How It's Made: Soldering Irons

In prison, inmates use homemade soldering irons to fix headphones and alter radios. To make the soldering iron, one must first fill up his hotpot with water. Then, he laces each prong of the hotpot’s plug with wire, the left side of which is readied to be inserted in the plug, and the right side of which is for the iron.

He then takes a pencil and shaves an inch or so of wood off the end, so that the lead sticks out that far by itself. He uses fabric to wrap two pieces of metal—each shaped like a long hockey stick with the L-curve on both ends—to the pencil with their L-curved ends clamping down on either side of the exposed lead.

Finally, he takes the wire and connects it to one of the L-curves on the other end of the piece of metal sticking off the back end of the pencil. He gets his solder ready by holding a coil of it with a strip of fabric, and then sticks the wire from the hotpot prong into the plug.

Now hot, the pencil lead serves as a circuit to conduct electricity and begins sparking as it glows red. And the solder melts like butter.

A Victim of the System

*Proxy Note: This is a guest column written by Texas Inmate’s cellmate – his intellectual antithesis.

Tonight is the night before shakedown, one of the most dreadful times of the year. I must pack up all of my stuff and take it to the gym to be inspected. All the while, hoping they don’t pull out the dreaded “box.” The “box” is about 3’ X 3’ and all my property must fit in it.

Yes, I am a resident of the Texas Prison. For most people this is a temporary part of their “rehabilitation”, but for me this is a ritual I will carry on till I die, unless of course I win my appeal.

Yes, my name is attached to the growing list of Texas Lifers. Really one hell of a deal though. I don’t pay rent, no bills, no job, they do my laundry for me, and I receive three meals compliments of this fine institution. Oh yeah, I live around nothing but men. I have been sentenced to the worst possible punishment—life without the loving touch of a woman. I found it somewhat humorous when I first got here to think of this as a Department of Corrections. Rather than “rehabilitation”, people are dropped into the pit of corruption known as “TDCJ.”

To survive, one is forced to harden himself or fall victim to the various predators who slink around the hallways. Having life I see no need for rehabilitation. To live decently, one must play by the rules of the “game.” From bottom to top, guards to inmates, the corruption is the rite of passage. Prison is the melting pot of corruption. Mixing rapists, child molesters, thieves, murderers, and drug addicts together. Those growing number of wrongly convicted stand slim chance of escaping this “correctional institution” untouched.

Welcome to my world.

Protecting the System

Continuing with my theme about punishment and rehabilitation, I believe that yet another point deserves consideration. We must keep in mind that the jury trial system—well intended as it may once have been—has devolved to exploit practically every logical fallacy known to man.

The result of such is that some number of innocent persons are convicted and imprisoned, and some number of persons less guilty than the crime they were convicted of, are imprisoned for longer than they deserve.

Granted, it’s hard to fathom that there will ever not be any innocents convicted, or less deserving punished more than they deserve, but, by focusing on rehabilitation, and incorporating the objectively successful completion thereof into parole plans, society can provide a safety net to these two groups of inmates.

You see, these inmates will enter the system already innocent—or less than guilty—and thus already rehabilitated in relation to their implicit rehabilitation requirements. But to capture this dynamic, rehabilitation must be the focus, it must be measurable, and it must be truly incorporated into parole plans.

Hence, while the wrongful conviction or sentence was unjust, that injustice at least won’t be compounded by the holding of these pre-rehabilitated groups in prison for as long as possible (as a purely punitive focus seems to dictate).

Mr. Whitmire's Justice

Senator Whitmire (R – Texas) was recently asked about the unsanitary conditions of Texas prisons in the summer, when the hundred-plus degree heat combined with stagnant air facilitates increased sickness and death rates. He responded by saying that those inmates at increased risk are supposed to be housed in air conditioned medical units, and that providing air conditioning to every unit would be prohibitively expensive. Then he reminded the interviewer that, in any case, “these people” put themselves in prison.

Except, of course, for the ones who didn’t, but such an obvious distinction doesn’t square with Whitmire’s fast aging, “hang ‘em high” ideology. “Tough on crime” is based on flawed reasoning. The question begged is “tough, compared to what?”

And based on my (admittedly infallible and probably slightly biased) experience and logic, I believe they mean tough in relation to ideal justice. Thus, the ideal becomes injustice, and all that such comes with. Or, more fundamentally, injustice becomes justified (i.e. injustice is justice).

