After nearly seventeen years of living within the secured perimeters of a US federal prison, I was transferred to the minimum-security prison camp at Florence, Colorado. I arrived just before Christmas 2003. When I walked onto the compound, free of razorwire-topped fences and walls, I realised I was being held in an honour camp and felt I had made a permanent escape from the ubiquitous tension that defines every prison where I have been previously held.
I call it an honour camp because without the fences, gun towers, or roaming patrols armed with assault rifles, any of the 500 men assigned to serve sentences here could just walk away and begin life as a fugitive. It brings different feelings than the pressure and mental strain that comes with living in caged us-versus-them communities where rules are enforced with steel locks and the ever-present threat of lethal violence. The day after I arrived, however, I had a run-in with Jessie, a young street tough from Los Angeles with a history of gang affiliation.
Jessie is not typical of the camp inmate. Rather than the clean-shaven, button-down white-collar type, Jessie cuts the image of men I left behind in maximum-security prison. There is no smile. He has closely cropped hair and a goatee. His muscular physique is covered with tattoos between the elbows, shoulders, across his broad chest and back. For the most part, he had the ink work done prior to his imprisonment, and it is of better quality than the shaky, squiggly lines so common in jailhouse tattoos. Still, the work has a demonic slant to it, with the prominent, proud signs indicating that he is affiliated with the Surenos gangs of Southern California. It appears that Jessie wants it known that he has put in work.
My unexpected altercation with Jessie came on an early evening in the community television room. Television rooms, like other recreation rooms and chow halls, are hot spots for trouble. Wherever inmates congregate in herds the potential for violence escalates. Someone will feel the need to assert himself as the alpha convict, and super-criminals feel it best to announce their badness in the loudest, most aggressive manner possible. When I transferred from my last secure prison I expected not to find such juvenile antics in minimum-security. I was wrong.
Being the only one in the room, I took the liberty of changing the channel to CNBC to watch financial news. Despite the label correctional institutions, I have seen little evidence of efforts to prepare prisoners for a successful life after release. With abundant threats of punishments and little use of incentives, the emphasis in our American prisons is to warehouse human beings. After advancing to the highest academic level available, I found the best use of my time in working independently on my communication skills and making efforts to understand, remain current with, and even participate indirectly in the world of commerce. I watched the programme alone in the room for fifteen minutes before others began entering to set up their chairs. I had arrived in the prison camp the day before and did not know anyone. I remained oblivious to the others and continued focusing on the ticker tape broadcasting price changes of American equities scroll across the bottom of the CNBC screen.
Then Jessie walked in. He did not say a word. He walked up to the television as if he were in his own home and changed the channel to the Spanish programming of Univision. Given his lack of knowledge about who I am or how I would respond to such blatant disrespect, I thought it a courageous move on his part. Potentially dangerous, but courageous.
Prisoners are territorial
Had anyone acted in such a manner in one of the previous prisons where I have been held, drama certainly would have followed. Not from me, but from other prisoners who held different values. Prisoners are territorial. They have had autonomy and identity ripped from their life. Registration numbers replace names. Personal clothing is replaced with institutional garb. Faceless administrators assign where each prisoner must sleep. Prisons offer few opportunities for individuality. So the confined attach great significance to whatever personal space they can command for specific periods of time. If a man is watching television and someone moves in to change that channel without even acknowledging the other, a prison protocol has been broken.
Even in communities of felons, tacit codes of behaviour exist to keep the peace. But some prisoners do not always want peace. A man may be bothered by recent revelations that his wife has taken his life savings, or invited another man into her bed. He may challenge the tenuous order in an effort to break the torment in his own mind. But the temporary diversion of ones thoughts also upsets the social order and has serious consequences. The confrontation is the equivalent of an assault: the aggressor makes it clear that he considers others nothing more than a nuisance, as he might consider an insect. This provokes violence or, if met with no response, worse: next could come a demand for food or goodies from the prison store, and after that, perhaps, orders for personal services that may be imagined in this world devoid of women. Prisoners who live in such jungle-like environments must take a stand at some point.
Negotiating prison space
In the first months and years of my sentence, I was not so sure of myself and did not always know how to respond to provocations. I passed my adolescent years in an innocuous suburb north of Seattle in Washington State, where violence meant no more than a fistfight in the schoolyard, skin on skin. Disputes in the prisons where I was first held, on the other hand, frequently resulted in the bloodshed that follows a sharpened steel shiv plunged through flesh. Yet I found a way to live through it.
