The PrisonCare Podcast
The PrisonCare Podcast
Can We Talk? (Seriously, like talk therapy...)
Continuing to learn about prison culture "in real time" with Sabrina and J as they walk through the uncharted territory that follows a rules violation, this week's episode examines the difficulties faced by people undergoing serious stress, and the limitations placed on even the simplest stress-management efforts, for residents and staff alike. And can someone please explain why talk therapy is not a priority in prison budgets? Let's look through a lens of common sense for a moment, if we can.
(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.”
Support PrisonCare with a donation of any size:
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
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:
(theme music outro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I’ll wait. I'll wait until I break.”
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.”
Support PrisonCare with a donation of any size:
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
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:
(theme music outro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I’ll wait. I'll wait until I break.”
——————————————————-
Hello, friends!
I’m glad you decided to listen today. I said last week that we would get back to a topic this week, and we will…kinda-sorta. I have gotten feedback from a number of you that sharing “in real time” what is happening with J and some of his friends during this rough stretch in his prison sentence is teaching you a lot. So I’ve decided the topic for now needs to remain focused on what J, his friends, his family, and the facilities in which he is living are dealing with in light of a rules violation and everyone’s responses to it.
This is a real topic that I would have planned into the content calendar for The PrisonCare Podcast if I had ever lived through it before. This IS my first rodeo, my first experience with what a rules violation does, and I am bringing you all along with me as I try to navigate it, while allowing the PrisonCare mission to guide me.
PrisonCare is non-partisan. First, last, and always.
I’m not on the side of the prisoner, all fury at the staffers who imprison him…even though I gave birth to that prisoner, and love him fiercely.
I am on the side of LOVE - a love that seeks holistic health and life for all individuals, simply because they ARE individual humans, each one worthy of meaningful life and relationships. I am all fury at the assumptions, and habits, and bureaucracy, and petty agendas that stress and chip away at the well-being of everyone living and working in this system.
Before anyone hears some unrealistic flower-child sentiment in that statement, remember where I am right now, what I am walking through. My lived experience in this moment gives me the right to speak with absolute authority. If I am guided by PrisonCare’s mission - to support positive prison culture from the outside, because EVERYONE on the inside matters - this week, I am walking the talk. I am living in the reality of the complex emotions, the fear, the resentment, the frustration, the grief.
So let me be the guinea pig, and you guys be the lab assistants who take notes on this experiment. I’ll do what I can to allow you to observe what it looks like when real people with real prison sentences and real mental illness walk through that sentence with people on the outside who love them and are trying to help…all while choosing to believe that every person on the inside of the razor wire fence matters, so no one can simply be written off as worthless.
I volunteer as tribute. Go District 12.
I can’t speak for J as to this experiment. His lived experience is separate from mine and entirely unique. He believes in the mission of PrisonCare. He co-founded this organization with me. But the burdens on him, the stresses, the limitations placed on him by his brain chemistry make it challenging in a different way, and part of what I am learning from is HIS journey.
See, I can learn from my own experiences that each road bump CAN be framed within the PrisonCare paradigm. I can see the nuance and the complexity for the staff, even when my heart is bleeding for my kid who has a DOC number. I am on the outside. That is the population I represent.
I can get a break from all of it. The people on the inside cannot.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like this stuff isn’t on my mind 24/7. Ask my husband, Fred, if I am often distracted while we are eating together, or watching TV, or driving to church. But there’s the thing — I get to eat with the people I’ve chosen. I get to watch TV sitting on the couch next to my spouse. I get to drive to church and see all my people there.
That’s a break from it. That’s the part the people inside the walls don’t get, even when they need it more than I do.
A few examples of what I’m talking about:
Physical touch is hugely healing for many people when they are in deep distress. That’s why we hug people, or at least take their hand as we walk through the receiving line at a funeral. That’s why we cry on each other’s shoulders.
Physical touch inside a prison is not an acceptable thing. It is immediately suspect — among residents: a way to pass contraband, the beginning of an altercation, proof of a sexual relationship that is a rules violation. No touching. Among staff: sign of weakness, looks unprofessional, crosses boundaries if residents are involved.
Quiet time, a comforting space, time to attend to yourself is a go-to for most of us. I spent much of yesterday afternoon on the squishy love seat in my living room, curled around a throw pillow I particularly like, breathing in the scent of calming lavender and patchouli, dealing with no one for a couple of hours.
