Day 62: House Arrest

Now that I am in the final month, I was able to meet with the County Probation Office, which is what handles the House Arrest process. I and three other prisoners met with a young guy from the office who [literally] read the rules to us.

Most of it was what I expected. No guns; no booze; you must notify your P.O. of your work schedule. You are permitted to go to the grocery store and doctors in addition to work, but not permitted to mow your lawn. You are required to comply with all Federal, State, and Local laws, although I am not sure how you are supposed to comply with weed-height ordinances if you aren't allowed to do yard work. Maybe city hall is bending to the powerful Lawn-Care Services lobby.

Oh, of course you are permitted to go to church, but not any other sort of hobby meeting.

I was able to slip in a question about the manufacturer of the monitoring devices while the guy was explaining how it worked. Based on his description, I believe I will be using the BI 9000 Series. Their company site is worth a look; it definitely is more polished than some of the other companies involved in the big business of imprisonment. On at least one of the product data sheets they refer to the people forced to wear these devices as "customers". One almost can imagine these people are marketing GPS location devices for luxury cars.

So the unit will be connected to a traditional landline - VOIP over DSL or cable Internet will not work. The P.O. will login to the BI website and create a schedule for me. Regularly, BI Inc's computers will dial into my device and download the log of when I cross the perimeter, comparing it to my schedule. I would expect it permits a certain amount of flexibility - I can not imagine P.O.s want to be notified every time I leave for work one minute late - and registers exceptions which it then reports to the P.O..

The perimeter is established by making me stand at each corner of my house and then configuring the device. While it is possible that the devices have a GPS receiver, based on the monthly price I will be paying, and the description of the hardware, the ones we will use appear to be a simple RF transmitter (ankle) and receiver (base unit). This means it probably only recognizes distance based on the time it takes for the signal to reach the base. Without two other units, it will not know location, so if I place the base unit strategically, I should be able to do some simple geometry and identify the true border and gain access to my back porch.

Most of that is deduction based on what I know and what info I can glean from publicly available information. But it is probably right.

Other, more interesting, opportunities for exploit are possible. If the device were extremely sophisticated, it might use public key cryptography to ensure the base can verify the anklet is the right anklet, but not visible to someone snooping the transmission. Although it probably just broadcasts an ID signal using spread spectrum, which is probably good enough to prevent the average electronic hobbyist from emulating the broadcast. If this sentence was for more than 90 days, I might build a spread-spectrum receiver and see if I could capture the signal and then emulate it.

But instead I will probably just end up playing a lot of XBox and PS3 (or the amount Brenda will tolerate).

Day 55: Gay Talk

Derick leaves soon. He made me a nice parting gift: a jailhouse calendar, hand written on a sheet from our tablet. This way, I can do what he did, and attach it to our (my) locker with toothpaste, and cross off each day.

He also told me an amusing story. Apparently when he and I arrived, some of Derick's friends asked if I was gay.

When I arrived I didn't display my masculinity by punching the first person I met, but on the other hand I was not exactly strutting around the Day Room in assless chaps, singing Judy Garland songs. So I was a little perplexed why I was setting off more than one prisoner's gaydar.

"Well, you talk different than everyone else in here, kinda funny, and that sounds gay," Derick explained.

"I do?"

"You use big words and shit, and to a lot of guys, that just sounds gay."

Wow, I never new.

"But I told them it is just 'cause you went to college."

Glad he cleared that up.

Or maybe it was my look of shock and confusion when I walked by the shower back at the beginning of my sentence, and I saw a grown man lathering up while wearing his briefs. I did do a double-take, but only because I haven't seen anything quite that strange since junior high gym.

Day 45: Gimme Some of That Old Time Religion!

We have a lot church in prison. And not just services, but propaganda hanging on the walls and in our library, and a very regular presence of proselytizers.