Conversely, justice should be the ideal, and it must be understood that the punishment for the crime is essentially the sentence itself (the loss of freedom), and the prison experience should be where rehabilitation is the focus. But, in Whitmire’s condoning of barbaric and deadly conditions as part of the punishment, he’s changing the focus of the prison, and reducing the only chance for rehabilitation that many inmates have. Rehabilitation necessitates self-edification, and with the inhumanity of barbarity and death justified as viable punishments, selves are not edified, but rather destroyed. One simply cannot have his cake and eat it too.

And this is one of the self-defeating aspects of the prison system.

From the Archives: A Perpetual Machine

My daily inundation with the travesty that is prison, and the minions of unproductivity that are its occupants and staff, allows me to see with ever increasing clarity, the fatal flaws contained herein.

For one, there is no backwardation of the attempted punishment. A man allegedly commits a felony, is convicted in trial, and sent to a facility where he is then guaranteed three square meals a day, clean clothes, hot water, relative security, quasi-health care, etc. etc.

There is the loss of freedom, but that truly affects very few. Most criminals or ruffians operate under a poisonous philosophy that itself grants them no freedom, even out there. They’re enslaved to various vices and hatred, and in coming to prison, they merely trade some of their vices for others. The hatred, however, is a constant. And the taxpayers funding this perpetual machine of criminalization get the short end of both sides of the stick: their monies disappear into this hole of beauracratic largesse, and then their progeny get sold drugs by ex-cons.

The fact that prison is merely a pseudo-punishment for the vast majority—a vacation as it’s occasionally referred to—is what facilitates the institutionalization of this vast majority, and disastrously alters the calculus of the risk/reward ratio. Prison being not so bad—simply an extrapolation of their former lives—further bolsters the enticement of the reward, and criminalization is incentivized. Multiply this by the amount of new criminals being minted daily by those poisonous philosophies that various subcultures spew, and we have what I’ll term lightly as a growing problem.

No, prison should not reward vice, but rather re-educate camp. And I say that with complete understanding of its connotations as this facility will be just as radical and reactionary, only aimed in the direction of creation, not destruction. Prison should be a bustling commercial mecca, highly interactive with the outside world.

Inmates will be encouraged to create value, either via their own entrepreneurial endeavors or by working for another in hot pursuit of his own dream. For you see, the creation of value defines a man’s intrinsic worth and allows him to increase his financial worth.

This is the only true method of rehabilitation, for when a man learns he can create value, he will seek to steal such no more, and when he can fathom his own intrinsic worth, the very entertaining of thoughts of immortality and criminality will be anathema to him. Businesses out there will capitalize start-ups inhere and eventually the reverse will occur as well. Networks will be created, and when men parole out, employment will be guaranteed. Not only as a result of their cultivated network, but because from a philosophical standpoint they will not be able to go without creating value.

To cease creating value is to cease to exist, and all biological life seeks to continue existing. This is why Hank Greenberg (a 90-something, I believe) is seeking daily to regain control of his old company, AIG. He’s fighting for his life!

With the immense profits netted, the government will get more tax revenues not just form these men’s paychecks, but also due to the fact that prisons will become wholly self sustaining. A fund will be created solely for restitution to victims and their families. And prisoners will once again be able to provide for their families, and save and invest as they see fit.

Prison will be an emulation of the outside world, where punishment is punishment and rewards are rewards. Non-producers, bent on criminalization, will go to a part of the prison where they won’t be fed, and can meditate on the true merit of their poisonous philosophy. I think they’ll end up seeing the light.

Lastly, and I switch gears from realist to idealist here, but it should be known that for a man to rehabilitate himself is the only hallmark of true remorse. And remorse is a major thing that is conspicuously absent from this hateful, ignorant and despicable place.

Contextual Morality

I have a problem with the notion that morality is contextual.

Take the act of lying. It’s fundamentally immoral (note: it’s beyond the scope of this post to prove this proposition, so I’ll move forward by presupposing it). But, if one must lie—because all moral options are off the table—to prevent the occurrence or success of a greater immorality, then the liar is justified.

Now, does this make the act of lying, in essence, no longer immoral? I don’t think so. Rather, the actor is merely not immoral when committing this inherently immoral act. (As opposed to the actor lying for no justifiable reason).

