I had been drinking all day on New Year’s Eve of 2003 and then, had gone to a party to celebrate more. Later, as I drove my twin brother home, he tried repeatedly to get me to slow down, to drive more carefully. But I ignored him.
Moments later, I sped through the intersection of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fremont Street and crashed into a car. As I was being interviewed by a police officer, he told me that I had killed two people and another was being life-flighted to Emmanuel Hospital.
It was days later when The Oregonian newspaper was delivered to my cell that I grasped the devastation — and the irreversibility — I had caused my community. It turned out that my victims were actively working their own programs of recovery from substance use. They had turned their lives around and were helping others do the same. Now they were gone.
Employees and clients at Volunteers of America and other recovery-related organizations were in shock and disbelief as they learned about the tragic deaths of their friends, mentors and loved ones.
Nearly a year later at my sentencing, I was confronted by my victims’ family members who were just a few feet away from me as they gave their victim impact statements. They offered me forgiveness that I didn’t deserve, yet they also made it known I took something immeasurable from them that they could never get back: Any more precious memories they’d ever make with their mothers.
Then I stood up, turned around and addressed the courtroom: “My indictment says I acted with extreme indifference toward the value of human life, but I can assure everyone here that my feelings have been anything but indifferent since the day this happened. And I know it’s not much consolation, but I vow to spend the rest of my life doing all I can to ensure something like this never happens again.”
With that, I was sentenced to 17 years and six months.
For the next three years I lived with immense guilt and shame for the senseless decision to drink and drive that fateful night because it changed the course of these people’s lives forever. But once I was able to forgive myself, I was able to positively channel that energy into making a difference in the lives of others, carrying on the legacies of the people I had taken from this world.
In keeping with that solemn life vow that I made more than 14 years ago to my victims’ family and friends — and my own — I have used my time to earn an education toward a career in counseling. I knew this would give me an opportunity to help others struggling with addiction, the same addiction that led to me killing two people. In these efforts, I have earned a master’s degree in psychology and published my memoir, “Palpable Irony,” in an effort to detail and warn against the dangers of drinking and driving. Three years ago, I was given a rare opportunity to share my story and help lead panels of victims hurt by other impaired drivers here at the prison. This restorative justice program provides profound healing for many men incarcerated for fatal car collisions as well as victims who come in and tell us their heart-wrenching stories. Those in attendance are incredibly moved and grateful for having heard so many compelling stories that urge them not to drink and drive.I currently work as a certified recovery mentor in a drug and alcohol treatment program at the prison. I mentor men one on one, counsel them in group settings and assist them with recovery-related issues. This is such a unique position within the Oregon Department of Corrections, and I couldn’t be more grateful and humbled that I would be entrusted with such a responsibility. Through this effort, I have earned state certification as a recovery mentor, and I expect to receive my state certification as drug and alcohol counselor early next year. This work is my life’s passion. Not because it makes me look good, or makes a lot of money, or because it could reduce my sentence. It can’t.
Rather, I do this work because my reckless actions took two beautiful people from this world. Therefore, I will honor their precious lives and bring meaning to mine every day through using my story, education and experiences to help others not follow in my footsteps.
And, because I said I would.
— Martin L. Lockett, MS, CRM,is serving the 15thyear of a 17-year sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
Christmas is a festive time of year, when family members get together to enjoy robust meals, open presents, and share good ole’ rare quality time. During the holidays, people tend to let bygones be bygones, differences become trivial, and allow their love for one another to rule the day. It’s the season of giving, cheerful volunteering, and routinely putting others before ourselves. Who wouldn’t love this time of year? I have an answer.
Prisons across this vast country incarcerate over 2.3 million people – PEOPLE! This means tens of millions of people are directly affected by this epidemic. Countless children wake up on Christmas morning to open gifts with one parent there to watch their shining faces as they rip open packages of their favorite toys, while the other (in most cases Daddy) sits in a cell, heartbroken that he has missed out on yet another Christmas Day with his family. If he’s lucky, he’ll get to make a limited phone call later in the day to wish his family a merry Christmas, but many are not even afforded this luxury.
I have been incarcerated for fifteen years, and am beyond blessed to have had the love of my family for the entire time. Others around me, however, have not been as blessed. It breaks my heart to see so many men for so many years go without even a single phone call on Christmas. They have no one to call; they have no family to answer on the other end, no family to send them a Christmas card, no family to come visit them. They carry on as though they are unfazed by their lack of family support, but when you’ve been around these people every day, year after year, their pain is evident in their faces, and heard in their voices.
