2/12/12

   A little update on my situation, it's Februauy 6th and I got another visit from my parole officer, unexpectedly, because I already signed my waiver of rights to a final hearing and that's that, I'd normally be waiting on a ride to prison. She returned and said our last conversation troubled her, she just doesn't feel good about sending me back and would I consent to go back to Whitworth again, instead of the penitentiary?
   For those of y'all who don't know(all of y'all, right?), Whitworth is a parole revocation center where I spent 6 months in 2010. It's a 6 month program, so the advantage in going there is I'll be out sooner. I wouldn't have to go back through diagnostics at Jackson. I won't have to reenter the prison system.
   That sums up the advantages, I know they are considerable and don't want to sound ungrateful, but before I left in 2010 I promised myself a thousand times that I would never again in my lifetime consent to spending 6 months at Whitworth. Let me count the reasons...
   It is actually called the Bobby Jo Whitworth Parole Center, and if that name isn't reason enough to avoid it at all costs, here's some more- never in my life have I been talked to like a dog in the way the staff here speak to all inmates, every day. It's structered like a boot camp kind of, everyone there is a parole violator, and the day you arrive, your 180 days begins. There;s no tolerance for any major DR's, if you get a disciplinary report for drugs,fighting or a weapon you go back to prison and as a resul, there's nothing going on there, no cell phones, no smoking weed, none of the little perks of prison. I also have serious personal issues with some of the administration, I don't even want to go into it here, on the off chance that an employee at the center might see this and cause me more problems. To summarize, my parole officer did me a favor by offering me another chance to go there, but for all these reasons and more, it wasn't a big favor. I am going to take it though. The sooner I get through it, the sooner I get home. Wish me luck in dealing with the uniquely fucked up enviroment of Whitworth. I'm praying for patience.

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   In my adult life, if you include jails, I have done time in 13 institutions. I'm not superstitious, but I got locked up on friday the 13th last month. Maybe someone put a hex on me.
   Prisons are like neighborhoods or colleges, they have their own character and energy. I had the misfortune to go to prisons with lots of "character", so to speak. Prisons with noteriety.
   Jackson is the main diagnostic chaingang in GA. When I came into the system in 2003, they also processed diagnostic inmates at Coastal and Baldwin, but since then, Baldwin has been shut down. The most noteworthy thing about jackson is that GAs deathrow inmates are housed there, I can remember seeing a condemned man shuffling down the hall with a police escort and thinking how pale he looked. I don't know who he was or if he's alive today, but as you might expect, buddy looked like a dead man walking. Like a wierdo.
   They did execute one man during my brief stay there, on his final day, the warden and other administration were pretty uptight during inspection. I guess it's a big day for them too. Everything has to go smoothly, there are higher ups present, so there is a chance of coming under scrutiny . Nothing puts a prison administration on edge like a regional inspection or other occasion when a wardens bosses come through. It's when you see how sniveling they can be. One of our terms of endearment for corrections officers, administration, and other prison staff is "shiteater". I'm not 100% sure where this term originated, but when they are being reprimanded or condescended to by their superiors, they seem more than happy to "eat shit".
    On the night of that particular execution, the lights in the cellhouse flickered. This happened from time to time, but since it was someones last night to live, this flickering was attributed to the power surge that happens when the executioner "flips the switch". This couldn't have been the case, because GA uses lethal injection and in the era of the electric chair, a generator supplied the deadly voltage. However the flickering lights did give that fatal evening some added drama.
   A couple other things that stand out about my time there,mostly related to the penitentiary ambiance. Jackson is an old prison, aside from the newly constructed wings, it's feninately grimy. It's the only prison in GA that still segregates prisoners by skin color. Whites with whites, blacks with blacks. It's a throwback kinda place, the paint is peeling inside the cells,the toilets are from a different era, before the prison industry chromed everything out. Jackson is an eerie place like shawshank redemption, or the setting of a Stephen King novel. One night there was a storm, and I was up writing a letter, looking through the bars of my cell at the lightning bolts and rain, and the Metallica song "ride the lightning" came on the radio...spooky shit.