The smaller immorality merely becomes justified when committed to prevent a larger immorality. Its intended, potential consequence is good, but its essence is still not good. (I once alleged that the concept of necessary evil was flawed. I was wrong, and this relationship attests to that). That is, it still has the capacity to poison the consciousness of its committer.

Just imagine if one had to destroy 10 million innocent people so as to save the lives of 11 million innocent people. Justified because of the necessity? Yes. Happy because of the goodness therein? No.

Hence, morality is not contextual, and justice is. But, isn’t justice itself moral, and thus any just act also moral?

Justice is moral, but justness resides in the implications of the act, and not its nature, which can still be immoral.

The Mirror Conspiracy

A few days ago, I received a hilarious letter from a good friend of mine at my last unit. He’s doing as well as the situation permits, and I was elated to find that he hadn’t lost his humor.

I’ll always remember the heated, polysyllabic term stuffed debates over religion, politics and philosophy that he—a hard, left-leaning Libertarian—and I—a slightly right-leaning Libertarian—would engage in during meals in the chow hall. And how the clashing counterpoints clanged silently over the “tone” deaf ears of the paradoxically bemused glances of whichever other two inmates shared the table with us.

One thing he said, at the very least, will always stick with me. As we walked out of the chow hall, I was in the midst of some admittedly arrogant diatribe about how the system ignores and thus disincentivizes the meritorious, how unjust it is that the idiots couldn’t begin to feel our pain, how shameful the systemic misallocation of intelligence…

“Dave”, he cut me off, pointing up and ahead of us at one of those large, curved mirrors that facilitate viewing around corners, “do you see yourself in that mirror?”

Looking, then squinting, I did see myself, reduced to monotonous insignificance amidst a long line of men draped in penitentiary white. Waving to make sure it was me that I saw, I said, “yeah…”

“That’s exactly how the system seems you.” He said.

At the time, I was less equipped, philosophically speaking, so I fell into a disheartened silence. With the hindsight of clarity, and vice-versa, I see that his statement would only have mattered if recognition were the sole reason for my attaining merit.

Now, however, I know that merit is an end in itself—and is something to attain for oneself (whether others recognize it or not)—and all of the things that I, at the time, wanted, to some degree, recognition to bestow, are simply natural consequences of merit.

And this will be fully attested to not by the mirror (the system), but rather when I disappear from the line of trudging inmates that it perennially reflects.

And the Trip Continues

I want to thank bloggers Shanchere, Mistress and Anonymous Anonymous for your cogent and delightful comments regarding my post, “The Guard is Always Right.”

I know that my equating prisoners with clients was a stretch, to say the least, but I do think it’s valid.

Your feedback means the world to me. At times, when demonstrable progress on my array of initiatives seems to have slowed, I’ll have fleeting moments wherein I’ll actually consider dropping everything and do nothing but read classical literature for the rest of my days.

But then something will happen to snap me back to reality. I’ll get a great letter from someone; one of my large stock positions will leg up; I’ll crank out a great post or finish a great book; I’ll pick up another plate on the bench press; or I’ll get some great reader feedback.

And the last of these is far from the least!

Thank you guys, and keep reading. And please tell your friends about Prison Proxy.

From the Archives: Tough Justice

Next time you hear some pandering potentate – probably in the Red South – extolling the virtue of “tough justice”, be aware that this universally-accepted catchphrase in oxymoronic. Justice occurs when a man performing at his fullest, gets what he deserves. It is, by its nature, an exactitude, a fixed point. It is the intersection of earning and deserving. “Tough” justice connotes going a few blocks past that intersection (presumably to make an example – a sacrifice – of the individual, to deter others0, whereas mercy connotes stopping a few blocks short. Hence, justice can be neither tough, nor lenient; it simply is. Anything else, by definition, must be injustice.

Baking Off Prison

In the June 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine there was an interesting article about Naturebake, a health food company run by a Mr. Glenn Dahl. His brother, David, is an ex-con who’s been in and out of prison five times since becoming addicted to crystal meth in the 80s. This latest time David got out of prison, his brother took a long shot and hired him at Naturebake.

David was put in charge of his own line of organic bread, and it’s been a resounding success thus far. Well, financially speaking at least. But as regards to a moral success, a little something in the marketing of bread presents a problem.

