Certainly, administrators who set prison policies must create environments that are safe for both staff and the prisoners. Clearly, controls have a place. In order for corrections to occur, however, administrators would need to augment the oppressive controls with mechanisms through which prisoners may work to redeem themselves. That fundamental flaw of denying prisoners a sense of their own efficacy leads to the type of perpetuating failure Congress described through its passage of The Second Chance Act.

Through that legislation, Congress found that prisons produce recidivism rates that our enlightened society cannot accept. In the Pew Report, research showed that prison expenditures are misspent. My experience of having been locked in prisons of every security level convinces me that administrators can lower operating costs, reduce recidivism rates, and create environments where guards can correct.

M. Browning, a criminal justice major, asked me questions about how I could expect guards to make the leap to correctional officers when security of the institution remained the top priority. My position requires a broader perspective. Those who lead the prison, the top administrators, need to think about more than protecting the institution. As professionals in “corrections,” they have a responsibility to protect society. To me, that means establishing policies that lower recidivism rates. It means creating environments that would help more offenders emerge as law-abiding citizens.

A small portion of prisoners need total control. They have proven themselves unwilling or incapable of living in our society. Administrators have the power and the discretion to isolate those offenders. An overuse of oppressive policies, on the other hand, extinguishes hope among the prisoners who might otherwise be receptive to reform and corrections. My contention is that by implementing prison reforms that would allow prisoners to earn graduating increases in freedom through merit, administrators would create an environment for corrections to take place. In so doing, they would contribute to lower recidivism rates and safer communities.

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My experience of living in prison for more than 21 years, together with what I’ve learned from interviewing hundreds of other prisoners, convince me that prison gangs come together and proliferate as a consequence of hopelessness and despair. The men feel oppressed and as if they are incapable of changing their lives for the better. Sometimes they feel political motivations and band together in an effort to control the subculture that exists within prison boundaries. Prisoners who serve life sentences sometimes participate in gangs that reach beyond prison walls and into society. The gangs are a human response to perceived oppression. Since the men feel as if they cannot participate in the fabric of American society, they respond by forming their own society.

Certainly, law-abiding citizens need prisons to isolate those who live as predators who threaten others. Yet when prison administrators obliterate hope for those in prison, they create a culture that allows the wicked influences of prison gangs to spread. My experience suggests that a responsible use of incentives will motivate more people in prison to pursue positive adjustment patterns and reject gang influences.

Those incentives must be meaningful to lift the despair of men who serve years apart from their family members. I suggest that by offering prisoners a clear path through which they can earn gradual increases in freedom, administrators would succeed in encouraging more men to pursue paths that will help them emerge from prison successfully.

Despite the 21 years I’ve served in prison, I remain filled with hope, optimism, and every individual’s capacity to grow. If prison administrators initiated reforms that offered opportunities for those in prison to find meaning in their lives, I am convinced that more prisoners would pursue positive adjustments. Not all prisoners, as some men live cursed with psychopathic disorders. Yet with a logical incentive program, a program that offered objective paths to earn freedom through merit, more prisoners would work toward reconciling with society.

If prisoners found such hope, many more would feel inspired. Those who gravitate toward the negative influences of the penitentiary struggle with misconceptions that regardless of what they do, they cannot make it in society. I feel convinced that administrators can do a better job of changing such perceptions.

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To further the possibilities for prison reform, and the safer communities that would result from lower recidivism rates, I’m hoping to persuade television networks to show the flip side. I’d like Americans to have a better understanding of the reasons behind the high rates of failure that come out of our nation’s corrections system. The truth that I’ve lived for the past 21-plus years suggested that if Americans wanted to see more prisoners emerge as law-abiding, contributing citizens, then they would have to support meaningful prison reforms. Prison administrators obstruct the public from learning about the oppressive infrastructures that policies create. Instead of showing the motivation behind negative adjustment patterns, the administrators advance their cause by profiling prisoners who plunge knives into the flesh of others, or men who run with gangs that terrorize.

American citizens need access to another type of prison show. They should see how policies extinguish hope among men who serve time. Without hope for a better life, too many prisoners succumb to the negative influences that pervade the penitentiary.

