17 May, 2022

The End of Cards (and More)

Restrictions on having nice things are nothing new for anyone in DOC custody. Prison is, after all, one big, long exercise in deprivation. There's almost nothing that being confined here doesn't deprive a person of.

Even back when prisoners could mail order certain articles of clothing, I declined to buy a coat or a more comfortable boots, because I thought that my appeals would soon establish my actual innocence and I'd be released. Keep your creature comforts, I thought, I won't be staying long.

I haven't indulged in much over the years. One of the few pleasures that I never denied myself from the world outside came to me through the mail. There are so many creative minds in my circle. We're not really Hallmark fans, so I love the cards that they've crafted for me. Drawings, too. Letters from one friend were often scribbled on blank spots found in his sketchbook; more than a few people sent little drawings (or even paintings, back when those were allowed).

As of 15 June, however, all that's going to stop. The Missouri DOC's new mail policy imposes sweeping change to what used to be one of the most meaningful ways for prisoners to maintain relationships with their loved ones despite the distance between them. The policy bans incoming greeting cards and directs that every piece of incoming snail mail be sent to some processing center in Tampa, Florida. There, letters from loved ones will be scanned and forwarded to our tablets within three business days of receipt.
Privileged mail, magazines, and newspapers should still be addressed to the prison.

I get it. The DOC wants to remedy its massive drug problem by preventing paper and card stock drenched in roach spray out of the hands of the prisoners who smoke it for a cheap high. But what happens when these prisoners get out? Most of them have parole dates. Some are going home within a year or two. It'd be immeasurably more sensible to instill in them an appreciation for sober living and teach them the necessary skills to achieve it. Rather than address the underlying cause of these people's self-destructive substance abuse issues, however, it's cheaper – if only in the short term – to stop one of those substances from coming in.

Who needs to receive postcards of support, drawings from kids, or cards from friends anyway?

04 May, 2022

Prison Dreams

Rodney's been down, as we say, for over forty years. He says that he doesn't dream anymore, but I'm not sure if I believe him. Years on death row, plus two more in solitary confinement seem to me as though they'd inspire the wildest flights of fancy. Then again, I know how creatively stultifying my own surroundings sometimes feel, day in, day out, and what a tonic pictures of elsewhere (whether physical or mentally conjured) can be.

A couple of days ago, my friend Paul said, "I think I've transitioned to dreaming exclusively about prison." I doubt this, too. I don't think that Paul, scarcely locked up for a year and a half, is in a position to know what influence his fresh memories of freedom might yet exert on his dreams.

Even after twenty years, my dreams aren't usually restricted to this world of walls and chain link and razor wire. The people in them are only sometimes inmates. I once wrote a blog about my weird dreams that still paints a pretty accurate picture of my nightly subconscious adventures.

Last night's dream was decidedly a prison dream.

The prison in it wasn't a real prison. It looked instead like an amalgam of the three very different facilities where I've been confined. While I walked around it, doing whatever daily tasks the dream-me did, a large group of angry prisoners took up occupation in a particular zone and refused to move. They shouted obscenities at passersby – myself included – and put on their most menacing faces; however, their purpose wasn't clear.

What was clear was that they were doing a good job of intimidating everyone. Members of the prison staff spoke about getting home to their families before violence broke out, while they packed up office supplies like Ukrainian refugees before a bombing attack. I just drifted from point to point, watching wordlessly, a spectator, but with the sense that I wasn't quite there, as though I occupied another plane of existence, which only intersected with this one.

That was it – just a series of observations. No riot ever took place, nor did I never get away from the fearful chaos. I simply stood by, watching and waiting for the seemingly inevitable. Because of that, it felt a little bit like real life.

Maybe it was the execution that the state carried out yesterday, here at ERDCC. Protesters massed in front of the facility, behind sawhorses and faced with armed guards – an unsettling scene from TV, remixed by my brain at some point in the night.

Or it could've been yesterday's breakfast-table topic about State Representative Kimberly Ann Collins, the legislator championing Missouri House Bill 1922 to form an independent committee overseeing the Department of Corrections. That conversation had me thinking for much of the day about things I've seen since being transferred to ERDCC, the ways that this facility operates, and the ways in which it's broken.

Sometimes I do wish that, like my coworker Rodney, I didn't dream. The lasting effect of dreams often feels like a daytime haunting. Even the best of my days are freighted enough.