My time in jail
To get the real story on
prison, you have to ask an inmate. Or, better yet,
become one.
by Chris Wright
Photographs by Mark Ostow
When the guard ordered me to
take my clothes off, I began to suspect I'd
made a mistake. When he
said, "Bend over," I was sure I had. But I did it:
stripped, doubled over, and
braced myself. The world looks very different
when you've got your head
between your knees, peering into the face of a
state employee who's peering
directly into your backside.
But then, it's not your
backside anymore, it's theirs. The question is,
what are they going to do
with it? By the time I found out the answer --
"spread 'em" --
all I wanted was to go home.
Funny, a few weeks earlier
all I'd wanted was to go to prison.
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DEPRIVATION CHAMBER: in
Billerica, two inmates share a cell built for one.
The shock of being thrown
into prison's cramped, dismal cells leads some
first-time inmates to
entertain thoughts of suicide.
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In turn-of-the-century
America, going to prison is the thing to do. One out
of every hundred American
men is currently behind bars -- the highest
proportion of incarcerated
citizens of any country in the world. The vast
majority of these aren't
sociopaths or big-time hoods. Most prisoners are
ordinary people --
drug-possessing, drunk-driving, and petty-thieving
people, maybe, but otherwise
just like you and me.
How does it feel, then, to
be an ordinary person thrust into this
extraordinary world? I'd
begun to realize that for all the blood-and-guts
prison movies I'd watched,
the overblown memoirs I'd read, the handwringing
editorials I'd avoided, I
hadn't the faintest idea of what prison life was
really like.
Besides, I was curious about
the food.
To get a true sense of the
prison experience, I figured, I'd have to go
there -- and go there as a
prisoner. No guards and no inmates could know I
was a reporter. I'd need an
alias, a crime, and the collusion of the prison
system. Right. I called the
Middlesex County sheriff's office and told them
my plan. The guy at the
other end laughed.
A week later, however, I got
a call back.
"I don't see why
not," said Brian Greeley, the sheriff's spokesman. Hell,
even I could see why not.
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So here I am, sitting in the
sheriff's office on the 17th floor of the
Middlesex County Courthouse in
Cambridge, having the living crap scared out
of me by the sheriff's inner
circle. This is when I get my first inkling
that I might be making a
mistake.
The prison for Middlesex
County is the Billerica House of Corrections.
Though not exactly Attica,
Billerica isn't Disneyland either. The prison
superintendent and the
sheriff's lawyer compile a torrid, profanity-laced
account of what I might
expect to encounter behind Billerica's walls:
"Some guys will have
cigarettes tucked up their ass, some will have drugs."
"They'll be asking a
lot of questions: `Who did you rat out? Where's your
paperwork?' "
"They'll be shaking him
down 'cause he's a new fucking fish."
"We should put him in
with some seasoned veteran."
"We don't want him to
get creased in one fucking night, either."
"That's a
crapshoot."
I can tell they're enjoying
this.
There's a hard-nosed
attitude that reaches all the way to the top of the
sheriff's office. The
sheriff himself, James DiPaola, is a no-nonsense
ex-narcotics cop. The
superintendent at Billerica is a gruff bulldog of a
man named Paul Norton, a
21-year veteran of the penal system who peppers
his speech with prison's
most popular adjective. Even the sheriff's chief
counsel, the silver-haired
John Granara, often speaks more like a seasoned
con than an attorney.
"You're taking a
chance," Granara says. "Anything can go on in a cell. You
wanted the full effect,
you're getting it, baby." He and Norton laugh.
"Great," I squeak.
And so Granara, Norton, and I hash out a crime and an
alias and set a date for my
two-night incarceration -- two weeks away.
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BLOCK PARTY: deceptively
calm in the daytime, by night these desolate
hallways ring with nonstop,
head-spliting noise.
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The prison at Billerica was
built in 1929 to house 300 men. Today its main
building holds nearly twice
that number, and its auxiliary buildings
contain another 500. Like
most prisons in the US, this one is chronically
overcrowded, with two
inmates sharing each of its single-occupancy cells --
a situation that inevitably
leads to trouble.
In the past five years,
Billerica has had two riots. One, in 1995, occurred
when fighting erupted among
a crowd of 100 inmates watching a basketball
game on TV. The cafeteria
was set alight. Riot police, state police, and
local police were called in.
