Monthly Archives: March 2016

Hey Corrections, Let’s Start Correcting

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Among the words I live by are these:  “You don’t know her/his story.”  When I keep that in mind I tend not to be too quick to pass judgement on someone concerning a comment or action that I may passionately find inappropriate or beyond the pale.  One never knows what kind of abuse, assault, neglect or harm that the next person has suffered through.  Thus, one must be careful.

That is my policy, so please know that I am not being judgmental or in any way cavalier in sharing the following quotes with you.  I know the stories of these young men. Their story is, at least in part, my story.

“Who that is?”…..”Hey C.O., what time it is?”……”Nigga, you really think that green beans is better for you than Ramen noodles?  If I open up a can of green beans and let them sit while I’m out trappin (hustling), when I come back tomorrow them shits is gonna be spoiled.  I open a Ramen noodle and not eat it till next year!  How the fuck is green beans better?”

Oh, but there is more, so much horrible more.

“Nigga, if you can’t dunk the ball for these people, catch the ball for these people, or blow up on YouTube with your spit (rap), you know you got one choice after that; get your pole (gun) and check a bag (sell drugs).  That’s what’s real, that’s a nigga’s Fortune 500.”

These are constant, every day, and all day statements and conversations with very little variation.  I find it overwhelming.  I do not simply mean the apparent illiteracy to construct a proper sentence, the hopelessness, and open talk of criminality, but I too mean to stand here as a modern day witness of classical philosophical theory, the Cave.  They cannot see beyond their immediate environment, thus they believe that nothing else is available, that there is nothing more within their reach.  They do not realize that there is more to be had because they have never intellectually, and quite often physically, ventured beyond the Cave, the hood.

To a certain extent they are correct, at a certain level of un-education [cue up Stacy Lattisaw] “it’s gonna take a miracle” to live wholesome and productive lives, the vicissitudes of a capitalistic economy dictate as much.

With that as a part of the backdrop I quite easily contend that among the horrendous things that were done to Black folk during the Clinton years was the barring of prisoners from receiving Pell grants.  College education is a peep into the world beyond the Cave, but Clinton obstructed that view and yet we are smiling, shuffling and propelling his literal bedfellow back to the White House.  Enough said, I do not want to be disagreeable simply because I disagree.

Post-secondary education is the only known and proven method of arresting recidivism, not slowing it, but stopping it.  (Shameless plug: see my book “New Slaves, Same Ol’ Economy” coming to you soon).  It is high time that the Department of Corrections start CORRECTING, bring PSE back to prisoners by reinstating Pell grants.  Maybe then we will have a few more green bean eaters.  That alone will save the country billions in health care dollars, and offset the cost of education.

Of Plantations, Slaves, and Overseers

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The citizens of the United States have 200 billion of their dollars spent annually on the criminal justice systems, or more appositely stated, on the new plantation.  The total number of overseers employed by these plantations exceeds the collective total of employees of Wal-Mart, GM, and Ford, the three largest corporate employers in the USA who employ about 2.5 million Americans.  Presented with that set of facts, one does not have to be an Economics major to conclude that the economy has a vested interest in the survival of the plantation.  Yes, the economy needs crime and criminals, slaves.  Three million families are dependent upon the paycheck earned by the breadwinner working for the criminal justice system, and that three million does not take account of those businesses and persons who contract supplies and services to the plantation.  Did someone say long live crime?

Crime is not on life support, but its health is waning, irrespective of the hyper-dramatic and over inflated media accounts that are piped into our homes by cable, Dish, and DIRECTV each evening.  The truth of the matter is that crime peaked in 1992 and has continued to fall at a severe rate ever since.  Herein lies the problem:  millions of Americans are dependent upon the plantation for their bread and circus.  Fewer prisons and prisoners would be catastrophic, yet fewer people are breaking the law.  A conundrum?  Not really.  The slaves who are currently on the plantation must remain for longer periods.  As for the few who are emancipated after years of captivity, they must be incentivized to make haste in their return.  The hopeless must fail for the heartless to succeed, and I will show you two cases that are but a microcosm of just that.

