectually malnourished within maximum-security prisons, at least partly because of the way others have perceived me. I hear the cries for justice going up, and I say, "I feel your pain." My differences can't be seen on my skin, but the frustration and suffering that comes with being "other" is very real to me.

Growing up with an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, I used to get so frustrated that I couldn't make myself fully understood, that my heartfelt intentions and desires couldn't be picked up telepathically by everyone around me. Why did I need to explain my thoughts so often? Why were my intentions consistently misread? This imbued a fundamental feeling of unbelonging, which sank into my bones, ultimately becoming as deep and integral as an identity. Being different, my mother cautioned me at an early age, would be difficult, that my "gifts" would be weights that bore down when others felt confused or threatened by them. My mother, the prophetess.

Civil-rights activist Jan Willis writes, in an article for the Buddhist publication Lion's Roar, "The root of this problem is the very root cause of [suffering] itself, namely, the overexaggerated investment we each make in our respective Is." Until we are able to relinquish our obsession with conditioned identities — the idea that these things that make me me are somehow better or worse than those things that make her her, or him him — and that our identity is precious and unique, rather than a fragile soap bubble that conditions have blown a certain way but that ultimately is made up of the same stuff as every other precious and unique bubble, we're going to encounter division and strife.

Addressing a recent viral video of racism in action, in his recent personal essay, "Homecoming", the writer Hilton Als echoes Willis's point, imploring readers facing discrimination or harassment, "Listen to yourself, not to your accuser, because your accusers are always listening to their own panic about your presence. And if what they are saying — or shouting — threatens your personal safety, protect yourself by any means necessary. If you can protect yourself, you'll be around to love and take care of more people, and be loved and taken care of in return."

On the two days last week when those men made me the target of their frustrations, I didn't take it especially personally. I understand how frustration demands an outlet, and that the more intense the feeling, the more forcefully it demands. Better those men's ire fall on me, I thought, than someone with a chip on his shoulder, a fragile ego, or something to prove. But that misunderstood sense from childhood did arise. Strange to feel it after such a long time. I even wondered, Why me? Can't they see I'm not like that? I ought to have known better. As if any of us wears ourselves on our skin!