Bibles, pamphlets, and various novels from the Left Behind cult series are available for anyone to read. The last time I saw this large of a stack of Guideposts was on the back of my Grandmother's toilet. If this still is not enough religious literature for us prisoners, we can buy a copy of the Christian Bible for seven dollars. Muslims, however, must pay $13 for a Qur'an. I guess religious equality includes a premium charge.

Each Sunday evening has a church service - Christian, of course. There are also two Bible Study sessions each week. Aesthetically, all of this is incredibly revolting. These services are held in the Day Room, with music via boom-box and the make-shift congregation of ten led by the nasally, off-key jail house preacher. A far cry from the majesty of Notre Dame.

Obviously I do not attend these services, as jail and church top the list of most excruciatingly dull ways to spend time. Experiencing the combination would likely send me straight to a bed sheet noose. But recently a jail house preacher had taken one of the prisoners aside, away from the church service, and I overheard their conversation.

Derick is cynical of the prisoners who choose to participate. "If you are out there on the street, never in church but getting drunk and smoking crack, and then you come here and all of the sudden care about church - well, you are probably hiding something."

I am cynical too, but not about the people who choose to seek out help. Because that is what they are doing by attending these services, albeit in a very wrong-headed manner. The conversation I overheard was very blunt: the prisoner was here due to his moral failure at not avoiding Satan's temptation, and if he would only choose a righteous path in the future, he would never be back in jail.

I am angry at this message, because it absolves society of our collective responsibility for the sorry state many of these people must live: a life in poverty or a life as a member of the working-poor, in a country ravaged by a Government War against Drug Addicts, Users, and The Poor.

Moralizing and lecturing others is a luxury of the wealthy, fat, and happy. It would be far more helpful if this time was spent helping the prisoners who need it in their current life rather than their alleged afterlife. Instead of job programs, educational opportunities, health care, and child care, they get lectures on how their own personal moral failure is the only reason they are where they are.

I admire people who wish to help those less fortunate. But sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

Day 32: From Russia, With Love

You may notice that the day count advanced faster than real-time. This is because I am actually more into my sentence that I initially indicated, and plan to "catch up" as my release date approaches.

Politics to me is a sport, and I watch it and follow the players and their peculiarities the way American Football fans obsess over athletes' minutia. Even though I am on Work Release and get access to the Internet all day I have not been able to follow things as closely as I once did. Following the political and financial blogs and Indy media during the day; watching CNBC in the early AM and late PM (to know what the ruling class are thinking, of course); nightly fixes of The Daily Show and of course The Colbert Report - these were my bread and butter. Now I stay current with day-old New York Times and our local daily morning paper, when they can cover something beyond local high school sports. The horror, the horror!

One of my favorite journalists is Matt Taibbi, who is a celebrity of sort in the world of journalism (he makes appearances on Bill Maher's show and also on Stewart and Colbert, so it counts). I think I first read him in print copies of The Nation, and then AlterNet online. Through Taibbi, I found out about eXile.

So it is with sadness that I must share that the eXile is closing up shop. Being a Russo-phile of the "wore a CCCP shirt during my junior high punk days" sort, I will miss the eXile's irreverence and brutally honest analysis of the West. But thanks to the Internet, I can still read a lot of the great journalists who were what made the eXile so grand.

Ironically, people are going to hear a lot more about the eXile in the Western mainstream media now that it is dead. Which is too bad, because the Western media could have learned a lot from the eXile, if they could fit it in between being an uncritical supporter for the Bush administration's Iraq War run-up, getting to the bottom of flag-pin-gate during 2008 Democratic Presidential primary debates, and reminding us that Hillary Clinton has a vagina.

Farewell, eXile!

As I was googling for Russian coverage of the eXile's demise, I came across Sean's Russia Blog, which was pretty interesting. The most recent post covered web videos of David Harvey lectures. 13 two-hour episodes, which of course I don't have time to watch due to being in prison. Something else for the post-release to-do list!

Days 26-29: Screw You, MPAA!