Also evident however, is the camaraderie I have witnessed over the last decade and a half during this time of year. Guys come together unlike any other time of the year, piecing together assortments of canteen ingredients to prepare “spreads,” burritos, nachos, and any other fine prison cuisine they can concoct. The banter is louder, the playing is more, well, playful, and the overall mood is palpably more jovial. It’s certainly no replacement for time spent with our families, but the surrogate families that are created in prison and on full display during the holiday season is encouraging and dare I say even heartwarming. It is, in fact, all that many have to look forward to, accepting they can expect nothing from the outside world during this season.
Some are fortunate enough to receive visits – even on Christmas itself – and cards, to remind them they are still loved, important, and dearly missed. But then I am forced to think about the impact on the family that comes to see their confined loved one. How do they feel when they leave him or her behind and return home to enjoy their Christmas dinner, and open gifts? And how do they answer the four-year old who repeatedly asks why Daddy or Mommy is not home for this special day?
For those of you who have a family member incarcerated and are in a position to support him or her through their hardship, please know they appreciate your devotion more than they can ever express. I thank you for giving them the invaluable gift of knowing they still matter, despite the rest of the world having essentially forgotten they even exist. For those of you who know someone incarcerated but haven’t, for whatever reason, found time or energy to write, visit, or send a card in years, I strongly encourage you to find a way to do so this holiday season. The gesture would be met with indescribable gratitude. As mentioned earlier, I, personally, am grateful for the unwavering support my family has shown and continues to show through my plight; others in this horrid situation are not as fortunate. Therefore, it is my solemn plea to all who read this and know someone who is incarcerated to send a card or letter, or to visit during this precious holiday season. This is all I want for Christmas.
We’re so pleased to introduce one our newest volunteers, Tina in Canada, whose work behind the scenes to help with our enormous backlog has been absolutely invaluable. Here she writes a warm and lovely tribute to her grandmother, and vividly describes the value and impact of letter writing.
When I served away (in the military) for weeks or months at a time, I imagined life at home coming to a complete stand still. But letters from our homeland remind us that time marches on; babies born, degrees earned, marriages begun (and some ended), promotions and demotions received, loved ones passing — and every life scenario not mentioned occurring in between. It was easy to believe that everyone was wondering what I was doing, the same way I was imagining what they were up to. But without mail, a person feels the sting of being out of sight and out of mind.
Handwriting a letter is mostly a lost art now. In my childhood years, I would receive beautifully hand-written letters from my Grandma Jean on stationary she thoughtfully selected. Often the artwork of the stationary matched the season or even my Grandmother’s mood. Sometimes in her haste to send me a note, she would grab a discarded grocery list or write on the back of a flyer — she never wasted paper, nor the opportunity to re-use a sheet if one side remained bare. I carried on her tradition and enjoy buying cards and sending them to loved ones far away — and even to those near me. I often slip a handwritten note to my children under their pillow, penning a sentiment of how I feel about them or an affirmation of their worth.
Letters say this: you’re worth the time it took to write this, you’re worth the cost of the stamp, you’re worth the walk to the postbox to send it!
This is why Adopt an Inmate has appealed so deeply to my senses. A letter (to an inmate) says: I stopped everything I was doing — to think of you — to reach out to you. In this moment I’m here with you. My friendship is tucked into this envelope. It’s a special part of me and I’ve chosen to send it to you. I hold no record of your wrong-doings. Your offenses do not offend me. This letter comes to encourage you, never to discourage you. My letters to you will carry your birthday wishes and acknowledge the holidays you choose to celebrate. I want to make time in my days to affirm that you matter.
My Grandma’s notes scribbled on the back of a grocery list spoke volumes to me about my worth. They were as important and as cherished as the pop-up birthday cards and sticker-embellished Christmas stationary she would send. My Grandma passed away before I traveled for work, so I never experienced hearing my name called by the Postmaster to say a letter had arrived from her. Her letters would have been a welcome reprieve from the dust and deprivation of the Middle East — but she did establish a set of values in me that I want to pass onto my children and others. Words matter. Words can give life to a dying soul. If you have 20 minutes a month and a stamp, you could write to a person who would be dramatically affected for the better by your compassion to reach out. You don’t need fancy stationary. You don’t even need paper, if email is your preference, but I would encourage you to consider the value of a hand-written or typed note, or even a scribbled note on a postcard. You could be the reason someone has felt love for the first time in a long time. You could be the reason that someone was reminded that they still matter. Mail has a peculiar way of arriving at the exact moment a person needs it most. Please consider adopting an inmate today.