Tear gas was lobbed. The violence was quelled.
TV was banned. The second disturbance
was in 1996 and involved 60 inmates.
This time the brawling was
racial, between African-American and Hispanic
inmates.
Earlier this year there was
conflict between two rival Latino gangs: a
local gang called Ņeta and
the New York-based Latin Kings, who are
expanding into the area.
"We had inmates fighting in the yard," says one
Billerica employee. "We
put 10 in the segregation unit and shipped some
out."
Riots are rare, but fights
are common. One of the more colorful incidents
occurred a couple of years
ago during a game of floor hockey in the gym. A
forward had collided with a
goalie and knocked his helmet off. Just like
the professionals, the two
traded blows. Unlike the professionals, they
ended their fight with one
player biting his opponent's ear off and
spitting it on the ground.
In the confusion that
followed the fight, an inmate strolled over to the
ear, picked it up, put it in
his pocket, went to the rec room, sat down
beside another inmate, and
said: "I'll bet you a carton of cigarettes that
I have a human ear in my
pocket."
Imprudently, perhaps, the
other inmate said, "You're on," at which the guy
pulled the ear out of his
pocket, only to have a cuff snapped around his
wrist. By the time
authorities rushed the ear to the hospital, it was too
late to reattach it. That's
the kind of thing prison does to you. When the
inmate had spotted that
bloody object lying on the gymnasium floor, he
hadn't seen a human ear.
He'd seen an opportunity.
And the guy who told me the
story did so in the spirit of knee-slapping
comedy. That, too, is the
kind of thing that prison does to you.
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DUTY BOUND: the tough prison
environment doesn't take its toll only on the
inmates; depression,
alcoholism, and divorce run high among Billerica's
guards.
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The day of my imprisonment,
my horoscope reads: "The stakes are high, and
there will be no room for
error. You feel lonely if you go out of town on
business."
Strange as it may sound,
having an ear bitten off isn't my main concern.
Though I'm assured by inside
sources that most sexual contact in Billerica
is consensual, the figures
on prison rape are not encouraging. According to
the advocacy group Stop
Prisoner Rape, 80,000 unwanted sexual acts take
place behind bars in the US
every day, with a total of 364,000 prisoners
raped every year. As I enter
the sheriff's office -- turn myself in, as it
were -- I feel like Buggered
Man Walking.
I'm taken to Billerica by
two officers, in the back of a cruiser. We spend
most of the trip rehearsing
my story. If it doesn't add up, my fellow
inmates might think I'm a
sex offender -- or worse, a rat. There will be no
room for error.
About a mile from the
prison, we pull into a parking lot, where I get out
of the car to let them
shackle me in "full hardware" -- leg irons and
handcuffs. The last 10
minutes of the drive are spent in silence.
Finally, we pull up outside
the prison gates -- or, more precisely, the
prison door. Billerica was
built around the same time as Alcatraz, but it
has none of that prison's
menacing stateliness. Three stories of blunt
brown brick, it looks more
like a mill than a prison. Still, it's an
imposing place, more so when
the first of its metal doors clanks shut
behind you.
I enter the receiving area
in a daze, an officer on either arm, and am told
to sit. The room is gloomy,
a patchwork of dun, a dank basement. No wonder
the correctional officer --
or CO -- who books me in is so cheerless.
"Oh, a fucking
limey," he says.
"The Orange and the
Green don't mix," says another guy out of the side of
his mouth. I notice many of
the officers have Irish names pinned to their
uniforms. I'd been told that
Billerica is "incredibly white," but I hadn't
thought that this might
translate into "incredibly Irish."
Too bad I'm incredibly
English.
When I ask to use the
bathroom, a CO says, "Don't you mean the loo?" The
laughter that greets this
remark feels inappropriate, as if at a funeral. I
offer a weak smile and look
around for the officers who drove me here.
Gone. No one here knows I'm
anything but a common criminal. And it'll be
this way for the next 48
hours. You feel lonely if you go out of town on
business.
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What my stars failed to
mention is that I'll also get in touch with my
inner naughty child. People
say prison is dehumanizing, and it is. It's
also infantilizing. You are
chided, bossed about, given that "I can't even
stand to look at you"
look. Never mind the brutality of prison, it's the
nagging disapproval that
gets to you. It's like being at the Registry of
Motor Vehicles, only here
the clerks can put you in solitary for 24 hours.
