Prison Visit Experiences: Fred Visits Prison, pt. 1

As we continue to share prison visit experiences, this first of a 2-part episode series captures a conversation between Sabrina and her husband, Fred, who is J's stepdad. He is not at all the same personality type as Sabrina, so his experience on visits is different from hers in many ways.
For more prison visit stories, check out ep. 10 with J's sister, Bekah, and eps. 31 and the Bonus Concert episode with PrisonCare's Community Director, Kym!

We are approaching our one-year anniversary on the podcast! Get ready for exciting news in the next couple of weeks!!

http://prisoncare.org/community.html

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Time Markers:

(0:48) Another Prison Visitor

(2:20) What Does it Feel Like?

(4:15) TV vs Reality

(6:02) Kind of Like an Airport

(7:25) What is a Long Visit Like?

(9:18) Visits During COVID

(11:21) Food During a Visit

(14:19) So Much Going On

(17:42) What About the COs

(19:30) Suspicious Visitors

(24:29) What’s Next?

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
 We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version)
 Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
 Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

Time Markers:

(0:48) Another Prison Visitor

(2:20) What Does it Feel Like?

(4:15) TV vs Reality

(6:02) Kind of Like an Airport

(7:25) What is a Long Visit Like?

(9:18) Visits During COVID

(11:21) Food During a Visit

(14:19) So Much Going On

(17:42) What About the COs

(19:30) Suspicious Visitors

(24:29) What’s Next?

Welcome to the PrisonCare Podcast!

I’m Sabrina Justison, founder of PrisonCare.org, equipping compassionate people to support the often-invisible people groups who make up a prison neighborhood - the inmate residents, correctional officers, staff, administration, and the families of all of these folks.

Join me for this week’s episode, and be encouraged to think, care, and respond as we explore the challenges facing prison neighborhoods everywhere.

Let’s support positive prison culture from the outside, because EVERYone on the inside matters.

So this is the second visitation episode we've had on the particular podcast and this time, I'm going to be talking with my husband, Fred and I wanted to do another one because visitation is just such a big deal and it has so many different impacts on people depending on what their personality is like. Fred and I are very different personalities and so I just thought it would be helpful for people who are considering making a visit to a prison themselves. Or that it would be just interesting conversation for compassionate people who are interested in learning more of what the experience is like when you have a loved one who is incarcerated. But I thought it would be good for you to hear from someone else, what their experiences have been like on our prison visits and you might get some cool insights into this sliver of life that becomes normal when you have a loved one who is incarcerated, but that would be really abnormal apart from that. 

We ended up breaking this into two different episodes because Fred and I had a lot to talk about and it was good stuff. I didn't want to cut too much of it out, just in the interest of time. So we made two episodes out of it. So, lots to hear about Fred's visits to the prison. So enjoy this very casual organic conversation between my husband Fred and me.

Fred: Yeah, I’ve been there maybe, I don’t know… close to half a dozen times. Oh it's cause if you go once I mean if you go as a trip, most times I go twice. Sometimes we even went three times.

Sabrina: Right. Yeah. 

F: So it might've been more than that, might've been like seven or eight. 

S: Yeah. Because you probably made at least four separate trips out there. Yeah. And then two visits on average. 

F: Yeah. At least two. Three one time.

S: You’ve never gone by yourself, right?

F: No.

S: We've always been together?

F: Yes, that's correct. 

S: Okay, so just in a really general sense, what does it feel like? Does it feel like you thought it would feel like to visit a prison? 

F: It’s hard when you go you go through two sets of doors and then they’re doors with barbed wire or top and man they slam. They're so… they look so heavy and when they close you're like, "Alright, I ain't getting out anytime soon.”

So, it took a while for me to get over that, a few trips and then I said, “Okay, I’m coming in to visit. They’re going to let me out after the visit.”

S: It is. It's intimidating. They are. They’re really heavy and like they they roll across and it just feels like something out of a movie. 

F: Yeah, exactly. 

S: Yeah, yeah. The first time that you went, were you like looking back on it, where you more nervous than you needed to be? Like was the thought of it, kind of worse than the actual doing it?