Glenn noticed that no one with tattoos or piercings ever bought his organic breads, so he decided to put a caricature of David—replete with piercings and tattoos—playing a guitar on the packaging. Had he stopped there, all would have been swell, but then Glenn thought it a brilliant idea to “sell David’s prison past” and condoned David’s superimposing the word “killer” over “Dave’s Bread”, also on the packaging.

First of all, what of the ideal? To sell one’s prison past is a disgusting concept. David already lived off of the taxpayers—gratis—while in prison for an initial windfall. Now, by literally marketing murder, he’s exploiting his immoral past, yet again, to reap a second windfall.

At this point, one may lob an ad hominem, and allege my hypocrisy in attempting to profit from a blog written while I’m in prison, that’s at least partially about prison. The fine distinction that I believe absolves me of such is that David is profiting because of prison, whereas I’m profiting despite prison (not to mention, I’m not even monetarily profiting at all). And the evidence is in the respective contents.

Lastly, there’s the perspective issue. A white man cannot make a black joke and be politically correct. A non-mentally disabled man cannot make a mentally disabled joke and be politically correct. In both cases, however, the black man and the mentally disabled man can make the same jokes and still be politically correct. Well, in this instance, with the marketing, the opposite is the case. A non ex-con can profit off of a prison experience (think Prison Break), and though the content may well be tawdry, he wouldn’t be politically incorrect, because he was never an actual convict. An ex-con is obviously not in the same shoes, so his profiting off of such is a slap in the face of society.

David’s only exonerating factor would be if he were totally innocent of the crime that he was convicted of. And for someone five times down, that’s a long shot.

Finally Finding Closure: The One That Got Away

I had a great visit with my parents last Sunday. Some of my girlfriends of yore were one topic of discussion. One of them visited my parents right after I was incarcerated, and had a long talk with my mother about yours truly.

I’d already been made privy to all of this, but what I just found out Sunday was that she explained to my mom why my courtship eventually failed, and she and I didn’t end up together. (FYI, I was purportedly competing for her affection with some mysterious blonde guy in Mexico. In the end, perhaps fittingly, and certainly not without irony, she chose neither of us.)

As this girl was one who I really, really liked, I’ve been sadly curious this entire time as to why I was dumped. With my interest thoroughly piqued, I practically interrogated my mother for this ex-girlfriend’s explanations, and, woe is me—save for a generality about my not being serious about our relationship—my dearest mom had by now forgotten the specifics!

I wrote this girl off and on for a year or so, post-incarceration, until one day when I received a “Dear (ex-) John” letter. In it, she explained that she had a new boyfriend, lived in a loft in downtown Houston, was the happiest she’d ever been in her life…and for me not to write her anymore.

Though I did write her one last time, with a cool—if not cold—stoic response to her letter, I was in fact incensed for a spell.

In the enlightened years that followed, however, I came to realize the presumptuousness of my anger. Moreover, during this weekend’s conversation with my mother, in which I learned of the other attempt at closure my ex-girlfriend bestowed upon our break-up, I realized something else.

Essentially, as regards to interpersonal relations, a common theme exhibited when dealing with prisoners seems to be a lack of closure at the cessation of relationships. Given, I believe, our location and status, rather than expressing to us why they’re moving on—or even that that is in fact what’s occurring—many will simply never write or visit again. I liken it to a simple changing of the channel on television.

With myself, most old friends, ex-girlfriends, and extended family members have moved on in such a manner. With some other inmates, the dynamic extends its tendrils all the way to fathers and even mothers.

In light of the painful nature of being on the receiving end of a friendship closing without closure, I realize what brave and beautiful things my ex-girlfriend’s conversation with my parents and final letter to me actually were. Though I responded to the latter with a foolhardy, false pride, I’m now ever grateful to her, with a gleam in my eye that’s not from a tear.

The Birth of School

The bittersweet truth is that even as doors of new opportunities are opened, the subsequent choice of which path to take may still lead back to adverse consequences.

In about six months, I’ll be transferring to a new unit near Houston to attend U of H (the University of Houston) for my B.A. in Humanities. Now, as I’ve expressed before, my motives for going to college in prison, in order of importance, are: to get housed at a unit closer to home (so it will be easier for my parents to visit); to have something to show parole as a testimony to how I beneficially allocated my time (as my investing and blogging might not hold weight or water in the minds of the parole board members); and finally, to get a college education.

