Saturday, July 18, 2015

A GLIMPSE



May 28, 2015

A recent letter I received from Charlie caught my attention, particularly, so I thought I’d share an excerpt with you. In Charlie’s words:

My Darling Wife,
[Thursday] I mailed a little card to you on the way back from lunch today. Lunch was a small serving of semi-fried rice (not bad), unseasoned pinto beans, wet cornbread, and a small piece of cake with icing (not bad, either).

Then I called my mother. She said Sandy came home from the hospital yesterday, but she’s in bad shape. Can’t walk, can’t do anything for herself. She knows the prognosis is not good. She told Dan she wants to stay at home — no more hospital stays.

I couldn’t deny her that, either.

[Friday} The phones are on the blink now. Beep—Beep—Beep, no dial tones. The stormtrooper said they’ll be working after 1 p.m. Hope you don’t worry.

I just came back from “KOP,” Keep On Person, or “Kills One Prematurely,” whichever you like better. I pushed a semi-paralyzed guy called “Jersey,” (guess where he’s from!) [in a wheelchair], who wanted to go for the drive. He reads my paper. Has nothing. I bought him a bag of sunflower seeds. He ate them faster than the sparrows do.

Yesterday, waiting for my turn on the phone, I couldn’t help but hear this old guy’s side of the conversation. I felt very bad for him, wish I had the means to give these unfortunates a little help, but can’t. Today was the final day to order the $100 packages [a few times during the year, family members can order “packages” of assorted items from an approved order form to be sent to the prisoner].

“I guess you didn’t order that package I sent you. No, I sent it Mother’s Day, with the card. You didn’t get it? I know I sent it. What I really needed was the shorts and the headphones. You found it? I was hoping you’d sent it in. I’d like to have had those apple pies and the coffee. I could just stick it in my locker and parcel it out for awhile like I did last year. No, I don’t have any money on my card, I tried it this morning. Zero, zero. I was hoping you’d have sent me a couple dollars like you did at Christmas. No, my locker’s empty. No, that’s okay. Tomorrow’s the last day. Well if you can, and think about it, I’d appreciate it. We’re about to get cut off. Love you, too. Bye.”

That was virtually verbatim. So many “have–nots,” so little hope. I thank God every day for my many blessings.

Back to work. Supposed to go to the library this p.m. We’ll see how that goes. I love my wife!  Charlie.

A glimpse of another day in the barrens of incarceration.
Libby

Saturday, July 4, 2015

“GOOD FAITH” LACKING IN EFFORTS TO CLEAN UP FLORIDA PRISON SYSTEM



  
            Prisoners beaten to death by guards. A prisoner boiled alive until he died. A murder contract taken out against a released inmate by racist Ku Klux Klan  (KKK) prison guards. Systemic brutality, widespread contraband smuggling, false statements, coverups, and fabricated disciplinary reports. Hundreds of prisoners dying due to inadequate medical care.
            Anomalies ? Isolated incidents? Freak occurrences? The answer is none of the above. For those of us inside the Florida prison system for decades, it is called business as usual.
            Thanks to whistleblowers stirring up a maelstrom of media attention over those incidents listed above, and many more, Florida politicians and the public are demanding that changes be made to a corrupt prison system that has bumbled along on its own for decades, the massive prison bus carrying 100,000 prisoners and 20,000 employees driven by a succession of “Good Old Boys” who have grown fat on prison largesse.
            Can the prison system be fixed? Can a new leader come in, wave a magic wand, and erase generations of abuse? Is it possible that a new Florida Department of Corruptions — er — Corrections, can emerge on the other side of a cleansing process, a process that will end the frequent beatings, gassings, civil rights violations, and worse that have been occurring all along?
            The answer is yes and no. Yes, if good faith efforts by Governor Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature to clean up the mess that has built up and accrued for over a century were followed through with new, enlightened leadership that was given carte blanche to sweep the prison system clean.
            No, if token efforts by the same good old boys result in just another dog and pony show for the camera and politicians, with a coat of fresh paint on the buildings, the green lawn neatly trimmed, and pacified prisoners sitting quietly on their bunks until the group goes out to the administration building for the requisite luncheon, nothing will have changed.
            After reading newspaper accounts of the most recent scandal involving KKK prison guards and the thwarted murder plot, an African-American prisoner who has also served decades in prison commented on the outrage. “Them peckerwoods been doing the same thing since they lost the war.” (The Civil War).
I must agree.
Why has “the system” withstood every effort to purge the “bad apples” and replace them with decent, honest people who will obey the law, enforce the rules fairly, and allow prisoners to “do their time” in an atmosphere conducive to personal growth and rehabilitation? To answer that question, one must examine the roots of the prison kudzu vine that has grown so large and ungoverned that it chokes out and suffocates every effort to reform it.
The “Main Housing Unit” of Union Correctional Institution, near Raiford, Florida, was Florida’s first “modern” penitentiary, a three-story concrete house of horrors that imprisoned thousands of men from its opening in 1913 until its closing over seventy years later. Uncountable blood sacrifices anointed “The Rock’s” walls and floors over the decades. Home of Florida’s Death Row and “Old Sparky,” the electric chair, until Florida State Prison (FSP) opened across the river in 1961, U.C.I.’s old-timer guards who were still around in the 1980’s, when I served my time there, delighted in sharing their joy at dragging condemned men from their cells, kicking and screaming, to be strapped down in Old Sparky and electrocuted. Their identities supposedly secret, every guard knew who the electrocutioners were, and vied for the honor of being chosen to pull the switch.
Children grew up eating state pork chops from pigs raised at the prison hog farm, listening to stories at the knees of fathers and grandfathers who regaled them with their rites of passage at the prison. Those children who went to college rose through the ranks quickly, became colonels and wardens, then bureaucrats and administrators at the highest levels of prison headquarters in Tallahassee, the state capital.
Others became police, sheriffs, or businessmen, then county and state politicians, completely controlling the prisons in “the triangle,” North Florida counties dominating the prison building boom. They married and intermarried, they were fruitful and multiplied, and certain powerful patriarchs controlled large voting blocs. State politicians courted and pandered to them. Outsiders who got jobs in those prisons were viewed with suspicion. Most of those soon sought jobs elsewhere.
Is it any wonder that they got away with murders, and every other act was covered up and dismissed? In the 1980’s on the TV show, “60 Minutes,” Dan Rather interviewed a prison enforcer who confessed to murdering another prisoner at the order of a guard. The guard denied it. What happened to him? He got promoted.
No matter what “good faith efforts” are undertaken by state politicians to clean up the Florida prisons, it is unlikely that anyone would be willing to dismantle the behemoth interconnected blood and marriage ties that dominate the present-day Florida Department of Corrections.
Prisoners who witnessed the first attempt to demolish The Rock described a crane that swung a steel wrecking ball against the thick concrete wall. The large steel ball bounced off the wall time and time again, to no effect. It wasn’t big enough. The construction crew returned days later with a bigger ball. Old-timers scoffed. The Rock would never fall. To their surprise, the wall crumbled with the first impact.
To those who hope to destroy a corrupt system, and rebuild it anew, I say, get a bigger ball. The little ones you’ve used before didn’t work.

Charlie