Since the Department of Corrections merely punishes as opposed to correcting, with the help of my resilient wife, I corrected myself.   I relinquished all ties with gangs.  I quit gambling.  I started tutoring and mentoring.  I put every dollar that my mother left me into earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree.  I have been nothing short of a model inmate, often speaking on panels to outside visitors, and major incident report free for more than ten years.   A now retired, highly place prison official offered the following in support of my release to the Illinois review board:

…The past is our baggage; the gauge by which we are too often defined.  Johnny seems to have come to terms with his.  He knows and regrets it. He understands the need to remember but not dwell on it as the past is merely lessons, which, if learned and internalized, steel passion, drive and tenacity.  There are a number of men in our institution who deserve another chance and, if given, will manage to fritter it away.  I don’t believe Johnny Pippins is among that group. He came into prison a defiant, selfish, “cornered the market on enlightenment” man-child.  Despite all that is dysfunctional about the prison environment, he sought and discovered that which is redeeming and found purpose.  He beat the odds and deserves his second chance; this time as a fine citizen.

Even with the weight of all of the above, I was not allowed to leave the plantation.

The second case is a conversation that took place between two slaves concerning a recently emancipated slave.  The morning news broadcast carried a story of a former “eighty-five percenter” inmate who we called “Treetop.”  An “eighty-five percenter” is a state inmate that has been sentenced to serve 85%, or mandatory minimum, of their sentence under Bill Clinton’s infamous crime bill which he force fed to the states.  Treetop had served 18 years of his 25-year sentence, and had reoffended after having only been released for several weeks.  These two inmates were assuring each other how much of a stupid motherfucker Treetop was/is.   I was keeping my comments to myself until they asked what I thought.

I asked them if I were correct in assuming that whenever they put their car into reverse that their expectation was that the car would go backwards.  Of course, they both agreed.  I offered that Treetop went backward, because the Department of Corrections placed his gear in reverse.  One does not have to be able to split an atom in order to figure out that if you lock a person in a tiny bathroom with a twin bed in it for 18 years and then send him home with $100 and a GED that he is probably going to fail.  That is the expectation, the car is in reverse.  His mother is probably deceased, his wife or girlfriend moved on 15 years ago, his kids are grown—they do not know him or want to be bothered with him, and when he hears “on-line” he thinks that it has something to do with waiting to be served at the local supermarket.  He has no job skills, no work history, no post-secondary education, his drug problem nor any of his other pathologies have been dealt with, so the expectation would have to be that he is going to reoffend.  He did not possess the means or wherewithal to self-correct. He was incentivized to make a speedy return to the plantation.

I contend that the shame is not on Treetop, the slave, but is on the plantation and its overseers.  The taxpayers of the state paid more than $600,000 to incarcerate him ($36,000*17 years), and the return on their investment was someone who robbed a bank within a month.  Or was this investment made to keep 3 million Americans employed as was the case with the present writer?  In my own case I often think of Fredrick Douglas, given all of the résistance that I receive regarding school, in his writing entitled Narrative,

“…To use his own words further, he said, ‘if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.  A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.  Now if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.  He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.  As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm it would make him discontented and unhappy’….”

I am trying to leave the plantation, as I do not believe that I am any longer fit to be a slave, but the survival of the economy seems to be far more important.

Life in the Gulag in Illinois

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In my new and yet to be released book entitled “New Slaves, Same Ol’ Economy” I made a vow of self-preservation by promising not to write about any place where I had personally been incarcerated.  I have a couple of reasons for that decision, the first one is I simply did not want it to read as autobiographical (I am working on an autobiography, “Shattered”).  The second reason is the self-preservation I mentioned earlier.  Often there is a heavy toll exacted from those who speak the truth to, or about, power.  I do not think that anyone would list me among cowards, but too, I must confess that I am not an overly brave soul either.  I believe that discretion is the better part of valor, translated: a good run beats a bad stand.  I am not necessarily reneging on that vow, as no such writing will appear in the book (it is headed for press), however I must use this present forum to bring you up to speed on the current inhumanity that I and about 2500 others are suffering through.  That item that you saw blowing in the wind was caution.

Everyone who reads my writing, or knows my story, is aware that my misconduct netted me sentences both in Iowa and Illinois.  Although I am in the middle of a Master’s program, that I will never be allowed to complete in Illinois, the state of Iowa paroled me to that outstanding Illinois detainer.  With the help of some gracious corrections officials we hatched a plan that would allow me to get processed in Illinois and then transferred back to Iowa under the Interstate Compact agreement.  This would not only allow me to finish my statistics degree, but to perhaps pick up an MBA as well.  Not to mention continuing to be close to my family.  On Thursday February 11th, I was transported to the Northern Reception and Classification Center for the Illinois Department of Corrections at Stateville.  I have continuously bounced between shock, awe, and disbelief since I arrived.

