International Drug Tribune

a cura di Marina Impallomeni

Pubdate: Wed, 2 Jul 2003
Source: Honolulu Weekly (HI)
Contact: editorial@honoluluweekly.com
Copyright: 2003 Honolulu Weekly Inc
Website: http://www.honoluluweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/197
Author: J. Incandenza
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Note: J. Incandenza is the pen name of an inmate currently serving 14 years in U.S. federal prison for drug-trafficking.

LETTER FROM PRISON

An Inmate Dispels Misconceptions About America's Brutal Incarceration System

There are more than two million people behind bars in the United States. One of every four black men between the ages of 20 and 30 is incarcerated. Millions are on probation or parole. In fact, one of every 32 Americans is currently caught up in the criminal justice system. In the District of Columbia, one in every three adult men is under some kind of penal supervision.

[Editor's note: As of June 16, 2003, the state of Hawai'i has 3,063 inmates here and on the Mainland. Of Hawai'i's prisoners, 21 percent are locked up for serious drug offenses and 29 percent are in jail for misdemeanor or felony drug-related crimes.]

Despite our vast numbers, we are, except for an occasional cartoon in The New Yorker, largely ignored and completely voiceless. We exist for the popular culture mostly as the punch line of a joke.

I am one of the incarcerated millions, a prisoner in what has become this country's endless War on Drugs.

Despite having spent many years in prison, I am not really representative of the average convict: I am white, middle-aged, educated and a federal prisoner. Many or most convicts are black or brown, have never finished high school and are states' inmates. But, I have at one time or another, been held in nine federal facilities ranging from Pennsylvania's Lewisburg Penitentiary to the camp where I am now and every sort of place in between.

I also have personal knowledge of a handful of county jails thanks entirely to the Feds' miserly attitude toward bail. (County jails are the worst; no other lockup even compares to their capacities to inflict misery. Guys celebrate the day they get transferred to a pen.) And from what I've seen in all of these stops, prison is prison and convicts are convicts.

I'd like to say I'm innocent, a victim of circumstance, unjustly held by a vengeful and misguided system. I'd like to, but I can't, because I'm guilty as charged. Everybody used to think it was cool when I got all those A's in Chemistry, but instead, I'll just say that not many people in jail claim to be innocent anymore. The standard line is more like, "Sure, I did it, but this sentence isn't fair."

Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe you think you know what it's like in here, but you're just plain wrong. Allow me to help separate you from some widely held misconceptions.

Misconception 1: Courts Are Manned By Soft-As-A-Grape Judges Who Dole Out Slaps On The Wrist

Some shrewd PR guy in some prosecutor's office somewhere must have come up with this one. It really doesn't work that way. Fifteen of my last 30 years have been spent in prison, the last 10 in a row. This is the result of two arrests, one in the late '70s and another on Groundhog Day, Feb. 2, 1993. I am the norm, not the exception. Don't believe all that stuff about second chances. Today it's one strike and you're out.

This is especially true of drug guys. All the places I've been are full of kids doing decades or more for a few hundred dollars' worth of dope. The kid who bunks next to me - he's not a kid anymore, is halfway through a 15-year sentence he caught from a D.C. judge for $600 worth. The judge even apologized when he handed out the sentence. It was the federal sentencing guidelines. He said there was nothing he could do.

Misconception 2: Prison Is Some Sort Of Sodomite Bacchanalia

This one is getting old. Mention prison and the next thing you are likely to hear is some wisecrack about anal penetration. Both Letterman and Leno seem to be contractually obligated to mention it at least once a month.

I've come to accept that, like fart jokes and bathroom humor in general, there must be something funny about anal penetration. I also understand that we have brought a large part of this upon ourselves. But enough already.

Sexual orientation is not a matter of convenience, and sodomy inside is not more likely than you would find in a big city nightclub. As far as rape is concerned, in 15 years behind bars, I've yet to see one.

As in any sizable population, there is a sufficiently large gay segment. There are plenty of volunteers and prison administrators usually accommodate their needs.

In one prison where I was a resident, the psychology department made women's underwear available to those who were so inclined. I'm talking about federal prisons, men's federal prisons. I have no idea what happens in women's prisons, though I like to imagine it sometimes. Which brings us to what sex in prison is really all about. To quote Woody Allen, "Sex is like bridge: If you don't have a good partner, you need a good hand."

The medical department even recommends a good hand as a prophylactic against prostate problems. Most prisons today are built with individual shower stalls as opposed to the type of shower rooms you may remember from gym class. (Lewisburg still has shower rooms, but it is considered bad form there to shower nude. The custom is to shower wearing boxer shorts.) These shower stalls are virtual masturbatoria, and you would be well advised to scrub one out before using it, especially if you find a page from the Victoria's Secret catalog stuck to the wall inside. There is even, among certain strangely twisted (and usually younger) convicts, a market for prosthetic devices known as fifis. I will say no more.

Please, lighten up on the sodomy jokes.

Misconception 3: Federal Prisons Are Country Clubs

This one really ticks me off. There is no such thing as a country-club prison. I can only assume that whoever coined this phrase has either never been to a country club, or has never been to a prison. I have spent time in both. There is no similarity.