They want to know my story.
Name: Christopher Lancaster. Occupation:
construction worker.
Birthplace: Ireland (a bit of ad lib). Address:
London, England. Offense:
distribution of a class B substance. My story:
I'm here on vacation. I buy
$500 worth of cocaine from some guy in Harvard
Square. I'm nabbed by a
state trooper, arraigned, and released on $2000
bail the next day. I plead
guilty and get 6 months. And here I am, inmate
#97827, being printed and
photographed, putting my head between my knees.
It doesn't get any worse
than this.
Or does it? Following the
strip search, I am given my prison blues -- blue
coveralls with INMATE
written on the back -- and led to a holding cell,
where a handful of
dispirited men -- convicted of God knows what -- loll
about. One of them looks at
me as if my very presence were an affront. If
you want to fit in, the
officers in the car had said, then swear. I press
my forehead into the heels
of my hands and say: "Fuck me." I hope it
doesn't sound like an
invitation.
I keep my head down and go
to work on an imaginary hangnail. Eventually a
CO calls,
"Lancaster." Pick, pick. "Lancaster!" Oh yeah. I'm sent up
to an
infirmary, where I have a
couple of vials of blood removed -- for syphilis
and TB tests, I'm told. Then
it's off to another cell a few doors down.
This one has a single
occupant, lying face down on a bunk, either asleep or
dead.
As I enter, the guy on the
bed stirs. He's chubby, maybe 20 years old.
"They can't break
me," he says, apropos of nothing. Over the next hour,
another six or seven inmates
are loaded into the 45-square-foot cell.
There's none of the brooding
silence that marked the cell downstairs. These
guys are all talk.
One hot topic is drugs.
"If I had all the money I've spent on crack," says
a goateed guy, "I'd
have enough for a house." Another is sex. "I like to go
on those chat rooms,"
says a muscular kid. "In two hours I've got 10 phone
numbers and I'm getting my
dick sucked."
Given the circumstances,
it's surprising that these guys are so eager to
talk fellatio. Then again,
prison has a neutering effect: a year in the
clink means a year,
theoretically, without sex. Talking about it is a way
to reaffirm that it exists.
Prison also generates an understandable fear
that your significant other
will seek sexual sustenance elsewhere.
"Mine better fucking
not," says the goatee.
"I always dump my
girlfriends before I come in," a redheaded kid says. "I'd
go nuts."
At this, the chubby guy
says, for maybe the tenth time since we've been in
here, "They can't break
me." Then he gets up, walks over to the toilet, and
takes a piss.
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HOUSE OF HORROR: three
stories of blunt, brown brick, Billerica stands as a
stark monument to the
miseries of prison life.
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Paranoia is a big part of
the prison experience -- your girlfriend is
screwing your best friend,
you've been ratted out, the guards have it in
for you, someone's going to
jump you. I, though, have a paranoia all my
own: someone's going to suss
me out. It's not such a stretch, even if no
one recognizes me. There's
an inside joke that many of these guys know the
law better than their own
lawyers. Sooner or later, one of them is going to
ask me a question I can't
answer.
It turns out to be sooner.
The guy who gets the ball
rolling is the largest in our group, but soon
it's coming at me from all
sides. Where am I from? What am I in for? How
long did I get? How much was
my bail? Who was my public defender? Then I
have a brainstorm, one that
will serve me well over the next two days: "To
be honest," I say,
"I'd been partying for five days before I got busted.
It's all a blur." They
seem to buy it. "Please God," I say, not acting now,
"get me the fuck out of
here."
It's growing dark outside,
which means we've been in this cell a good two
hours, with only a stiff
ham-and-cheese sandwich to break the monotony.
When you're doing time, waiting
becomes a kind of art. Some inmates are
better at it than others.
"I don't want to be here," groans an older guy
with faded tattoos. "I
never want to spend another fucking summer in this
place."
But he probably will. In
1999, the recidivism rate at Billerica was 68
percent. Most of the people
in this cell have been here before, and most
will come back. One has
spent 11 Thanksgivings out of the last 12 behind
bars. "What I wouldn't
give to be out there," says the largest guy, staring
through the window at the
waning light.