When we arrived we spent approximately an hour in the transport van waiting to get into the sally port to unload.  While there were law enforcement agencies from other counties around the state waiting to drop off prisoners, the wait can primarily be attributed to Cook County/Chicago.  Cook County makes the short trek out to Joliet four times a week to feed the mass incarceration meter, and each time they bring approximately 120 new slaves.  Incredible.

As I waited in the back of the van with Rock Island County’s other seven prisoners I stared at the wall of the actual prison, Stateville.  I stared at the place that had confined Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy. I stared, and I wondered what the hell I had done to my life.

The Reception Center looks like some highly secure warehouse or farm building constructed of concrete and corrugated steel.  Once we were finally inside the first thing I saw was several birds flying near the ceiling, and the first thing I heard was a guard yelling to another group, “sit down and shut the fuck up!”  They are not Iowa nice.  After the leg irons and restraining belts were removed we were each given a warm carton of milk and a soy/mystery meat sandwich with bread that had to have been baked sometime during the Jackson’s Victory tour.  With our inedibles in hand, we were directed into one of five holding cages that the inmates refer to as “bird cages.”  I assume because there is no wall, everything on the cage, including its roof, is made of rubber covered chain link.  These cages sit at the far edge of a room that was approximately 45 o F.  All of the guards had on winter garb.  The cages have enough wooden benches to seat about 40 people in each.  I counted 92 souls in the cage that I was in.

My group arrived at about 7 a.m. and from then until 8 p.m. we were shuffled in and out of the “bird cage”, with no particular order to various stations:  strip search, personal property, medical, dental, ICE, identification, etc.  During that same time span, we were called one name after another:  stupid motherfuckers, bitch motherfuckers, motherfucker motherfuckers, you name it, they said it.

Given the low level of cognitive ability on display by both the captors and the captives, I consider myself blessed to have ended up with the cell-mate that I got.  However, the cell.  The cell walls were filled with graffiti and pseudo-philosophy, and it looked as if it had never been cleaned.  It had not.  They do not make cleaning supplies and disinfectants available at NRC.  I cannot articulate the filth that one is submerged in.

Speaking of items not made available, you are not provided with, nor allowed to purchase, a spoon or any other eating utensil.  I have used a combination of my hands and the back cover of a paperback book to eat chili, beans and casseroles. I have never felt so dehumanized in my life.  In the mornings I take a handful of cereal followed by a small sip of milk.

The meals are horrendously small, but too from that misfortune: they only give us one roll of toilet paper per week.  Thus, the fewer bathroom visits from food intake, the better.

The slaves on this particular plantation are only allowed one shower per week as well, which I assume justifies the motel size bar of soap that one receives along with the toilet paper.

Although one’s stay here is two to six weeks or longer, the only jumpsuit you will receive is the one issued to you the day of arrival.  No, it will not be washed.

If you were fortunate enough to bring an envelope and stationary here with you from the county jail, you will still be forced to barter items from your pathetic meal trays to use an ink pen.  This facility does not sell or give out pens and pencils.  If you have no envelopes that costs you another item.  No paper, you know the drill.  In order that you may read this present writing I surrendered tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.

When I arrived here I had just a shade under eight years left to serve.  My out date is 1-6-24.  However, the record office has made such an incompetent mistake that they have my out date at 7-5-65, an unbelievable 49 years from now.  They will not listen to reason that this is 36 years beyond what I was ordered to serve at any point for Illinois.  No, it is MY responsibility to hire an attorney to fix it.  Speaking of attorneys, mine wrote me on the 12th and I did not receive it until the 20th.  It takes them 7 to 14 days to give you your mail.

Not unlike many other places, they have a Muslim problem here as well.  The Chaplain offered up Christian religious material to the Christian inmates, but when he got to my cell and I told him that I was Muslim, he informed me that he was not an imam and had nothing for me.  I’m sure it was not only my religion that offended him, but my breath as well.  I was issued some 1-1/2 inch apparatus along with a tube of what looks like hair gel, to handle my dental hygiene.

These practices are far beyond the pale of decency.  I realize that some of it is related to budget; more people are locked up than can be afforded.  Further, some of these woes are related to poor staffing.  There are simply some human beings who should not be allowed to work with other human beings. However most of the problem is previously failed leadership.  From a distance, I know the man that now heads the Illinois DOC, by virtue of him having formerly headed the Iowa DOC.  I do not believe that he will allow this madness to continue, that is assuming that the atrocities are not so interwoven into the fabric that he is compelled to throw up both hands and walk away.

Initially I balked at the cost my wife and I would incur for the interstate compact, however tonight, I could easily be persuaded to give up a kidney in order to get back to Iowa.