Frank and Gloria

Frank had been married to Gloria, his childhood sweetheart, at the time of his conviction. Together, they were the parents of three sons, each of whom was in his early teens. Frank had agreed to transport the drugs for local traffickers in a misguided effort to provide for his family. He had been working as a mechanic, scraping by but not thriving. The opportunity to supplement his income by carrying drugs from one city to another ended up costing him much more than his freedom.

Soon after a judge sentenced Frank to prison, Gloria divorced him. She felt that her primary responsibility was to rear the couple’s three sons. Since Frank had made the bad decisions that would separate him from the family for so many years, Gloria felt that the best way to move her family forward would be to make a clean start. Frank understood. Her decision to divorce devastated him, but he knew that he had brought the problems upon himself, with his decision to participate in drug trafficking.

Frank served the first eight years of his sentence inside the cages of secure prisons. While locked inside, he admits to having adjusted to the negative influences. Gangs were active, and to him, survival meant adhering to the ways of the penitentiary. Everyone has seen the violence and corruption of the prison on television, and Frank’s adjustment while inside fed into the stereotype. Without hope, he forgot about the world outside and made decisions that he felt were necessary to survive inside.

A consequence of Frank’s early prison adjustment meant that he served lengthy stretches in the punishment cells of solitary confinement. During the past 22 years I’ve been locked in prisons of every security level. I’ve known thousands of prisoners who, like Frank, adjusted negatively because they had lost hope. The length of sentence was so long, and the depth of loss so profound, that they could not muster the will to think about a life outside. Frank’s wife had moved on. His sons were growing from boys to men and he was incapable of playing a large enough role in their lives. After six years of confinement, his mother died. Frank felt lost to the world, as if he was living in his own tomb.

After his eighth year inside the fences, however, Frank had crossed the fulcrum. He had more time in prison behind him that he had of prison time ahead. As a consequence of more calendar pages turning, administrators adjusted Frank’s classification score and transferred him to the minimum-security camp in Taft.

The transfer to camp made all the difference in the world to Frank. Double fences that were capped with coils of razor wire no longer confined him. Since he was not caged up like a wild animal, he began to feel a bit more human. In the camp, all signs of tension were missing. Prisoners in the camp still longed for the closeness of family and community, but the absence of gang pressures along with lower tensions between the prisoners and staff lessened the perceived need to project a hard and impenetrable demeanor. Hope began its return to Frank’s life.

After a few months of good behavior in the camp, Frank qualified to participate in a community service program. He had been confined to the wrong side of prison boundaries for eight years. That long period of confinement had eroded his sense of the broader society. Once he was allowed to leave the prison camp to participate in volunteer projects that would contribute to the Taft community, Frank said that his entire adjustment changed. He began to feel as if he were living a life of meaning, as if he were something more than a prisoner.

Since 2003, Frank has slept inside the boundaries of Taft’s prison camp, but he has spent a portion of every week as a regular volunteer for community-service projects. During that time he has given more than 2000 hours, frequently working without staff supervision in the city of Taft for its residents. He performs landscaping, maintenance, irrigation, painting, light electrical work or plumbing, and general clean-up services for local nonprofit organizations. He provides needed labor for tourist attractions, recreational centers, health care providers, and churches.

The many years of contribution that Frank has given to the Taft community have changed Frank’s life. When I spoke with Frank, he was 49-years-old and only months away from his scheduled release. He had lost more than 15 years of his life to the prison system, and he struggled with the deep sense of loss that came with his separation from family. Through his community service, however, Frank felt the cleansing power that came through work. It was his act of redemption; Frank’s labor had been his way of reconciling with society for the bad decisions he had made at 34.

The responsible adjustment Frank had made with his transfer to the camp brought him a measure of respect and trust from many staff members. Like the citizens with whom he interacted in the Taft community, many staff members treated Frank with dignity, as if he were simply a fellow human being rather than a federal prisoner. Frank appreciated that courtesy, and it inspired him to prove worthy of the trust staff members extended.

The staff administrators at Taft rewarded Frank’s outstanding adjustment to camp by granting him two furloughs. During the summer of 2008, he was given permission to attend his son’s wedding. Then, in December, administrators authorized Frank to spend the Christmas holidays at home with his family. an unintended consequence of Frank’s furloughs was the rekindling of his romance with Gloria. She was giving him another chance, welcoming Frank back into her heart and into her home.

Frank had fewer than 100 days of confinement remaining when we spoke. He felt grateful for the opportunities that opened for him upon his transfer to Taft Camp. Had he remained locked inside the high-pressure atmosphere of secure prisons, Frank doubted that he would have made the positive adjustment. The negative influences would have kept him on the wrong path. With hope, however, he found a new spirit within him. After more than 15 years of imprisonment, Frank felt ready to live as a contributing citizen, doing everything he could to nurture his family. 

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Recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made a ruling that will require the state of California to release thousands of prisoners before their sentences expire. I know that many citizens feel threatened by such a ruling. Those taxpayers have been influenced by the propaganda machine of the enormously powerful lobbyists who represent the so-called corrections system. Ironically, citizens have been deluded into believing that long-term imprisonment of all offenders is a good strategy for America. They ignore the unbiased statistics which show that the longer society locks a person in our system of corrections, the less capable that individual becomes to function in society upon release.

