Turn Your Head and Scoff

"We do not torture." George W. Bush, 2005

2009-09-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

One of my initial trips to psych Ad-Seg (a sub-set of Ad-Seg in general) in the Central Valley was an experience, if only because of the infrequency of these inmates' release on parole, necessitating contact with me. By comparison, it was a relatively small unit whose occupants were frequently designated as "Mentally Disordered Offenders" and were transferred to state hospitals. It was also at a time before Governor Schwarzenegger banned tobacco smoking (and I emphasize tobacco), thereby creating another lucrative inmate commodity, A study published this past March by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, suggests that 24% of the US population has a lifetime prevalence rate of tobacco smoking, while the prevalence rate of tobacco smoking is an approximate 58% of psychiatric patients in need of hospitalization. Therefore, I found the combination of florid psychosis and unsupervized "flame" troubling.

One of the staff psychologists was looking at my list of patients to be seen and said she would "introduce" me to my first customer of the day. Getting in to Ad-Seg was an ordeal in itself: first, go through a sally port into a control building & show your ID (meaning they actually took and examined the card) & sign in; get buzzed through to the "street,"where my general destination was a good 10 minute walk at a "brisk" pace; get to the yard where you duplicated the ID procedure and are buzzed onto another street leading to the specific gate; get the CO, with the (NOTE: Should you do so, this will be a totally gratuitous click) bigass automatic rifle around his neck,in a booth atop the wall, to identify you, then let you onto the yard (I can't recall if I've written about the terror this same guy provoked in me when, on state-wide lockdown following the brutal murder of a CO in Chino, I was walking away from him and he screamed at me, "Where the fuck are you going!" I slowly pulled out my ID around my neck & turned around to see him with that weapon in his hands; recognizing me, he apologized and said, "It's tense around here." No shit); sign in at the Mental Health office; try & find someone to unlock another gate approximately 100 yards away (for some reason, after trying for a year and a half, they would not issue me a key - the hair?); shake the handle of the Ad-Seg Unit door (knocking generally was unacceptable in this facility), which if it failed to rouse attention meant you had to start yelling "Control" at the small window above the door to summon the Control Officer (and beyond once generally pissed the CO off), also armed with the bigass automatic rifle, who was responsible for every door; sign the log, sign out a mandatory stab-proof vest, and you're in.

The unit consisted of 4 "pods," self-contained cell-blocks with a flat back-wall (so no one could elude the sight of the Control Officer) and two tiers of cells. The security level increased as you walked the hall from pod 1 to 4, and pod 4 was was what you would consider "Super Max": one man to a cell with a window in the door; in-cell confinement except to shower (the shower being a locked cell with bars, a metal plate attached to the bars extends from waist to knees) or outside recreation alone in a "dog cage," approximately 15' long, 8' wide, and 10' high. It is a bit unnerving to see, painted in red 12" letters on the walls,"NO WARNING SHOTS!" in English & Spanish. I am told this is, because of the shape of the pod, "ricocheting" bullets pose a danger to the "uninvolved." That would be me. Psychiatric & therapy services are either done at "cell front" (literally talking through half-inch space between the door & the wall) or cuffed and in a "cage" (the size of an old phone booth) bolted to the pod's main floor. The psychologist & I climbed the stairs to the 2nd tier and stood before a smoke-filled cell whose occupant was standing in the toilet. He was a tall, very thin, very young appearing Black man with toilet paper in both nostrils, smoking a cigarette, and wearing only boxers and a U. of Georgia baseball cap (it took me a few times to figure out that these were not "bulldog" fans, but it was a gang symbol). "Mr. WTF-in the toilet?, this is Dr. Starfish & he's here to help you with parole." This unleashed about a dozen psychotic thoughts culminating in, "And I don't need no help, man, but thanks for coming." Alright then.

