Pinellas County Floridaâs Sheriff Bob Gualtieriâs complicity in creating a racial divide leading to constant strife, stress and physical fights among the prisoners at the county jail facility under his charge actually costs the taxpayers untold thousands of dollars.
Being one of those prisoners and having a firsthand account, I can tell you that if divide-and-conquer is the goal, the exorbitant costs thrown at this draconian method of imprisoning humans and leaving no hope for a second chance and the possibility of a productive life is completely unnecessary. Not to mention the fact that it is counter to any stated goal of making the community a safer place to live. When you create an environment that is in most cases worse than the one the person was plucked from, it only makes sense that the one that still exists on the streets is going to perpetuate itself. Long Live the King.
Let me cut to the chase. Jail is not a place where people are coddled. But some bureaucratic genius there at the Pinellas County Sheriffâs Office came up with the bright idea of allocating thousands of dollars for brand new 50â flat-screen TVs with remote controls. The jail pods cage inmates 24 hours a day in crowded conditions – in some cases with 6 and 7 men including the one sleeping on a plastic âboatâ bunk on the floor, in a space the size of a bathroom. The most disconcerting part of that is the toilet is right in the middle of the space. But I digress.
The tensions run as high as the testosterone with the stress level being fed by practically non-existent legal help since the public defenderâs sham is in complete collapse, but the fiscal hypocrisies abound. The conditions are a further detriment in an environment that already has such a negative draw on life and humanity.
Another bureaucratically genius decision was to award a huge contract to a  parasitic organization known as Trinity Services Group. Think about the implications of the play on words with a name that includes trinity in its title. This is one of the largest food service companies that feed not only from the taxpayer trough, but also from the broken families whose would-be breadwinners are imprisoned. Trinity runs the âcompany store,” a.k.a. commissary, charging outrageously high prices for staple items like ramen noodles at 75¢ per package, a product that retails for less than one third that cost outside the gates. The genius in that decision lies in the fact that even though the dietary intake of the prisoners is so atrocious that stray animals at the S.P.C.A. have a better nutritional plan, the officers are enticed by the fact that they get free, yes free, meals while at work. Why else work in such a degraded environment? Well, $21 per hour starting wage is not a bad perk either. Ah, but yet again I digress.
How does all this feed racial tensions and encourage criminal behavior while perpetuating anger, violence and hatred? Letâs start with the beautiful new televisions, complete with cable TV. There is a âsurvival of the fittestâ mentality in here and not because of the racially disproportionate numbers of prisoners but because idle time is the devilâs workshop. The particular pod Iâm housed in has 13 whites, 5 Hispanics and 8 African Americans. Whites have an approximate average age of 50, Hispanics 30, and African Americans 38. The problem stems from who controls what. Since the officers do their checks only once every half hour (by forced issue I might add after such a high number of incidences of things like unanswered inmate medical emergencies), the bullying and juvenile acts of a small number of prisoners prevail when they control of the remote. If you donât like it you can fight because no amount of diplomacy seems to impact this mentality and any attempts to address the issue with staff as a mediator gets you labeled a âsnitch.â
The attempted solution we proposed was that control of the remote would be designated according to the existing rotating cleaning duties assigned to each inmate. But because this remedy didnât work for a couple of people who have an incessant need for control, or maybe an inability to see things from their limited perspectives, that it has become a battlefield again.
The bullies’ excuses for holding the beautiful new 50″ flat screen television hostage come in endless torrents, but as anyone who has ever been in jail or prison knows, divide-and-conquer is the mentality that keeps separation at the forefront of inhumanity. Unfortunately, the racial divide is the most efficient method to tear at the fabric of the under-educated, unprotected and underrepresented villains of amerikan society. The most devastating component of this attack on humanity is that it works.
So Iâll leave you with this question. Is it more cost efficient to tack 50″ flat screen TVs to the walls of jails and pump already stimulation-starved minds with 75 channels of cage-fighting, NFL, and Real Housewives ofâŚouter space, than it would be to implement some real, cohesive, educational programs designed to halt the madness of mass recidivism, racism, hatred and juvenile antics that lead to the kill-or-be-killed-for-control-of-the-television mentality?
I guess we would have to ask Pinellas County Floridaâs Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, since the taxpayers donât seem to have any say as long as the fight isnât brought to their living rooms. Yet!
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Shake down Go ahead and take it from me Shake down In the middle of the night Shake down Iâm sleeping here canât you see Shake down itâs not alriiiiiightâŚ
With me
Although this sounds like a parody from weird Al Yankovic of a famous Tom Petty song, it really is, by definition, criminal behavior perpetuated by prison and jail guards worldwide.