Being in prison for now fifteen years, it’s pretty obvious that I have spent countless hours, days, and nights waiting: waiting for what will be my eventual release. On a daily basis, I’m forced — well, conditioned is more accurate — to wait for more mundane things like chow, yard, line movement (when inmates are given five minutes to come and go from their cells to a designated area), visits, etc. In fact, when I think about it, even prior to prison I spent much of my life waiting: waiting for my next paycheck, waiting for my lunch break, waiting to get off work, waiting for my vacation. It’s seemingly a natural human instinct to wait. But why? Why do we accept this bleak, uneventful reality? And perhaps more importantly, what are we giving up in the meantime?
When I came to prison fifteen years ago, I could not fathom how I was going to bring a semblance of normalcy to this dreaded situation. The only thing that actually kept me from going insane was day dreaming about my eventual release, albeit nearly two decades later. However, at some point I had to come to terms with my circumstance, accept the harsh reality I was going to be here, and begin to brainstorm how I was going to make my days meaningful — if I could.
Once I’d reached this point, I discovered something: I can make this as hard or as “easy” as I want it to be; I opted for the latter, and in doing so I began to pour all my energy into my evolution — my character overhaul, purpose-driven living, educational goals, being of service to those around me.
I focused on my character flaws (impatience, selfishness, manipulation) and began to work on each one, asking others around me to hold me accountable when they saw me exhibiting them. I approached every day with the attitude of improving myself, in turn making myself better able to help others – particularly younger inmates who may have looked up to me for how I conducted myself in prison. This gave me a purpose even in a place as dark as this. I tutored inmates of all ages and backgrounds who were working on their GEDs and other curricula because, thankfully, I was suited to do so having gotten my own GED while incarcerated. I then delved into my own educational endeavors by pursuing a college education. I didn’t know how it would turn out, where it would lead, but it didn’t matter because all that mattered was, I was improving myself personally and increasing my chances of employability when released. All of these things enabled me to keep my mind off the time – waiting – and on bettering myself on a daily basis, bettering those around me, bringing purpose and meaning to my life in a way that I’d never experienced prior to prison.
In eager anticipation of things, we often say we “can’t wait” for them to arrive. We spend each day leading up to a particular day or event in deep contemplation about it, excitement building at the mere thought of it. This should particularly resonate with those of you whose favorite holiday is Christmas. Though I’d never be the one to tell you that you should feel guilty for waiting in eager anticipation for this sacred, beloved holiday to arrive, I do caution you to not let it — or any other day or event you look forward to — prevent you from making the most of the day before you; to not lose sight of the gift of the present and the vast opportunities it yields — ones that will only be realized and seized if we’re looking for them, not if we are merely waiting for something else to arrive.
As I sit here and write, I only have two and half years left on my sentence. I have earned a master’s degree in psychology, published two books, gotten certified as a recovery mentor and expect to be state certified as a substance abuse counselor by year’s end. I have helped countless men in their own educational pursuits, addiction recovery efforts, and personal goals. I have co-facilitated the DUI victim impact panels offered here, telling my own story twice a year. My life has taken on a quality and immeasurable purpose that I could not have even imagined possible fifteen years ago when this journey began; this is directly attributable to the fact that I refused to wait: to wait for my life to pass me by in eager anticipation for a date on the calendar that would eventually come on its own.
It’s not too often that we take time in our day to reflect on the many good things we have: a job, healthy kids, a home in a safe neighborhood, food on the table, and the list could obviously go on for pages. After all, we are so preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of day-to-day affairs, doing everything we can to stay on top of our responsibilities; who has time to stop what they’re doing, ponder life’s blessings, and truly be grateful for them without thinking about what we need to get done the next day — or even an hour from now? But doing this is actually as critical as taking care of all the obligations we give so much of our attention to.
I have indeed found myself contemplating, more and more, the many blessings I have, even in my current circumstance which is inherently negative. But this is not entirely voluntary; allow me to explain.