   I also remember a lighter moment one afternoon, when the Driving and crying song "I'm going straight to hell" caused an eruption in the cellhouse as what seemed like a hundred country boys rattled their cell doors and sang the chorus.
   The night before I transfered, I stayed up late talking to the guy in the adjacent cell. The topic was various prisons, and he was fixated on telling me his experience of  Alto. For hours he relayed stories of the violence and sexual degradation that occured there daily. He asked if I had ever seen the movie Roots, based on the novel by Alex Hailey, a story of the horrors of slavery. In this mans description, Alto State Prison was like that, except the slaves were all white. It didn't sound like a cozy enviroment at all, I remmember thinking that surely he was exaggerating a little.
   Early in the morning, before breakfast, an officer told me to pack my shit, I was transferring to Lee Arrendale State Prison. I'd never heard of it before, and niether had the guys I sat down to eat with. When I returned to my cell, my next door neighbor had noticed that my belongings were packed and asked where i was going. When I said Arrendale he almost fainted, sometime in the nineties, the name of Alto was changed to Arrendale. Whether it was done to try and shake its fucked up reputation or simply  to pay tribute to the great Lee Arrendale, I don't know. I thought about that Driving and crying song and wondered how much truth there was to that guys grim stories.
   Thinking back on it now, I don't know if Alto lived up to the hype or not. It was a fucked up place for sure though.
   Initially, Alto was a prison for violent offenders in the 25 and younger range. Of course this made the prison into a warzone, all these kids trying to make a name for themselves, indoctrinated in violence. By the time I got there, they had mixed in prisoners of all ages, but it still housed the states juvenile offenders who had been tried as adults for violent crimes. They stayed in their own section of the prison until they turned 17 or 18, then joined general population. In this way, they were thrown to the wolves.
   During the 90s the GA legislature introduced some new game-changing policies. One of which was mandatory minimun sentencing for acts of extreme violence, "the seven deadly sins". This took the discretion out of the hands of judges and the parole board. After january 1st 1995, anyone convicted of these crimes was sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison, to be served in its entirety. No parole. The one exception is rape, which carries a minimum of only a year. What the fuck is that about? Essentially, for commiting a violent crime like armed robbery, you will get atleast a ten year sentence if convicted, even if no real physical violence occurs. But if you violently rape a woman, you may be able to get off in a year. That's tough Georgia justice right there.
   Another piece of legislation, introduced in the Bill Clinton era, was senate Bill440, Which allows juvenile offenders to be tried as adults for violent crimes in Georgia. These two senate bills worked together to fill the GA prison system with violent, parole ineligable teenagers, serving sentences of 10 years or better.
   As I understand it, both of these laws are still in effect. The passing of SB440 was made possible by a sensationalist media campaign, which coined the term "superpredator", used to describe children who commit heinous crimes. I ended up knowing quite a few of these superpredators while I was at Arrendale. In my opinion these kids were more like supervictims or super mentally ill. I'm not rushing to defend anyones monsterous acts, but there's something wrong about giving a 13 year old boy a life sentence.
   I remember one pathetic story of this young kid who attempted to rob a foursome on a country club golf course. He was quickly disarmed, then the golfers beat his ass and detained him until the police arrived. Punishment for this 15 year old villan? A 15 year sentence and sexual subjugation by older inmates.
   The day I got to Alto they took me to the special management unit, or SMU. It was a 3 story building with 252 one man cells, the standard old school version with bars across the front. They put me in an open cell on D range until a bed became available in population. At that time,D range usually housed level 5, red flag, and maximum security prisoners. I remember a couple of the dudes on my range were on max for raping other inmates.
   While I waited to get to general population I read a book call Coming Of Age in Mississippi about a young black girl dealing with poverty andracial prejudice in the early 1900s. Books like this were always in circulation in prison. they were interesting and informative, but I think they fed the fire of racial tension. Everywhere I went in the pen, there was lots of hate on both sides.
   In the SMU, inmate workers called runabouts passed out trays for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I remember watching a couple of them, small white guys, kind of sizing them up. They seemed much softer than me from all outward appearances. If they were making it in Alto then I would be ok.