There is one funny thing about prison which is actually kind of nice. We watch a lot of "guy movies", and many of them are new releases. Robbins brings them in, and we watch them on the Work Release DVD player. I am pretty sure he has a friend who downloads them via BitTorrent.

Legally, this is definitely in the murky grayness of trading "bootleg" or "pirated" videos, since many of the movies we've watched are still in the theaters. A Video Camera is placed in the projection room, with the complicity of theater-workers, and audio is dubbed from the stereo output used to broadcast on the low-power FM system for use by the hearing impaired. Prisoners certainly can't be choosers, so a lot of them are a welcome change from the homo-eroticism of a prison viewing of professional wrestling. I, sitting in prison, was able to see Prince Caspian before many friends had a chance to make the theater.

I cry no tear for you, the poor MPAA, and your alledged lost revenues. I am sorry to hear that the Internet is forcing you, like the RIAA, to adapt your prehistoric business model (or perish). How well did fighting the relentless march of technology work out for Carriage Makers at the turn of the 20th Century? Anyway, if you want me to pay for a movie, I will be more than happy to download a DRM-free video for $10 (my market price for a DRM-free audio album is $5, which I happily paid Radiohead). Theater-going, with screaming children, high ticket prices, disgusting restrooms, cell phones, over-priced food, and no rebates for crappy films, is out of the question. I'll can easily sit at home on my couch, than you very much, so price the movies for the market or stop whining about us using BitTorrent.

So the possible illegality (to date, the only legal precedents are related to file sharing, not downloading or viewing) of this doesn't really bother me. Stick it to the man, and all that.

But, considering the venue, Robbins could pick his movies more wisely. The problem is the horror genre that I like to call "torture porn".

We've watched two of them recently - Timber Falls and the insulting Rob Zombie remake, Halloween. These movies are not frightening - they are just disturbing, and well, gross. Mutilation and torture are common themes, to the point of literal interpretation: usually the bad guys tie up a woman and do all sorts of horrible things to her. Including, but not limited to, cutting, slashing, hitting, etc. And of course, rape. The latter movie I mentioned had a scene featuring the rape of a mentally ill girl. Young women identified as 15 year olds are featured prominently in nude sex scenes and then quickly cut and covered in blood.

I'm no prude, and I think the 1st Amendment is the Bee's Knees. But considering we have some people even in Work Release with Protection From Abuse orders against them, one guy with an assault charge, a few people who have had charges of making terroristic threats against their spouses or partners, and one rumored pedophile (where the victim was a cop pretending to be a teenage girl), maybe, just maybe, these films are not appropriate.

Days 24 & 25: PrisonCare

Only someone living under a rock, or the CEO of an Insurance Company, does not realize that health care in the USA is a serious mess. You can not turn around without coming across an article showing just how bad things are, like how it isn't just the uninsured struggling, but the growing numbers of under-insured.

So it is interesting that in prison we get some basic health care. It is outsourced and care is not completely free to the prisoners, but the rates are pretty reasonable. Each visit to the infirmary costs a small amount, about $3.00. This gets you a nurse who examines you and then decides if you need to see a doctor. If you do - then there are no additional charges. If the nurse decides you do not need a doctor, you can still insist on speaking to one - but for an additional $5.00. The theory is that by putting at least a marginal cost to this "free" service, prisoners will be discouraged from abusing it. That seems to be a reasonable fear, because the infirmary is comparatively clean, air-conditioned, and staffed with females.

I did some digging to see if I could find a copy of the prison's contract with the provider, but I could not. I did find some news reports of the contract though, which indicate that it is costing the County about $2000 per prisoner per year for full health care.

So, despite the claims of the far-right, it is possible to provide some basic affordable health care for all, even in a prison. The prison is a mini-socialist medical scheme, if you ignore the profit motive of the provider. The staff are all hired by the provider (government), and they deliver as much service as they can for a trivial fee ($3 and $5 visits). A market does not exist to set prices, so insisting to see a doctor to remove your appendix costs the same as insisting to see one for a mild cold.