A couple of the guys
speculate about how easy it would be to escape -- kick
the bars out, make a run for
the trees. Actually, few people escape
Billerica. One guy did it --
calling collect from the Dominican Republic a
few weeks later to rub it
in. Less successful was the guy who clawed
himself a burrow in the
moldering plaster of his cell, where he huddled
until he was dragged out and
taken to segregation. Many more people "hang
it up" -- commit
suicide -- than successfully scale the prison's walls.
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One thing you learn in
prison is that being locked up isn't always the
worst thing that can happen.
To get to the place where
we'll spend our first night -- the New Man unit
-- we have to navigate the
"day room," where inmates gather to play cards,
chat, or skulk about. This
is where the riot of 1995 started. As we pass
through, a chorus of
derision goes up: "That's him! The guy in the blue!"
It's a little joke the
inmates like to play on new fish.
The thing is, though, it
isn't always a joke. Sometimes someone will see
someone he knows, and
sometimes that someone will get something done to
him. A couple of the braver
guys engage their antagonists. I don't. As we
leave, one inmate approaches
the redheaded kid and sneers, "I'll see you
later."
The New Man's lot is not a
happy one. You're hassled by old hands, locked
up in a six-by-eight cell
23.5 hours a day for up to five days straight --
no reading, no exercise.
Then there's the humiliation. Before lockdown,
we're strip-searched again,
right in the middle of a chilly landing. This
time the CO adds "lift
your balls up" to the repertoire of shame.
It's meant to be unpleasant,
of course. Every element of prison life, right
down to the tarnished steel
dinner trays, is designed to remind you where
you are. There are three
floors. Each stairway opens onto a landing, at the
center of which is an
officer's station -- a cage in which dour COs sit
before panels of controls.
Behind this there's another cage containing open
shower stalls. On either
side of the landing there is a long corridor,
lined on both sides with
solid metal doors, each with a small barred
window. You cannot turn your
head without seeing bars or grates or a
combination of the two.
We mill about waiting for
our cell assignments: "Ramirez: K6 . . .
Lancaster: K7." As I
make my way down the block, I feel as though someone
were chewing on my heart.
Anything can go on in a cell. K7. I poke my head
inside. The color scheme is
putty. There's a little metal shelf, a bunk
bed, a toilet and a sink, a
window overlooking a litter-strewn yard. Beside
the window stands a beefy
redheaded guy. I walk in and the door clatters
shut behind me.
The first thing I do is
swear. "Bloody hell," I say. D'oh! My cellmate
grins, revealing an
incomplete set of teeth. "Oh," he says, "a bloody
Brit." He grins again
to emphasize the point. It turns out he's of Irish
descent, from Charlestown.
Assault and battery, 10 months.
"I'm Irish too," I
lie.
Raymond is actually one of
the more agreeable assaulters and batterers I've
met. He's 30, the father of
three, a regular at Billerica. There's a rumor
going around the prison that
Raymond died of a drug overdose, and every now
and then a CO will come by
and say, "I thought you were dead." He shows me
how to stick a milk carton
over the light for ambiance. We spend most of
the evening discussing what
we wouldn't do for a butt.
Smoking has been banned here
since last October -- for health reasons.
Since the ban, violence has
risen, and cigarettes have become valuable
contraband. A single butt in
Billerica goes for about $15. To be caught
with one means being put
into segregation. This hasn't deterred the
die-hards, though, who go to
near-heroic lengths to sneak a smoke. In our
cell there's a piece of
graffiti: "I need a cigarette." Below this someone
else has written, "Then
suck my dick."
By his breathing, I can tell
Raymond has fallen asleep. I doubt that I'll
be able to join him. My bed
has a biscuity plastic mattress, starched
sheets, and a scratchy wool
blanket. It's hot and musty in here. And
explosively, apocalyptically
loud.
If you're treated like a
naughty kid for long enough, you start acting like
one. And many inmates, like
naughty kids, make a hobby out of noise. They
rattle, clatter, and clang
with unflagging energy. They tap on pipes and
bang on windows. One popular
technique is to turn your faucet on a
fraction, which produces a
jackhammer sound. An anti-lullaby.
Even worse are the human
noises, the all-night squawks and howls, the
nonstop whoops and caws, the
multilingual banter, the hissed whispers.
Until now, I'd comforted
myself with the thought that if my cellmate
started anything, I would
simply yell "Guard!" A ludicrous idea. I'd have
to set off a small nuclear
device to be noticed in this racket.