The prisons of America confine more than 2.3 million people. Ironically, the longer we expose a man to corrections, the less likely that individual becomes to emerge as a law-abiding citizen. Prisons condition failure. A man cannot swim through the rough seas of imprisonment when administrators shackle his ankles and wrists in steel manacles.

Although I expect to meet resistance, I intend to work toward helping Americans understand how prison reforms can lead to safer communities. We need reforms that will encourage more people in prison to reach their highest potential. They need hope. They need mechanisms through which they can work to reconcile with society and earn freedom.

For more than 21 years I’ve been working to build a record that would help me counter the image most Americans have of the long-term prisoner. Now, as I advance through these final years of my term, I hope media representatives will join these efforts to show how prison reforms can lead to more enlightened society.

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For example, prison administrators determine what clothing an inmate may wear and how much clothing he may possess. They determine what the prisoner may eat and how much. They determine where a prisoner will sleep and with whom he will share space. Administrators set rules that determine the structure of every prisoner’s day. They establish a disciplinary code to punish prisoners who violate the rules. One thing missing from the prisons where I have been confined since 1987 was an incentive system that would encourage inmates to reform their ways and prepare for law-abiding lives upon release.

One of the consequences that follow the institutional atmosphere is that prisoners lose a sense of efficacy. They do not strive to prepare for the challenges that follow release because administrative practices discourage growth on meaningful levels. Those who run the prison strive to maintain security in the institution, that means keeping it running smoothly, without disruptions. The policies are designed well to cope with gang problems, with contraband, with corruption and violations of rules.

They are not so well equipped to function with individuals who are striving to build bridges to society or expand their networks of support. Prisons are designed to confine, to extinguish individuality. That does not result in a good return on taxpayer investments in these costly institutions, as the high recidivism rates suggest.

During the more than 21 years that I have served, I have worked hard to build a record that would demonstrate the need for prison reform. My work required that I educate myself, keep a clean disciplinary record, and interact with others so that I could write vivid descriptions of the prison system and why it fails to bring about positive change. I interacted and learned from many of the men with whom I served time. Those interactions put me into contact with prison gang leaders, organized crime figures, and white collar offenders. My fellow prisoners share their stories with me because they know that I write with hopes of bringing about change that will improve society and our lives as prisoners.

By extinguishing hope, I am convinced that prisons breed violence and continuing cycles of failure. They fail to make society safer, as more than 600,000 people are released from prison every year, and those individuals lack the preparation they need to function as law-abiding, contributing citizens. If administrators were to change their policies and implement incentives that would encourage inmates to earn their freedom, I am certain that more prisoners would adjust in positive ways. I’ve written about the work I have done to lead me to such conclusions in my books, and in articles available at www.criminal-indictment.com.

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In higher-security prisons, violence and power grabbing dominate the subculture. Rather than focusing on preparations for release, prisoners clique up and strive to create their own identities inside the fences and walls. They serve years and decades together, and for many, building a prison reputation within the community is an essential part of life. Yet rather than concerning themselves with intellectual distinction, careers, or the lives of others, high-security prisoners concern themselves with prison respect. For most, that means a reputation of standing up to authority, for paying any price to defend one’s perception of honor.

While I served time in higher security prisons, I created niches for myself to avoid interactions or altercations with the prison subculture. That strategy enabled me to reach significant goals that I set without encountering any problems. Some people mistakenly attribute my avoidance of problems to the fact that I serve a lengthy sentence for my conviction of being a drug kingpin. Yet I am certain that neither the crime for which I am serving time, nor the lengthy sentence that I serve, has had much of an impact on my ability to avoid prison subcultures and the toxic influences they bring.

Other than rapists, child molesters, or those who cooperated in some way with law enforcement, the prison community is indifferent to the crimes that brought a man inside. Leaders of the most powerful prison gangs began serving time for simple crimes like car theft, while those who formerly led organized crime syndicates may find themselves challenged by less notorious criminals in prison. My crime and sentence may have absolved me from suppositions that I may have cooperated with law enforcement. Other than that, it did not shield me from the challenges that every high-security prisoner had to face.