F: It probably was. It was… Yeah. It's the unknown and you're it's a lot of fear in the unknown. And what could I say… The only thing I can compare it to is like what you watch on TV.

S: Yeah, how does it compare to what you've seen on TV? 

F: Um well, you know, you always see on TV these guys behind these plexiglas walls and you're talking to him on the phone and, and that's like, kind of… I mean, every time you see somebody visit, that's the visit. 

S: Yeah. And it's not… there are plenty of facilities that do it that way. Most of them are not prisons. Most of those are like County jails. And that whole not being able to touch each other and having the plexiglass between you the whole time and stuff that… Yeah, that’s… you’re right. That's I think what most of us have in our minds if we've never done it. And so I hear from other people that visitation is very different, different places. And the fact that we that we do it the way we do at the facility where J is. There are some people who would say we have a really good setup and, you know, we're allowed to hug him when he gets there, we’re allowed to hold hands across the table if we want. You know. We're sitting there like with the something the size of a card table between us.

F: Right. Exactly.

S: You know, but like then there are other facilities where I hear people are like, “Oh my gosh! Like you can't like sit next to each other on a bench and hold hands? Like you can't walk around together?” So other people would say we have it really rough where we visit so there's a lot more variety in visitation than I would have ever thought. I thought it was like a real standardized thing. You know. It's a level 3 prison, this is how it works. Whatever. Once you’re… once you're through the sally port, right? The big gates and then you get inside and have to go through security, is it… Does it feel like a big deal, now that you've done it a couple of times now that you know what to expect? 

F: That was… Yeah, you know what to do now. I mean once you do it two or three times. You know you take your shoes off it's not not unlike going through security at a airport except for once you get your shoes and your stuff you know, and roll and they check it with the X-ray machine and all that. Then they pat you down and all that which obviously they don't do at the airport. 

S: Unless you get pulled out of line. 

F: Unless you get pulled out of line, yeah. That has happened to me before. That's correct. 

S: They didn't check under your tongue at the airport? 

F: No, no type of your tongue… only your feet and all that. I mean but yeah.

S: That part is actually like not all that bad. It does feel a lot like TSA. So then once… once we go inside and like, you know, you're going to be there for hours, what is like… you and I are very different personalities. So I know what it feels like for me. And I think it probably feels kind of different for you. So like coming in there and knowing okay this is this is 7 hours where we visit, it's seven hours if we get the full day. Just talk about like the chairs, the vending machines, the options of what do you do with all that time? Like what does that feel like for you? 

F: It’s… you kind of run out of things to talk about and sometimes it's just, I just listen to you and J. I run out of things to talk… I try to intermingle once in a while if I have a point to make but a lot of times I'm just sitting back and listening to you guys talk and curious on some of the stuff that's going on in the prison and I'm really happy he's in an incentive pod and it's and that he's not being bullied or anything like that because that's the scary part when you're here. 

S: Yeah. If your loved one’s in there  it is scary. And for the most part, he's not being bullied at this point in time but there have been significant problems in the past and I don't want to like pretend like that's not been the case, you know? Yeah. So okay, so sometimes you run out of things to say. Do you also… I know that I feel this way… that it's this weird mix of there is no privacy at all because we're in this big, it looks like a Fellowship Hall of a church, you know, this… or a school cafeteria or something. Big, open room. People are at tables just a few feet away from us having their visits. So there's like, no privacy. But at the same time everybody who's having a visit is trying to let everybody else have their visit. Like we're all everybody you can tell is trying not to eavesdrop. You can tell we're trying to just like pretend like the rest of them aren't there. And we're not allowed to talk to anybody other than J anyway. Like you can't chitchat. You know, you were like the friendliest guy in the grocery store. You would talk to everybody but when we’re there like you're not allowed.

