Inmate Art: Locked In
This beautiful work is by Jason in Pennsylvania.
Letters From Prison: Late One Night
Andrew (see his Halloween card on yesterday’s blog) recently sent us a letter:
Melissa,
Greetings, Sister! First let me tell you my mom and grandmother were all I had. My Grandmother passed away October 22nd, 2010, and my mom passed away December 2, 2010, so I’ve been indigent ever since (you know Texas doesn’t pay inmates to work). I wrote a few of the book places you told me about, thank you for that! I was sitting here thinking about how I could help your organization out. But the reason I wrote is to tell you a story I wrote that really happened to me …
Late One Night
I was lying in bed with the light off, but you can still see! I saw a little rat, so I got up and got a bag, and tied a line on the bag and ran the line over my light, so when I pulled the line, the bag would pop up. I laid the bag down and turned the light off. I lay there forever waiting, until I fell asleep.
That little dude got all the chips and I opened my eyes to see him running out of the bag, with the last chip. I couldn’t help but smile. I put part of a cookie in the bag, and a little later, here he came in the bag! I pulled the line and got him, grabbed the bag, and I was looking at the little dude, and I could see he was looking at me, so I wanted to pet him. I put my hand in the bag, and just as I was about to pet this cute little dude he want all psycho, mad-dog on me, he bit my hand and wouldn’t let go, so I am jumping up and down, trying not to holler.
He let go, and blood ran down my hand. He was still in the bag and I verbally abused him for going all psycho on me … but then got to thinking … all he wanted was some food, and I got in his business. So I let him go.
And now I keep some chips and food by the door just for him. Every night when the light goes off, he’ll go get the food. It brings joy to see him!
Andrew
If you’d like to write to Andrew, leave a comment or send us an email to get his contact info.
Inmate Art: Happy Halloween
Happy Halloween, from Andrew in Texas and Adopt an Inmate.
Come back tomorrow to read “Late One Night,” a story Andrew shared with us about something that really happened in his cell.
Letters From Prison: The Price of Stupidity
by Frank E. Page Sr.
The first officer that any male who goes to prison in the state of Alabama will meet is known as “Michael Jordan.” This is not his real name, but the nickname given him many years ago as he looks like a shrunken version of the more famous basketball player. if he had had a stroke. Inmates in Alabama county jails know and warn first-timers about this officer. I have had personal encounters with him and I would like everyone to be aware of this 30-year “decorated” officer.
Kilby Correctional Facility has a no smoking policy in the chapel for any type of religious service, or when going to see the captain (whose office is located in the chapel). Each dorm would execute church call a little differently, but all inmates had to go through a checkpoint office to get to the chapel. Kilby keeps different types of inmates separated, so there are fences inside of fences, with checkpoints along the way.
Letters From Prison: Frequent Unexplained Deaths
From a prisoner in the Sing Sing facility in New York.
Q: Please indicate issues you would like to see addressed in your facility.
A: Actually, everything, because management could not run a hot dog cart for a week without going out of business. Clearly they want recidivism. Keep the cells full – just like a hotel needs its rooms full. Sing Sing may be best prison in NYS, but very badly run.
Main problems are health care with ZERO education, prevention, healthy diet, age appropriate care or exercise for older men. We have frequent unexplained deaths of fairly young men. Our pharmacy is very prone to errors. After our Nurse Administrator was “fired” and arrested, they gave her another job in mental health which is technically a different agency. She kept her parking spot! Does it sound like a certain church? Educational opportunities are here only for those who fit profile of 20-25 years, above average IQ, interested in college, and no mental illness. That is about 150 out of 1600. My GED classroom has 20 seats. About 1000+ men need a GED. Obviously, this “does not compute.”
Roughly half the population has substantial mental health problems (on psych meds, zero impulse control, talking to themselves, self-medication / drug abuse, very low intelligence, illiterate in any language). Treatment of mentally ill is overmedication, zero exercise, poor diet and isolation.
For those of us who came to prison with skills and education, the problem is no opportunity to use or maintain skills. Our library is okay for fiction, otherwise zilch. Very old, e.g., vacuum tube electronics and a book on Fortran IV (might be valuable to a collector?). Car books have carburetors and crank windows.
Drug problems are major. Head in the sand about problem because “they” don’t want to explain how drugs can get through a forty-foot-high concrete wall. (Staff, of course.) Only control point is poverty of most prisoners.
Poetry From Prison: My Momma
Poetry submitted by C.F. Guyton, pictured here with his wife.
My Momma
My Momma, puts the “El” in “El Shabazz,”
The love in laughter and the joy in these lonely days of future’s past.
My Momma; the Hiroshima of Hell’s Kitchen.
Succulent entrees of deliciousness are served.
Incredible are her choice vegetables, and did I mention,
Exquisite is her cooking?
My Momma; sheer, pure goddess of glam,
Bountifully, beautiful, through nature’s span.
Water lilies, and yellow to golden daffodils perk.
Her grand stand.
My Momma; the Earth births, Fresh mountain air.
Cool breeze and crystal blue streams.
White sparkles everywhere.
My Momma; with her courage and devotion,
Holds the mighty strength of a thousand seas.
Smooth as cotton and a smile like silk.
Creative is her mind as well as sharp is her wit.
My Momma; a star to be remembered; A torch to keep lit.
A force to be reckoned with. The Soul that has ignited the heavens untold.
My Momma; because of you I’ve found it all the more,
Yet to simply be me.
Inmate Art: “Universal Guardian”
This artwork was created by an inmate in Indiana who is in his cell 23 hours a day, using only a “flex pen” (the inner plastic ink tube of a disposable ink pen).
This piece is “the beginning conception of a trilogy presently at work called “Lord of the Dragon and the Princess Nasas.”
Letters From Angels: I Had One Person
This is from our new friend of the blog, Frank, who has recently adopted an inmate. Watch for more from Frank in this series.
I find myself with extra time on my hands these days due to my health and I try to think of ways to make a difference. I remember my time being incarcerated and it was my rock bottom. I believed everyone forgot I was even alive, believed my children hated me and never wanted to see me again. But I had one person who, even if she didn’t feel like it, wrote me anyway. Sometimes her letters were just her daily routine written down and addressed to me, but it was meant for ME; I did still exist. This woman was my mother. I had eight months with her after I was released before she died.
As I write this, fighting off tears from the thought of my mother, I want to do for someone what she did for me day in and day out – help a fellow human being feel like they are worth being alive, and assure them many people do love them.
Thank you
Letters From Angels: A Mother’s Tears
First in our new series, Letters From Angels, which is a companion to our Letters From Prison series. This was written by a mother whose son was wrongfully convicted.
AJ, I picked myself a flower today,
and said they were from you.
Because if you were here with me,
I know its what you would do.
As you walk alone to your dorm,
I walk alone to my car.
I leave a piece of my heart there with you
and take a piece of yours.
I cry my silent tears that only God can see,
until the day that I can bring your whole heart home with me.
Letters From Prison: Not Right at All
The letter below is from a Texas prisoner. TDCJ does not pay any of their prisoners for work, so the only way they can purchase items from commissary is if someone on the outside is able to put money on their books. TDCJ provides minimal hygiene items to indigent inmates (who have no money on their books): soap, toilet paper, and toothpaste, and for women, 1 box of pads and 6 tampons per month. No shampoo, no lotion, no deodorant (and remember Texas does not provide any air conditioning for the inmates).
It is commonly against the rules in jails and prisons for inmates to help each other by sharing commissary items or food. Each item of their property must be labeled with their name and ID number (like in elementary school). Any item found in possession of an inmate that is not labeled with that inmate’s name and number is considered contraband, and will be confiscated. This includes every piece of paper, stamp, envelope, book, hygiene, and food item. Even “special” items such as radios and typewriters (in facilities that have those items available for purchase), cannot be given to another prisoner upon his or her release, they must take it with them. The irony of this practice is that it encourages theft and hostility.
I have a concern about the required work we inmates do in TDCJ that goes without pay or incentives of any kind (no “work time” or “good time” is applied to our sentence, as in most other states). I feel that the Texas prison system should adopt the same plan as other states, and start paying their inmates by the hour, or by the day, which would allow their inmates to become independant, to some degree, reducing the number of inmates who are indigent. This would teach the inmates the value of a dollar earned doing hard labor, and allow them to purchase needed items from commissary for the work they do.
Texas does not believe in rehabilitation, because if they did, they would have adopted this idea for their prisons. The Texas prison system believes in capital punishment only. And they do not want to help their inmates. They believe in allowing their inmates to suffer, they do not want to help us and they do not want anybody else to help us, inside or outside. For example: If an inmate who is indigent who never makes commissary nor gets visits, and he is not able to buy or purchase himself a Speed Stick deodorant, and some other inmate sees this man’s suffering condition and buys this man a deodorant, the inmate that helps out the poor, suffering inmate will get in trouble for helping the poor, suffering out. Now I don’t think that is right at all.