Iâve used the comparison of seeing your child, while playing with another, strike their playmate â and then as punishment, you spank or strike the offending tyke. I think that most rational people would view this as a negative feeding a negative. You cannot draw something positive from a negative. The message to your little one is not that itâs okay to hit in certain situations, it is more apt to be black and white. It’s okay for someone bigger to hit someone smaller.
It applies not just to small humans because â even though our thinking process matures as we grow â there are basic universal laws which cannot be adjusted according to the whims of humankind. That being said, there is only one logical outcome of producing an environment that is not only negative in context, but petty in execution.
Let me define the term shakedown for those who aren’t familiar. It is a search of property for contraband. Now, picture if you can a structure more impervious than an ancient castle, combined with Fort Knox and The White House. The â weâll call them residents â do not have physical contact with anybody except those who conduct the shakedowns. It ainât rocket science to figure out how contraband gets into jails and prisons. But thatâs not the focus of this essay. The law enforcement mentality places an assumption of guilt on the inmates, and a superiority complex on the administration. It appears that the main objective is to punish those who are in their custody and control. At every turn, most officials do whatever they can to dehumanize the prisoners. Shakedowns are a primary vehicle for that, and are routinely performed by 20 or more officers charging into the dorm in the wee hours of the morning, turning the area into a stadium of bright lights, screaming at the top of their lungs to agitate the prisoners, just in case they were able to fall asleep on the slab of metal called a bunk.
You would think that with all this effort the haul would be everything from weapons of mass destruction to sophisticated communications devices. Iâm not saying that it never happens that a cell phone or a plastic bag with homemade wine is found, but it is the exception. The big score this last siege produced was some fingernail clippers that had apparently found their way into my legal work upon transferring from prison to county jail for some hearings. Had it not been for the incompetence of the officers performing the intake, the nail clippers that inadvertently ended up at the bottom of a very full file would have not made it to the dorm in the first place.
It goes to a whole new level of petty when generally all that is harvested from these maneuvers of dehumanization is some extra sheets and a plastic bag being used to keep a t-shirt clean so when you appear in court you can present yourself as somewhat human. But the level of psychological warfare is evidenced by the seizure of items as benign as a rubber band holding some notes in an address book, or a paper clip keeping things organized â which is most difficult considering all the confusing rules for adhering to legal procedures in the first place.
But there’s more. If you happen to be fortunate enough to be able to purchase a bowl and lid from commissary and it is found with food in it, they will dump the food and have sometimes been known to break the bowl itself. God forbid you save some bread from your tray for the peanut butter and jelly you purchased from commissary. Itâs another tactic to dehumanize and punish. This is in a county jail where most are pre-trial detainees who have not even been convicted of a crime.
I have personally seen guards slinging property and legal documents everywhere and squirting toothpaste onto it as it lies in the sink/toilet, smashing purchased food, leaving what semblance of order you may have had in shambles. A pile of trash. The purpose of this of course is to remind you who has all the power. Who cares if it perpetuates and reinforces the negative energy that brings people to prison? This is the oxymoron of the department of corrections. The staff, being undereducated, falls prey to the big brother mentality while continuing less than ethical or professional behavior by retaliation through shake downs. Prisoners have very little, and there is comfort in having a few personal effects around them. It helps to maintain some sanity. Until bang! Everybody up, we need to see if you have any of the contraband that our fellow officers are smuggling in! If it werenât so annoying, it would be laughable. So every night, you go to sleep wondering if this will be your night. Until you make up your mind to detach from it. Thatâs a measure of success.
I read that in the 1930s, law enforcement were running amok and instead of arresting those involved in criminal activity, they would just shake them down, taking whatever they wanted, and many across the country were arrested and imprisoned. This resulted in prisoners employing the same behavior with each other on the inside. You donât shine the light on these shakedowns and risk being called a snitch. I believe not only is there a duty to shine the light but also point the proverbial finger. These doubly negative actions will not change until we change them. That begins with personal accountability and understanding the importance of change.
Prisons may have come a long way since the 1930s but God knows there is much room for improvement. Conducting searches with some semblance of care to find contraband supplied by those who are considered the âgood guysâ is a start to treating humans humanely â one shake down at a time.
Racism is something I never gave much thought to for most of my life, I just didnât ascribe to the unconscious practice even before I began waking up. My opening quandary is an actual, honest-to-God exchange between an inmate and a corrections officer. The officer was white, the inmate black and they were joking each other; mostly. But it brought clarity to something I had been feeling for a long time during my incarceration but wasnât able to identify. Racism, directed toward me!
