Fifteen years ago, I stood at the entrance facing two guards, stout no-nonsense men who were all business. They told me to empty my pockets. “Of everything,” one guard said. I did, placing all the items from my pocket in a plastic bowl. They shoved a clipboard in front of me and told me to sign my name. I was patted down and a third guard appeared and told me to follow him. Another guard walked behind us. I stood facing the first of several barred gates through which I would pass. The lead guard spoke into his radio and the door opened, leading to another. The process was repeated several times before I was led into a sparsely furnished room and told where to sit.
I can still recall the feeling of dread and fear. I was inside the belly of the prison. The world I had known was barred gates away and inaccessible. How does a person survive this, this being locked up, away from all that matters? Locked in my thoughts, I almost missed hearing the last of those barred gates opening. A guard led in a prisoner, dressed in prison drab. He was the inmate I had come to visit.Yesterday’s experience was very similar to the first time. I was having the same thoughts as I had fifteen years before. This time I wasn’t there to visit anyone. I was there as a member of the Kentucky State Police Citizens’ Academy Alumni. We were being given a tour of the facility by a Deputy Warden. For the next two hours, we walked among the prison population, which included men guilty of minor felonies, drug related crimes, sex crimes, armed robbery, assault, and murder. We saw the area that housed the general population—meaning those men who had recently entered and many who never managed enough good behavior days to earn the right to move to “better” accommodations. We walked through the prison hospital and past the psychiatric ward. We stood in the middle of the dining hall as prisoners made their way through the lunch line and sat to eat their meals. They are allotted twenty minutes for a feast that put my memory of school lunches in a new perspective.
We walked through heavy rain to make our way from one building to the next. We walked as the prisoners walked, sans umbrella, umbrellas being too easily transformed into weapons. At last we made our way to the “honors dorm.” The primary difference between the other dorms and the “honors dorm” is fresh paint and wider hallways, and the possibility of earning the right to a private cell—a cherished dream for many. The cells are approximately nine feet by six feet. The typical cell includes a double bunk bed (metal frame and a four inch mattress), a plastic chair, and a small shelf. “We try to match up the cellmates,” the Deputy Warden told us. Unless there is physical danger for a cellmate, matched cellmates must stick it out for six months no mattered how poorly they may have been matched. Imagine spending six months in a nine-by-six cell with a guy you can’t stand. It must seem like a lifetime.
The one bright spot in the prison was the GRRAND program (Golden Retriever Rescue & Adoption of Needy Dogs) involvement by some of the inmates in the “honor dorm.” Prisoners who qualify are given rescued dogs for which they assume full responsibility. They house the dogs in their cell. They feed, groom, and train the dogs until they are ready for adoption. One prisoner told us, “This program has changed my life. It gave me something to care about and to invest myself in. It’s given me a better outlook in here and hope for the future.” He added, “The only downfall is that I cry my eyes out each time I have to give up a dog.”
Everyone ought to go to prison. It would change your attitude about prisons and prisoners. I’ve been to several prisons. There may be “luxury” prisons, but I have not seen one. Oh, but someone will say, they get bed and board, exercise rooms, basketball courts, and cable TV. Well, as for bed and board, the bed is “boardy” and the bread is pretty common. There are exercise rooms and basketball courts, but how much exercise and basketball can you stand day after day year after year? Some of the inmates do have cable TV, but the taxpayer doesn’t foot that bill, and the TV is tiny. The TV and the cable must be paid for by the inmate. The inmate gets his money in one of two ways: (1) Someone outside pays into his prison account from which he can spend no more than $100.00 per month—the one exception being the purchase of the TV; or (2) he “earns” it at the pay rate of 80 cents per hour. The “salary” paid to the inmates does not come from tax dollars. It comes from the profit made from the prison industry and the prison store.
Thanks to programs offered in the prison, many of which are highly dependent on volunteer assistance, some prisoners do better themselves and reenter society with an opportunity of bettering both their lives and ours.
By the way, the prisoner I visited fifteen years ago was released a year later. He went to a men’s shelter, found a job, made enough money to get his own apartment. Today he still lives in that same apartment and continues to be a law-abiding citizen. Sometimes the system works.
Thanks for this perspective, Mike!
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