I work for an addictions treatment program. Every day we start the group session with a daily reflection read from a book, and each person says why or how it resonates with him, followed by what is called a Daily Moral Inventory (DMI). When we check in for the DMI, each person says how the previous day went, what they’re grateful for, what they regret (if anything), etc. This expectation can at times seems repetitive, but I’ve learned that it’s a healthy practice to get into because if I were not “required” to do it, I likely wouldn’t “have time” to reflect on what I’m grateful for, in spite of my physical circumstance. Instead, I’d either keep my head down and stay focused on my job, my next goal, or find myself complaining about what is not going well in my life.
It’s entirely too easy to fall into a pattern of allowing good fortune in our lives to go unacknowledged as we focus our attention on the next goal or responsibility we want and/or need to carry out. This is a harmful practice, however, because it is essential to our psychological well-being that we take time to “pat ourselves on the back” for things we’ve accomplished, appreciate the things and people that make our lives more purposeful and fulfilling, and be grateful for opportunities that others have not had in life. Doing this has allowed me to refocus my efforts, while doing my part to “pay it forward.”
I intend to keep this practice of daily reflection and gratitude going even after I release from prison because it’s shown me how to ground myself on a daily basis. Life is entirely too short not to celebrate our good fortune and acknowledge how others have enriched our lives.
I take time to acknowledge and be appreciative that I can fulfill my dream of becoming a drug and alcohol counselor. I get to work for a successful treatment program in a prison setting, and teach groups and individuals about addiction and recovery, decreasing their likelihood to recidivate after they are released. I have had the rare opportunity to earn a Master’s degree in prison that, according to statistics, gives me a 0% chance to recidivate. Moreover, it enables me to go directly into my field with a level of credibility and respect that I never imagined coming into prison 14 years ago.
These are a few of the many things I take time to appreciate as often as I can. Life has enough struggles to complain about; therefore, I owe it to myself (as do you) to cast as much sunshine on my day as possible — by counting my blessings.
We are no doubt in a time where evil has been on the rise, public discourse has turned hostile, demagoguery appears to be a winning recipe for political office, and the divides among demographics in our melting pot are as pronounced as I can remember in all of my thirty-nine years.
The recent tragic hate crimes and attacks on our nation’s politicians are, sadly, not new phenomena. What does feel different, however, is how accepted these acts are (often viewed as our “new norm”) by so many who have retreated to their tribal clans at the peril of our society at large. We have allowed our politics and innate compulsion to bind to our cultural groups, while excluding others, to cause our interpersonal/intercultural relations to either stagnate or regress. However, I’m reluctant to buy into the dismal notion that this is who we are, that perhaps we haven’t made as much progress as some of us thought.
We are a young relatively nation compared to many countries throughout the world. We have come from a period at the inception of this country that legalized slavery to now having had our first Black president. We have progressed from a nation that denied women the right to vote, to electing women to many of the highest offices in the land. We have grown from a country that denied Blacks and Hispanics adequate housing, employment, and educational opportunities to one in which young people of color graduate from prestigious colleges and go on to occupy high-level positions in distinguished companies. I could provide countless more examples to substantiate the progress we’ve made, but this is not necessary — the historical evidence speaks for itself.
The fact of the matter is that what we are currently seeing is a mere reflection of today’s political and social climate. Did you get that? Today. While it is unquestionably problematic, it is a snapshot in time — the peak of the current inflammatory political climate — and not reflective of how amazing, loving, compassionate, and truly genuine the majority of Americans are.
America’s true nature is especially on display when natural disasters strike and rip through our communities. What we inevitably see are Americans dropping everything to come to their neighbors’ aid. We see people rallying together, raising money, collecting clothing, and feeding those in need. This is who we are, and reflective of how far we’ve come. This is not to whitewash or downplay hate crimes that continue to pervade our communities, exacerbating already strained race relations. Having said that, it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge the steady stream of progress made over our country’s nearly 250 year history. We should not become prisoners of the moment by allowing what has happened in a matter of several months — or even several years — to represent what and who we are as a people, as a society. That is neither rational nor accurate. It would be no more accurate than to point to a temporary bad period in someone’s life (for whatever reason), as indicative of who they are. An objective judgement is based on how far someone has come in relation to where they started. Looking at America in this context, it is readily apparent how far we’ve come.
I sympathize with all those who are utterly disheartened by a rash of crimes committed in the name of hatred. I understand why many feel angry, depressed, and disgusted by a climate of tribalism. But we must remember that this is a moment in time in the grand scope of our societal evolution. Our focus ought to be on the overall progress made; and the historical evidence that shows we are better than this.
