Across the entire justice system, there seems to be the attitude that when a staff member does something wrong – whether it’s beating a cuffed prisoner or destroying a prisoner’s property – it’s permissible because we committed a crime: “If you don’t like it, stay out of prison, convict!” My response is the same as what Paul Newman said when he played Cool Hand Luke in the movie, and a corrupt prison officer was “just following orders” when he threw him into a hot box after Luke’s mother died. He said: “Just because it’s your job don’t make it right!”
Blatant corruption and plain outright theft is rampant in every justice or correctional system in this country. It boggles my mind that more people aren’t outraged, because it’s documented in some of the most iconic movies in the history of the film industry: Cool Hand Luke, Escape from Alcatraz, The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption – to name just a few.
And I have news for everyone: If anything, those movies only show you a mild version of what it’s REALLY like!
Officer perks
Why do prison officers drive $50,000 4×4 king cab deluxe late-model trucks around the fences of a prison 24 hours a day, seven days, year round? I am talking fully loaded state-of-the-art radios and all the modern goodies: back-up cameras, GPS mapping, fog lights and sunroofs. I have yet to see a cop standing up in the sunroof while chasing an escaped prisoner or even watching over prisoners, so why do they pay for the sunroof option? I don’t believe for a second that the dealer just threw all those extras in. It seems to me that a simple four-cylinder gas-saving car with the basics would surely work just as well. And for sure it needs working A/C, since it can get pretty hot driving around in circles all day in the blazing sun in a state like Florida or Arizona.
I spoke once to an assistant warden for the prison mega company CCA, based in Tennessee, when I was incarcerated at the privately run prison in Lecanto, Florida, known as North Bay Correctional Facility. He told me that when he was coming up through the ranks, he was assigned to a “post” or perimeter position. Basically, that means driving around to see who could drive the most miles in their shift. Sounds harmless, but to “win,” you had to take some risks – like driving as fast as you can around and around much like a Nascar race (but with no roll cage, pit crew or safety services standing by). How much gasoline do you think a V8 large-body vehicle can burn through in eight hours of speed racing at, say, $3.50 a gallon? I bet all the gas wasted in victimless crime would really be appreciated by a school teacher who has to drive 50 miles a day to work and back. It’s something that’s deceptively simple and harmless, yet callous, selfish and irresponsible. And I’d say … CRIMINAL.
Tablets for rehabilitation – NOT
Meanwhile, while hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on niceties like sunroofs for staff, we are denied basic things that would make life more tolerable. When I asked my boss at USP McCreary if we were ever going to get tablets for books, movies or email in the BOP, he said, “God willing, not in my lifetime.” At USP Big Sandy, the warden knew I had come to the BOP from a long sentence in the Florida Department of Corrections and was there when the state gave tablets to inmates in 2018. He asked me what effect it had on the overall prison system. I told him that they (the BOP) were going to love it. “Why?” he asked. I said, because you’ll love what you see when you go into a dorm dayroom. Instead of inmates hanging around yelling back and forth and getting up to God knows what, you’ll find a quiet zone with inmates sitting around with their heads bent over their tablets playing a game, reading an ebook, watching a movie, reading, or typing an email to a loved one. If inmates break a rule, you can restrict their tablet use with the simple click of a mouse on the computer. You don’t even have to take the tablet away; it’s all controlled by the prison. The tablets are the best form of behavior control since television. An inmate will think long and hard about skipping a work detail, not following an order, fighting with another inmate or talking back to a staff member when they know that access to their tablet can be taken away with the click of a button.
What I didn’t realize, however, was how much less inmates in the BOP would be able to do on our tablets, when we finally got them in 2022. In the BOP, we cannot access ebooks, educational programming or email, and we can’t do video chats or make calls.
What’s crazy is, these tablets are equipped with everything we need; they just aren’t activated so that we can use them. The tablets have the cameras and supporting software, but we can’t take a photo, then upload and send it out via the prison email system. Why? All of our email is screened anyway, so that would stop us from sending anything that breaks the rules (although those rules are often pretty arbitrary and baseless). The tablet also has an alarm app; you can even choose the sound you prefer. But it doesn’t work. Why? If I’m laying around listening to music or watching a video, why can’t I set the alarm to tell me when it’s 9 a.m. and time to go to a callout?
What we can do is download music, games and mindless entertainment like the TV shows Nashville, Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, The Arrow and Psych – one episode at a time (despite the fact that my tablet has over 80% of its memory still available). We have to “spend” 73-96 Trulincs minutes (time on the computer for email) to rent a movie. If the movie is, say, 118 minutes, we’re allowed only 200 minutes in 48 hours in which to watch it or it will expire. (Two hundred minutes is only enough time to watch a movie one and a half times.) And talking about the movies.. There are 100 available, with 10 changing at a time. In the three years since we were finally allowed to buy tablets, the list still includes some of the same movies – and most are old. This month, not one single movie offered is less than five years old.
In the Florida prison system, I could email customer service about the tablet and actually get answers in real time! In the BOP, I can’t get answers to anything. Like, “Who actually controls what we get on the tablets, who approves the movies, controls what games we get?” I have been asking these questions and get no answer yet!
It’s just cruelty on the BOPs part; the agency refuses to let go of its control to allow us to have some dignity or – gasp! – a little joy. Sure, you can argue that we are lucky to have tablets at all. But consider this: We have to pay for these tablets and the movies we rent and songs we download. This is all about profit.