Classes at U of H are $528 each, but the second class (NOT every other class) is always matched by the state. I already had to be wrestled down by my mom to even go to this unit for school, as I know how expensive it will be for her. Given that the second class is free, however, the overall cost of the degree can be cut by 10% all the way up to half, depending on how long one takes to get it.

The only problem is that as soon as one finishes school on this unit, he gets shipped back to where he came from. Hence, a new dynamic is presented: if I were to take the second class for free, I’d be sacrificing a higher personal value (being close to home) for a lower one (a college education) and such would thus be irrational…unless I’m going to get out soon!

The money is the X-factor. They do offer scholarships, but one must have a 3.5 GPA or higher. My local GPA is 3.89, but my malevolently lurking 1.12 from when I went to HCC (Houston Community College) out there is going to reap havoc on my overall average.

And even when I do get it up to a 3.5 (after four classes at 4.0 each), and a scholarship does cut my costs in half, is it proper for me to turn down free money so as to potentially—if I remain incarcerated—stay closer to home for a longer period of time?

Of course my parents say it is, but given how expensive it is, it still seems sort of irresponsible to me. If I knew that I was getting out soon (probable, but hardly guaranteed), I’d take the second free class. But I just don’t know how to quantify it all.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted.

Autobots vs. Decepticons

Yesterday, in the craftshop, my two buddies and I were discussing one of their youths, and the criminal adventures he had growing up. He’d always referred back to some pretty outrageous things since my other buddy and I have known him, and we were basically asking if he embellished at all.

Normally, such an allegation wouldn’t come up with the individual in question, but the highly effective (i.e. “square business”) nature of his purported criminality seemed conspicuously incongruous with his somewhat squirrely present day demeanor.

Furthermore, one thing he said was that he “quit drinking in middle school.” That particular phrasing, replete with his lips curled down like an ancient mafia don, seemed to imply two remarkable things: he started drinking when he was a toddler, and he had the fundamentally adult state of mind to see the futility and danger of alcohol…in middle school!

Calling him on this seeming inconsistency, he qualified his claim by saying that he only drank for a year, and thus started drinking in middle school as well. Obviously, that’s a more believable claim. His initial claim, however, constitutes embellishment, not for what was said, but for what was left unsaid.

Then, he told us of the gang he was in his hometown of San Antonio in the nineties. He told us of how two gangs divided the city in two, and everyone on either side had to be with its respective gang. My other buddy then flippantly asked what gang he was with, and the former said that he was with neither, but his homeboys—whom he backed—were in fact affiliated. Undaunted, my other buddy retorted, “Well, what about your dad? Certainly he got a summons!”

As I doubled over in tear begetting laughter, my buddy saw that his remonstrance was not going well, and exhaled in resigned disgust. Upon recovery, I explained to him that it seemed that he held his city in veneration because of these terrible things. I told him that if it weren’t for all the lost lives and stolen or destroyed property, the whole thing would be a joke, and that a city could be divided and driven into gang warfare by starting any two clubs…say, the Autobots and the Decepticons.

Colors would be accorded, gang signs would be adopted, and kids would die. And that’s nothing to venerate.

Thirty Things to do Before You're Thirty

“The coast-to-coaster. Yes, it takes time. It takes money. But here’s why it’s essential: You will meet one unforgettable girl and never see her again. You will almost land in jail. And best of all, you will collect more immortal memories than you will bugs on your windshield.”

This tenet was number four on a Men’ Health “Thirty Things to do Before You’re Thirty” list, and I clipped it out and put it in my wallet. When I show it to people, I jokingly tell them that it’s my credo. Well, somewhat jokingly. I’m a sentimental guy about certain things, and though almost going to jail isn’t on that list, unforgettable girls and immortal memories are.

My church’s youth group used to drive out to Colorado every spring break for a ski trip. Coming back from the first one, in 1996, we drove through Oklahoma. There, we stopped for dinner at a Boston Market on a lonely and dusty stretch of highway that, in its absolute stillness, practically screamed Middle America.

As the meatloaf sandwich was a given for me at Boston Market, I didn’t need the assistance of the menu. Looking instead everywhere else, my heart slowed at the sight of the cashier. A blue-eyed, little angel with flowing golden ringlets and a flawless smile rendered me a clumsy stoic.