When I heard this statement, it dawned on me, there are actually some people who truly donât know what racism is. The American Heritage Dictionary defines racism as 1) the belief that a particular race is superior to others, and 2) Discrimination or prejudice based on race. I think itâs important to note that although the numbers are balancing out some, the prison population is predominantly black. Debating the reasons behind this fact is not my goal here. Reaching out to my brothers in blues (Fla D.O.C. has blue uniforms for inmates), is my goal, to let them know that I can feel racially discriminated against too. Not just by my fellow inmates who believe their conversations overheard are their right, but also by the direct use of some of the terms like white boy, cracker and other disparaging words intended to hurt and propel one race over another. And by the staff who have to be hyper vigilant in not committing any professional or political snafus by making any kind of a disparaging comment because of the ignorance that white people donât or canât feel discriminated against. How do we fix it?
I have to admit that after my last question, I felt a little overwhelmed at the enormity of the vastness of that query and had to put my pen down, not to return for a week. My pulling away from the subject felt like a real dilemma as to whether or not I could continue without an answer as how to make things ârightâ after so many years of static thinking from the two primary races that make up America. I should also mention that in 2015, the Spanish population outgrew the black population to claim the dubious title of the largest minority in the U.S. But the Spanish prison population is still third place.
Most people perceive prisons to be some sort of separate entity; a body of its own, distinct from the âit wonât happen to meâ crowd. That mistake in thinking has left most people without any concrete ideas about prisons, prisoners, and race relations in prison. Prison is essentially a microcosm of what our society has become, not a representation of the people that make it up but for the ideals that have been propagated by an idealistic group of a few people with a vision that is actually limited in scope and context.
I have concluded that the problem with race relations is not a problem of a few, but of epic proportions plaguing the human race. Maybe Iâm showing my own worldly ignorance, speaking out of place for cultures Iâve had minimal experience with, but when millions of people have to seek refuge from their homes because of internal strife, and then have to deal with not being able to find a safe place because of the ability of a few demagogues, spewing poisonous rhetoric to the masses, creates a false sense of separatenessâŚand thereâs nothing tenable about human sufferingâŚnothing. Ah, but I digress on a global scale.
Let me scale back a bit. Ethnically speaking, itâs up to prisoners themselves to make their lives better; more equitable. How can they do this when there is absolutely no model for selfless thinking; inside or outside these fences.
Say your two year old hits another child like kids sometimes do. Do you then hit your child as punishment and hope they learn itâs not okay to hit? Some do! How counterproductive is that. Itâs not a mixed message youâre sending. Itâs UnequivocalâŚitâs okay to hurt people, period. We as thinking beings, cognizant and emotional, are in a state of shock about how we treat each other and the excuses we make to do it are as numerous and tenuous as the differences we think give us the right to be prejudicially racist. Greed, as opposed to need, is no different in prison than it is outside of prison. Somehow we have convinced entire generations that they need to be materially superior in order to have a sense of self. We spend endless resources and energy on teaching self esteem in a society full of ego maniacal, undereducated and dissociative people who have no understanding what it means to treat each other with equality. So maybe my dilemma is not so remote as it relates to prisoners, but there has to be a starting point for everything, even the beginning of the end of something as destructive as racism. No matter who it is against or who itâs from. How much more evident could it be that our method of dealing with what we consider our criminal element just doesnât work. Is it our goal to perpetuate our children hitting each other? Because the message weâre sending by taking all human dignity from someone we perceive as having done harm to our fellow beings is doing just that.
A couple of modern prison systems who got this message loud and clear are two relatively unlikely to be thought of as progressive, Germany and Norway. The message they are sending to those who infringe on the dignity and security of their fellow citizens is a simple one. There is another way.
Through wonderful folks and organizations like AI, we too can stop the proverbial hitting of our kids. But it has to come from the top down. Iâm not saying we need to rid ourselves of the justice system, but if we want it to reflect our goals of justice and equality so our citizens can treat each other without prejudice due to anyoneâs race, the American prison system is a great place to start.
Some of you may have already seen this in our Spring 2017 Quarterly E-Newsletter – but it deserves it’s own post, and we want to be sure no one misses it.
We are honored and excited to share the beginnings of a joint project between AI and a young acting class. Using actual letters written to us from prisoners, acting students – under the direction of Sarah Underwood Saviano – have turned these letters into monologues as a class project.
We were able to project the film on the final night of our recent volunteer work weekend in California – which was attended by a donor who made a major contribution to our website fundraiser. His comment after seeing the trailer was that, although he had given to a handful of organizations over the years, this was the first time he was able to see the result of his donation.
