There is an old adage in politics, “if you ain’t at the table, you’re on the menu.”  That is to say, if no one is speaking up for your issue, then that issue will escape consideration.  Staying in the world of clichés, “power cedes nothing without demand.”

Many people have been speaking to the issue of criminal justice, according to their own description.  However, what they are calling Criminal Justice Reform is more correctly labeled Law Enforcement Reform.  My two cents of the criminal justice coin concerns prisoners, their treatment, and lack of reform.  More than forty years ago we Americans listened to the powers that be and embarked upon the path of lock ’em up and give ’em enough to stay alive.  This draconian stance has served but two ends:  ballooning the incarcerated population, and swelling the budget.

By virtue of my pen, I have invited myself to dinner.  Should you notice that my table etiquette is a bit lacking, bear in mind that I was all but raised on a slave plantation.

It goes without saying, no matter how egalitarian a society strives to be, human nature will bear out a need for jails and prisons.  A casual observer will encounter no difficulty finding criminality and inhumanity, even in the communities of the highest socio-economic reaches.  Utopia is a unicorn.  We need prisons.  The most progressively liberal soul can offer but tongue-in-cheek opposition to that assertion.  However, if we are indeed going to be a civilized society, who segregates the criminal and inhumane, would we not stand accused of dissimulation if not out and out hypocrisy, if we were to subject the criminal and the inhumane to crime and inhumanity of our own?

Another reality of the instant topic is that even once the criminal and inhumane are segregated within the confines of an institution, some of them will prove in need of even further corrective action.  Yet I am certain all will agree that depriving ANY human being of water is not a fitting course of corrective action.

We all know the “rule of 3’s” :  3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food.  Anything beyond these limits will almost always result in death.

The family of Terrill Thomas (who suffered from bipolar disorder), are trying to wrap their minds around the reality that their loved one went more than twice the prescribed 3 day limit without water.  Terrill suffered in a cell for seven days without water as a corrective action for violating jail rules, and he died of dehydration.  Punishing inmates by shutting off their water is considered a permissible corrective action in the Milwaukee County Jail under Sheriff David Clarke, who is a right wing, tea partying, orange Kool-Aid drinking, yessir bossin’, ill-informed, academic plagiarizing, testosterone deficient, should-have-been-a-miscarriage, self-hating, milksop miscreant. (I warned you that I was a bit uncouth and my table manners ain’t the best).

Further, in an absolute display of we-don’t-get-it-ness, the sheriff and his posse, just a few weeks after killing Terrill, turned off the water of two more inmates, who put the public at risk by covering their cell windows.  One of these inmates was actually “on suicide watch and coughing up blood” when they shut his water off.

Is this the best policy that tax payers can get for their 200 billion dollars a year?  And that figure does not include the tens of millions that will be paid out to the family of Terrill Thomas, since his death was ruled criminal by an inquest jury.

Were you to mistake Terrill Thomas’ death for an isolated incident, then that is exactly what you would be, mistaken.   These incidents are but a day at the office in the world of corrections.  Be on the lookout for my book, “If These Walls Could Talk” where I take the reader on a deep plunge into the cesspool of the American correctional system.  Most readers, I am sure, will be surprised by the crime and inhumanity being doled out by agents of the state.  From boiling a disabled man alive, to the rape of a female inmate so vicious she had to have rectal reconstructive surgery, to the shooting deaths of two handcuffed inmates, to starvation in private prisons, to rapes committed by chaplains, to the poisoning death of inmates by guards, to the murder for hire plots, and the list goes on and on and on.

There are those that would rather I shush, but ironically these same persons will recognize the First Amendment rights of a clan of mouth-breathing Neanderthals to carry tiki torches through the streets of Charlottesville chanting simpleton Nazi rhetoric. Why the need to extinguish MY torch?  I’ve never endorsed or condoned even a hand slap of violence.  I’ve done nothing more but offer evidence to support policy change that would stifle recidivism and suppress the oxygen of ignorance that fuels the fire of violence in our streets.