Is Amerika preparing its children for a life in prison? According to the modality used by Sheriff Bob Gualtieri and his staff at the Pinellas County Jail to deal with violent inmates who prey on society, and then are housed with the general population inmates — the answer is absolutely, unequivocally, yes.
CNN reported today that a young girl who was being bullied by a group of troubled classmates was removed from her school’s roster and transferred to another school. As the parents filed suit, the school back-pedaled and said what amounted to – her punishment was for her benefit.
Here at the Pinellas constabulary, the method of dealing with violent, destructive bullies is to move them from housing unit to housing unit, maybe give them a time out, and then move them right back into general population to allow the cycle of violence to begin all over again.
There are a couple of disturbing factors that need to be examined in the penology mentality here and probably the most frightening is that if an inmate attempts to circumvent the cycle and protect himself with any kind of preemptive action — like getting staff involved to deter actual, physical harm by the violent predator — the inmate will likely be punished, as the story of the young girl reported by CNN.
This, like all my other accounts of life on the inside, is drawn from personal experience, and has happened to me recently. Equally frightening is the endemic culture of lies perpetrated by staff in order to cover what amounts to very personalized and branded justice. I have commented before on what could easily be construed as subjective reasoning for objective consequential happenings — but another issue that never gets talked about in Amerika’s dungeons is the brand of racism suffered by what arguably is the minority in prisons, the white or light-skinned prisoners. We hear all about the sufferings of black- and brown-skinned people, but here in the penal colonies the tables are often turned. That is precisely the case I have for your consideration.
An inmate who has been thrown out of every pod (housing unit) for aggressive, violent behavior, and threatening, abusive language was placed in our pod. I sought staff intervention for my own safety, as I’ve been the target of this young man before. The resulting action taken by Corporal Taylor was to tell me that it was my white ass that is the problem and I received a disciplinary report, was removed from my housing unit, and will be given time in confinement for supposed “manipulation of housing.”
This may not have been significant but for the fact that both Corporal Taylor and the violent inmate are black men. Why would a man with violent history not have had to be vetted before being placed with men he had been aggressive with in the past? The bigger question is why was the man who never had a violent incident in his life impugned and ultimately punished? The answer lies in the systemic divide and conquer mentality propagated by the staff at Pinellas County Florida’s jail and the statement made to me by Corporal Taylor.
There is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is racism. Addressing these issues is never easy for either party when the very system that is supposed to be neutral and unbiased propagates for its own nefarious reasoning, the volatile environment that breeds hatred here in Pinellas Florida.
In closing, it should be noted that the inmate I was trying to stay safe from only lasted four days before having a violent, explosive outburst and was taken from the pod in handcuffs, while my pleas for justice are claimed to be lies from the top soldiers like Lieutenant O’Brien in Sheriff Gualtieri’s army.
While certainly not as grossly unjust as it was prior to the 1980s, incarceration is still an incredibly dehumanizing experience, and given that people are incarcerated for years at a time, imprisonment in the United States often permanently scars a person to the point that many prisoners no longer feel like people at all.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not saying we are victims, and I’m not forming my conclusions based on the sense of entitlement that is so pervasive in American culture. It goes without saying that prison is punishment for criminal misconduct, and my actions warrant that punishment. I can accept that. I have developed into a man who can acknowledge the fact that my act of egregious violence not only cost another human being his life, but ultimately harmed everyone involved, including the victim’s family, my family, and the community at large. I am not denying that, nor am I blaming anyone else for my situation.
However, the commission of and consequences for a criminal act, especially an act of violence, doesn’t take place in a vacuum, right? I mean, in the same way that there are identifiable social and psychological ramifications for criminal activity, there are many social and psychological variables that influence and shape the reasons why a person commits a crime. Redemptive justice should look to identify and treat the highly individualized social and psychological deficits in those who engage in criminal activity in an effort to redeem the human beings behind the acts and prepare them for reintegration into society while simultaneously disciplining them with proportionate punitive measures. Unfortunately, prisons in the United States are neither redemptive nor restorative. They are overly punitive and dehumanize the already troubled human beings confined within them.
One example, a situation with which I am dealing currently is an increased emphasis on the enforcement of property rules on my unit, which is completely understandable because things have grown lax in recent years. I live on an incentive housing unit and we all had too much property stored in unauthorized places. However, the one in charge of communicating this elevated enforcement to those who run the units is less than approachable.