I escaped altercations by making different decisions than Jessie was making. Whereas Jessie aspired to live as the centre of attention, or the shot caller, I wanted to distinguish myself in another way. I did not want to spend my life in cages. If I wanted to make it outside of prison I would have to limit my exposure to the collision course of life inside. I kept my head by thinking about my survival and my potential emergence from that hellish, twisted world of maximum security every day. I kept to myself. I avoided television rooms or places where prisoners gathered. Solitude was an integral component of my strategy, my plan to leave after twenty-six years with the ability to function in society. I did not traffic in contraband or gamble. I looked straight ahead when walking and focused with a tunnel vision on the goals I had set for myself. I developed size and physical strength through a disciplined weight training and running routine so that predators would look for easier prey. I never informed on the wrongdoing around me.
As time passed, I became more confident and skilful in navigating through the prison minefield. I learned to embrace and live by the maxim that one should keep his friends close and his enemies closer. Experience assuaged the constant tension that came with every day, but I have always been mindful that I am walking a tight-wire over a burning abyss. I know that losing my balance can lead to disastrous consequences. Each year I served and each step down in my security level made the effort worthwhile. Now the end of prison is in sight, and with it will come the beginning of life.
Higher-security prisons are not environments where people can turn to civil procedures in response to perceived aggressions. Nor can prisoners rely on protection through interventions by staff members, at least not without consequences. Once a man wears the snitch label, he becomes open prey. Snitches are the bêtes noires in these brotherhoods of convicts. Higher security prisoners consider them to be parasites because they ease their own existence by exacerbating the troubles of others. Some cooperate in the prosecution of others to lessen the severity of their own punishment. Generally, such machinations result in lower sentences and thus keep the government witnesses out of the more dangerous prisons. But with Americas prison population over 2.1 million, it has become more difficult for administrators to protect those who cooperate from the aggression of convicts who are consumed with rage. Still, some people run to a staff member for assistance, offer information in exchange for a cigarette or an extra box of cereal, or drop a secret note to apprise administrators of troublemakers like Jessie.
The prisoners I have known choose a more immediate response to aggressions, like lifting a solid steel chair high into the air and crashing it down with force onto the skull of anyone who boldly but mistakenly thought he could castrate them with impunity. The violence usually takes on a life of its own from there. Jessie was either ignorant of such possibilities, or they did not faze him. I tended to believe the latter. Lopez did not seem a stranger to the threat of violence. Although he had not been incarcerated anywhere else besides the minimum-security camp at Florence, Jessie was a convict.
Terms like convict and inmate have different connotations in these abnormal communities. An inmate abides by all prison regulations. He is deferential and complies with what is asked of him. A convict, on the other hand, is contemptuous of everything related to confinement. He rebels against the system and all of conformity. He is at war with the patterns of civilised society. I have considered myself more a prisoner than a convict or inmate. I am eager to reconcile with society for the bad decisions of my youth, to earn my freedom through merit. My efforts to prepare myself for release sometimes conflict with what administrators would expect of a model inmate. Reaching beyond fences to describe prison society through my writing, for example, is something administrators would like to stop. For me, it is more important to connect with the world outside the walls than to comply with every prison rule. That is the stand I have taken.
We watch Spanish TV in here, homes
My encounter with Jessie came on my second day in the camp, and I was not of the mindset to allow the changing of a television channel to disrupt the course I had set for my life. Instead, I stood up and told Jessie that although I was new to the Florence camp, I had been in prison a long time. There was an appropriate manner to make a channel change, and it was not consistent with the insulting method he employed.
We watch Spanish TV in here, homes, was all Jesse said while he stood with arms crossed in a portrait of defiance. Knowing that I was new, I told him, he should have acknowledged me by saying as much before changing the channel. I walked out of the room with tension; but further words were not exchanged.
Later, I learned that Jessie was one of the thirty-two prisoners assigned to the same wing as me. Although I had lived in prison since 1987 without a physical altercation, my sensors alerted me to the possibility of further problems with Jessie. We lived in close proximity, with only a few feet separating our bunks. Whereas I passed my time quietly, reading or writing at my tiny desk, he struck me as a bully, speaking in a loud, insolent voice and belittling many of the people around him. Hangers-on and wanna-be thugs paid him homage. Jessie had natural leadership abilities and an unrefined charisma.
