How Prison Time Is Spent

By  Karl Frederick Vinson

 This article was inspired by the brilliantly written article called, “War Times,” by Mr. Tone Pitts and was in the November 2008 issue of Cell Door Magazine.  Mr. Pitts was correct in stating that we, as prisoners of war, are “in a war with a cruel opponent, ‘time,’ a fierce enemy that never sleeps or takes timeout, only destructively advancing minute by minute, day by day trying to annihilate me, ruin my dreams, ripen me with age, and destroy my allied ships….”

Prison has reduced us to “adult children” because we have very little or no responsibilities.  We’re not paying for lights, gas, or water, nor are we paying for our housing.  We get 21 meals per week, and we are ordered to clean our rooms just as our parents ordered us as children.  When we are “bad” and misbehave, we are punished by being confined to our rooms.  A lot of prisoners didn’t finish high school before being locked up, so they are ordered to attend school until they attain their G.E.D.  Higher education is no longer available unless we can afford certain correspondence courses, and there are not too many candidates for that.  There are vocational classes available, e.g., food technology, building trades, custodial maintenance, and in a couple of prisons, welding and automotive technology.  After participating in the foregoing activities, we get to “play!”

During my 23 years of incarcerated vegetation, I’ve seen more prisoners play more games than I saw in all of my school years at home!  For 15 years, I played right along with them.  There’s basketball, baseball, football, soccer, racket ball, handball, tennis, hacky-sack, horseshoes, a host of card games, including “casino,” which takes zero intelligence to play.  There’s chess (there was a period when I played chess and basketball all day long), checkers, dungeons and dragons (illegally), pool, bowling, riding 10-speeds, ice skating, skiing, and there’s more; I just can’t think of them right now.  This is serious activity, and as long as it’s going on, the powers that be are happy because they know that we aren’t concerned about trying to get out.  The prison administrators are educated people, and our non-education allows them to win this game with the greatest of ease.

Prisoners who took plea bargains usually don’t concern themselves with getting their cases reversed, so they live like children until they are released.  There are prisoners doing life who live like children because they’ve given up on hope and have prepared to die whenever it happens.  (Michigan does not have the death penalty.)  There’s a small percentage of us who utilize the law libraries and try to fight back with whatever we know, and there are a few “spoon-fed” prisoners whose people are behind them with good lawyers and resources; however, the vast majority of us would rather live like children and spend our time playing every game available.   Some even find time to play with each other!

If prisoners were home educated, the successful conviction rate would not be so high.  Most prisoners can’t see that because they don’t even realize that they didn’t know very much.  I’m a prime example because if I would have known anything about the Michigan rules of evidence back in 1986, I would have avoided this conviction.  It’s that simple!  My lack of education allowed my court-appointed lawyer to get away without doing her full job, and it happens everyday that lawyers deliver ineffective assistance without the defendants knowing it.  Since we couldn’t retain competent counsel, and had no idea as to the law itself, we were literally sheep led to slaughter.

It’s clear that prison administrations are not in favor of educating prisoners, but we cannot let that stop us.  We must educate ourselves by going to the law libraries and general libraries.  We must help each other by studying together.  If we don’t want to educate ourselves for ourselves, we must educate ourselves for the children we left behind.  How can we feel comfortable by doing the same daily activities as our children:  playing childish games from sunup to sundown?  What will we have to offer the children other than what they already know how to do?  We want our children to love and respect us, but how can they after they discover that we know less than they do?

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