I finally enter a brittle
sleep, only to snap out of it a short time later
to see my cellmate, big
Raymond, standing beside my bunk in the dark. Here
it is, I think, calmer than
I'd expected. I look down at his hand. Instead
of a shank, though, he's
clutching a Styrofoam box. Five o'clock in the
morning and it's breakfast
time. Holy shit. I sit on my bunk and savor two
cold, sloppy fried eggs. Oh
happy day.
Or not. I fall asleep again,
and when the sun comes up I find that I've
spilled yolk down myself,
over my sheets, over my blanket, even over my
socks. Who knew eggs
contained so much yolk? Raymond thinks this is the
funniest thing ever.
"This guy spilled his eggs!" he yells to the guy next
door, who also seems to
enjoy the joke.
Nothing anywhere near as
exciting as the egg incident happens until lunch,
when two more Styrofoam
boxes and four cartons of milk are slid under the
door. It's a cowpat of
shepherd's pie, not bad. We gobble the gloopy sauce
and sticky mash in silence.
I've never felt more like an animal, and I've
rarely had a more satisfying
feed.
After this, it's back to
nothing again. I've heard that prisoners overcome
boredom by letting their
minds soar, like birds. What crap. My mind soars
straight into a brick wall
before sliding, defeated, to the floor. For a
while we try to amuse
ourselves by watching ants. Raymond's more into it
than I am, using scraps of
food to herd them. "You're like the Bird Man of
Alcatraz," I say.
"The Ant Man of Billerica."
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DRESSING DOWN: prison strips
you of not only your liberty and autonomy, but
your identity. Many inmates
respond with acts of fearful violence.
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By the time the cell door
opens, Raymond has taken to capturing his little
friends and chucking them in
the toilet. Before long, I will get a sense of
how the ants must feel.
Now that our day in lockdown
is over, it's time for us to join the general
prison population. As far as
I'm concerned, general population is a one-way
ticket to Shakedown City, a
trip aboard the Shanksville Express.
We're herded once more along
the cellblock and out onto the landing, where
I catch the eye of a guy --
a boy, really -- who looks even more terrified
than I feel. (I'm happy,
however, to note that he's a good deal
better-looking than I am.) I
try to latch on to Raymond, but he's mingling
like a guest at a costume
party where everyone is wearing the same costume.
Several times I make a show
of patting him on the back in a Hey buddy! way,
and then I get a bombshell:
Raymond's being sent to minimum security, and
I'm going to medium. Heading
into the general prison population, once again
I'll be on my own.
Here's everything I know
about the general prison population at Billerica:
the average age is 32.8
years old. The maximum sentence is two and a half
years, though many of the
inmates serve consecutive sentences, up to seven
years at a go.
The top three crimes are
offenses against a person, 48 percent; drug and
alcohol offenses, 18
percent; property crimes, 14 percent. A very unhappy
two percent are sexual
offenders. Eight percent of the population report a
drug problem, 12 percent an
alcohol problem, and 54 percent a problem with
both. The racial make-up is
70 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, 13
percent black. There are no
figures on what percentage of the population
hates limeys.
My main objective, as I set
foot in the dreaded day room, is to look
nonchalant. Mainly I do this
by whistling. It becomes my thing. I whistle
in the gym, whistle in the
laundry room, whistle in the prison yard. A few
inmates give me the hairy eyeball,
and at times I feel like I'm being
circled, sniffed. But no one
hassles me, or even talks to me. Maybe they
think I'm a nut. Watch out
for the whistling guy, he's bad news.
More likely they're just
biding their time.
The longer I go unscathed,
the more confident I get. I even pluck up the
courage to take a shower.
It's a fairly warm day, so I
spend a lot of time in the prison's two yards.
The smaller yard, hemmed in
by pocked brick walls, is a bit depressing. The
larger yard, though, is
nearly pleasant. It has a baseball field, a
basketball court, a track,
and rows of chain-link fences, each topped by a
scribble of razor wire that
shimmers in the sun.
To help pass the time, I
play a little game with myself: Guess the Crime.
The barrel-chested guy with
squinty eyes -- robbery; the loner with the
Beatles hairdo and Karl Marx
beard -- drugs; the portly guy who looks like
an insurance salesman --
booze; the cheerful teen -- auto theft; the glum
guy with patchy skin --
restraining order; the skinhead with the teardrop
tattoo below his eye --
assault.