One day, he came to the unit after we were called to chow. We returned to chaos and intimidation — I entered my cell, and the folders I had on the table were thrown to the floor, my papers scattered, the blanket on the end of my bunk thrown to the middle, and as I surveyed the small room where I live, I could hear him threatening to move people off the unit when they simply tried to explain that this unit offers less storage space than other units. While this seems like a relatively innocuous incident, it is emblematic of a larger reality.
Another crucial aspect of being human is feeling warmth and love. The incarcerated are almost never shown warmth and love, and we rarely show it to each other. It is generally viewed as a weakness within prison culture, and the staff are trained to put on a persona that lacks any degree of warmth or compassion when dealing with us because it is believed that showing concern and warmth will reduce their authority, even though there is an argument that holds warmth would increase not only the authority and credibility of the staff, but also their safety. In an environment as cold and unfeeling as prison, it can become difficult to express warmth at all after a while. It just becomes so foreign, and if we are unaware of this dynamic, which most of us are, then it can become uncomfortable to receive it as well.
Every human being is unique and has a need to express his or her individuality, but in prison, our ability to experience and express our own individuality is limited. Communication is stifled. Staff rarely listen to or even allow us to explain our side of a given situation, believing we are trying to manipulate everything to our advantage. We are treated as if we are all the same, cattle to be exploited for profit by both the state and the private companies that do business within the prison system, rather than the unique human beings we are.
Meaning and purpose are also crucial aspects of being human. People need to feel like they matter; they need a reason to wake up, to put one foot in front of the other. The “Will to Meaning,” as Victor Frankl put it, provides the impetus for growth, the drive to become a better, more actualized person. While certainly not comparable to Frankl’s Nazi internment camp experiences, the dehumanization of contemporary incarceration still works against the will to meaning. The effects are simply more subtle and, therefore, more insidious. In fact, the prison system has no vehicle or mechanism either to express why meaning and purpose are so critical for rehabilitation or how to help the incarcerated find meaning and purpose in their lives. When humans are treated like their lives are meaningless, it becomes too easy to believe the lives of others are meaningless, too.
The punitive aspects of prison are out of balance with the stated mission of rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the current reality of the prison system is that it more often than not produces people who come out more broken than when they went in. They feel disrespected, frustrated, empty, alone, humiliated, and unloved. Academic and vocational training is limited in both scope and availability. Substance abuse or sex addiction treatment programs are literally non-existent, even though 75% of the incarcerated in Oregon are in for either a drug offense or sex crime. Although I’m not a sex offender, I was drunk when I committed an act of violence against another man, and I had a history of drug and alcohol abuse at the time.
Cognitive dissonance involves a psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. The idea is that one cannot hold competing beliefs and attitudes for long — it is inevitable that a person will eventually take one position over the other. I feel like when this manager looks in the cells and sees pitchers full of ice water or colored sugary drinks, folders, books, and other evidence of human presence, it causes a psychological conflict for him because he does not view us as human. He wants no human possessions to be visible on the tables and walls — only steel and brick. He wants to see an animal in a cage, rather than a man in a room, so he reacts with venom, intimidation, and vitriolic rhetoric.
Problems of dehumanization are paradigmatic and systemic. Take for example the man in charge of pushing the elevated enforcement of property rules on my unit: It is not the enforcement of the rules that is dehumanizing. It is how he treats people as he enforces them. The lack of flexibility, nonverbal intimidation, and verbal threats reveal his cognitive dissonance regarding the incarcerated.
He is not the only one. Many administrative staff hold these views of the incarcerated, and because of the paradigm with which they do their jobs, subordinates adopt similar views, making it a systemic problem. I don’t blame them too much. I’m not sure they even understand the ripple effect they have on their world, but the consequences go far beyond themselves.
Constant dehumanization, experienced everyday in a thousand different ways over a period of years, amounts to socialization. The negative and abusive patterns of treatment during incarceration socially conditions the incarcerated to view themselves as less than human, unlovable, and undeserving of empathy, thereby reducing their capacity to empathize with those in society. In fact, gang members, sex offenders, and drug addicts who desperately want to change their lives find little in the way of guidance or counseling — when they are in that liminal space between their criminally-oriented past and whatever their future may hold, the only consistent message prison offers is that they are less than authentically human.
