#81 Prison Revenge

Prison revenge

The last couple of days has been pretty busy. I noticed that for some reason, my blogs spiked up with readers. I had a LOT of people checking out my blogs over the weekend, which is interesting because I have not written that much the last day or two. I have been working on my short story “Defending Job”, which I will be posting only on the blogspot prison blog.

I explained this before, but the reason why I do that is because I have noticed that more of my support comes from that blog site. A lot may read from other of my prison blogs, but it seems that the people who support my writings come from there, so I make sure that I post more there than anywhere else. I had 3 emails today from new readers and one from a person who had been following my blogs for a short while.

Remember folks, if you want to get in touch, email me. I say again, if you want to get in touch, email me.

Now, I was going through my folders and stacks of things I wrote while in prison, and I came across something interesting that I have shared in the past before. There are ways where the inmate can have the last say in his incarceration, and personally I think this is rare because lots of inmates talk about what they are going to do when they get out of prison, when it comes to prison neglect and things like that…but most never do anything because I suppose they are just happy to get out of prison.

But I strongly believe that prison incarceration with little to no TRUE rehabilitation means nothing, and only returns people to society that are not equipped to contribute to society. Society in general gets weaker because the men and women you release from prison are not adapt to today’s society, and are forced to “sink or swim”. While many of the casual readers might not care about this at all, often times it backfired on you either as paying taxes to keep a person in prison, or even being a victim of a crime from an ex felon who had nothing else to lose, because he had nothing left to gain.

(I STRONGLY encourage you to think on those words…many of you don’t quite get what I just said….)

I could go on for pages about this, but it the title is my way of talking about how the inmate can indeed make an impact before he leaves prison…or even long after he is gone.

Before I was released from Dan River Prison Work Farm, I had gone through numerous situations where sometimes (not always) the inmate could be right about a situation, but the prison refuses to acknowledge it. We always like to think that every time an inmate got a write up or complains or anything negative, it is all their fault. That is not always true folks…sometimes prisons screw up too.

After going through years of this, writing grievances, getting kicked out of prisons and the like, it was near my release date. And in fact, I was close to getting kicked out of Dan River, because I had written grievances there and had debates with officers about the rules. It’s funny how the rule is perfectly clear to them when it is written in the book and is against the inmate, but if the same book clearly says something that puts the prison in a bad light, they don’t want to acknowledge it.

I was taking a computer class while at Dan River, and I wanted to leave something for the prison to remember me by…something to let them know that even though I might be out of prison, I won’t be forgotten. So I prepared some small leaflets or sniplets of a short message that I would type on the computer, and print out on some of my paper that mom sent me. I have one in front of me right now, and it says the following:

“Is Dan River Cheating You? If you believe that Dan River Prison staff has violated your grievances (a violation of the Constitution) write to: Senator Marc Basnight, NC General Assembly, 2007 Legislative Bldg, Raleigh, NC 27601-2802”

And at the bottom I added, “The greatest fear of prisons are inmates who write”

I wrote numerous variations, adding different elected officials, based on the fact that I was at Dan River, in Yanceyville, so I had to make sure that the inmate who wrote would be writing to an official that was responsible for that area. I think I did about 200 of these things, but now I needed a way to disperse it.

Every now and then, when nobody was looking, I would leave one or two on a table in the dayroom, but I put most in the inmate library. It took many days to check in, get a book or two, slip one in, and go to another book, but after several days, I had slipped about 200 of those slips in various books, magazines and newspapers in the library.

Some of those book would be looked at likely in the same day, some might be checked out a week or two later, some books were barely touched, so it might be months… or YEARS before someone finds it.

What I wanted to do, before I walked out of the prison, was to leave one at the desk or in the hands of an officer, and tell them, “There are 200 of these on the camp, I hope you find them before other inmates do.”

But if I did that, the camp could, if they wanted, put the camp on lockdown, in an attempt to find them. As much as I might get some laughs off that, it would put the other inmates in a spot. I did actually tell a few guys about it before I left, so a few inmates knew what I did. But I figured, just let them all sit there, somebody will run across it the day I left, or 6 months after I left. Or even 6 years.

In that way, I leave a strong message to anyone who finds it that an inmate is not without some power, if he is willing to use it. I did not make a lot of friends with the prison system when it came to the authorities, because I often got upset when they bent the rules to what they wanted and when it benefited them. It got me kicked off several prison camps, but in every instance, my writing was clearly legal. I still had the right to write, and if I make a good point with it, then all the better.

The idea was to hopefully encourage other inmates to not just “do time” but to try to better themselves. The fallacy is that while in prison you need to just do the time and do what the prisons tell you…folks, that is NOT how you get through that incarceration. I am not saying to become a rebel, but I am saying that the inmate must retain his individual point of view, with respect to the rules of prison, and to his own humanity.

I can share MANY stories, with NAMES of people that was in the NC prison system while I was there, from Captains, Sergeants, other officers of the NC prison and other officials, some of whom made some very interesting criticisms of me…that I have on paper.

So today I look at this piece of paper, one of many I slipped into lots of books at Dan River, and I wonder…how many were picked up by inmates, who took the advice to write to their congressman about these issues? Are there still any secretly hiding in some book in that library that nobody has checked out in years? Or, after getting finding the first one, could the prison just have shut down the library to search for all those notes? Any number of things could have happened, but I feel that the last word in any prison issue can always fall on the inmate…especially now…

I mean, I am STILL talking about it, so I can still share opinions, whether the prison likes it or not.

Anyway, just sharing some thoughts, again, if you want to contact me, email me and ask about supporting my blogs, or ask about prison issues. Until then….