I find the library and
borrow a couple of books, Nabokov and Updike, then
get a bit of a twinge: maybe
literary fiction will be seen as a sign of
weakness. Maybe I should
have gone with Grisham. At one point, an obvious
hard case crosses my path.
He doesn't say anything, just looks out at me
from beneath a thick,
forehead-spanning eyebrow. I think he must have
rehearsed that look for a
long time. After this, I'm feeling decidedly less
sanguine.
Another guy walks over and
asks if I'm new. I manage to choke out a yes.
The guy says:
"Welcome."
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When I get to my new cell --
the one where I'll ostensibly be spending the
next six months -- my
cellmate is there. He's an older guy, mid 50s. He
wears glasses, the kind that
make your eyes seem bigger, and a few
straggles of hair spring
from his glossy head. He's in for operating under
the influence. "I'm
just an ordinary drunk," he says, before showing me
which shelves are mine.
Alan has had eight cellmates
since he came here in November. "I won't tell
where the bodies are
buried," he says. The only time he worries me, though,
is when a guy in another
cell yells something about passing contraband from
his butt like a chicken
laying an egg, and Alan starts clucking. Otherwise,
his dry humor is a nice
change from the usual banter about cigarettes and
blowjobs.
Like almost everyone else
here, Alan's a repeat offender, and he seems even
more versed in prison
culture than Raymond. He does that thing where you
hold a mirror outside your
cell door to see what's going on. He points out
the work details that pass
by. Then he points out a group of PC --
protective-custody --
inmates in the yard.
General-population inmates
are let out of their cells six times a day:
three times to eat, and
three times for recreation. For their own safety,
PCs are isolated from
general population -- they eat, shower, and exercise
alone. The PCs are the
snitches and the skinners (sex offenders), and they
are the most reviled people
in prison. They suffer an endless stream of
abuse, and, if the chance
presents itself, much worse.
One PC, a chester -- a child
molester -- recently got snagged by a couple
of inmates. By the time they
were done with him, the chester's teeth were
decorating his cell floor.
One of the guys hit him so hard his knuckles
came through the skin.
Another piece of Billerica lore tells of a rapist
who was castrated with a
fork.
I must look worried, because
Alan says, "Keep your head down, and you
should be okay." Then
it's off to the cafeteria, with its rows of long
metal tables, for dinner: a
cold pastrami sandwich.
Mealtimes in Billerica are a
big deal. They are among the few routines in a
prisoner's day that suggest
a semblance of civilian life. Beyond this,
eating offers rare sensual
pleasure. If you see an inmate with a truly
satisfied look on his face,
chances are he's got a mouthful of tepid chow.
Prison food is by no means
gourmet, but it's plentiful -- and starchy and
greasy -- and the prevailing
physique tends to reflect that fact. Prisoners
are not the glistening gym
rats we see in the movies. There are few bulging
biceps, rippling abs, or
chiseled pecs in here. Many inmates are, to put it
bluntly, fat.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Back in the cell, Alan is
making himself a cup of instant coffee with a
little electric kettle. They
sell kettles for $15.20 in the prison shop,
along with playing cards
($1.55), antifungal cream ($1.50), and squeeze
cheese (70 cents). For some
reason, it's heartbreaking to see him content
himself with this crumb of
domesticity.
Over the next few hours, I
genuinely grow to like Alan. He shows me how to
tie my sheets under the
mattress so they don't slip off. He gives me a
plastic soap dish and a
couple of packets of shampoo. And he explains the
importance of earning Good
Time.
Good Time is given to
inmates who attend meetings, take classes, and do
work detail. Keep yourself
busy and you can earn up to 12 days' worth a
month. Good Time negates bad
time -- every hour you earn is an hour knocked
off your sentence.
At first I thought the whole
idea was a bit cynical: you go to an
Alcoholics Anonymous session
and rack up your Good Time, knowing you'll be
sucking on that bottle all
the earlier. Then I go with Alan to an AA
meeting. The inmates sit and
listen to other inmates' bitter confessions,
and you feel that, no matter
what their motives are for coming, something
good is coming out of this.
Besides AA and Narcotics
Anonymous, Billerica offers violence-intervention
programs, GED courses, a
life-skills class, a computer class, an
auto-repair program, even a
barbershop where you can learn the art of
hairdressing. Then there are
assorted work programs, which allow inmates
varying degrees of freedom.