There was another inmate who had the audacity to crash the dinner party.  He once said, “I came here to tell the truth.  If the truth is anti-American, blame the truth—not me.”  I fancy myself the less elegant, less intelligent, and less handsome step-cousin of brother Malcolm, and I too simply tell the truth.

I believe in the power of the pen, the ink of a scholar is far weightier than the blood of a martyr.  Based on that belief, I refuse to relinquish my seat at the table, and yes, I often talk with my mouth full.

Johnny Pippins

“The benefits of increased incarceration would be enjoyed disproportionately by Black Americans….”

         Why the long faces. Black people?  I mean really, did you actually believe that you were in fact penciled-in for his first one hundred days?  The title of this commentary is not simply a quote from an ill-reputed research article, but it too has become a bipartisan, political truth.  Unfortunately, it will remain the truth as long as companies like Microsoft, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lilly, Koch Industries, Nintendo, Starbucks, and a multitude of others need it to be the truth.

            During the run up to the 2016 election cycle there were voices of dissent from two popular African American thinkers—Dr. Cornell West and Tavis Smiley.  They shouted into the echo chamber, “Quit giving your vote away.”  That message seemed to reverberate for a while with other African Americans, sending Democrats into a panic that bordered despair and Republicans so much more near an earthly nirvana.  The Black vote just may be in play.

            Throughout the primary season both sides of the aisle sought out data that would allow them to conjure up the perfect lie, permitting them to lock up this voting bloc.  What do Black folk want?  They had to figure out what promise, that need not be kept, must be made to both ensure the vote and secure their own political aspirations.

            Oddly enough, they did not have to make promises that went beyond their populist message of gainful employment, a living wage, decreasing the wealth gap, guaranteed health care, and affordable education.  For if they were to venture but one step beyond that threshold they would stand accused of increasing the size of government, political suicide.  And really, aren’t these socioeconomic deficiencies, enumerated above, especially prevalent in many Black communities?  One would think that a candidate would not only have to promise these voters these things, but that they would have to be promised in exponential quantities above and beyond what was promised to others.  However, they came with the perfect message: a promise that both included all of what we have mentioned, and actually decreased the size of government.  Their message to Black folk was a simple one, we will let your fathers, husbands, and sons come home, we will let them out of prison.

            Criminal justice reform became every ones calling card, and suddenly all and sundry had the numbers memorized: We are but 5% of the world’s population, but we have 25% of the world’s incarcerated population….There are 2.3 million Americans behind bars….1.53 million of them are non-violent property and drug offenders…Nearly half of the prison population is Black, while Blacks make up but 13% of the American citizenry. Everyone was on top of his or her stump speech game.  Nevertheless, most amazing to me was not the fact that Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and yes, the Donald were saying that something needed to be done about this surfeit abortion of liberty, but that Hillary Clinton was chiming in as well.

            No one was more responsible for putting poor people and Black people behind bars than Hillary and her husband.  While Papa Bush (President H.W.) had sponsored a paper entitled, “The Case for More Incarceration,” it was William Jefferson Clinton and Hillary Diane Rodham (Clinton) who actually implemented the recommendations of this poorly written, ill researched, and non-peer reviewed paper.  In this paper Attorney General William Barr says in his cover letter, “…Of course, we cannot incapacitate these criminals unless we build sufficient prison and jail space to house them….” What is more, in the final paragraph of the the paper’s introduction one will find this insightful glimpse:

Finally, amid all the concern we hear about high incarceration rates of young black men, one critical fact has been neglected: The benefits of increased incarceration would be enjoyed disproportionately by black Americans living in inner cities….

Therefore, Billy Jeff decided, what the heck since they would enjoy having their menfolk taken away, that he would adhere to the advice of his Republican brothers from the previous administration.  One hundred and fifty new prisons were built, 171 existing prisons were expanded, and 100,000 additional cops were placed on the streets. Meanwhile Madam Clinton made her rounds assuring one and all that not only were we prepared for the coming of this “super predator,” but too the ghetto was about to become a much better place.  Because of these policies, America reached and exceeded the 2 million prisoners mark.  Underprivileged communities became worse as there were hardly any men there to carry out the role of patriarch.  In addition, taxpayers received an annual bill of $200 billion for criminal justice.  The only net positive from this venture was that a bunch of otherwise unemployable people lucked up on good paying jobs as prison guards.