Thank you to all the students for their enthusiasm and hard work, to Ms. Underwood Saviano, for birthing the project and giving a voice to those who would otherwise have none, and to the prisoners for sharing their stories.
We hear you.
Notes From The Director – Sarah Underwood Saviano
One of the most thrilling aspects of working in the theatre for me is wrestling with the concept of theatricality and what it means to create a theatrical moment. I had the pleasure this last week of working with some young actors, hurriedly as we did, in preparation for the volunteer event for Adopt an Inmate. Using letters from inmates as fodder, we began a very early exploration of the text, just seeing where the words would take us. Though we are in the very inception of this project, it is clear that there is a profound âsomethingâ here and we look forward to a much deeper exploration in the near future.
Playwright Neil LaBute wrote an introduction to his play Autobahn titled The Pleasures of Limitation. In it he states:
âActors sitting onstage with nothing but a script, a rudimentary set, and minimal lighting, communing with the audience while pushing all the right buttons – that is a sight that I personally never tire of, no matter how many times I see it.â
Not to bore you with a lecture, but suffice to say that when I teach the concept of theatricality, I emphasize that it is not just out of an economic necessity in the theatre that we create a âsomethingâ out of ânothingâ, but it is because of the gift that is derived from a seeming limitation.
I could not help but feel that it is a metaphor for the incarcerated individuals who may feel that they are nothing â experiencing nothingness, making no difference â that so much something is gifted to us. So with a camera, a stool, a door, and some letters, we tried to give voice to these men and women.
With the help of acting and film students Ping Sirisuttivoranun, Wayne Broadway, Donge Tucker, Patrick Tabari, and Aliyah Smith, we put a short trailer together. We hope this serves as an inspiration for the volunteers whoâve given endlessly to this effort.
So much news this quarter! After some technical snags we are back on schedule with the newsletter. You won’t want to miss this expanded issue, with a recent podcast from Ashley Asti in conversation with Melissa, news and pictures from our recent volunteer work weekend in California, a surprise screening of a trailer in which acting students read some of our letters as monologues, and notes from the director Sarah Underwood Saviano about the project (link to the trailer is in the newsletter).
This publication was created for you â family members, friends, and advocates of prisoners. In each issue you will find useful resources for and from inmates; artwork, stories, recommendations from both adopters and adoptees; and news from the staff. Donât forget to print and send a copy to your inmate loved one. We welcome your feedback and comments.
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The most remarkable part of being locked up is not the lack of remorse and compassion from these prisoners, but the level of humanness of these so called hardened criminals.
A man came to me the other day because, he said, I was a father and he didnât know what to do about his family. They still didnât know he was in jail where heâs been for two months. He was brimming with tears over the mess he found himself in when he was arrested.
Mostly, I get to help men understand the complexities of the legal system. Something just about everyone in jail has a very hard time with, but on those all too many occasions when God sends someone my way who needs a pat on the shoulder, a kind word, or even some affirmation that this event does not define who they are and that they mustnât let it consume them, I am thankful I was the one who God allowed to be there for them. Even here, imprisoned.
Families these days take on so many different forms and this one was no exception. Heâs not with his sonâs Mom anymore in the conventional sense, but her other kids call him Dad too and he has been active in their lives as well. This man had been away for two months and hadnât spoken to or written his family because of the tremendous amount of shame and self depreciation he was dealing with. Though we live in a world of technology and information at our fingertips, he was hoping to find some solace and encouragement to reach out to the only people on earth who even cared if he was seen, ever, and let them know where he is; the Mom at least, the kids, of course, require some diplomacy and a delicate balance between total disclosure and compassionate honesty. I knew his struggle all too well.
Iâm still trying to help him make sense of the legal system, but two days later he told me he got out not just one letter, but four: one to the mother of his child and one each to his child and her two others from previous engagements. While he described the tremendous weight that he felt had been lifted from his shoulders, the tears welled in my eyes this time. There hasnât been an answer yet and I pray that whatever the answer that comes is one he can pull enough strength from to know how important it is that we humans not just be there, but we reach out to the family we have in the eyes of God.
Yesterday I received a letter from our friend and featured writer Shawn Ali Bahrami. Notice the note at bottom left:
Read the great news for yourself:
Join us in wishing Shawn a successful journey back to his family and his community. We know he’s going to do great things. The Innocence Project of Texas is investigating his case, follow our blog to stay updated.
Great news, indeed, Shawn. We shall be cheering for you!
Sonya Staples was attempting to visit her husband at Deep Meadow Correctional Center in State Farm, VA – something she had done many times before. This is what happened to her.
Sonya’s husband was put in solitary after the incident, and moved back into general population just today.
Watch this space for updates – Sonya will not go quietly.
