TIME
Does Change Things
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By
Ron Slatton Bio/Address
Time
- a word that has a whole different meaning in prison. Since a person cannot
be removed from time unless you kill them, what prison does is make time as
miserable and unpleasant as possible. Prison time is hard time, a metaphorical
death, a sustained twilight condition of death-in-life. The point is to create
the fiction that you don't exist. Prison is an experience of death by seconds,
minutes, hours and days.
Yet
the deadly nature of a prison sentence doesn't quite kill you, because
prisons, in spite of their ability to make your life unbearable, can't kill
time. Incarceration as punishment always achieves less and more than it is
intended. Prison deprives the incarcerated of the benefits of society,
abridges their civil and legal rights and dehumanizes their daily life. The
incarceration process makes a prisoner feels less than human. However, unless
a prisoner’s life is taken, prison can't take time from the prisoner.
You
suffer in ways beyond an outside person's comprehension. Bodies languish.
Spirits are broken. Yet in some cases, the prison cell becomes a monk's cell.
Exile and isolation are the blessed solitude for self-examination and
self-discipline.
You
got time but you can't do anything with it. I mean there are 24 hours in a day
just like the outside world. It could be compared to a country mile, seemingly
longer, but is the same. You aren't booked up for most of them so you try to
fill the minutes and hours with something. After a while it gets quite hard to
do.
How
many times have I sat down to write a letter to a friend or even something for
myself and find I have nothing to say, not even one word.
We
are in a vacuum, a calm vacated space. The images of free life fade in and
out; memories of the outside world have grown dim, vanished. Faces and places
are no longer seen, which may be a blessing for if you go too far you can push
yourself into a bottomless pit of depression and despair.
I
looked at all I have missed, what could have been and never will be. I have
looked at pictures and seen a blank spot where I should be. Society can lock
up your body, but they can never lock up your mind. You must hold on dearly to
the dreams that you have so as to have hope.
You
try to kill time in the classic prison manner. So you move slowly, for there
is no rush and no real reason to rush. You try to find friendship. But, if you
get close too to someone, then gossip mongers have their effect. Or you are
harassed. Either way it seems to stop the friendship or curtail it
drastically. You need not listen to that, just being close to someone leads to
companionship and allows you to be a person, human in an inhumane environment.
What is wrong with that? Why must a person live by what other people think of
them? As long as you are happy and content with yourself, that is all that is
necessary.
I
think nicknames and tattoos are ways we can show terms of endearment and
compassion. For in here there is no warmth to be projected, no feelings to be
shown. These small gestures seem to be the only warmth one can project and the
other to permit. In recreation, the dining hall and dayrooms, our
conversations are small and we continually ask, "How are you today? How
do you feel?" And to varying degrees we really mean it. No other person
can know the cyclic longings compared to a person in prison. We know the deep
troughs of despair one slogs through while locked up.
Sexual
longings are, if not completely forgotten, at least greatly sublimated in
prison, not by chemical means, but simply because one is generally depressed
and sees the same male faces day in and day out. Those feelings get
diminished.
There
are gays in here, far more than the administration may wish to admit. This
being if you so chose to indulge in this activity. The penalties are quite
severe if you are caught, which is unlikely, but you will receive 60 days in
segregation and harassment from the guards and fellow prisoners. Somewhat like
Puritanism, they punish you for something that society has accepted. Do gays
go to jail in society for what they do in private?
There
are some who think they are females and have female names and thus act as
such, doing others hair, laundry, ironing and cooking and other things that
make them feel feminine. This amuses the guard, but causes the staff to cringe
and try to cover them up.
The
prisoners that do so choose to enter into a relationship, the majority keeps
the ideas and the relationship as secretive as possible. While rumors will
abound, no one knows actually what goes on behind the doors of a prison cell
except the two involved. The reason for the secrets is peer pressure. They do
not want the harassment of their alleged friends. But they don't see that if
they were their actual friends, they would still be accepted no matter what
their beliefs or ideology may be. It is really a matter of preference, but it
is also a way to sustain yourself, to show compass ion, care, trust and
loyalty to a person. All that seems lost in this environment. A person need
not actually indulge in sexual activity, but only have a closeness with
someone. This type of relationship means a lot in prison. It is always hoped
that you don't get duped or tricked on the matter. That goes on a lot in here.
Someone plays on another’s feelings and people will see that as a weakness
and use it to their advantage.
Another
area (the largest by far) that is most frustrating is the total disrespect
shown to the prisoners by the staff and officers. Whether it is blatant verbal
abuses, or subsequent mental abuse, they say, "I have the power and
control over you and you can't do a damn thing about it." There is
nothing a prisoner can do. The administration will not believe you and the
procedures to have it investigated are a joke. So you must endure this daily.
When you do try and take the proper form of action, you gain the label of
troublemaker, writ writer or grievance writer and subjected to more abuse,
harassment, shakedowns and placement into the hole. This is the way they try
to break you down. The camaraderie of the staff shows through and they form
their own "gang" to get back at you in some way. So you may win part
of a battle but you will always lose the war. The cruelty is not within the
prison population, but lies within the system and society. The guards fail to
see the prisoner as a human being, a person that one day will be back out on
the street. At least 90% of us will be one day back in society. There must be
an adjustment in the mindset of the people in power. They must show compassion
towards the person in prison.
I
have endured many things over these 22 years and I have learned from them. I
have learned how cruel, uncaring people in power can be. This in and of itself
is enough to make a person not wish to return to prison, but it also makes me
bitter and angry most of the time.
I
feel I am being punished for standing for the person I have become and the
individual I am. I will not allow the guards or other administrators beat me
down, mentally harass or abuse me. All I want is to be treated as a human
being that can think on his/her own. I always believed and continue to believe
that I must express myself as an individual or I will become an
institutionalized person, unable to function without people telling you what
to do.
The
past and present have taught me a great deal about human behavior. Politics
the governs a prison. What society thinks about prisoners runs the prison, not
the prison administration. It is all a game to make every one look good. The
public perceive prisons as country clubs so they take all privileges away from
a prisoner. But yet no member of the government has come into a prison to find
out what it actually is like.
The
concepts will never change -- the continual punishment, the degradation of a
human being. The staff will never change their ideas. They will always see us
as the scum. We are only good for an easy paycheck. The prisoners deserve
nothing. They demand respect while not showing respect for the prisoners.
Respect for the guards is given in more out of fear than actual respect for
they are armed or can be armed with PR-24's, mace, night sticks and hardware
to inflict pain and suffering. They have the power to isolate you on a whim
and they won’t be held accountable.
My crime was against
the laws of society and an individual. I do sincerely regret it. But I can do
nothing to alter that fact. But what I did do is alter myself, my thinking and
learned that others in society have rights and deserve respect and that has
helped me a great deal to understand myself. Prison didn't do it, nor did the
professionals, but I did it myself.
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