Can you imagine a country club where 130 snoring, stinking, farting guys sleep stacked on bunk beds arranged not even two feet apart in a tiny little dormitory, and then stand in line in the morning to use one of six toilets, which are only rarely in working order at the same time.

American prisons are, for the most part, overcrowded, dirty and dangerous places. Having always been a federal prisoner, I cannot speak with authority about conditions in state prisons, though people tell me that they are, in the main, abysmal.

I've spent more than a little time in county lockups. I would have spent none if that stuff the Eighth Amendment says about bond was more than just words on paper.

Speaking of the Third World, I once asked an erudite Nigerian convict, who supported himself in prison by writing habeas corpus appeals and habeas corpus petitions - he averaged two to three a month at about $1,000 a pop, what prison conditions are like in his native land.

"Absolutely horrific," he assured me. He didn't believe that the average American could survive even a short stay. But, for the kind of money a convict spends to get by in an American prison, someone could probably bribe his way out of a Nigerian prison, or at the very least hire someone to do his time for him.

You tell me where you'd rather be.

Misconception 4: All Prisoners Are Stupid

This is the converse of a belief widely held in prison: That everyone out there is gutless. This is not to suggest that prison is some kind of graduate seminar, except maybe of crime. Nor am I referring to "street smarts," which I have found to be nothing more than a high level of paranoia combined with incredible baseness and selfishness and a willingness to do things that most people would consider beneath them.

All of this aside, it has been my experience that IQ distribution mirrors the usual bell curve, even if we get more than our fair share of guys who have been failed by the big-city school system.

My guess is that the idea that everyone in prison is stupid is based on the line of thinking that goes: They got caught. Ergo they must be stupid because there are some things that one just cannot do.

I suggest, however, that the way the world is really set up is with few exceptions, you can literally do any damn thing you want to do, anything that you can think of.

Of course, you may have to deal with the consequences. I say "may" because TV cop shows aside, people do get away with things once in a while. Machiavelli observed it is not the severity of the punishment that deters one from pursuing a particular course of action, but the certainty of being caught. Machiavelli was no dolt.

Misconception 5: All Prison Guards Are Misanthropic Sadists Like The Ones Portrayed In The Movies

This is true. Not all of the guards. Maybe there are 2 or 3 percent who aren't.

The question I have never been able to answer to my satisfaction is whether working in prison turns people into officious petty dictators, or people with those traits are the ones attracted to prison work in the first place.

Many of the guards we see here are former (or failed) military who arrive with bad haircuts and affected, tortured syntax and a love of acronyms while they double-dip their government pensions and strut around like Patton clones, shouting orders in what is known as "command voice."

I'd be willing to wager that given the choice between tossing a few back at the corner pub with a group of convicts or a group of prison guards, most of you who looked into it would opt for the convicts.

Misconception 6: Everything Someone Needs To Survive In Prison Is Supplied By The Prison

If bare survival is the goal, that might possibly be true. But over the course of a 10-year sentence - about average for a small to mid-level dope dealer, anyone who hoped to treat himself to a few luxury items like dental floss, or coffee, or a phone call home, or postage stamps, or even aspirin or cold pills, which are mainly available through the prison commissary, that person would have a problem.

It's a problem that will soon be getting worse, because the Bureau of Prisons has recently announced its intention to begin charging convicts a nominal fee for sick-call visits. If a $4 fee for someone who makes $5 a month can truly be called nominal. (We all have jobs in prison, but it's like the old Soviet system under Communism: We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.)

For the fortunate in the prison population for whom crime did pay, the $200 to $400 a month required in order to comfortably do his time does not represent a serious burden. However, for the person who is more accustomed to scores than to paychecks, who typically is not the sort of person who had put a little something away for a rainy day, comfort is something one strives for.

Misconception 7: Prison Has A Rehabilitative Effect

By removing us from the pressures and temptations of the money economy, prison supposedly affords convicts the opportunity and inclination to reflect on our evil ways and do penance. Hence the name "penitentiary."

Given that most convicts hit the door under pressure to earn, about 80 percent of the prison population is on a 24/7 hustle. Some hustles are even tacitly encouraged.

Sanitation, for instance, is a high-priority item with all prison administrators. New arrivals are commonly told that their areas have to be cleaned every day, regardless of how that is accomplished. In a higher-security joint, enterprising types take this as authorization to seize all the mops, buckets and other cleaning supplies and establish a monopoly on cleaning that hardly anyone is inclined to break. After all, the crowd who needs to hustle and the crowd who needs, for reasons largely associated with perceived status, to have their cells professionally cleaned, are symbiotic, and two bucks a week is a cheap way to feel like a Mafia don.

Laundry service is similarly tolerated by staff, who have come to accept that maximum usage of the limited laundry facilities in woefully overcrowded prisons is best achieved by people who are motivated by profit.

Along these lines, a convict who is willing and able to pay can hire another convict to perform his assigned job. The cost of this is, naturally, many times what the prison pays. No one would really work for that.