Residents in prison can never fully get away from people. There is no upholstered furniture. There is nothing but concrete and metal and the smells of people. For staff, there may be an upholstered office chair, sure. But there is not even a moment of dealing with no one, attending to self. Not even for a moment. A Correctional Officer who stops focusing on the people around them is a CO who just might die at work today. Always vigilant is the only way to do this job.
Sleep is a go-to for me when stress becomes overwhelming. I crashed during a show on TV last night at 8:30. I woke up several times during the night, but always drifted back off. And when I actually got up this morning, it was an hour after my usual 6:00 a.m. wake up.
J described his night during a phone call a few days ago. He is currently housed in a 3-tier open pod. That means cells surrounding an open, common area, three stories high, so think convention center atrium, only really ugly. And there are no doors on the cells, just bars. This is an old prison. So you can’t shut the door for even a little sound muffling. While he lay on his metal bunk with a 1 - 1/2 “ foam pad, trying to sleep to get a few hours break from the anxiety, there was another inmate somewhere in that echoing space that screamed, “Help!” over and over and over. This guy would then stop for a couple of minutes, just long enough for J to think, “Oh, my gosh, he’s dead. What happened?!” And then the same voice would echo through the space, moaning with satisfaction, calling out, “yeah, that’s right baby, that’s right…” A few minutes silence, and then the screaming for help would start again.
And for Correctional Officers, sleep-deprivation is simply the name of the game. They work long hours in short-staffed facilities (because there is a nationwide staffing crisis in prisons in the U.S.). They have mandatory hold-overs for an extra 2 - 8 hours on the regular. They often have a one-hour commute home because prisons are typically built in the middle of nowhere. The prison must be staffed 24 hours a day, so they are often adjusting to a different shift than the one they most often work. Their circadian rhythms simply don’t exist anymore.
I have been trying to watch what I eat over the last couple of months, trying to cook more, use whole foods instead of processed short-cuts, limit sugar…all because I’ve noticed the stress of the last few years taking a toll on my body, and I wonder if I can improve my joint pain levels with an anti-inflammatory approach to feeding myself. Eating wisely is a universally-respected component of stress management, right?
J eats what he is given in the chow hall. IF he had food in his box that he had bought from commissary, it would all be highly, highly processed (because how else would it stay edible for months without refrigeration). Much of it will be very high in sugar. But since he is in his third week of abnormal housing in the wake of the rules violation, he has no box to pull food from. And CO’s? They are forever at the mercy of whatever food they can throw together. They eat from the prison kitchen or from vending machines in a staff lounge. Bringing food in is highly complicated, due to concerns about contraband. And living with a sleep schedule that is off does weird things to your metabolism and hunger, and people are often tempted to rely on sugar and caffeine to manage the work shift.
It goes on and on, and I think by now you get the idea.
My primary point is this: I don’t get to choose for anyone but myself. Right now, J is trying to still believe that everyone on the inside matters, but he is pretty overwhelmed with simply trying to take care of himself enough to stay alive.
And that’s the mission of PrisonCare, Inc. Our goal is to raise awareness and equip people like ME, on the outside, to support a more positive, less toxic culture on the inside. Any prison inmates or staff who catch hold of the vision and want to participate in carrying out the mission are so very welcome…but they are not the ones supposed to bear this burden. We are. It is our job as a society, that requires the existence and use of prisons to support THEM, to care about THEM, to remember THEIR needs behind the walls.
So, perhaps by bringing you along on my personal journey in something like real-time, I will raise your awareness. Heck, I’m learning stuff I never knew about prison culture, and I’ve had a loved one inside for 5 years! Perhaps I will equip you to remember, to care, and to support the people inside prisons, no matter which uniforms they wear.
Where are we now, on July 17, 2023?
I speak to J every day for a 10-minute phone call, either once or twice each day, depending on whether or not he can get to the front of the line a second time. He says there are long lines for the phones. We pay for these calls, of course, with a pre-paid phone account I put money on monthly that allows him to call my number. If he wants to call other people, he has to purchase phone time through commissary. Because he is in temporary housing, that is hard to get, so he is calling only me for the present. That’s part of why he is so eager for Jpay emails from other people — and thank you to the many folks who have been sending him encouragement! His Mum is the only voice on the other end of the phone right now.
