This is THE PRISONCARE PODCAST! I’m Sabrina Justison, your host, the founder and Executive Director of PrisonCare, Inc. where we are committed to equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters!
(theme music intro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I want to be as relevant to you as you are to me…
…am I the fool who’s dreaming? I’ll wait.”
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Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
The Fool, original recording music and lyrics by J. Bloom © 2022.
For the full song, visit the PrisonCare, Inc. YouTube Channel:
https://youtu.be/cG8zHpQZDug
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Hello, friends!
This is the last “in-real-time” episode as we follow J’s story up close over the last month. After an anonymous accusation and a series of badly-handled moments of communication by staff, a frustrated punch to a door landed J in isolation in Medical, first getting his hand patched up, and then on suicide watch for 12 days, and what has followed is a transfer to a temporary housing unit at another prison for a week, and finally transport to the prison that will be his home for the foreseeable future.
I’m excited to record today’s episode, here on Monday, July 24, 2023, because J is doing really, really well after a brutal month. I’m excited to tell you about some of the beautiful moments along the way that helped him choose life. If you’ve been around PrisonCare for very long, you know that J has a thing he likes to say, and it carries so much power. He says, “Circumstances being what they are, and me being who I choose to be…”
This last month has been a profound example of what that looks like lived out. “Circumstances being what they are, and me being who I choose to be…”
Some of those circumstances have been ugly. And some of them have been beautiful. And in the face of each, J has had to choose who he wants to be.
This is true for every one of us, right? We don’t get to control our circumstances. And we don’t get to excuse ourselves for bad choices when faced with circumstances we did not want in our lives. A break up. Bad news from our test results. A financial crisis. Stuff happens, and we have to decide how we will respond. Our response actually has a MUCH greater impact on our lives going forward than the circumstances that called for it do.
To respond, rather than to react. Or, perhaps more accurately, to react briefly, because we can’t help being human with automatic hormonal stress responses, and with emotions that can temporarily overwhelm us, but then to move past reaction into response, into choice. This is what healthy, growth-oriented humans do in the face of crisis.
But for people in prison neighborhoods, while that same need to respond well is paramount, the deck is stacked against them in some unique ways. And this is true for people wearing both kinds of uniforms. This is a reality of the toxic culture inside most prisons, and it makes healthy response to crisis more difficult for everyone than it would be on the outside. We’ll explore that idea in a few moments.
First, your update!
As of last Tuesday night, J had been moved to the prison that will be his new home for the foreseeable future. He was still in temporary housing there as of yesterday, but he expects to move into one of the regular units in the next day or two. He has had his personal property returned to him, and while several items have disappeared and must be repurchased form commissary (in particular his boots, which got his blood on them when he cut his hand, and which were summarily destroyed rather than held for him to clean upon his release from isolation), he is feeling more on top of his life at last.
When he left his original prison last two weeks ago, he was taken by bus to a facility that acts as a holding unit for all the prisons in the state. When someone has to leave one prison because of a problem, and administration wants them gone sooner rather than later, they are taken to this one unit in one prison, and they stay there for as long as it takes to figure out where the best fit is for them long-term.
His week in this temporary unit was challenging in a number of ways, and I touched on some of that in last week’s episode. It was not a very clean facility. It was old, and problems with rats and roaches made it unpleasant. It was an open three-tier layout with no doors, only bars. So the din was constant, offering no break from the noise. And because it’s temporary housing for people passing through, J had 5 different cell-mates in 8 days. That meant sleeping inches from a total stranger each time a new cellie was brought in.
But there were positives, too. The food was a huge improvement over the place he has lived for the last 5 years. And the staff seemed more comfortable in their roles, still stern, but more approachable and less perpetually stressed out. He got good help examining his file from a Sgt. there.
Unfortunately, there came new crisis point, and that was where we were when I recorded last week’s episode. In looking at his file, J learned that he was listed as “available” to every Medium security prison in the state. Apparently it’s like Tinder, or something, and each prison can swipe to take the inmates they think will be a good fit for their facility.
What he was told while on suicide watch, and he was told this again and again, by multiple staff and administrators, was they they were forced to transfer him out to a new prison because his Psych code had changed. Because he was now listed as P4 (he had been coded as P3 before this), their facility did not have services needed for a P4, so he had to leave. It was nothing personal. His rules violation (destruction of property) was not a big, ugly one. He just had to leave because his P code had changed, and he had to be placed in a prison with serious psych services.