The USA certainly would not be ready for such a scheme, much like the UK's, where most doctors work for the government. The natural first step, of course, would be mandated private insurance combined with price controls (like in Japan or Germany). But the USA needs to do more, first as a moral issue to take care of our less fortunate, but also to remain competitive (health care costs are one of the largest differences between the cost of producing a car in the USA vs. in Japan). The US Government as single-payer for health care costs is the right answer in the long-term, with optional private care available if one would like it (much like Canada).

So the PrisonCare model wouldn't be too bad, except they get a few things drastically wrong. First, I am sure HIPAA applies, so it would be nice if the nurses didn't wander around leaving an inmate's records open on the computer with other prisoners sitting nearby.

But most importantly prison needs to spend time and money on preventative care. If this means the moralizing county residents who insist that prisoners suffer while they are there, are overruled by a State or Federal authority, so be it. Climate control will go a long way to reducing the growth of bacteria, as well as reduce the number of prisoners being taken away due to heat exhaustion (our day room was near 100 degrees the other day). Public spaces, especially bathrooms, should be regularly inspected for cleanliness and receive regular maintenance. For example, one of the urinals in the Work Release area randomly overflows, spilling urine and water all over the floor of the bathroom, where many inmates are only wearing sandals on their feet. Some windows in cells do not open, reducing the amount of fresh air circulating through the prison.

The prisoners should be given an opportunity to get some basic exercise. Since free-weights are unacceptable, some cardiovascular exercise options would be perfect. What is served as food should follow USDA guidelines and the food pyramid, with whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables supplying the bulk of the calories instead of instant cakes and ground mystery meats and greasy sauces.

CA-MRSA is the biggest concern of the entire prison - the medical provider, the inmates, the COs, and the administration - but it does not seem like common sense is being applied. It certainly is not surprising that a largely sedentary prison population, living on a low-nutrition, high fat/sugar/cholesterol diet, confined to a small area where surfaces are dirtied by human waste, where humidity and temperatures both approach 100, contracts serious infections.

The only gap to be filled which would make it the perfect disease breeding ground is that we aren't sharing our quarters with both swine and fowl...

...yet.

Days 20-23: Maybe One Sigma?

The industry I work takes process improvement very seriously. We've adopted the Six Sigma methodology and apply it from basic widget production up through our business processes like widget supply chain management. Even "soft" processes like on-boarding new employees gets smacked with DMAIC methodology.

So one of the ways I amuse myself in prison is to map in my head some of the processes that could use some improvement. Well, which means, just about all of them.

The most wasteful and inefficient process I've seen is prisoner-to-cash. As I've mentioned before, I am required to bring in a certified check along with my direct deposit notification. Here is what happens after I hand it to the CO:

1. CO drops it in a locked check box.
2. Work Release Administrator takes the checks form the box and sends them to a different office (next business day).
3. The funds are split: first to the prison for their cut; second to the County for fines and costs; third to my prison account (next business day).
   
4. Statement updates are prepared by the outsourced Commissary and financial service provider (same day).
   
5. The statement is sent from the office to the Work Release Administrator (next business day).
   
6. The Work Release Administrator hands it to the on-duty CO (same day).
7. The CO distributes it back to the prisoner.

So the processing of cash is 3 days, when in the real world, this process would take about 2 seconds. But it gets better! Now I want to send my balance back out to Brenda, so I can use it to pay my bills:

1. I request a Check Request Form from the CO.
2. CO says he is out and will get some soon (repeat for approximately one week).
3. Fill out Check Request Form and return to CO, with addressed and stamped envelope.
4. CO sends to Work Release Administrator (next business day).
5. Administrator approves or denies request, and if approved, sends to office (next business day).
6. Office processes and issues check, mails in envelope (2-3 business days).
7. Envelope arrives (2-3 days).