            Depending on how closely one was paying attention, you will have noticed that once Clinton and Trump won their respective primaries each of them were mum on criminal justice, in fact, the former confirmed her belief in the death penalty, while the latter announced that he was the “law and order candidate.”  The fact of the matter is that those companies that I mentioned earlier, along with the likes of AT&T, Bayer, Caterpillar, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Mary Kay, McDonald’s, Merck, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sprint, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Victoria’s Secret,  Wal-Mart, and still a plethora of others are heavy campaign donors who have a vested interest in maintaining mammoth incarceration numbers. Given that set of facts, one has to know that  neither of these Wall Street loyalists would have anything further to say about criminal justice reform after winning their primary, as the old adage goes, they ‘know which side their bread is buttered on.’  Why the criminal justice interest from these companies?  Because those fathers, husbands, and sons that the politicians promised to send home are actually slaves for these companies.  Yes, slaves, that is not a hyperbolic statement.  These companies have constructed 21^st century plantations within the walls of America’s prisons and as a result have watched their overhead decrease and their profit skyrocket. Not China (as the Donald is always so quick to point out), but in America.

            There is no amount of ring kissing and boot licking that Kanye, Steve Harvey, or Jim Brown can do to change this, “power cedes nothing without demand.”  A withholding of your nickels and dimes from the companies that were mentioned above (just as it was done during the Montgomery bus boycott) coupled with non-violent civil disobedience (which disrupts economics) will get the attention of the king.  Economic warfare works, even the Republican governor of Nevada, who is a former prosecutor, walked back plans of building a new prison/plantation given the economic concerns.  His majesty, Trump, will not incline to be nice to you simply because someone shows up to dance a jig, or that it will enrich his legacy.  In his estimation, a couple more billion dollars to enrich his pockets will augment that legacy far better than any award from the Urban League.

            I have returned, and mostly recovered, from my whirlwind tour of the Illinois Department of Corrections, but I do continue to struggle and reacclimatize to the much less aggressively inclined environment here in Iowa.  I am desperately trying to get my head back onto the cloud that it was once upon, but I know that those eight months of super-max changed me, irreparably so.  The good news though is that I am again enrolled in graduate courses and am at the moment wrapping up the analysis of data that I have gathered for a paper I intend to submit to the Midwest Sociological Society for peer review.  The research concerns the positive correlation between government sponsored/endorsed violence and criminal violence.

            I will give you a small peak into one of the truths that I uncovered during my recent research: the death penalty is a good predictor of violence.  The United States, collectively, have a mean of 362.6 violent crimes per 100,000 citizens, per state (with an SD—standard deviation—of 138.2).  However, the violent crime average of those states that have the death penalty is 373.4 (SD 125.8).  Yes, you are correct; the states with capital punishment are actually more violent on average, not less violent as one would conclude.  The logical takeaway from these data is that the death penalty is not a deterrent for violent crime.  The thing that one has to love about statistical analysis is that it is a science.  It is not partisan politics; it is not religion, nor ideology.  It is fact. Moreover, the fact is that the government killing people does not stop others from killing people.

            It does not daunt murder, and the reason for this lack of effectiveness is that most people who are found guilty of this offense are not violent under normal circumstances.  Some “un-normal” circumstance most often leads up to this event; an act of passion or an unfortunate escalation of a set of circumstances.  If Mrs. W had not come home to find Mr. W in bed with Ms. X, she would never have shot either of them. Meth Addict Y was simply trying to rob shopkeeper Z, and only shot him accidently during the tussle that ensued.  Mrs. W and Meth Addict Y did not ever consider the fact that they would be put to death, because they never considered killing another human being, nor were they thinking rationally when they found themselves thrust into that “un-normal” circumstance.  The death penalty is not a deterrent.

            Even in the face of these truths, state lawmakers in New Mexico have launched efforts to restore the state’s death penalty.  Economically these are rather lean times for state governments.  Thus it is peculiar indeed that a state that is among the lowest of total revenue generators, 43^rd in per capita income, and has more than 49% of its citizens living in poverty would choose one of the most expensive punishments available—it cost more to kill a convicted murderer than it does to incarcerate him for 40 years.