   When I got out of the hole I ended up being in the dorm with one of them and quickly learned that he was a punk, having sex for protection. Same for the other little white orderly from the SMU. Damn...
  
   I could write a hundred pages about Alto, I'll come back to it soon, the story of how it was shut down and turned into a womens prison is crazy. Right now it;s tuesday night, I;m in jail, still have 6 months and some change left before I can go home and I wish I was about to lie down next to a beautiful girl. This shit is so fucking lame...Goodnight.

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   The first time I smoked weed in prison, I smoked a stick with a whiteboy named jeremy. It was a normal $3 joint rolled inside 2 bugler papers. I didn't think there was anything in it, we both got maybe a lungfull and dude, I was completely STONED. Paranoid high, I took a shower to try and shake it off but it was useless.
   I smoked alot of weed while I was in prison. It's a good drug to do time on. It makes the mundane bullshit easier to cope with, helps to kill the hours. I was high all the time, every chance I got.
   One day I was on the yard, I'd been at Alto for a few weeks and someone gestured for me to look at an inmate standing by the basketball court.  When I saw him I recoiled, it was like a viceral reaction, because he was the ugliest human I'd ever seen. He looked like the missing link, his head and jaw were deformed and he had the vacant stare of a mentally retarded person. "That's Playa Playa, they just raped him in F cell last week." I was shook. Anyone capable of having an erection in the near vicinity of Playa Playa had to be a monster. Alto had more predatory homosexual activity than any other prison in GA. It was known for being the turnout capital, and violent rape did happen but most of the time just the threat of violence was enough, and even that wasn't always necessary, dudes got turned out on the finesse tip. Literally talked out of their ass.
   For years and years, for decades, it was known Alto was dispropotionately violent. Victimization was a daily thing. In the 80s and 90s it was worse, but even as of late as 2003(the year I got there), Arrendale was the 2nd most violent penitentiary in GA. Rapes,Stabbing,and beatings and the staff just let it continue. The correctional officers, counselors, and wardens who worked are all complicit in human rights violations in my humble opinion. It's almost like they had a secret set of instructions; let these convicts suffer. If that sounds paranoid, all I can say is that I was there and I witnessed some unbelievable shit. Empathy and compassion aren't prerequisites for employment as a prison guard of course,and every prison has a few good people working there, but the majority of the staff working at Alto were unfeeling and callous at best. They got away with too much and when the hammer finally fell on their renegade institution it was a hollow victory. Too little, too late.
    What brought about the end of Lee Arrendale as a mens prison was a combination rape/homicide. Definately not the first in its long, proud history. If the victims family hadn't had clout and financial means(his mother is a lawyer), I doubt if anything would have changed. His story and my own overlap, but let me rewind a little bit first. I was in Alto for 3 or 4 months, without incident, some vets schooled, brought me up to speed on chaingang politics, and I hit the ground running. I had a clique of homies, get tattoos, wrote letters, got high, and time passed. This early in my sentence, I had lots of support in the form of money and mail, everything was gravy. The most you could spend on the commisary back then was $50, and I hit for $50 each week. Alto had the best stor of anywhere I'd been, at that time a pack of roll ups cost 89 cents, ramen noodle soups were 20 cents, coffee was $4 a jar, I was well taken care of for sure.
   Occasionally I wo.uld lend someone a couple of bucks and I never charged any interest. In prison money lenders are called storemen, and the rate is fifty cents interest on the dollar. I didn't make a habit of lending money cause that leads to trouble, but every now and then I made an exception.
   This particular exception was a young black dude named Gizmo and he owed me 2 honey buns. On store day I asked if he had any moneyand he said he did, just chill. Store day is when all the gambling cranks up and all day I watched Gizmo shooting dice. Clearly, he had enough money to gamble and I guess he felt like he could pay me back at his liesure, but I got angrier and angrier. When it was time for lights out at 11pm, I listened to a song on the radio, tied a masterlock on a sock, and ran up on Gizmo, swinging for his head. Somehow I only grazed him and police put me in the hole.