Without these programs --
and the Good Time they bring -- morale would
plummet. You can hear it in
the way they talk: this is one of the few areas
where prisoners can feel
some control over their fate, even regain a little
bit of dignity. And this is
a good thing for everyone. After all, you can
shut people off from basic
human needs for only so long before you're
helping turn a petty
criminal into someone who would bite off an ear. As
one prison official says,
"Eventually these guys are going to get out --
they're going to be your
neighbors."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
As my cell door slams shut
for the night, I come very close to giving up
the game. I'm tired of being
bored, tired of being scared, and just plain
tired. I gaze out of the
window and say, "I wish I was out there." Deadpan
Alan lifts a loose corner of
bug screen and replies, "Go ahead, I'll hold
the door for you." Then
he says, "I wish I was out there, too. Outside
those fucking walls."
Next week, Alan has a
revise-and-revoke hearing coming up, at which he'll
learn whether he'll be
allowed to return to his life, or whether he'll have
to spend two more years in
this cell. He's hopeful, he says, sipping on his
coffee, very hopeful. I'm
starting to hate the lies I have to tell him,
especially when he browbeats
me about going to meetings: Good Time.
My last night in prison
turns out to be even more restless than my first.
One guy yells some Spanish
word -- "Hoyoda!" it sounds like --
compulsively, the way a
caged lion paces. Then there are the indescribable
clanks and clatters: Buicks
being thrown out of third-floor windows,
aircraft carriers being dragged
along cobbled streets. I climb beneath my
yolky blanket and listen to
my cellmate's snores, the songs of frustration
filling the night.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
The next morning, as always,
the doors grate open before sun-up.
Bleary-eyed inmates shuffle
toward the dining hall, scratching their arms,
coughing. Breakfast today is
cold pancakes. Yum. Waiting in line to get
served, an inmate turns to
his friend and says, "So, what do you want to do
today?" They both
laugh.
There's a lot of prison
humor in prison. During the morning rec period, I
overhear a guy decline a
game of cards: "I'm here for rehabilitation," he
says, "not
entertainment." At lunch, we're given spaghetti. It's Ash
Wednesday, and so we have
the choice of clam sauce as well as the usual
tomato. "Clam sauce in
prison?" says an inmate to a nearby CO. "What next,
chicken al-fucking-fredo?
Where is the punishment?"
When the excitement over the
clam sauce dies down, the hall is filled with
the sound of mass slurping.
An inmate opposite me, a huge black guy, wolfs
down his huge helping of
spaghetti and complains about still being hungry.
I can only eat half of mine,
so I offer him my leftovers. He declines,
politely, and offers me a
carton of milk. Even more politely, I tell him
I've had my fill, and he
gives the milk to a shaven-headed white kid before
turning to a Hispanic guy to
discuss what sounds like a pretty nasty crime.
One of the biggest surprises
I get at Billerica is the racial climate. I'd
expected a perpetual
standoff. Though there are lines of demarcation
between the black, white,
and Latino populations, on the individual level
there seems to be a fair
amount of integration.
Just as I start feeling warm
and fuzzy, I overhear a snatch of conversation
-- "Kill that
bitch" -- and notice a guy at my table who has a piece of
gauze taped to his neck.
Apparently he got into a dispute over a card game.
The gauze is covering a bite
wound.
Even so, later that day I am
happy to fall in with a card crowd. We play
cribbage on a board made out
of an old flip-flop. I am a pretty good
player, and soon I've strung
a few wins together. It feels good: the
Cribbage King of Cellblock
B. "I play better with a beer and a cigarette,"
I quip, and this starts
everyone going on about beer and butts. In a few
hours, of course, I'll be
having a drink and a smoke. For some reason this
makes me feel ashamed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Afternoon lockdown is at
3:15. I'm supposed to be taken out of here at four
o'clock sharp. As Alan sits
and sips his coffee, I can barely contain
myself. I fidget, pretend to
read, fidget. "It's tuna and pasta tonight,"
Alan says. Sip, sip. Then
the door opens. Know-everything Alan -- Alan of
the mirror held outside the
cell door -- looks startled. "I don't know what
this is all about," he
says.
A huge guard appears at the
door. "Lancaster!" he barks. "Step outside!" As
he cuffs my hands behind my
back, I can almost hear Alan's jaw drop. I am
marched along the cellblock,
which erupts into a frenzy of noise. It looks
as if I'm being taken to
segregation. "You've got the wrong guy!" a couple
of them yell. Some even
batter their cell doors. Just like in the movies.