Recall my offer to just write, up front, the prison a check for their full 90 day cut of my pay, and pay my fines in full? That was, of course, denied, as it is against the rules (as an aside, the reason something is against the rules in prison is because "that is the rule" - the answer I keep receiving when I ask why). So bottom line, the process from prisoner pay check to cash back in all parties' hands is about two and a half weeks.

The general request process follows the same model, with the required form processed at best in one day. But the blank forms frequently run out. Apparently the COs can not be trusted with access to a photocopier.

This pattern repeats itself in all aspects of prison life. There are the occasional modern innovations bolted on to the antiquarian paper-based processes, like an art student's junk yard sculpture. Commitment was completely paper based except for a brand-spanking-new LG Corporation retina scanner. Which, doubtless, was used to print something that was stapled to the other forms. Commissary orders are done using scantron sheets, but after they've been sorted and packaged by the service provider they are all dumped together into giant bins and then hand sorted again.

Prison is an excellent example of how a government-run operation can go horribly awry. I am not advocating prison privatization by any means, but our legislatures ought to require prisons to adopt some process improvement exercises and efficiencies which would benefit the prisoners.

Day 19: How to be Homeless

A reader commented privately that my posts of the last few days have been "whiney". Far be it from me to bring you, dear reader, down with tales of my prison woes. It is after all prison and like Jesus said, "when someone does something wrong, they must suffer." I guess Jesus did not say that but based on how all the people who name Jesus as their number one philosopher act, they sure think he meant it.

So some light-hearted fare on this fine Friday. In case you find yourself in a Work Release prison (as one of the other inmates observed, at the rate the prison population in the USA is growing, half of us are going to be guarding the other half before too long), this information may be useful to you.

Brenda and I have our routine down, and I mean down. I've stopped into the house a few times to get the mail, retrieve a few things, adjust the thermostat, etc. But I'm not living there: I haven't showered there, changed my clothes there, or even used my own bathroom (well, once - but still!).

But I am not really living at the prison either. As the weather has turned hotter and more humid, the smell has become awful. The cleanliness of the restrooms and showers that surprised me earlier as been replaced by the odor and discoloration of the bacteria that loves to fester where heat and humidity meet a high-density of men. As a result, I am not showering, or using the bathroom for you-know-what unless it is an emergency (the commissary doesn't sell quilted TP or bath wipes so to hell with that). I do that business at work!

So, Brenda and I are kind of living like how I would imagine a generous homeowner (Brenda) and her homeless ward (me) would live, if such a situation existed, and people actually gave a crap about the real homeless, which I am not trying to make light of.

I have my jail house clothes and my work clothes. I thought about trying to come up with some middle ground, something between business casual and formal jail house, but I really couldn't.

So at prison, in my smelly, rusted, ancient prison locker, I have a few pairs of tightey-whiteys (bought for prison - I'm a boxers kind of guy), some socks, a couple pairs of jeans, sneakers, and a collection of plain T-shirts. I did recently order some vacation attire, all linen, to wear there on Sundays to help handle the heat. So those are there too. Maybe I will burn those when this is over, or maybe I'll save them for the very expensive vacation to the very luxurious beach resort to which I damn well better take Brenda when this is all done.

Each morning I leave prison wearing the T-shirt and jeans I wore in the night before. When I get to work, I go to my locker and grab my real work clothes - the dry-clean-only stuff I certainly can't have in a jail - and my gym clothes, and then work out. At the gym at work I can use a private shower, a clean toilet, and a clean sink, before changing into my work clothes.

Brenda is driving my car, a "compact SAV", and in the back are laundry bags for darks and whites, and a basket of clean clothes. At lunch, I place the dirty jail and gym clothes into their respective laundry bags, and replenish my gym bag with clean ones. After work, I change out of my work clothes and back into my jail clothes. As the work clothes get dirty, I drop them off at our corporate dry-cleaner station.