Sure, in this environment, we all have the choice to grow… or not, but the criminal justice system certainly does not highlight the better choices one could make. Nor does it show the incarcerated person how to purposely and positively alter his or her decision-making patterns in order to realize genuine change. This method of “rehabilitation” does not curtail criminal behavior or reduce the recidivism rate. Unfortunately, current models of incarceration and systemic dehumanization actually work to increase criminal thinking and antisocial behavior patterns. But…at least there is nothing on my table now.
In the movie Shawshank Redemption, one of the incarcerated characters, Red they called him, went before the parole board. He had been in prison for over 30 years at that point, and one of the members of the parole board asked him, “Do you think you have been rehabilitated?”
Red responded. “I don’t know what that means…. I know what you think it means, but to me, it’s just a politician’s word, a made up word so people like you can have a job…” The setting of this scene is the United States in the mid-to-late 1960s. While it is undeniable that the criminal justice system has come a long way since the 1960s, I still relate to that scene.
I have been in prison since 2001, and I don’t blame anyone else for my incarceration. I am in prison as a direct result of my violence, my selfishness, and my irresponsibility. Yet, I have grown and matured in virtually every conceivable way, and I have made some observations about rehabilitation during my journey.
One of the stated missions of the criminal justice system is the rehabilitation of those convicted of criminal activity while holding them accountable for the harm they have caused. The concept of rehabilitation involves returning something back to good condition. Synonyms abound: overhaul, renovate, re-condition, restore, but it seems none of these truly capture what goes on in America’s prisons.
Without question, there are some programs that positively impact the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of those incarcerated, such as ABE/GED programs, a few basic cognitive-behavioral classes, and even some rudimentary mental health groups. However, none of them wield the depth or intensity to be considered authentically rehabilitative.
The greatest impediment to genuine rehabilitation taking root in the criminal justice system, in my opinion, is not only the ubiquitous tension between correctional staff and the incarcerated men and women whom they supervise, but also the fact that its magnitude is usually kept hidden — it isn’t ever talked about openly, making any solutions extremely enigmatic.
I certainly don’t hold it to be completely the fault of correctional staff. Without a doubt, they have a difficult, stressful, and often dangerous job, and they deal with some of the most unreasonable and violent personalities the country has to offer. The complexities and risks involved with being a correctional staff member do not escape me. I do question, however, whether the adversity and subjugation of the incarcerated escapes those who profit from them.
Genuine empathy and compassionate concern are transformative, not only for those to whom they ar given, but also for those who feel them when serving others. However, they cannot be applied legitimately to a correctional setting without an elevated degree of mercy from those who administer and enforce the rules, regulations, and orderly operations of a correctional facility. Unfortunately, mercy is often misunderstood, and within that misunderstanding lies the fundamental reason for the great gulf that exists between the incarcerated and those who staff correctional facilities.
Currently, much of the criminal justice system does little but warehouse and manage those convicted of crime, rather than treat the substance abuse and violence surrounding most criminal activity. This has created a growing underclass in the United States. During incarceration, “otherness,” “uncleanness,” and “inferiority” are internalized, and after release, pervasive disenfranchisement reinforces them. Mercy is too often perceived as letting someone off the hook or reducing consequences, to pull one’s punches, so to speak. Yet the true nature of mercy involves such a depth of compassion that one is moved to action on behalf of another. Holding those of us in prison accountable for our actions is both redemptive for us and demanded by the communities from which we come. Consequently, mercy requires justice — but the kind of justice prescribed by mercy is restorative, not corrosive.
Correctional staff are trained to put on a persona of authority and superiority when dealing with inmates and assert their authority at every opportunity. This maintains a social gap between themselves (essentially those who represent mainstream society) and the incarcerated, creating strawman stereotypes that make it incredibly easy to generalize the most negative notions of the worst incarcerated person to all incarcerated persons. “These guys are lazy, dirty, manipulative, untrustworthy, and dangerous.” These are statements made regularly about inmates by staff.
Instead of feeling empathy for the moral and social gulf that separates those who have lived a criminal lifestyle and those who have not, instead of learning more about the individual nuances that may provide insight into a given inmate’s behaviors, the situational assessments needed to do these things are too often abandoned in favor of what is easy: subjectively reconstructing the image of every inmate, replacing the diversity of motives and experiences with a singularity of favored presuppositions, a subtle form of rejection that affords correctional staff a feeling of superiority, which becomes intoxicating. This social distance facilitates thinking of the incarcerated in abstract, depersonalized terms.