F: Yeah, the only time you can talk to other people is when you're out in the lobby. Before you actually go through to security doors again into the visitors room. And you really  don’t, you really don't talk to anybody but the person you're visiting with or the or you come to visit. And so it's it was really hard during covid because you had to wear a mask and like they’re looking at you and of course when if you're drinking something or eating something you could pull your mask down. So you always want to try to have, make sure you get something to drink or eat because it was a pain… I mean.

S: And they doubled the tables then. Instead of being across one card table from him, we were across two. So they increase the distance too and so hearing the conversation… like you felt like you had to talk really loud and sometimes you’re trying to talk about personal things.

F: And J’s a very low talker. 

S: He is a low talker.

F: So that makes it really hard to hear and I'm kind of hard of hearing so it's hard for me to, when he's like when he's low talking to but you know, and probably and I think he does that low talking so other people can’t kind of hear. 

S: Yeah, that's the weird thing. You're trying to have a private conversation but you're this very public place. Yeah, it’s weird. 

F: But I don't, I think it's a decent setup. I don't think it's they let people hug, and you know, holding hands and whatever they do, you know? So you don't mind that.

S: Well and we get silly too. I mean, I'm talking about trying to have a private conversation and some of what we, it's seven hours. It’s long time, right? So some of it is like serious conversation for sure and some of it is ridiculous and we're talking about movies and we're telling jokes and like we, I have, I have laughed so hard that I've been crying in there. Like there was a time when… Okay, so the food the food thing is weird. So let's talk about food for a minute. Overpriced vending machines. Yeah. You can eat and drink as much as you want pretty much at the facility that we're at. Now that's something I've heard that varies. Some places like you can only spend up to this amount or whatever and then you can't spend anymore. So we do a lot of food and drink when were there? Fortunately, we've been blessed with enough money that we can. 

F: Right.

S: Which is amazing… and that's something someday I would love for PrisonCare to be able to help people with is when people are visiting and they don't have the money. Because if you can't have snacks, it's hard. Like it's the thing to do. But when we bring the food over to the table, he's, we have to, like, give him his food. Like I have to open all the packaging. I have to lay it all out in front of him on a paper towel, or whatever. You have to rip open all the chip packs. You can't have a little bag of Doritos. Like, you have to open it and dump them out on the table ‘cause the officers, I guess have to be able to see…

F: It’s also for the people visiting, you have to dump all your… 

S: And you can't share food. 

F: No. No sharing food. 

S: So like your food has to sit right in front of you, so they can be sure that nobody's slipping contraband. You know, pretending to share pretzels and really slipping ‘em something else or whatever. But like, one one of the times I was there and I got I got, J his burger and I got it out and everything and then he wanted ketchup and mustard on it and I had the little packets. And I couldn't open ‘em. Like my hands wouldn't, you know, sometimes they're hard to tear and I trouble holding small tight things like that in my grip. And I was having a heck of a time trying to get these things open. And I didn't know if he was allowed to open them for himself because a lot of the stuff they're not allowed to do. So J says, “use your teeth, use your teeth.” So I'm trying and my teeth don't meet in the middle so I like couldn't get hold it there either. So I got the giggles and I started laughing and then I couldn't stop laughing. And then he started laughing because I was laughing so hard and so we're standing there with this ketchup and mustard that we could open and we're like in hysterics and he's like, “just go ask them if I can just open it.” I was like, “I have to stop laughing before I can go and ask them because I look like an idiot.” So I finally did go over and I said, “is he allowed to open his condiments or…” And they were like, “yeah, of course.”   Really would have been good to know that a couple of minutes ago. So like really silly stuff happens too and it's not all gloom and doom. And, and I guess that's something else you always see on TV, right? Like the people talking through the plexiglass are crying and they're threatening suicide and they're afraid because the Mobsters are coming to get… like, it's always terrible and heavy and the lighting is awful. It's always dark. Like in this place it’s bright fluorescent lights everywhere and white walls and you know. So it's not dark and heavy like I thought it would be.

F: And there's always people, other COs walking by. Last time we were there, they were training new COs. And it was like 15 COs would walk by through the visiting room and into other parts of the prison. And it was interesting to watch the new hirees and them, you know? And you're thinking to yourself boy. 