   A month passed and I was released back into general population. The administration elected to put me back in the same dorm, with Gizmo and all his buddies. I could've refused to go in but that would've been a bitch move, so in I went. Gizmo and I squared off and started fighting, he had a considerable size advantage but I was getting the best of him when I felt my feet get pulled out from underneath me. The beating commenced, state boots danced on my head and face, but it wasn't that bad. My buddies in the dorm stood back and watched. Later on their excuse was that I was beating Gizmos ass and it didn't look like I needed their help.
   The officer in the chow hall noticed I was beat up and they put me on involuntary PC(protective custody). I was locked down for a few days and moved to a different dorm. At this point I suffered from an insane dillusion that just because I'd displayed my willingness to fight, I had nothing to worry about anymore. In my sick brain I figured I'd "made my bones" and would be universally respected from then on. Dreams,Dreams. One thing about prison,there is no such thing as universal respect, people will try to assasinate your character in any way they can. It's a non-stop propaghanda war. At that time I was still too green, still too young to be granted respect and left alone. I had no history, just a couple of quick scuffles.
   That weekend I went to visitation for several hours. When I got back to the dorm I sat down, got my tape player out of the box, and hit play. Nothing happened. I soon discovered that someone had switched the headphone wire out, so now I was stuck with a busted pair of useless headphones. 2 packs of cigarettes were missing from my locker as well.
   In prison if someone steals from you, there is only one reaction possible-You have to get violent. It's absolutely mandatory. If you don't know who stole your shit you have to pick a likely suspect.in this case, I was convinced it was my bunkmate, a dude named Hood. The night before, he asked if I wanted to sell my speaker wire. I didn't. He seemed like a good one to pick.
    I was mad. one of the vets in our dorm, a friend of mine, counseled me to get a "head-up", a square fight, one on one, rather than useing a weapon or suckerpunching Hood. He told me he wouldn't let anyone jump in and I agreed. I put my boots on and told Hood to put his on too. He didn't want to fight, insisted that he didn't steal my stuff, but I wasn't trying to hear that.
   We fought for a few minutes, I'd say it was a draw, I did a little bit of damage but not much. He said we could keep on fighting if I wanted but that he couldn't return my speaker wire because he didn't steal it and didn't know who did.
   Around that time it was our dorms turn to eat. By the time we got back my buddy Dago,the old school vet who had my back earlier, was convulsing on the floor, unresponsive and foaming at the mouth. He had gone to visitation and swallowed several balloons full of oxycontin. I guess one of them busted in his stomach before he vomit it out. We carried him out of the dorm on a stretcher, on the way out I heard someone say that we'd better bring that stretcher back with us, we were gonna need it again. For me.
   I guess some of Hoods buddies didn't like that I'd fought him, now they wanted to fight and my buddy was ODing in the infirmary, so I was by myself.
   The main antagonist was a dude named Wayne Boatwright Jr. He was who stole my speakers and maybe his conscience was troubling him since it got Hood caught up in the mix. We fought and Boatwright definately got the best of me, his hands were too fast. You can't win them all. Boatwright learned that too when he was raped and strangled to death 2 months later.
   For obvious reasons, I didn't mourn his passing. I didn't think he deserved all that, but Boatwright was a thieving menace who wanted to be down. I feel for his family and applaud their efforts in attacking Alto as an institution. I believe I speak the truth when I say that his mother and the southern center for human rights are directly responsible for Alto being converted to a womens institution. There's no doubt that this has prevented alot of suffering for young people. Two thumbs up for that.
   God bless the dead, what a horrible fate for anyone to endure, even him. I try to keep my mind open too the fact that no matter how ville or unlikeable a person may be, at one point they were an innocent child, somebodies little gift from god. Also we never know what kind of hardship people have undergone, it's good to be conscious of that and try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
    Perhaps Boatwright would've had some kind of life changing event and transformed into a stand up dude. I don't think he had very much time, but I can't remember. He was 18 when he died. At that time, it has to be said, he was no great loss to anyone but his family. He stole from me for no reason aside from the fact I'm white and he felt he could get away with it. Since my mother sent me the money for those headphones, he was stealing from my family as well. And he got his buddy Hood punched in the mouth for nothing. Hood turned out to be a good dude.