He has been in a two-man cell in a very old building. Most of the cells on the 3-tier pod are single cells, but one row is doubles. He says that he can stand in the middle of the cell and reach out to touch both walls simultaneously. The metal toilet/sink combo is 18 inches from the lower bunk. There is no door, just a wall of bars looking out onto the common area. He has had to share with a new cellie every other day, so far.
They can’t have food in their cells, so even if he had been able to order commissary food at this point, he wouldn’t be allowed. There is a problem with roaches and rats in this facility, due to its age, I guess. I’ll just leave that there, because that’s part of what keeps waking me up in the middle of the night when I’m trying to hide from my anxiety — I dream about him dealing with that problem.
Staff are professional, from what he has observed so far. He says there is a difference in the vibe off of staffers, different from the private prison where he was before. He can’t exactly articulate it, but he says it’s as if they seem more comfortable in their role, like they are doing their job rather than trying to prove that they are doing things right. That might not be a perfect way of saying it. But he told me that he always felt before like staff around him felt as if they were one-step away from the chopping block with the administration, where he was housed before, and that here in this state facility, there seems to be less of that tension.
In a strange plot twist, three days ago a bus rolled up from his former facility, and the friend with whom he had the argument that started this whole mess got off the bus. Yup. That guy got written up for fighting…with J…and was then shipped out to the same facility where J is now. That is supposed to be a no-no. If two guys fought, they are to be forever kept separate, so they don’t fight again and bring more people into it.
J asked around, and it appears that there never was any serious concern at the previous prison about the two of them; staff obviously knew that there was no real fight that took place, and these two are NOT a danger if they are housed in the same facility. Which raises further questions as to why any of this happened in the first place…and certainly why it was ruled that both guys had to be shipped out entirely.
J let his friend know that he was open to talk, and they had a good heart-to-heart. The friend expressed deep sorrow at all that had happened because of his short-fuse and the argument that started it all. They are both hoping for good things for each other, even though they will probably never be close again like they once were.
J ran into another old friend who had transferred out of the other prison some time ago. He has spent time in one prison, and was now again in temporary housing, awaiting placement in a prison with better mental health services. Like J, he has some significant needs that could not be met where he was. In fact, he was tested by gang members immediately after his arrival at the other prison, and the level of threat was such that he did what is called “checking in.”
When a resident is heavily threatened by someone - usually gangs - they are often given three choices: join with us and do whatever we tell you to do, submit to sexual assault, or agree to let us jump you, and if you survive the beating, we’ll leave you alone from then on. Sometimes this is called a “heart-check.”
What some people do in the face of this threat is “check-in” to solitary, or administrative segregation. If an inmate refuses to leave their cell when they are ordered to by an officer (like at Count time when they are told to come and stand beside their door), they are automatically sent to the hole for refusing to comply. When they are placed in solitary confinement, they are asked why they refused to comply.
This is the point in the story where you would *think* they would say, “because I wasn’t willing to work for a gang, be raped, or be beaten.” But they don’t say that, because that would be snitching. So they look the officer in the eye and say, “I have to be moved. I can’t live there. You have to move me.” And no matter how many times they are asked WHY they can’t live there, they just keep answering, “You have to move me.”
The staff know why. They also know why the inmate won’t give them a straight answer. “Snitches get stitches," is not a made-up-for-TV thing. It’s real. The gangs have a lot of reach, much more than anyone would like for them to. If you tell who threatened you, there WILL be retaliation. So the game is played, and eventually the staff either move you to new housing, or they keep you in ad-seg for refusal to cooperate, or they ship you out to another facility, if that is in the best interest of their facility overall.
This a no-win for everyone. The staff hate this, because they understand all of the complexity and still have to jump through the hoops of protocol. The protocol isn’t working for anyone, but they have to follow it anyway. The resident who checked-in hates it, because ad-seg is a nightmare way of life, and they have NO idea how long they will be there. In the case of J’s friend, his check-in lasted six weeks before he was transferred out. Six weeks. And I am told that six weeks is nothing — the guy got off easy. There are people in ad-seg for years, all in the wake of what started as a check-in to preserve their own safety.