S: Yeah, as they would go through J would like quietly predict like, which ones were not going to last more than a week. 

F: Yes and it might surprise you. But… 

S: Yeah, they've lowered the age to 18 now. You can be a CO at 18 if you have your high school diploma, which is just really young. And I heard, I saw this debate online, I guess people say, “well, what's the big deal? Because you can go in the military at 18.” Which is absolutely true but you don't go into the military as like in charge of a unit of a hundred people. You go in as the bottom of the pecking order, right? And you have leaders above you, who. For this, you're going in and you're going to be the authority and that's really young, but anyway that's another episode.    Sorry. So. Do you… brutal honesty time. Do you enjoy anything about the visits? Or is it something that you do… 

F: I enjoy it. I…

S: Wow, quick answer. 

F: I mean, not all of it, of course, I enjoy like hearing about what's going on as far as how he's working, how he's making out in his incentive pod and what things are going well for him and what things are… most of the time it's up beat when I’m there with J. It's not, it's rarely downer or anything like that. That's good. The hard part is you have to get permission to go out if you have to pee. You have to go out both security doors, go to pee and you get go back out in the lobby and take your shoes off, go through that and go through the pat-down and this and that. And that’s…

S: Yeah, seven hours is a long time. Like you pretty much have to go to the bathroom at some point and we can't use the bathrooms that are in the room.

F: Right, they used to be able to use the bathrooms in the visiting rooms and then they stopped that and they make you go out and go through security and all that even though I was told that the amount of Contraband that came in… What af… during covid was…

S: There was no significant reduction in the amount of Contraband problems in the US prisons during the twelve, fifteen, eighteen months, whatever, that there was no visitation allowed anywhere. 

F: So obviously it's not coming in from people visiting.

S: I mean, I'm sure that there are people who visit who manage to bring in Contraband, but that's not the primary source of contraband. Yeah. Yeah. So what what's your impression of the officers that we have come in contact with.

F: The one guy that's left, I really liked him. What was his name? 

S: We don't do names. 

F: Oh okay, we don’t do names. 

S: There was one officer that you really liked, he's actually not there anymore. But what did you like about him? 

F: He was direct and he was stern, but he was fair and he was, you know, he seemed like a likable guy. He, he intermingled with you once in awhile where a lot of them were standoffish. And I don’t know what’s the word I want to say… mingle mingle he has to mingle a little bit because well, that's what humans do. That's what people do. If you don't mingle, you don't get to know a person or you can have a negative effect on people if you’re so serious all the time. 

S: Yeah, yeah, it was interesting with him because I always totally felt like I was deferring to him. Like, he felt like the authority in the room, totally. And I was not interested in getting in trouble with him at all, you know, like he carried himself with authority but he also just looked like his Common Sense was turned on all the time too. Like he was watching the room. He was looking for any signs of trouble. But he also understood that we were the parents of this person that was sitting at the table and we loved each other and we were trying to just catch up on a ton of life in seven hours and that that was like a good normal positive thing that we wanted to do not that we were somehow suspect for even wanting to come in.

And we're going to save the other half of our conversation for the part two of this episode, Fred visits prison. You can hear I think in what we were just talking about a complex problem that is there for correctional officers, overseeing visitation. I have really come to, I don't know, have empathy for them, I guess. They have to be eyeing all these visitors as if they’re suspect because they are. I mean, We're coming into a secure facility. We pose a security risk simply by being there. So, they have to look under our tongues, they have to look behind our ears and have us pull our pockets out and they have to pat us down and you have to shake out the bottom of bottom of your bra for them. And you know, it's it, it's weird. So, from that first moment that we come in, they are looking at us like we're suspect. And yet, I think that the most of them on some level understand that visitation is a good thing. That it's making their workplace actually safer because there are people coming in. Especially when there are, there are people who are coming in for the right reasons, they're coming in because they have a loved one that they want to stay connected to that they're trying to support in doing life while serving a prison sentence. There are unfortunately others who are coming in… there are people who come in with all kinds of attitude and they are clearly looking to just push buttons and break rules and see what they can get away with and, you know, but but for the people who are there visiting and they're clearly doing it for the right reasons, this is going to be a good visit, not a bad visit. There's an understanding, I'm sure not with everyone, but with a lot of staff that this is a good thing and we want to make this possible for people to do this. But we at the same time, we have to look at you like you're a security risk because you are. 