All of the crap I traditionally carry in my pocket - chap stick, small knife, tissues, wallet, cell phone - is left in my briefcase at my desk. I leave each day with only my petty cash, bus pass, and badge.

Brenda also refreshes a supply of fresh fruit, granola bars, and vegetable snacks in the car every few days. I grab those on my way back from the gym (and freshly ground fair trade coffee, bless her sweet heart) and take them to my desk.

So, I am able to avoid the worst part of being in prison - feeling that it is my home. I am sure the bureaucrats would be enraged that I am doing this, but I am not violating the rules. I am not leaving work, and since Brenda works here too, she isn't visiting me.

Luckily at work I am considered a bit of an eccentric so wandering into the back door of my building in jeans and a T-shirt, keeping a dozen work shirts and pants in my locker, and leaving each day in a similar T-shirt and jeans outfit, has only elicited one or two humorous questions, which I easily deflect.

So, there you have it. How To Go To Prison But Not Look Or Smell Like You Are Living In One.

Days 17 & 18: Breakin' The Law

Yesterday I had the pleasure of a scolding. Two days ago, on Day 16, on the advice of counsel, I placed a call to an office number regarding some bureaucratic requirement that was part of my sentence. Some sort of appointment for a meeting, ordered by the judge, with the phone number handed to me by counsel. Innocent, right?

I could not have been more wrong. The petty-clerk at this office phoned me back in a fit of rage.

"You aren't supposed to be making personal phone calls, are you!?!?!?!?"

"Well, I was told I could call the office about my sentence, which is what I did, under advice from counsel, but that is a true statement - 'no personal calls'. But anyway, what can I do for you?"

The notion that I could classify calls in all sorts of ways - personal, business, legal, emergency - was foreign to the enraged civil servant, whose simple mind seems comfortable in a black and white world of personal and non-personal calls. "Well you aren't supposed to talk to anyone but Jim! We'll call you for obligations so never call here again", he screamed before slamming down the phone.

For sport, I follow national politics. I dabble in some minimum knowledge about our state. But the county's bureaucratic organization is not clear to me (they don't give you an Org Chart in the Welcome to Jail Kit). Unfortunately I had upset the natural balance of things. I had bypassed Jim's authority by contacting someone above him and I was going to learn why that was bad. The hard way.

What occurred then, I did not learn until later. Mr. Furious Petty Clerk apparently called Jim, enraged that one of "Jim's guys" was contacting his holiness directly, rather than through Jim. He most likely reprimanded Jim for not minding his house. Jim became furious with me. Rather than simply picking up his phone and calling me, he crossed my name off the Blue Sheet and planned to keep me in prison that day (with no warning), and meet with me.

But that night, safely back in prison, watching TV in the 85 degree, humid day room, I decided to go to my cell early and call it a day. I missed the Blue Sheet, which was actually a blessing in disguise (since I didn't lie awake all night worrying about what the hell was wrong) and only learned I had been removed the next morning.

I had a lot of work planned for Day 17: out of town visitors, a working lunch, and a brainstorming session to lead. I scrambled to come up with workarounds, operating the jail house pay phone like a movie computer hacker, bouncing through our corporate voice mail system to leave messages in the appropriate mailboxes, asking others to cover for me in light of my ambiguous "crisis at home from which I can not get away." Brenda dove in and helped, fronting the costs for the lunch I had planned to buy my work comrades. I still had no idea why I was being kept at work, but the morning CO was nice enough to check Jim's schedule to ensure I would talk to him that day.

I kept making calls all morning - the prison's cut of the pay phone revenue probably covered a month's room and board - to the food delivery service, back to Brenda, then back into the voice mail system. My crisis was averted for work, but only due to the efforts of Brenda and my unknowing cohorts. The burden of missing a day of work is put upon the shoulders of others, not me. Unfair, of course, but prison is not about justice - it is about power, cruelty and suffering.

I finally saw Jim in the early afternoon. I had come prepared, with my entire prison folder, assuming I was meeting regarding my follow-on court-ordered probation.

"Why did you bring papers," he asked.

"I was not sure what you wanted to talk about so I wanted to be prepared."

"We're talking about your personal phone call, and you don't need any of that."

Jim, like the other petty civil servant, sees a black and white world. I tried to explain that this was an innocent mistake, I was following counsel's advice, and that a call regarding my sentence is not a personal phone call.

"You are only supposed to be making work calls, so yes it is," Jim countered, while fetching the 1990 rulebook from his piles of coffee and cigar-stained papers, plopping it in front of my face. The rulebook states not to make personal calls, but not 'do not make non-business calls, including calls about your case, even under advice of counsel, to comply with orders by a judge'. I see a distinction between those two things. I, however, am alone.

It was clear that this was not a time to teach Jim some basic philosophy of logic - that it could be simultaneously true that "all personal phone calls are non-business", and also, "not all non-business phone calls are personal" - if you entertain more than one classification set to the superset "phone calls".

My friends and family might say I am a stubborn mule, prone to arguing, always wanting to be right. True perhaps, but only when I get to play by the rules of logic, reason, and can appeal to the subtleties of the English language. This was not one of those cases.

So Jim went through 20 minutes of berating attacks, lecturing about how I am supposed to be kicked out of Work Release and have 90 days added to my sentence, and I replied with 20 minutes of apologies and appeals to mercy. It wasn't difficult to realize that Jim had been reprimanded himself - he became adamantly defensive when I apologized for "causing any trouble for him". He was making himself feel better by castigating me.

It is hard for me to explain how foreign this world is to me. For all its imperfections, the corporate world is a fairly polite and easy one to navigate. Generally, if you are pleasant, the people you work with are also pleasant. Those that are not pleasant, are usually fired. [I always wondered what happened to people who would get fired for disrespectful, unprofessional conduct. Some of them must find natural homes in the criminal justice bureaucracy.]

I can only contrast this to how I handle an issue when someone working for me makes a mistake - perhaps through haste, carelessness, or inattentiveness - but a mistake, not a malicious act. I explain the situation, explain we are going to work through it together, and then offer to help in any way to ensure it doesn't happen again. Documentation? Training? A mentor? Whatever we need to all feel comfortable for the future. Since everyone is trying to do their best, there's no reason to belittle someone for an error.

But in prison, that is not how things work. Imagine if in that example above, I instead threatened them to be fired, to have their life ruined, thrown out of their home, their children possibly taken, etc. I offered them no hope that they could recover from this mistake, that all was lost, and that there was no excuse for their error or misunderstanding. "The rules are the rules" I would repeat, and then quote them the punishment. I would go on like that for 20 minutes, watching them as they sit, let them practically beg for mercy, ask not to have those awful things happen.

Well, that is exactly how prison handles mistakes. If they revise the prison rulebook, they ought to include chapter headings. One could be "There Are No Mistakes in Prison, There Are Only Violations and Punishments."

Granted, I was emotionally fine during my meeting with Jim, but I can imagine this psychological abuse would get to many people. I played my role, throwing myself upon his mercy. Jim asked me what punishment I thought appropriate for my rule violation. Oh, how sweet to say "here's a thought - stop wasting my time with this stupid bullshit, douchebag", but I completed the role-playing without incident. Instead, I offered this gem: "I can't sit here and ask you for special treatment, or for the rules not to apply to me, I can only ask that you consider that I am not trying to be a troublemaker and then use your judgment as you see fit."

"We'll call today your penalty, but don't do it again."

Day 16: Life Lessons

Prison has to be one of the most primal displays of patriarchal hierarchy found on the planet. As a transitional step for prisoners from the normal blocks before they re-enter the community, Work Release is a profoundly disastrous environment.

I am not so naïve as to believe that among some tiny minority of prisoners, the violent psychopaths, a brutal display of authority, without mercy or accountability, is perhaps the only way to keep order. Those prisoners might expect minimal civility from their captors.