Unlike all the girls on all the trips that I did talk to, and have since forgotten, I said nary a syllable to this little princess, yet she’s as fixated to my concept of road trips, and my notion of 1996, as love is to a heartbeat. She’s unforgettable, not for all the things that we did, but because of what her coy blush and my juvenile pout, amidst downward cast glances, seemed to attest to what could have been.

That’s why my second favorite name for a girl is Desiree.

Men of Honor

Continuing with my rebuttals to what I perceived as illogical propositions in the novel Shantaram, I must take issue with the author’s distinguishing of honor and virtue. The former, he alleges, involves how exactly something is done, whereas the latter involves what exactly is done.

He goes on to use this logic to explain how “criminals, killers and Mafiosi” can be “men of honor,” and how a war can be fought honorably or not. That’s the bait, and for the switch, he writes, “honor is the art of being humble.”

What? Talk about a non sequitur! What does that even mean?

First of all, if a killer can be honorable solely by the means he takes to kill, can a rapist do the same? I hold that such is not the case, as these are simply varying degrees along he same principle. To hold that a killer can, but a rapist cannot, is to split a principle. To entwine honor with means alone is simply a method of attempting to use the means to justify an end. The next step is to propose the Mafiosi as justified due to their honor.

It is true that virtue is entwined wit the end (the what), and honor is in fact related to virtue. The author’s error was to assume that honor is entwined with only how the ends are actualized.

I hold that honor is entwined with how and WHY. How a man kills another man—whether it’s via an arrangement at high noon or by slithering up behind him at a pub—cannot dictate whether the killing was honorable, just as how a rapist rapes cannot dictate whether the rape was honorable.

Rather, why the man was killed, in addition to how, dictates whether the act was honorable. Self-defense: Honorable. A drive-by: Dishonorable. And a rape simply cannot by honorable, for a why can never be justifiably answered.

A war, then, is honorable not only in how it is conducted, but also in why it was initiated.

Celebrities in Prison

It’s common here in prison for those of us with magazines to trade them out with each other when we’re finished reading them, and pass them on to those who may not have access to magazines.

I get eight magazines, and they all have to do with investing, business or technology. What I don’t have a subscription to, but still procure off “the street” to the best of my political ability, are celebrity magazines. And that genre is, I might add, a very—and incongruously—popular one here in prison.

Moreover, the consumption of that particular content in here isn’t apparent, yet is common to all prisoners that I know of. Essentially, nary an article in the rag is read, just the captions underneath the pictures of the beautiful people. The pictures are the entirety of the magazine. First, the girls in the gowns. Then the young, famous mothers with their little ones. Followed by the beach shots, and finally the pics of starlets draped in fashion nightmares.

But it’s while one eagerly ogles these pictures that the amazing occurs. Namely, a coherent, reasonable man, if questioned during this time will be reduced to grunts. Even an intellectual, when queried, will slowly utter, eyes still fixed downward, “huh?” Repeat the question, and you guessed it…”huh?”

Respectable Gangsters

I’m currently reading the novel Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, and it’s a great read. But the writing, which is compelling and beautiful, belies some seriously bankrupt aspects of his philosophy (his, as the author, is the main character’s).

For instance, he writes, “The generals who were like a mafia clan without the courage, style or solidarity of genuine, self-respecting gangsters…” But such a proposition is ridiculously riddled with logical fallacies.

First of all, “self-respecting gangster” is an oxymoron in two ways. One, a gangster is a criminal that either steals or destroys (or both) the material or spiritual value (or both) of others. To do such, he must not respect others. To not respect others, he must not respect others’ selves. And if he fails to see the validity and worth of the concept of self in others, then he must not respect his own self. Secondly, a gangster is an individual who has devoted himself to a collectivist, criminal body. At any time, he can be called upon by his peers to sacrifice himself (e.g. his values). Any individual who will do that cannot truly respect his self.

Now that we see that “self-respecting” must logically be removed from the sentence, we’re left with courage, style and solidarity supposedly being the defining elements of the “genuine” gangster. Are such virtues really what constitutes the genuineness of the concept gangster? No. Such virtues may define a man despite the fact that he’s a gangster, but what defines a gangster are the vices of criminality, and belonging to a criminal organization.

Loving Life

Almost immediately following my incarceration, I began explicitly exhorting a love of life in both word and deed. Moreover, I’ve since been quick to debate the validity of my stance with any individual who wishes to question its rationality.