Leaders need to reform America’s prison system. Rather than measuring justice through the turning of calendar pages, we need a system that would encourage offenders to work toward earning freedom through merit. Rather than a system that extinguishes hope among the 2.4 million people locked inside cages, we need a system that inspires offenders to work toward reconciling with society. Prison reforms should launch programs that help individuals emerge successfully; they should not perpetuate cycles of failure.

One area that administrators may consider reforming would be the system of minimum-security prison camps. What is the point of these facilities? I understand that they serve the interests of lobbyists and the businesses that provide goods and services to the prison industry. Yet they do not serve a legitimate interest to taxpayers.

Much earlier in my prison term, I was confined in a medium-security prison where Warden Dennis Luther presided. At the time, Warden Luther had more tenure than any other warden in the Bureau of Prisons. I was studying independently toward a graduate degree at the time, and Warden Luther extended me the privilege of interviewing him for several hours. If he could, Warden Luther said that he would close all prison camps. He said they represented a waste of taxpayer resources and that they served no useful purpose.

Since 2003, when administrators dropped my security classification to minimum, I have served my time in minimum-security camps. No fences have confined me. While in the camp, administrators have assigned me to jobs that placed me in direct and unsupervised contact with society. If administrators have classified me as posing no threat to society, and they allow me the degree of trust to serve my sentence under the honor system, in a prison without walls or fences, then why shouldn’t I conclude the remainder of my term under the strict conditions of home confinement? Why shouldn’t I be working in a legitimate employment position where I would pay my taxes rather than wasting taxpayer resources in an open prison?

The American prison system is ripe for reform. It generates recidivism rates that exceed 60 percent, and taxpayers fund these cycles of failure with nearly $60 billion in public expenditures each year. One place to start prison reform would be to release those in minimum-security camps into community confinement programs that would require appropriate offenders who do not pose a threat to society to pay their own way. Such a reform may not serve the interests of lobbyists for corrections, but it would serve the interests of the American citizens.

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All new prisoners should have a clear understanding of how their behavior influences the Security Level Classifications that administrators assign to them. When I was initially arrested, in 1987, I was 23-years-old and I didn’t know anything about prison management or how administrators would classify me. I didn’t even understand the difference between jail and prison. Since then, I’ve passed more than 21 years inside these boundaries. The lessons have taught me a lot, and I’m always trying to pass them along to new prisoners so they make better decisions.

My time began inside the walls of a United States Penitentiary, where I was forced to share eating space, and shower space, with 2,500 other felons. Many of them were predatory, violent offenders. They lived by a code of values that differed in remarkable ways from the affluent, north Seattle suburb where my parents reared me. I served more than five years inside those walls, yet the choices I made resulted in the achievement of significant goals that influenced my continuing adjustment through prison.

In 1995, administrators transferred me to a series of medium- and low-security Federal Correctional Institutions. Those places may have been designated with a more euphemistic name, though they were still prisons. I did not perceive any administrative emphasis on correcting anything, though the levels of stress, volatility, and violence were appreciably lower than I experienced in the high-security penitentiary.

After more than a decade in those FCIs, administrators dropped my security-level classification to minimum, and in 2003 they transferred me to the Federal Prison Camp system. In prison camps, I’ve known a higher level of freedom than at any time since my journey as a prisoner began. Although I look forward to my release, I feel grateful for every day that I serve inside the more relaxed atmosphere of the prison camp. I’ve known much worse.

My appreciation of minimum-security and the camp environment comes as a consequence of my having endured many years in higher-security prisons. Other prisoners who self-surrender to camp sometimes take the privileges we have for granted. Rather than recognizing the low-level of stress that accompanies open movement, lack of gangs, and total absence of mass disturbances, they whine about the indignities associated with confinement.

Because I have served my entire adult life in prison, I do not dwell on what I consider to be the minor annoyances of confinement. I expect them. Strip searches do not bother me. Special census counts mean nothing. The loss of privileges is a fact of life I can handle. What I don’t want is to return to environments where I have to walk through puddles of blood, where I hear the cries of violent gang rapes, where I see regular abuse of force. I know such environments are only a bus ride away.

The post New Prisoners Ought to Understand Security Level Classifications appeared first on Prison News Blog.

In my article Comparisons of Three Federal Prison Camps within The Bureau of Prisons, I described three separate prison camps where I have served time. Those camps include the camp at Florence, the camp at Lompoc, and the camp at Taft. There were significant differences between each. Yet if an individual adjusts well, he can succeed in either of the camps.

With regard to Eric’s question about judicial requests for specific camp placement, I do think the Bureau of Prisons takes a judicial recommendation into consideration. Yet the BOP is crowded, and sometimes administrators cannot accommodate the court by assigning an inmate to a specific camp. Yet the BOP has a policy of trying to keep offenders in camps that are closest to the individual’s recorded residence. I think the defendant should learn as much as possible about the various prison camps, and then he should certainly ask the judge to make a recommendation. In my experience of speaking with other prisoners, the BOP grants the judge’s request better than eight out of ten times, provided the security level is appropriate.

The key point to remember is that more than the specific camp, it is the security level that makes all the difference. Inmates in a camp, generally, are less volatile than inmates in higher security prisons. That is an excellent reason to pursue camp placement. For more information on prisons and the people they hold, I urge readers to check out the articles catalog and the daily content I provide at www.prisonnewsblog.com.

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