Sure, we are not tortured — in fact, we are provided for quite well. But we are not treated with the dignity that might condition us to believe we could ever become contributing members of society. We often encounter an insensitive ear and a closed, even locked door when searching for redemption, intensifying the anguish, pervasive loneliness, and utter despondency of being separated from everything we know and love, and everything that knows and loves us.
However, the incarcerated are not blameless. Far too many incarcerated persons view their incarceration as an injustice, believing themselves to be victims, unfairly imprisoned. They operate with an obnoxious sense of entitlement, failing to acknowledge the wake of material and human carnage left as a result of their careless, selfish actions. They will spew anger and venom at correctional staff for the smallest, most inconsequential directive or request, however legitimate. Many inmates push the envelope, looking to manipulate every situation to their favor and even defraud their way into some sort of advantageous special treatment, and when their goals are thwarted, they will flip it, making the correctional staff into the bad guy. Some will even be violent, seeking to harm staff members in any way they can. Far too many incarcerated individuals are perpetually disrespectful, legitimately dangerous, and constitutionally unruly, shirking the authority of staff members at every opportunity.
This seems to be the result of the incarcerated doing the same thing the criminal justice system does to us: Inmates often dehumanize and objectify correctional staff, viewing them not as people with lives and families and a job to do, but as obstacles that keep us from doing what we want to do.
The bottom line is… no one is innocent in the creation of the tension between correctional staff and the incarcerated. These stereotypes are fundamentally inaccurate. All inmates are not irredeemable — some of us take responsibility for our hurtful behavior and are honestly interested in becoming people who do not hurt others in the pursuit of our goals. And neither are all correctional officers full of hatred for the incarcerated. Some are wonderful people genuinely interested in helping those inmates who are committed to becoming productive members of society.
The criminal justice system is broken, and the primary reason, aside from the obvious overcrowding as a result of draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws and a failed war on drugs, is a vicious cycle of animosity between inmates and staff. And it makes it worse that we do not talk about it. Solutions to problems are not found in the dark. If we could all just give each other a break, accept each other as equals with regard to our humanity, and show compassion, things could really change for the better.
This past Friday, I was taking advantage of this amazing opportunity to take a CPR class. The lieutenant instructing the class actually spoke about this problem. He intimated that for many years he had seen only blue (the color of our uniforms) rather than our humanity. I was literally stunned! I was not offended; I was softened. We all know how we all feel, but when it’s brought into the open, it loses power. This staff member’s vulnerability earned my respect and afforded him a level of credibility that I have not often experienced in almost 20 years of incarceration — simply by acknowledging his struggle to see us as human beings.
I related to his words quite deeply because I deal with the same problem. For the past few years, I have felt my bitterness toward staff, this ball of galvanized disdain in my gut at which I have been chipping, trying slowly to process away my feelings by working to humanize the correctional staff. It has not been easy, but the admission by that lieutenant not only made it a little easier; it made my struggle feel normal as well, bringing me into the fold of society again, even if only just a little. I hope in the future we can do more to break down the barriers between us — after all, we are all human. Understanding that is what rehabilitation means… isn’t it?
We are beginning to hear from prisoners housed in Gulf Correctional Institution in the direct path of Hurricane Michael at the time it hit. They were not evacuated until days later. Below is a letter from one of them:
The hurricane was pretty crazy, at first I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, but then I started seeing all kinds of debris flying around outside my window — metal roofs peeling back from buildings like sardine cans, and trees whipping around in the wind, so I changed my mind pretty quickly. When the eye passed over us, the officers evacuated all the guys from the open bay dorms (I was in a 2-man cell), and brought them to my dorm, so we had three people in each room for a day. The guy who moved in was telling me and my roommate how the roof caved in while he was on the phone with his mom, and the phone turned off on him. Once they decided to evacuate the whole prison, the officers forced everyone to leave all their personal property in the cells, so now that’s turning into a major ordeal. Everybody’s missing stuff, getting other people’s property, etc., It’s crazy.
My family (and others as well, I’m sure) is pretty upset that we didn’t evacuate before the storm, like we should have. What’s even more troubling is that for days following the storm, the media made it seem as if Gulf was OK. They showed pictures of a roof with some shingles missing, one partially twisted fence, etc. None of the buildings torn down to their frames or the trees snapped completely in half, the windows blown out of the dorms, or the flooded compound. I didn’t even recognize the place, it was so destroyed. The officers are telling us that Gulf is being patched up and we’ll all be going back in a couple weeks. I seriously doubt that place will be anywhere near habitable within months, let alone weeks.