   If I could talk to Boatwright now, I wonder if he'd have more humility. Being victimized is a horrible thing, especially if you're minding your own business. I wasn't bothering anyone and niether was Hood. Boatwright made a fucked up situation worse for both of us.
   The 3 men who attacked and killed Boatwright all got sentenced to life with no parole. One of them was a young kid from savannah, we called him Home Alone. Maybe 3 or 4 years later, I ended up being roommates with Home Alone, or "Homie" for short. I can't defend the crime he was convicted of, but in my personal experience he was good peoples. We got along with no issues whatsoever. Kind of ironic that years earlier, Wayne Boatwright took me to be a lame, stole from me, swelled up my eye, and disrespected me for no reason at all. Later on down the line, I shared a room with one of his killers and it was nothing but respect. It's crazy how shit goes sometimes.
   I got in a fair amount of trouble during my stay at Alto, compiled a large amount of DRs, and eventually, my security was raised to level 5-pending max. Aside from one assault, my DRs were for stupid shit, failed drug tests, contraband,insubordination,etc. They had some kind of unique point system at Alto, I think they called it the BMS or behavior management system. Level one was like trustee status. Level 2-3s were normal inmates and level 4 were considered predatory or troublemakers. Housing units were based on these levels, so all the docile, behaved prisoners were housed together and security risks were housed together. Level 5 meant 6-12 months of solitary confinement. I got level 5'd in march 2004 and spent the next 8 months in isolation.
   By the time this happened, I'd already taken a couple trips to the hole, once for assault, once for an incident with an officer, and once for a positive drug screen. I've read that long term solitary confinement is considered a form of torture in some places but it never bothered me much. I enjoy my own company, like to read and write, and for the most part, can hold myself down mentally. I did have a stroke of bad luck in the early days of that 8 month stretch, which caused me some considerable grief. I was on property restriction, which meant that I wasn't allowed any tapes,radio,CDs,photo album, or store goods of any kind. Of course, I had all these things in my cell. Being able to put on my headphones, smoke a cigarette, and look at my pictures made level 5 a pretty mild form of punishment for me. One day, bound by leg irons and waist chains, I was escorted by 2 officers all the way to Atlanta Medical Center to see a specialist about the broad disc bulge in my lower back. I remember this day clearly, it was such a stark contrast, going from a prison cell in north Ga where I had been for a couple of months uninterupted, to the city of Atlanta, my city, on a beautiful blue skied spring morning. I was amped up in the extreme, energized by my surroundings. The young rookie officer got a wee bit agitated by my roaming around the parking lot and actually pulled out his gun,took aim, and said that he'd blow my fucking brains out if I didn't stop moving. It's this kind of overzealous performance by law enforcement officials of all kinds that makes you want to play N.W.A. at full volume.
   When we get back to the prison and I'm being placed back in my cell, the dorm officer asked me to please not wig out, but they had conducted a random search in my absense and confiscated all my earthly possessions. Since I was on property restriction, all my tapes, cds, radios, and pictures were taken from me.
   Of course I wigged out. The loss of music was a back-breaker but I'm pretty sentimental, so taking my pictures was an act of war. In retaliation, I blocked the bottom of my cell door, temporarily stopped up my toilet, and flushed it about a thousand times until the water in my cell was ankle high. I then removed the blanket from under the door and released a flood into the dormitory. This was one of the only ways to lash out at the officers from inside the confines of an isolation room. I got a DR, but they appeared inept at controling the cell house. Flooding cells was a daily occurance in the level 5/max unit.
   I also started a hunger strike. For 3 days I refused all trays, I sat in my cell, brooding and smoking roll-ups, sending beams of hateful energy at any officer who came to my window. Gradually my righteous anger burned out, I started eating again, and new pictures came in the mail. Those tapes and CDs were a loss but eventually I got another radio. Time went by.
   I worked on correspondence courses my parents got me, philosophy and English writing & rhetoric. I also had lots of personal correspondence going on at this time, most rewardingly with a female friend from out of state. I wrote long letters examining prison life, drug use, crime, sex, music, politics, and she was a sympathetic ear and a sharp mind. I really enjoyed that kind of give and take intellectually. This girl was just a dope person in general...she was hot too.