            This writer concedes that there is definitely something wrong in New Mexico as its violent crime per 100,000 crept up to near double of the national average in 2015 to a whopping 656.1.  However, the above facts demonstrate that becoming a death penalty state is not the answer.  Heck, lawmakers in New Mexico only need to consult with any of their clear-minded neighbors to their west and east, Arizona and Texas respectively.  These two states carry out government sponsored murder on the regular basis, yet they have violent crime rates that are habitually above the mean.

            Speaking of Texas, this state is so partial to its death penalty that some of its proxies ventured on to the foreign black-market to find a supplier for sodium thiopental.  Sodium thiopental is one the drugs used in the lethal injection cocktail, and whose European maker has refused to make available for the purpose of killing.  The feds confiscated Texas’ underground purchased shipment, and they are at present suing the federal government in an attempt to get it back.

            If the citizenry of a society decide that the conduct of a fellow citizen is so dangerous that he should no longer be allowed to dwell among the rest of the people, then one would extract a far fairer pound of flesh by compelling him to live in prison for 40 years rather than to die in prison after 4 years.  This logic serves another purpose as well; at least one can let him out if the system, which is in need of retooling, gets it wrong.  It seems as if there is not a week that goes by without a news segment concerning someone who has been exonerated and released after being incarcerated for something that they did not do.  This very scenario played out with enough consistency in the state of Illinois that it chose to abolish its death penalty.  The truth is often billed as convoluted and complicated, but most times it is clear eyed and simple:  dead men can’t be freed.

            What comes to mind when you think of prisoners, inmates, offenders, or any other appellation that has been affixed to incarcerated persons? Do you think murderers, rapists, robbers, and folk who are just generally violent? If so, you are not even half-right. Barely one-third of the people who fill the nations prisons live up to (or down to) that billing. The other two-thirds, roughly 1.5 million souls, are nonviolent property and drug offenders (1), most of whom are mentally ill or drug addicted; many of whom are mentally ill and drug addicted.

            I have yet another query for the reader.  Recall those 1.5 million souls—those petty thieves, burglars, joyriders, reefer smokers—do you think that they should be boiled alive, rectally sodomized, deprived of life saving health care, or starved to the point of emaciation? Heck, for that matter, what about the rapists, robbers, killers, and car-jackers, should they be subject to those crimes and indignities in a society that calls itself civilized even though they may have perpetrated the very same crimes upon others? As it turns out, both groups are imperiled and subjected to the aforementioned brutalities. These inhumanities happen with some measure of regularity in state and federally operated penal facilities, however the despicable acts are mainstays in private prisons. The Justice Department has finally said no more… well kinda. Let me explain.

            The most acrimonious medicine for the would-be-writer to swallow is the second rewrite, absolutely. The pen-person believes she or he had it correct from the beginning, and the first rewrite was but mere capitulation to the fragile ego of those who claim to know better, thus, to be told to do it again….Yes, I am still talking about private prisons; placate me, please. At any rate, I was in the midst of choking down the aforementioned bitter linctus, beginning my second rewrite, when I thought that my literary world had come crashing down upon me. On the front page of USA TODAY was an article entitled, “Justice to end use of private prisons” (2). I was crestfallen at first because I had been working on my first book initially entitled, “New Slaves, Same ‘Ol Economy: Incarceration, the Twenty-first Century Plantation” for several years. The headline, quite explicitly, suggested that half my book had just gone down the tubes since the Feds were certainly going to use the barbarities that I had written about as reasons for discontinuing the present practice of using private prisons. But then I read the article—is that not the advice of the old adage, peruse the pages cover be damned (well, I guess what they say is don’t judge a book by its cover).