So when J saw his file and learned that he was showing as available to ALL the medium security prisons in the state, not just the four that are described by the Dept. of Corrections on their website as having psych units, he was scared. The whole reasons he was enduring a transfer and all its stressors was in order to get somewhere with resources the professionals decided he needed. And now he learns he could land anywhere, and not have mental health help after all. Apparently, he was deemed “too unstable” to be housed in a regular facility, but they were going to send him to a new one of those anyway.
And this is where the story takes a weirdo turn. On his behalf, I reached out by voicemail and email to the state, clearly explaining the situation, and asking for help getting this corrected on his file. I received a really polite, detailed email reply from someone at the state Dept. of Corrections who explained that J was fine to go to any Medium security prison in that state, because all of these facilities are “equipped and required” to provide mental health services to inmates up to and including P4 ratings.
The four designated “psych unit” prisons are only for acute, residential care, like schizophrenia in active psychosis, or persistent, severe self-mutilation. In other words, behavior so dangerous that on the outside we would take our loved one to a locked ward at a hospital to get them through the mental health crisis they were experiencing. So J really DIDN’T need anything close to that level of treatment, and he was green-lighted to go to any of the prisons with openings.
So what was with the line of explanation J was given at his original facility, how they had no choice but to move him because he needed services they could not provide? According to the state, they have those services and are required to offer them.
I can certainly testify to the fact that J never received any mental health services during his five years there. He has chosen not to take medicine, and that was really his only option. If he wanted to, he could have been evaluated remotely by the psychiatrist who oversees meds via Telehealth, and been prescribed one of the approved drugs (the list is very short when compared to the meds your doctor will try on the outside - it’s a cost-saving measure), and he could have picked it up his pills at Medline every day and taken them.
Because he has never had a real evaluation done where he was prescribed meds pre-incarceration, and because he has seen people go through hell because they were on meds that were NOT the right fit for their brains, he was unwilling to try meds, and that was his only option for support.
Not only is there no professional talk therapy, but even the peer program, that trained other residents to offer emotional and relational support to their neighbors who request it, had been discontinued right around the time J moved in there 5 years ago. So no peer counselors, either.
And yet the state seems to think that this prison facility is offering mental health services, and should be offering enough of them that people with a P4 code could still be safely housed there and be supported in healthy living.
This raises a couple of questions:
- If the state says part of your tax-dollar budget is supposed to provide support for mental health, why is it okay that you are simply not doing it? Where IS that money being spent? Oh, that’s right. Private prisons have very little oversight from the state, and answer primarily to share-holders. And yes, I sound mad about that. The fundamental idea of prisons that are designed to generate profit for shareholders is disgusting.
- If J did not have to be transferred because of his psych code, and if his rules violation was not that big a deal, and if the alleged fight was never a real thing, and the person with whom J argued ended up in the same space as J just a few days later…then why DID they feel they simply had to transfer him? It’s hard not to wonder if there was some more personal agenda at work. And there can be no question that something that was making the decisions was not being honestly communicated to J. I am willing to give benefit of the doubt; maybe there was a very good reason that staff and administration decided J simply must live in another neighborhood. But why lie to him about it?
We will likely never know why things went sideways the way they did. But in the process of all the chaos and the yuck, some truly beautiful moments emerged. J will share some of that with you on future episodes when he is in a healthy enough headspace to talk about it. But I can give you a glimpse:
A couple of COs who were assigned to watch J decided it was ridiculous that they were only bringing him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat, meal after meal. On suicide watch, you are not allowed to have utensils, so they have to give you finger food. Apparently, the only food a human can eat without utensils is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, ‘cause that’s what showed up over and over. Eventually, one CO volunteered to go to the kitchen to bring up a tray personally, since they wouldn’t send real food up. After a few days, J began receiving real food that could be managed without utensils, and he felt better from the nutrition and better from the personal sacrifice COs were willing to make on his behalf.
He was told by one CO that he knows J is a good guy, that he knows he treats people right, and that it made him mad when he saw them bring him through all shackled up, especially because the only person J had hurt was himself. He told him to choose life, because his life is worth living.
There are good humans in Correctional Officer uniforms. I hope that if nothing else, this podcast shines a light on that truth. I recognize that these COs I’m talking about were using time and energy that was already in short supply to them. They were choosing to see a person in front of them rather than an assigned task. They were realizing that their presence might help a person choose to live in the face of pain rather than take their life. They did not see a DOC number, and they did not see only their own suffering - lack of sleep, or frustrations at work, or at home, or emotional distress from something ugly that had happened in front of them earlier that shift - they chose to look at and respond with compassion to someone in the other uniform who needed some help. If you’re listening to this episode, please know that you are a rockstar. Discernment and kindness made a difference in the world on your shift.