All of this contributes to what is known as "the orderly running of the institution," and there isn't anyone on either side of the bars who would argue that turning a blind eye to certain indiscretions is anything but sound management policy.

Most hustles, however, are not so benignly regarded. Stealing, for instance, is frowned upon by everyone, though the sanctions imposed by the convict population are so much worse than anything the administration is allowed to employ that this is not as much of a problem as you might expect.

Such is not the case with gambling, which is ubiquitous. Many a bookmaker has arrived in prison already feeling unfairly persecuted while the society he has just been exiled from is rife with church's bingo games, volunteer fire departments' Monte Carlo night and the NCAA Tournament pool that was hanging on the wall of the police station where he was taken after he was arrested. He finds himself in prison, immediately solicited to place bets or buy squares in pools for football games, basketball games, NASCAR races and the Daily Number.

The first advice a newly arrived convict usually receives is to mind his own business, always pay his bills on time, and never get involved with gambling, dope or punks. The first piece of advice he usually ignores is the part about gambling. In the higher-security institutions, more convicts PC (check into protective custody) over gambling debts than for any other reason.

There is plenty of dope in prison, which begs the question: If they can't keep drugs out of a penitentiary with 30-foot walls, eight gun towers and a full-time security staff of 500, how do they expect to keep them from crossing the Mexican border?

In most prisons, one can obtain the full array of intoxicants available on the street corner. In maximum-security joints, tastes run toward heroin, exorbitantly priced reefer (about $40/gram), and jailhouse wine made from either orange or tomato juice or, for the connoisseur, a very fine grape juice vintage aged 21 days in a plastic trash bag that most convicts say tastes almost as good as anything that can be had in a bottle with a twist-off cap.

At a medium security facility, you'll find less heroin and wine but more reefer. A minimum-security facility is about the same. Coke and hallucinogens are rare everywhere - there's no sense getting too wound up with nowhere to go.

At a camp where it is easiest to get things from the street there is, paradoxically, practically nothing to be had except for some occasional vodka, the drink of choice because of its mild smell. Convicts get transferred to camps, after all, for good behavior.

Besides the dope biz, other hustles you find everywhere include extortion, prostitution, selling chow-hall food (your own and others'), making and selling greeting cards and other hobby-craft items (including fifis), selling loosies (single cigarettes), operating a 2-for-1 store with commissary items (take 1 now, pay for 2 later), doing legal work, really anything you can think of.

In here it is still all about the money, and we don't have much time for rehabilitating or reflecting.

Misconception 8: Politicians Are Sending A Message To Potential Criminals With Harsh Sentencing Laws

There is a consistent refrain among the John Ashcrofts and Donald Rumsfelds of the world that that person, or group of people, needs to be sent a message, usually in the form of some draconian punishment. Every week on the evening news you are likely to see some politician advocating the bastinado or drawing and quartering to send a message to jaywalkers or mopes.

Hello out there.

No one in here is listening. Do you really think that with the time and effort one must devote to a career in crime, not to mention staying out half the night carousing and sleeping 'til mid-afternoon, that any of us actually has time to watch the news or read the paper, let alone the Congressional Record or the Federal Register?

These messages are spam, or junk mail, and ignored. Few of us will ever learn the penalty for anything until we get caught, at which point the message is useless unless, of course, the message really is a wink and a nod in the direction of you, the voter, to let you know that the government is going to continue to do its best to punish the people who do things that you don't want them to do; so please continue to vote for me and, by all means, don't think that this pat on the back is only a diversion to disguise a grab for your wallet. But that is too cynical for even a criminal like me to believe.

Implicit in these messages is a misunderstanding of exactly what goes on in here. A criminal-defense lawyer who has defended hundreds of clients once told me that no one who goes to prison is ever the same again. I didn't believe him. Convicts never believe anything anybody tells them. We are archetypal show-me guys.

But it turns out that he was right, and I'm not talking about an increased tendency to dress in dark colors, wear sunglasses at inappropriate times, or believe that Vegas and Sinatra and Wayne Newton are really, really cool. Prison leaves an indelible mark on the soul. The results, however, are not what I believe the people who advocate it most are hoping for.

So if we're not rehabilitating, whatever that means, what are we doing? Everybody's main activity, even more than hustling, is scheming.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Take a large group of people largely motivated by money and remove them from the economy during their prime earning years. The longer you do this, the more it increases their anxiety. Then, stigmatize them with a label that makes the possibility of a secure future via traditional means unlikely. Finally, when you set them free, place them under the thumb of a supervisory system designed to hassle them. What do you expect to happen? It is so obvious to me that I can't see how anyone could believe that we are doing anything else in here but hatching schemes.

The message we get by the time we're paying attention is: You're really screwed, so you'd better figure out what you're going to do about it.

Soon a lot more people will be getting that message. The feds are so happy about how the drug thing is working out that they are in the process of upping the ante for everyone. Just this year they doubled, and in some cases quadrupled, the sentencing guidelines for a bunch of white-collar offenses. I'll leave a light on for you.

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