But likewise, in a minimum security area, shouldn't the prisoners expect, if not maximum civility, a certain modicum of civility? For, there is none. Based on the shared experiences and anecdotes of some of the prisoners who have been to the other blocks, the guards all act alike no matter where they are assigned (to wit, guards frequently work different blocks). This may explain why the prison-wide announcement system routinely calls in a "Code 13" - CO being attacked - or a "Code 26" - two COs being attacked. Everyone has a breaking point for how much psychological abuse they can withstand.

It is very easy to assume that COs and prison administrators only behave in this barbarous manner when they are at work, and they do so only because the prison culture requires it to ensure the safety of both they and the prisoners.

However this assumption breaks down when considering Work Release. The assumption is therefore generally suspect.

What lessons are the prison CO and administrators teaching by example before sending prisoners back into communities?

• Power is absolute, never to be questioned.
• He who has power can wield it arbitrarily, without accountability.
• The ambiguous nature of some rules and contracts is no excuse for an alleged violation, if he who has power decides there was a violation.
• Polite speech ("yes sir", "no sir", "please", "thank you", etc.) , greetings, and salutations are a sign of submission and will never be used or acknowledged by one who has power.
• The primary way to get someone to change their behavior is to publicly raise one's voice at them in anger. This is most effective if he who has power says things intended to humiliate him.
• If raising one's voice does not work, then violence should be threatened.
• Kindness (e.g., offering to help someone) and honesty (e.g., turning over found money to the CO) are signs of weakness, to be derided by those in power.
• A request for assistance or a question may be treated as an appropriate act of submission, and addressed in the manner of a benevolent despot. Alternatively, the same request or question may be treated as an annoyance or rule violation.
  

The average age of the Work Release block is young - probably under 25 - and recidivism must be considered in the context of the lessons these young men are learning from the COs and staff.

It is also reasonable to conclude that the mental state of the COs has a direct impact on the frequency of domestic violence committed by them, if we draw an analogy from the 3 to 5 fold increase of such incidents in the military. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a reputable source for domestic violence incidents by occupation to test the theory (for law enforcement and corrections personnel, such data might be intentionally suppressed). As many of the COs and staff of the prison, parole, and probation systems seem to exhibit the symptoms of antisocial personality disorders, while the inmates are there mostly as a result of poverty and the lack of a functional social safety net, members of society are most at risk by the people who claim to be protecting it.

Days 13-15: Ritual Cleansing

During college my foray into Anthropology led me to a class focused on the various indigenous cultures of Melanesia. Melanesia, or Papua New Guinea, offered 20th Century ethnographers a chance to observe cultures which may have been only mildly influenced by Westerners; and due to the terrain, each other.

The Trobriand Islanders were studied for their practices around sex, marriage, and family life. Ritual Washing was a common practice, accompanied by appropriate use of oils, garments, and of course, magical spells. Returning each day from "the street", I feel like a Trobriander being purified by ritual.

Each CO has his own manner of searching anyone returning from the street. Only a few will actually do a strip search, including the charming "squat and cough twice" command, but even they only go to that extent occasionally. The more regular a guard is, the more regular and simplified the search will be.

Pockets are usually checked for contraband. It is an equal chance that they will search shoes or a folded jacket, as they may simply ignore both. Each CO seems to have his own particular pet search spot: one is obsessed with socks (like a puppy) and will ask you to pull them down, then yank them up; another, belt loops and pant cuffs.

No CO has ever compared what I am wearing or bringing in with what is listed in the logbook of approved articles. I have smuggled in, in plain sight, a rain jacket and a watch, purchased at a drug store. I always bring in the petty cash that I am supposed to get via a request form and deduction from my prison account.

But all of these things appear to be legitimate, so they are ignored. At this point I've clearly identified a system and it would be trivial to actually smuggle contraband, if I choose to (but I have no intention to). I would imagine many of my fellow inmates are smuggling in at least tobacco, if not more.