Do I really need to remind anyone that the system is fundamentally broken?
*sigh*
J met with a Sgt. yesterday to discuss his situation, to verify his charges, and to learn what he could about where he will be going and when. The Sgt. was kind, knowledgable and helpful. He pulled up info on the computer and confirmed that destruction of property is J’s only charge. He saw proof of his work in the dog program, and even some of the pro-social volunteer choices he has made in the past that were significant enough to get a positive note made in his file by a staffer somewhere.
And then came the bad news. While his Psych Code has indeed been moved up to 4, he is still showing as “available” to any medium security prison in the state, with the exception of the one he just came from. While there are only 4 prisons with mental health services sufficient to handle an inmate with a P4 psych code, he is showing as available to a bunch of prisons with little to no mental health services at all.
He called me after that meeting, in a panic. He is hanging on by a thread as it is, and the thought of surviving the long suicide watch, and limping through this temporary housing situation breath by breath, just to be shipped out to someplace with no help for him at all is terrifying. The Sgt. agreed that this was an incorrect setting on his file, and that he should only be available to move to a prison with mental health services, but said he could not fix it himself, and would talk to someone with more authority.
I did what I could find to do. I left a long voicemail for the Case Management dept. and explained in detail J’s situation. I also left a long voicemail at the state Dept. of Corrections Constituent Services helpline, and followed up with an email to their office as well. But who knows?
And that’s where we are now, in that holding pattern.
One final thought as I wrap up this episode.
If you had a co-worker going through a scenario that looked like this:
- major family stress at home, divorce looming, something like that
- housing issues, having to crash on a friend’s couch while in-between situations
- the loss of a best friend
- AND chronic mental illness, currently showing active symptoms
wouldn’t you ask if they had anyone to talk to, a counselor or therapist? Wouldn’t you immediately think that would probably be a help to them in making good choices rather than destructive ones?
This is not rocket-science, right? We know that talking through problems with someone who has some wisdom, some training in helping guide people through hard patches, is helpful. There are free suicide hotlines in this country because we know that talking to someone can mean the difference between death and life for a person undergoing a mental health crisis.
The absence of talk-therapy in prison is inexcusable.
If I swooped in from above with a magic fairy wand to fix all that is toxic in the prison system in the United States, one of the first things I would sprinkle fairy dust on is mental health services. I would magically provide a huge staff of counselors (not even psychologists! we could make great use of counselors with all degrees of training and experience!) and they would be available to talk to any correctional officers or residents who wanted to try talk therapy.
There would a ton of the people inside the prison, wearing both kinds of uniforms, who would scoff at the offer. That’s okay. We’ll sprinkle fairy dust on them later, and find other ways to help them.
But for those who are wise enough to know that talking to someone on a regular basis when going through crisis would help…get them an appointment! Give them a wise and caring ear. Give them a sounding board to test their choices with. This is so obvious that it hurts my fingers to type these words. Why is this not a financial priority for prison budgets?
Start with the folks who are willing to try to get healthy. Figure out what to do with the knuckleheads who don’t want to change their lives later. Do something simple to facilitate rehabilitation - the restoring to health of something that is injured, or ill, or has been imprisoned - just by giving them access to regular talk therapy.
That’s what J would gladly trade most anything he has for just now.
And he is not the only one. There are so many people inside prison cells who ARE determined to change, to grow, and to become whole. And there are so many prison staff who don’t want to descend into bitterness, cynicism, depression, anger, and fear. Many correctional officers go into this field thinking they will be able to make a positive difference in the world as they serve society in this role. They need to have easy access to professional counseling. Many of them want it, and those who don’t just might come around if they saw their colleagues begin to thrive where once they simply survived.
Does this sound important to you? I hope so.
To learn more, visit prisoncare.org. Consider getting involved. Host a house party to raise awareness among wise and compassionate people in your life who may know next-to-nothing about the needs of prison neighborhoods. Invite me over, either virtually or in person. Give to support our work. We’re continuing to create mental wellness resources for incarcerated people, and sponsoring the creation of one of those PDFs is great way to let your spare change make a difference in the life of someone who is suffering.
Most important, remember. Don’t allow the people behind the walls be forgotten and invisible. Talk about it. Pray for it. Send out some encouragement in an email. We can do better.
Thanks for caring, friends!