Chapter 2 - The Prison Environment

The society within a prison is a direct reflection of the civilization that creates it. Time spent in a Missouri Prison means exposure to violence, hatred and ridicule from undereducated prison guards who firmly believe that all inmates require continual punishment for whatever crimes they committed or were at least convicted for. This goes a long way to explain why so many prisoners are dumped back into society only to re offend and return to prison.

If your pet dog wets on your carpet, you might smack him with a rolled up newspaper and teach him that what he did was wrong. If you want to eradicate your problem you teach the animal to go outdoors to eliminate waste products. You do not lock the dog up for years and beat him every few hours during that time period or what you end up with is a crazy animal.

Most prison inmates are socially maladjusted to a certain degree, but many could be helped to return and become productive members of society if that were the goal of the prison system. At the present time, those inmates that successfully rehabilitate themselves do so in spite of the system that they are exposed to.

Some prison inmates simply don"t belong here at all; they are innocent victims of social injustice. These persons suffer in ways that are beyond my poor descriptive powers. Society used to make a joke about this saying that, “Prison is full of innocent people,” But the recent development of DNA techniques has demonstrated that, in fact, people are sometimes wrongfully convicted.

I"ve noted with some interest that prosecutors often fight to keep these people in prison anyway. After all, they had their trial and they lost their case—they were convicted. It seems strange to me that there is no public outcry against this kind of immoral behavior. I"ve also noted that prosecutors who are caught lying in court, or who are detected suppressing evidence receive no punishment for their actions, although it is considered a crime for a citizen to behave in the same manner.

Of course, some inmates are deeply disturbed beings and will probably never experience rehabilitation in this lifetime, but the current system we have in place seems perfectly happy to discard thousands of lives every year like so much unwanted trash.

Many of the people being discarded are poor, or belong to disenfranchised minorities. Oddly enough, there are no rich, powerful white male prisoners here; they have their own "special" institutions. All of these factors play a big role in the mindset of the average Missouri prisoner. For instance, when President George Bush Jr. described his children"s abuse of cocaine as merely “youthful indiscretions” the people here serving mandatory time for the same offence were deeply affected and embittered.

The first day a new convict arrives his life is changed forever. The first thing that happens to the new arrival is public humiliation. He is striped naked in front of hundreds of people, guards and prisoners, comments are made, many of them of a sexual nature. Many prisoners become sexual predators and this is their first chance to examine potential victims. Guards do not discourage this behavior, and often participate in the “fun.” Nobody works in a prison for the money, which is negligible.

Inmates are placed in roughly three categories, violent, semi violent and passive. Each group is housed according to the assessment of the guards, but these people are not kept separate from one another. This system encourages tragic abuse.

When I first arrived I was assigned to a “Level Five” camp, which is maximum security. We were locked into cells for twenty two hours per day. We had one hour for meals, twenty minutes each for breakfast, lunch, and supper.

I will not inflict on your sensibilities a description of what passes for food here, but I will add that the entire community could greatly benefit if the basics of sanitation and nutrition were roughly understood and practiced.

The other hour was supposedly reserved for recreation, after spending twenty two hours in a cell that measured eight by twelve, this should have been the period of greatest happiness but the system seemed to be created to cause as much friction and violence as possible. Somewhere between two hundred and fifty to three hundred prisoners were released at a time into an area that held one television set and four phones. There was no supervision in this area and there was no time limit set on phone use. This inevitably led to violent confrontations, which amused the guards to no end. I soon realized that this was their period of recreation, not ours. The guards hugely enjoyed violence, as long as it wasn"t directed at them.

If you don"t intend to be sexually molested, you must fight to defend yourself. After this has happened four or five times the predators leave you alone. The punishment for fighting another inmate is one day in “The Hole” (Solitary Confinement.) However, if you choose to sleep through "head count" you are locked away for one or two months in solitary confinement. The message is soon absorbed; Violence is good, passive resistance is very bad.

I watched people change in appalling ways over a period of time as this system took hold of them. It really surprised me that those persons who actually tried to change in a positive manner were actively discouraged. The problem wasn"t the inmates, people settled into groups where they were accepted and understood. However, the guards seemed to have a vested interest in keeping people unhappy. There are some deeply disturbed men currently working in the prison system. Anyone who changed very much in a positive way soon found himself in trouble. A little bit of religion was all right if you didn"t take it too seriously, and if it was the right kind of dogma.

My first year locked up was spent observing prison life and battling severe mental depression. I read, lifted weights and tried to cope with a system that dehumanized everyone involved with it on either side of the bars.

Things kept getting worse for me; I found no joy in anything at all anymore and soon even my friends began to notice the difference in me. My best friend tried to preach the Bible to me in an effort to instill some hope in me but that had absolutely no effect at all.

I didn"t know it yet, but I was about to hit my psychological "rock bottom" point. From here there would be nowhere for me to go but up. I was about to discover who I really was and why I was here in the world. In a short time I would discover my mission in life and everything would change.