   I got a visit from her once during that 8 months, she stopped by on her way to Florida. We had a good visit and she was cool enough to bring me an x-pill in her bra. That was the last time I saw her, 8 years ago, and I still miss her friendship and her commentary.
   I ate the roll at the end of visitation, expecting to be safely returned to my cell by the time it kicked in. Being on level 5, I had to wait on a police escort,and they usually waited until all the level 5,red flag, and administrative segregation inmates were handcuffed before walking us back to B unit. On this particular day, it took much longer to get us all herded back together. Since I was pending max, I was handcuffed and leg shackled. The walk from visitation to B unit was over a quarter mile, down stairs, through gates, and up hills. Because of the unexpected delay, we had just begun trudging up this steep incline, about halfway to our destination, when the roll kicked in. One minute I was sweating under the oppressive summer sun, taking little micro steps to keep the leg irons from biting into my ankles, and then with almost no buildup, unannounced, I was rolling my balls off. I felt like I was in an old starburst commercial, like a beautiful tidal wave had come along and now I was waterskiing back to maximum security. This was one of those good rolls that don't come around anymore, an unconditional love pill that made me happy to be alive. Sometimes people tell me that they can't understand how someone could use drugs like that in prison, like they wouldn't enjoy it. To each their own I guess. When your daily reality is waist chains,leg irons,steel bed frames,white walls, and screaming maximum security inmates a little autonomous joy is heavensent. Thank you girl.


                    GHOSTFACE KILLER

   The day after I got out, I reported to my parole officer. I don't know exactly how many x-convicts are on parole in Cobb county, my educated guess is between 500 and 1,000. I got a warm welcome, not only from my officer, but from the entire office. 5 or 6 officers popped in to see me, I started feeling like a bug under a microscope. Maybe everyone gets the red carpet treatment in this parole office, I don't know. I imagine my file is interesting reading, a counselor in prison once told me so. The parole officers were tickled pink by a remark I made the night of my arrest when one of the detectives made a disparaging comment about the quality of one of my handguns, I replied that it was good for killing cops. Of course this was documented.
   The parole officers wound up being...pretty cool. I've fought the urge to like them the entire time. My gut instinct is always to say fuck the law, fuck the police, they are the enemy. Making generalizations like that are dangerous though. There are good people in almost every catagory or group humans come up with, I know that is the truth. In Cobb county, the parole officers I've dealt with(with the exception of one barely legal closet homosexual who smiled like a little girl when he told me I was going back to prison) were mostly ok. I never got the impression that they were hell bent on making problems for me.
   That's not to say they are shining examples of compassionate humanity. Part of their mission is rapport-building, coming across as cool,reasonable people who just want to help so parolees won't just abscond and fail to report. They know what a big risk the parole board is running by ever paroling anyone, without fail, someone will get out and do some twisted act of violence, and then the public is mad that this idiot made parole in the first place. So parole officers definately employ some subtle manipulative tactics to keep their charges close and trusting. They'll let you get away with a failed drug test, no big deal. That way, when a parolee gets in trouble, instead of bonding out and keeping it to themselves, they will feel comfortable calling their parole officer and telling them all about it. Not a good idea y'all.
   On that first report day they put an ankle moniter on my left leg. It stayed there for 4 months. The officers joked, saying that since I'm well developed muscularly, if they ever had any problems and had to storm my house, they'd take no chances, and would not hesitate to shoot me... I think they were joking.
   One of them said they didn't anticipate any problems because of how long i had served in prison. It was mostly just those who had done a couple years who got out and fucked up. People like me had more sense and were more determined not to go back
   I don't know if that's the truth or if he was just releasing positive thoughts into the universe, hoping they'd influence my behavior. I had an unspoken secret agreement with myself, that I wouldn't take any major risks. What constitutes as a major risk was never clearly specified, but by any definition, I trampled all over my personal resolution. I made some foolish choices, broke the law, but I still believe I am incarcerated unfairly. I'm good people, never fuck with anyone unless they fuck with me first, and try and do the right thing as much as I can. I should be a free man now. There must be a reason I'm not.