The choices I made inside were the reason behind my successful adjustment. I wrote about those choices extensively in articles available at criminal-indictment.com, yet in essence, it was my absolute commitment to prepare for success upon release that kept me away from the problems that many encounter in penitentiaries. I have served more than 21 years in prison, yet I have never been a part of the subculture. My allegiance has always been on preparing for life outside. All of my decisions enabled me to focus on such goals; they kept me away from altercations and confrontations.

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I spent the first 16 years of my sentence inside higher security prisons. When I was locked inside the walls of a United States Penitentiary, I understood the dangerous environment. With a lengthy sentence to serve, I knew that I would have to stand on my own. I could not expect prison staff members to protect me from all the chaos around. Survival meant that I had to develop strength in my spirit, in my fitness level, and in my mind. I had to choose my activities and my associates with calculation. Nothing about surviving prison is by chance, I knew. I had to make choices every day, and those choices determined how I would emerge.

For the first decade I focused exclusively on building a strong physique and working toward my education. That meant discipline. I worked daily with a brutal weight training routine and ensured that I kept in tip-top shape. A strong presence, I reasoned, would suggest to predators that there were easier marks in the penitentiary. Also, I avoided interactions with trouble makers. I did not engage in table games or play any organized sports. I stayed low key, focusing on my independent study projects and on exercise. Since I was respectful to every other prisoner and since I did not interfere with others in any way, I worked my way around the penitentiary without have any troubles.

After completing my education, I began to engage in projects that raised my profile. I started to develop more contacts outside of prison boundaries by writing. In time, I began to open opportunities to publish. Those efforts were part of my long-term plan to emerge from prison with a position of strength. I felt hopeful that I could walk out of prison with a career in place and a network of support that would assist my efforts to succeed.

A gang member once approached me with an extortion effort. He understood that I had a higher profile and he thought that he might score some points in his gang if he could pressure me. Yet when the young gang banger made his approach, I had more than 13 years of prison behind me; he was new to the prison and striving to lift his status. Although he thought my demeanor suggested that I would be an easy mark, the young extortionist learned that I was well liked and respected in the prison. Gangs are political organization, and I had good relationships with gang leaders. When I described the effort at extortion, the problem was quashed immediately.

People are extorted in prison when they are perceived as being weak. I prepared myself to project strength, and those efforts have served me well. Also, once I cultivated a reputation as a prison writer, other prisoners admired the efforts I made to initiate prison reforms.

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Protective custody is simply the Special Housing Unit (SHU), otherwise known as “the hole.” It is a locked cell that is stripped of all liberties. Inmates who serve time in PC do not enjoy free access to telephones, recreation, or the library. They spend all of their time locked in a tiny cell, usually with another PC inmate. It is a difficult way to serve time, even though the PC inmate is separated from the general population of the prison.

I’ve served time in prisons of every security level. For the past five years I’ve been held within the boundaries of various minimum-security camps. Prior to 2003, however, I was held inside secure prisons. Those fences contained considerable amounts of predatory offenders, and violence was an ordinary and unremarkable aspect of every day. The higher the security level, the more prevalence was bloodshed. Some inmates sought protection from the violence by going into protective custody.

Inmates who approach an officer and ask for protection will meet with a lieutenant and explain the reasons why he feels threatened. Sometimes the inmate will provide the lieutenant with the names of prisoners who are threatening him, but other times the inmate will feel threatened by entire groups of inmates and will not be able to specify a single individual. The lieutenant will make a decision of whether to admit the prisoner into protective custody.

Rumors spread in the prison as quickly as a gasoline fire. Guards talk to inmates. Besides that, the SHU has a daily turnover, with some prisoners going in and other prisoners returning to the general population. In a specific wing of the SHU, word spreads from one cell to another about who is locked inside the cells. News spreads through the SHU, and those released back into the general population then carry that news with them.

Despite serving time in prisons of every security level, I’ve never sought protection from staff members or from other inmates. Instead, I’ve found it best understand the dangers of my environment, and choose my activities and associates carefully. I adjusted in ways to ensure that I would reach my goals while simultaneously avoiding problems with others. I do not expect staff members to protect me. Although PC is an option that some inmates choose, it is not one that I would encourage because such a choice can bring retaliation from prisoners who consider PC inmates the same as snitches. It is better, my experience suggests, to adjust in ways that avoid problems.

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