But I'm not going to
segregation, I'm going to the superintendent's office.
"Uncuff him," the
superintendent says to the CO who brought me in, who
looks uncertain about this.
Then, "You can go." As the door closes, Paul
Norton and I burst into
laughter, as if I'd just pulled some kind of silly
prank. God knows what the CO
must have made of it all.
As Norton feeds me tea and
cookies, all I can think is, I want out. I want
comfort, ease, a familiar
restaurant booth. I want to have someone smile
and call me sir. Above all,
I want a damn cigarette.
Outside, the officer who
drove me here gives me two packs of smokes, Camels
and Marlboros: "I
forgot your brand." Bless him. Back in Cambridge, he
treats me to Buffalo wings
and a beer at the Ground Round. Puffing on a
Marlboro, sipping on a Sam
Adams, I ask him about Alan's revise-and-revoke
hearing next week, which
will determine whether he gets an early release.
"Slim chance," the
officer says. "Slim to none."
That night, lying in my own
bed, my wife cozying up beside me, I'm
restless. I won't get a full
night's sleep for days, and right now I can't
sleep at all. Two nights in
prison have left me jittery. When I close my
eyes, it all comes rushing
back: metal trays, drowning ants, plumes of
razor wire, "I owe you a
ass kicking" penciled on a cell wall, and Alan,
sipping a cup of instant
coffee, saying, "Tuna and pasta tonight."
++++++++++++++++++++++
SIDEBAR
The Bartender
The top of the ladder at
Billerica is James DiPaola, sheriff of Middlesex
County, who oversees the
operation of the jail in Cambridge and the main
prison in Billerica. Before
being elected sheriff three years ago, DiPaola
was a state representative
from Malden, and before that a cop for 18 years
-- three of those as an
undercover narcotics officer. He spoke to his
former guest Chris Wright at
his office at the Middlesex County Courthouse
in Cambridge.
On crowding: "The
average DOC facility has 500 people; we have about 1200.
It's like a little city.
There are control techniques in place to maintain
order. There are things we
have to stay on and monitor. How close are you
to the worst-case scenario
of `losing the place,' as they say, which means
the inmates taking over?
What are the small things that could lead to a big
problem in the future?"
On the population:
"There are factions in Billerica, gang factions --
whether they be rival Latino
gangs, rival Asian gangs, or rival
Latino-Asian gangs. In the
midst of all these potentially predatory
individuals, you get people
who have a serious alcohol problem and are
serving a year or two for
drunk driving. We have a lot of people who are
actually mentally ill, who
need treatment for mental illness."
On the guards: "My
biggest thing here has been to raise the professionalism
of the department. When I first
took over, the officers were doing three
weeks of training -- the
academy we're getting ready to start will have 12
weeks. It's a tough,
depressing job. Alcoholism runs high in correctional
officers, problems with
family lives."
On being thrown in jail:
"We had a suicide attempt the other night. There's
a real risk of depression
and hopelessness. Someone who never got arrested
before suddenly finds
himself thrown into a cell and he thinks this is the
end of the world. We try to
let them know: you've got two and a half years
here. Relax, find something
to do, use the opportunity to make yourself a
little better."
On rehabilitation:
"It's easy for someone who's never been in the prison
environment to say, `Hey, to
heck with them, throw them in the cell, feed
them garbage.' But we're
dealing with somebody we're trying to motivate,
and motivation comes with a
state of mind. I see it as a moral obligation
to try to get an inmate into
the right frame of mind so that he's going to
accept a change in his life.
We will provide opportunities for the inmate
who shows he wants to
improve himself."
On prison conditions:
"We're certainly not running a five-star hotel.
They're not eating prime rib
every night and putting their feet up and
smoking cigars. But you treat
a fellow human being as a human being, with
dignity and respect. You
have to follow the orders of the COs. That doesn't
mean that when I want you to
go to your cell it gives me the right to grab
you by the hair and throw
you in there. The inmate has some expectation to
be treated fairly. You want
to have that balance of fairness and being
tough."
On whether that makes him a
softie: "Anybody who thinks the inmates are
being coddled, I would
challenge them to do what you did. Come on up to
Billerica and see for
yourself."
Chris Wright can be reached
at cwright@phx.com.