            In the article, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, enumerated several reasons for deciding to take such action, 1) Private prisons do not cut costs substantially. I agree. Although these facilities were promoted as cost-cutters, in some instances they cost the taxpayers more money. 2) Private prisons do not offer inmates adequate programming. Amen. 3) The prison population has declined. Well…yeah, but only ever so slightly. We are still but 5% of the world’s population yet we host 25% of the world’s incarcerated (3). She also said, 4) Private prisons have a higher rate of inmate assaults on staff. To say that I was taken aback by this final reason would be an understatement, my mind was screaming ‘what the…#@$%!’ While it is definitely true that inmates assault staff—remember that we are dealing with a group that has some mentally ill people in it—however, those manners of assaults are dwarfed by the number of staff-on-inmate attacks (4).

            It strikes me as duplicitous, that even when sort of, kind of, almost doing the right thing, the voiceless remain the object of condemnation and censure by the powerful. They do not bother with informing the public of the ‘goings on’ lest they take a chance on letting truth get in the way. On the other hand, perhaps they worry that they may sully the reputation of those 1%ers who have made billions of dollars off this appalling public policy and business. Among said one percenters is the likes of that perennial humanitarian—tongue in cheek—Dick Cheney (5).

            The reprehensible conduct of private prison employees and their administrators is the primary reason that Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Male staff members, not other inmates, perpetrate the majority of prison rapes whether the victim is female or male (6). The Deputy AG failed to mention this fact even though it was her office that spearheaded the investigations into these offenses, and in addition, the Justice Department was charged with enforcing PREA. And that ain’t the half of it.

            Unfortunately, I do not have to break a sweat or even roll up my sleeves to tell you more of what she failed to mention. These abuses take place so often that just reciting the ones that I know off the top of my head should enrage you. Let us check my hypothesis.

            The DAG said not a single word about the two guards, Kevin Hessler and Alexander Diaz, who urinated and defecated in inmate’s food and drink (7). Why didn’t the DAG mention Jeffery Buller, an inmate who was denied his medicine for hereditary angioedema—he died from asphyxiation (7)? I read not one word of her citing the transgressions taking place at the Moss Criminal Justice Center where inmates were being charged $8 for an aspirin, (7). There was no reference to Autumn Miller who was refused a Pap smear and pregnancy test when she noticed that something was different with her body. She subsequently gave birth to a baby in the toilet; the baby lived for but four days, (7)—where was that ‘right to life’ crowd then, probably somewhere supporting the death penalty. There was not a single remark about the chaplain at Otter Creek Correctional Center who sexually abused several women, nor Eugene Pendleton a sexually deviant correctional supervisor employed at another facility—even though he had served more than two decades for murder—who raped several female inmates (7). Neither Estelle Richardson—who was beat to death—nor the nine other prisoners who died under mysterious circumstances at the Metro Detention Center received a passing word from the DAG. There is much more of this story to be told to the public, and I can only hope that my book proves to be one of those documents that changes the course of history by exposing these horrors.

            I also hope that you, the readers of this article, inundate the in-boxes and phones of the Justice department with requests to cease and desist all business with private prisons. At present, the government does not plan to leave this sordid business wholesale, but rather they simply plan to have their numbers down to 14,200 federal inmates being housed in private prisons by the coming spring. Further, the Feds have only suggested to states that contract with private prisons that they should discontinue doing so. History has always been the preeminent teacher, but it seems as if those four days at Attica in the late summer of 71’ taught us nothing.

Works Cited

1. Loury, Glenn C. Race, Incarceration, and American values. Boston : MIT Press, 2008.

2. Johnson, Kevin. Justice to end use of private prisons. USA TODAY. Weekend, 2016.

3. Pelaez, Vicky. The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery? [Online] March 10, 2008. [Cited: April 9, 2015.] http://www.infowars.com.

4. King, Shaun. Record 346 Inmates Die, Dozens of Guards fired in Florida Prisons. m.dailykos. [Online] January 14, 2015. m.dailykos.com.

5. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. New York : The New Press, 2010.

6. Peters, Justin. Guard-on-Prisoner Sexual Misconduct Happens Far Too Often. Why Can’t We Stop It? A Blog About Murder, Theft, And Other Wickedness. s.l. : Peters, Justin, September 26, 2013.

7. writer, staff. The Dirty Thirty: Nothing to celebrate about 30 years of Corrections of America. grassrootsleadership.org.

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 11^th, 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 12^th and I did not receive it until the 20^th.  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.