One such person, for the fist few months that I knew him, condemned my efforts at eating properly, working out avidly, reading voraciously, etc. as wrongly loving this life more than the next one, in heaven. As a Christian, the only logical response that I could come up with was that, given the finite nature of this life, versus the infinite nature of the next, one may as well maximize the duration of the former based on the simple fact that it’s a scarce and depleting resource. And, there’s an infinite amount of good that still must be done here.

Over time, however, this individual has shed his cloak of pretense as regards to Christianity, and has of late even taken to the bottle. Today, he actually procured dye solvent from maintenance or somewhere, and drank a couple ounces of that!

After my initial shock at hearing of such lunacy wore off, I remembered our initial debate about life, and realized his true position at the time.

His qualm wasn’t with my loving life, and thus failing to regard it as a means to the next one, but in my loving life, period! His purported Christianity was merely a hypocritical feint, and he’s simply one who despises life. Drinking dye solvent to get drunk is his way of killing—no pun intended—two birds with one stone (his consciousness and his existence).

TDCs Aversion to Innovation

A common theme of the prison system seems to be its fierce aversion to innovation. A case in point is the fact that Texas just installed phones that prisoners can use to make collect calls to persons on their visitation lists. The favorability of the cost/benefit ratio seems obvious in that some portion of the substantial revenues will go to victims, prisoners will be able to stay in closer contact with their loved ones, illicit cell phone usage will decrease, and every other state has already instituted phone systems.

Yet the Texas Department of Corrections dragged its feet on the issue for what I’d imagine to be an inexcusable amount of time, and as TDC itself is nothing more than a mass of committees mired together in a textbook beauracracy, I’d bet no one can be held accountable for this issue that’s not even known to exist.

Take the parole system as another example. In here, one sees some really bad choices as to who stays in prison, and who is paroled. I’ve heretofore outlined a parole free market system wherein “shares” of potential parolees would trade and determine who gets parole; but that was a long time ago, when I was a touch idealistic, and I see now that that could be a bit outlandish.

But as is, when parole becomes a more popular option (probably due to the cyclical, fiscal crunch of overcrowding prisons), monsters are inevitably released early, and headline-grabbing mayhem ensues. Then, the theory of parole itself is questioned, and the blame for said mayhem is extrapolated on all near-future potential parolees. What essentially happens is that more victims are the result of underserved parolees getting out, and the blame for those crimes gets extrapolated onto most, if not all, potential parolees—a morass of injustice.

But what of the parole officer who let the inmate that committed more crimes out? Does anyone ever know? Are parole officer track records made public? Mistakes will occur, as no one is omniscient, but what if granting parole to the undeserving, or not granting parole to the deserving, becomes a commonality to one parole officer relative to his peers? Would that not be actionable intelligence as regards to his possessing such a job?

I think merit-based employment and pay should be instituted in this vocation immediately, along with complete transparence as regards to track records. This isn’t Mickey Ds, where hourly pay is admissible. Lives are at stake. Not to mention justice itself.

Attempted Escape

Two weeks ago, a brazen escape was attempted on this unit. An inmate on medium custody (i.e. the disciplinary side of the unit) went to recreation with a rope made out of sheets tied around his belly.

Once on the yard, he went to a portion of the fence that circles the rec yards where construction work had recently been done, and crawled underneath the fence in a track left by a tractor. Then, once outside the rec yard, but still inside the three razor wire topped perimeter fences, he ran around the rec yard’s maintenance building. From there, using his makeshift rope, he somehow used it and the building to get over the first of the three perimeter fences (and supposedly, in so doing, just barely scratched himself).

Once in “no man’s land,” however, without the assistance of any structures to get over the second and third fences, he, then shirtless, began wandering about. At no point up until then did any officer in any of the towers see this attempted escape.

The officer in the truck that drives around the unit (the “Rover”) finally did see him, and pulled up to the outer fence and asked the inmate who he was and why he was out there. The inmate said that he was a warden’s boy (the plushest—and most suspect—inmate job available), and had permission to run laps in “no man’s land.”

The incredulous officer radioed the warden and was adroitly instructed to draw a gun on the inmate.

So ended the inmate’s attempted escape. He’ll be sent to ad seg for the indefinite future, and perhaps the rest of his life, as he was a psychiatric patient with AIDS.