These COs essentially said, “Circumstances being what they are, and me being who I choose to be…”
And it was hard for them to do that.
They exist in an industry that has a paramilitary structure.
We all know the difficulties faced by people who must follow orders that violate something in their own conscience. There are countless movies about people serving in the military who are faced with deeply complex circumstances. If they disobey orders, they will probably be disciplined, and may well lose their entire career because of it.
Similarly, if a CO finds themself in a deeply complex circumstance and decides to follow their conscience instead of following protocol, they risk discipline. They are VERY likely to be found out, because the facility has cameras covering most of the area. The question is not really whether anyone higher up will find out, it’s whether that higher-up will decide to discipline them or not. So it’s more of a crap-shoot. Your boss IS watching. You just have to hope that your boss is in a reasonable and common-sense frame of mind when they find out, rather than a stressed-out, we’re getting ready for a safety audit and you decided to do this NOW?? frame of mind.
But here’s the real problem.
In a military organization, orders are passed down to behave in a certain way to stand against our country’s enemy, the military forces protecting a hostile nation.
In the paramilitary model that is the U.S. prison system, the enemy is the residents in the facility where you work. Your orders are about how you will deal with people who are serving prison sentences.
Some of them ARE hostile. Some of them are choosing to behave as enemies of the state. But many of them are not. And those who are not are still to be treated the same as those who are.
As long as there is no clear distinction of who the enemy is, a paramilitary model is going to be a serious problem in the running of prisons. If the COs who are representatives of the state have no way of distinguishing “enemy soldiers operating with hostile intent,” from “civilians who are living peacefully in this enemy town,” how can they faithfully carry out orders in the course of their duty?
The “enemy” in this paramilitary prison model is the people group we are hoping to CORRECT under the guidance of the Dept. of Corrections in each state. The “enemy” includes hundreds in every facility who are consistently demonstrating prosocial behavior, as well as hundreds more who are willing to learn prosocial behavior if someone introduces them to the concept that they have never encountered before because of poverty, lack of education, or lack of positive relationship in their lives.
And then there are the knuckleheads who just don’t want to grow up, to be responsible, to build rather than destroy. I get it. There are plenty of those, too. But should the orders handed down for controlling them be the same that govern the movement and behavior of all the rest?
Circumstances being what they are, and me being who I choose to be…is a tough thing for a Correctional Officer to live out.
And for the residents? No great surprise here.
The system institutionalizes and dehumanizes at every turn. Decisions about the simplest, most basic things are taken away from you. You get used to being guided through your days by the institution, and it becomes harder and harder to remember that you actually still have a choice to make when confronted with a difficult circumstance.
This is why people who have been incarcerated for more than a couple of years who return home have tremendous emotional and relational difficulty functioning on the outside again after serving their sentence. Some are agoraphobic, and fear leaving their house, or even their bedroom within that house. Some develop eating disorders, because their food has been controlled for so long that they don’t know how to listen to their body’s cues for hunger or satiation. Some are paralyzed by the smallest decisions, because they have lost the confidence to choose for themselves. The list of issues goes on and on.
It is hard for all of us to choose who we want to be in the face of difficulty. But in the paramilitary model of a prison neighborhood, it is much harder - for people wearing both kinds of uniforms.
Is there a better model? Heck, yes. We don’t have to start at the drawing board on this one. There are other countries that have been operating their corrections system using a model of dynamic security that works so much better. We don’t have to figure it out on our own; we can learn from people who have been getting the success we want for decades.
The people who serve prison sentences in these systems rarely return for re-offending after release. And when you talk to the COs in those systems, they have a dramatically different story to tell than the COs in U.S. prisons.
A paramilitary structure doesn’t work well for anyone. Let’s support the efforts of everyone in prison neighborhoods to regularly say to themselves, “Circumstances being what they are, and me being who I choose to be…”
The personal challenges of the last month have slowed down some of the changes and new resources I had been planning to implement at PrisonCare.org this summer, but don’t give up on me. Good stuff is coming, and coming soon. PrisonCare’s Community Director, Kym, and I are going on a 4-day retreat together this week. Part of that time will be for personal growth work, but a big chunk will be planning and prioritizing PrisonCare’s next steps.
Please visit prisoncare.org to learn more. Get involved as a penpal encourager. Support this 100% compassionate-person-funded 501-©(3) organization. Share the podcast with friends and leave us a review on your favorite podcasting platform. Follow us on social media and YouTube. Continue caring about ALL the people inside the razor wire.
Thanks for listening today!
(theme music outro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I’ll wait. I'll wait until I break.”