So what I have found to be really helpful in interacting with the various staffers in visitation  is to first of all, come in with a smile on my face because hardly anybody is smiling when I come in. So it automatically draws a little bit of attention to me. Simply by… I keep my shoulders back, I keep my chin up, and I smile. And when I first hand over my ID and start filling out my paperwork for today's visit, I say good morning to the sergeant who took my ID. And often that officer is startled and looks up and makes eye contact and says, “oh good morning.“ People come in for visits, often are not at all just polite, just basic friendly politeness and understandable because it's an intimidating thing. And there is an US versus them mentality and a lot of people come in on a visit see the staff as the enemy. But if you come into that space with the same kind of friendly politeness that you would use in the grocery store or at your dentist office, or talking to your neighbor, it can set a tone immediately… not anything that's going to get you special treatment, but it just diffuses some of that tension in the air for the both of you. And then later, if you make a misstep and you break one of the rules that you didn't realize you were breaking, and that officer has to call you on it there's often already going to be an assumption that you probably didn't mean to break that rule. I have to correct you, I have to tell you that you can't do that, but it's not a “now, you know better than that.” You know, they're coming at it because You treated them respectfully and politely, the moment you walked into their house. Because this is their house. You're on their Turf. This is their house. If you come up with an attitude that respects their Authority and also was friendly and polite because of their Humanity, it is much more likely that you get treated that way when you do goof and break one of the rules in their house. 

So if you're going on a visit, if you've been on visits before that haven't gone well, just keep that in mind. You can keep your shoulders back, your chin up, a smile on your face and you can communicate both I respect your Authority in this situation and I know that you are a person, not just a uniform. Good morning. Just a little friendly politeness. It can go a long way to breaking down the discomfort of a prison visit. 

All right. We're going to wrap this episode up with more teasers. I'm going to say we got good stuff coming. We've got a new application of the PrisonCare model that we have been working hard to get into good, good shape to articulate it to you. We’ve got new resources coming that will help people take advantage of those ideas, put them into practice. And this is going to be tools that that point more toward connecting with prison staff. 

So, most of the resources that we've made available up to this point have been aimed more at forming a Compassion Team that includes penpal encouragers. And we have all kinds of resources for writing letters, for learning to use virtues based language all of that kind of stuff. And we've said, and then if your compassion team wants to to focus on staff appreciation events and raising awareness about the challenges that people who work in Corrections face, you know, come up with some ideas for that you and your team can brainstorm ideas. We've kind of left that on you. And so we have a new, a new set of ideas that are much more practical and specific that we are going to be sharing with you in the coming weeks. 

So please keep listening to future episodes and please remember that we are a 100% compassionate person funded 501 c 3 non-profit. You know what that means. And we are also real people with real families, real lives. You just heard the first half of a conversation with my husband who never expected that he was going to be married to somebody who was going to start a nonprofit called PrisonCare. This whole thing was not something we ever saw coming and it's not just my thing. It’s affected every single one of us. 

So we're going to hopefully do some episodes in the future with other families who have incarcerated loved ones and we're going to try to open up for you some of that reality. You hear from me and my experience all the time but even hearing from my husband it's a slightly different experience for him, right? And there are families for whom it is a profoundly different experience and deeply challenging in ways that it is not for us. So if you are listening to this and you would like to share your story. You have a loved one who's incarcerated. You would like to be interviewed on the PrisonCare podcast. Drop me an email. Tell me a little bit about your story and we'll see whether it might be a good fit for the podcast. We all have a lot to learn from each other. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being willing to learn. Thank you so much for caring.  

Thanks for listening to The PrisonCare Podcast. Be sure to visit us at prisoncare.org. PrisonCare: equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters.