I recently visited a non-profit Native American advocacy group who is offering to help with any Native American clients caught up in the system. They hold a smoking cessation group on Monday nights and I jokingly asked them if I could join because they give free patches. They gave me some free patches anyway.
Two nights ago I was driving up to the mountains on business. The prison just happened to be at the top of a mountain, just above a village that I've been to before in a couple of dreams in the past. The sun was beginning it's descent behind the mountain as I drove up and so it was still light out but a purple hue was cast over everything. I drove around through the town to see how it had changed. There was quite a bit of construction going on; resort style houses being built, ski shops, touristy stuff but still quaint somehow. Someone had installed loudspeakers, however on the corners, and 2 women were talking in numbers and code I didn't understand. I parked down this road in front of a home that was being built and got out of my car with my file, nodded to the construction workers who nodded back. "I have gotten good at the 'Confidence Man' thing," I thought as I walked up the street in my shirt, tie, and suit pants to where the prison was. Along the walk I realized the women on the loudspeakers were corrections officers (CO's) in central control at the prison letting each other know which doors to open, in which wings of the prison, and which officers were on which tiers. It seemed a little eerie but also kind of normal. "I don't think I could live here," I thought. "There must be some back story about how it came about that the town thought it was a good idea to broadcast that."
I walked up the hill to the top of the mountain and stood at the gate of a sprawling prison and flashed my idea to the guard in the tower. The gate made a banging noise as the chain engaged and the moving part of the gate began to move and I was let in and the gate closed behind me. Going to prisons in the sticks is always preferable to going to prisons in the city. They're generally run tighter and the staff is generally friendlier to me. They're newer so they are much cleaner, at least the parts that I see. I walked up to the first building outside the second wall of fences and barbed wire. That second wall is always the real wall. It's usually a wall of 3 fences, ab out 10-15 feet apart, all three coated by razor wire. "Ain't nobody getting over those," I always think when I see them. But just in case they got that first gate I went through, mostly to keep the public out. Prisons are like that. Keep the prisoners in, keep the public out. There are motivations behind both tactics.
So I went into the first building where the two CO's who were at the control board were behind glass with a hole in it and a slot at the bottom to slide your paperwork through. I introduced myself, held my ID up to the glass, and slipped my visit confirmation letter through the slot. One CO took the letter and looked it over carefully, straight-faced, and grabbed the microphone attached to her shoulder, depressed the button, and called officer such and such to ready whatever client number xxx-xxx was and for control to open door who-knows-what for him to be brought to visiting. And her voice went out over loudspeaker, through the prison, and through the town. She pressed a button and the door to the sally-port to my right banged and opened and she nodded and said, "Go ahead" and I stepped in and up to the next door. The outer door closed, slamming shut and the door in front of me banged and opened and I stepped through and then the second door slammed shut behind me. A CO came out of control and said, "Hi, you can just go on in here, he'll be down in a minute," as he pointed to a doorway down the hall.
The lights in the prison, and in the room, were all fluorescent and fixed in metal cages that were covered in black dust, mostly. The lights cast a green on the milky, institutional, creamy blue-green paint on the walls. I sat down at the table in the room, in which one wall was made up entirely of dark blue painted lockers, but otherwise was empty. It was a decent sized room, maybe 30x20. The wall with the door on it, which only had a lock on the outside, was covered in shatterproof windows. The windows looked out into the hallway, but otherwise there was no other view except the motivational posters hanging on the walls. The posters are standard. A picture of a man climbing a mountain with caption at the bottom with the title, "Adversity" and then some wise quip about how to overcome the mountain. They're in every prison.
I'd never met this guy before but from what I read he was out of his mind. He was charged with some nuisance crime, found guilty, sentenced to 10 years and was already one year into it. While I was waiting for him to be brought down one of the CO's stood in the doorway. "This guy is pretty crazy. He doesn't belong here and we can't handle him. You think you can get him out?" I told him I hadn't even met him and that I wasn't sure. "His brother is here too. Brother's crazy also, worse than him. His brother has been in seclusion for 3 months and won't be getting out any time soon."
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