I could not help but overhear his conversations with others. The living cubicles at Florence camp do not have doors, and the partitions separating one cube from the next extend only to head level. Voices travel easily. I learned that Jessie had a daughter who was born after he began his imprisonment and that the childs mother has since been imprisoned for an unrelated offence; Jessies parents care for his daughter. Though his overt behaviour suggested that the ten-year sentence he was serving was only the beginning of a life term in prison, I heard him express a desire to live as a role model for his child. Seeing an apparent inconsistency, I wondered what those aspirations meant to Jessie and, out of curiosity, sought an opportunity to talk to him.
I am currently working on a manuscript that graphically describes some of the thinking patterns and accompanying violence that exist in prison communities. One evening, in a feigned quest for feedback on my work, I asked Jessie to read it. He agreed, and as I had hoped, when he finished we began talking. Jessie, being relatively new in prison, asked more about my experiences of living in higher security. I described the many people I had met who, like Jessie, had begun serving manageable terms but made a series of decisions that led to life sentences. Our conversation allowed me to question Jessie about his own motivations, values, and expectations, and transformed potential hostilities between us into the beginning of a friendship.
As Jessie learned more about my accomplishments, his disposition changed. It was as if he found hope that he, too, could make something of his life despite his confinement. Such a thought had not previously registered with him. I saw him cut off those who were encouraging his surliness. He quit demeaning the lives of others and he began reading. I saw him working through Dale Carnegies How To Win Friends And Influence People. Jessie began sitting with me in the evening, discussing steps he should take to prepare himself for a productive life upon release.
Teaching has been a role for me in prison, perhaps even a defence mechanism. Respect in prison does not come through educational attainment, contributions to community, or career distinction. Prisoners respect a man who uses violence deftly, but also those who have negotiated their way successfully through many years of confinement. I have served more time than most. By using my experiences to teach others, I have gained respect and thus can move through this final decade of my sentence with fewer complications.
doing time like a bunch of bitches
Jessie explained that he had been influenced by the gangs of East Los Angeles as a younger man. Although he had worked to develop the skills of a journeyman plumber and always held a job, he says he loved to fight and hurt people; he welcomed the excitement of violence. Ive stabbed a lot of people, he said, explaining that although he did not much care for firearms, he enjoyed hand-to-hand combat and never was without a knife. There were many times I could have killed someone, and back then, he said, I never thought about the consequences.
Jessie explained that, initially, he was disappointed to have been sent to serve his term in a federal prison camp. He has two uncles who are serving life sentences in a California maximum-security prison, and when law enforcement officers locked steel cuffs on his wrists and he knew he was going away, he had wanted to prove himself, to make a name for himself in the federal prison system. I came in here ready to bust somebody in the head so I could do my time in higher security. I was surprised to see so many soft motherfuckers in here doing time like a bunch of bitches.
Listening to Jessie reminded me of conversations I have had with hundreds of other prisoners. Many begin their terms wanting to create a reputation for themselves as tough guys inside. After a while, they realise that anyone can be a tough guy in prison. He simply must be willing to pay the price. He can wait for his opponent to lie sleeping while he stabs him in the neck, or he can creep up behind him and take a swing at his opponents head with a steel pipe. Such behaviour is considered fair play in prison. It also may well bring a new life sentence, but for tough guys, a life sentence is an honourable thing.
Jessie and I talked about the relationship between the choices he had been making in prison and the aspirations he had set for himself upon release. He realised that he was not going to emerge from prison as a well-spoken role model for his daughter if he did not take immediate steps to adjust his strategy for serving time.
Prior to our interactions, Jessie acknowledges that he did not give enough thought to his responsibility to grow more than his muscles and his prison reputation. But afterwards he became a different person, more humble than brazen, and focused on achieving significant goals while still inside. He recently heard that his request to transfer to a prison closer to home has been approved and expresses enthusiasm at this new course he has set for himself.
Its even more important for me to change now that Im transferring to a prison closer to home. I expect that Ill go to the camp in Lompoc, California, which is only about two hours north of Los Angeles. Or I may go to Nellis, the camp in Las Vegas. Ill have homeboys at either place trying to pull me in. But Im just thinking about my daughter and my parents now. Im going to be 37 when I get out of here, and there is no way Im going to put my family or myself through this again.
Jessie has several more years to serve. Although he makes solid statements now about acting responsibly and taking steps that I deem essential to growth, discipline and commitment require more than talk. I have heard hundreds of men talk about lives they will lead upon release. Few, however, have been able to transcend the constant frustrations and provocations of prison life. Conquering such challenges is part of growing up in prison.