Next patient, floor-level cell, equally smoke-filled, but this single-occupant is a morbidly obese man, whose struggle to get from the bed to the door is painful to observe, as getting from bed and 5 steps to the door left him totally gasping for breath and his face bright red. He was gasping, "Please don't go," & I kept assuring him I was in no rush. When he had finally slowed enough to speak, he seemed to be asking more questions of and about me, and I continued to redirect the discussion. When I had finished, he was disappointed I had to leave & kept thanking me until I finally walked away. About 2 months later, as I was walking down the hall, I heard someone calling me by my first name, something that never occurs in prison; generally ascribed to the issue of safety, I suspect it creates a necessary distance for CO's & staff. I turned around, and literally jammed into a cage outside the nurses office was the morbidly obese man. They had to click 2 pairs of cuffs together to get his arms behind him. "I thought you'd be gone already?" "I got a 115 (administrative violation) and they gave me 120 more days." "Why?" "I wasn't getting up fast enough for them, so they started pulling and I banged my head on the bunk bed. I got pissed and hit a CO." When I told him I would come back before he paroled, he response was both surprising and disturbing: "Please, when you come back, can get them to let me out to the cage so we can speak face-to-face. I never get to speak to anyone."

To be continued...

The Ambivalence of Captors

2009-09-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, amongst the usual glut of lunacy that accumulates in in my email (e.g. a "phishing" notice that my Bank of Nova Scotia Accounts were frozen until I returned to retch up all my vital information - I actually have fond memories of Nova Scotia, though no bank accounts) my dear friend, POTFP, forwarded me an OpEd I'd missed in the Times, Recession Behind Bars". I digress for a moment to say, Pal, if you are going to present Two Liars, how could you possibly miss liar-on-the-left's droll statement to the press that "The charges against the owners of Studio 54 are a sham" (as the Feds rolled out the financial records on carts behind him) which rang about as truthful as his (delusional?) insistence, "I do not have AIDS!" in Angels in America. Maybe we need to "team up" once in a while. As you know, my head swims with useless data.

I admit from the outset that the story of Jack Henry Abbott, self-taught prison philosopher/psychopath, "progeny" and spoil of Norman Mailer, who emerged from 25 years of prison only to murder & return to prison before the parole papers were dry, leaves me with a coldness for writings such as Kenneth E. Hartman submitted to the NY Times. In particular, my eyes were drawn to the fact that he is the author of the "forthcoming" Mother California: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars." Perhaps it's the mention of "redemption," his unnecessary use of the word, "schadenfreude," or maybe it's just memories of Norman Mailer. I'm not sure, but I'm also not sure it matters, if only because I was there, surrounded by liars in places where lying is an acceptable and expected - though infrequently unacknowledged - manner of daily life, and I can only imagine death. I am reminded of Clinkshrink's dilemma in identifying a patient, who may or may not have needed preventative medication, when presenting information differed from what the computerized record indicated (I couldn't find the specific post, but if you ask - nicely - I'm sure a ShrinkRapper will direct you). In fact, lying without a perceivable reason or benefit is symptomatic of psychopathy. Dilemma? Yeah, dilemma. Why? Because voracity is an unknown quantity in the forensic setting. Or at least a clinician can begin to believe as such. I only ask you to imagine an environment that, at the least, promotes a certain paranoia that everyone is lying.

Hartman, however, makes several interesting observations: 1) while CA is a "blue" state, it is, at least on paper, "red" on crime, and in my own observation, with a BIG intolerant magnet for the mentally ill (in my town, for example, building a baseball stadium "downtown," attracting (pardon me) white people several summer days & evenings per week results in some rejoicing in the "end of urban blight" - blight as in "scary homeless mentall ill" who all come out of hiding when the Padres predictably tank); 2) Simply put, in my tenure, a lot of folks "managed" the CDCR - save Rod Blagojevich, but there's still time before he switches teams - with little impact, driven by a governor and legislature that consistently flaunt the state's constitution requirement of a timely balanced budget and federal judges nudged awake to toothlessly threaten them; and 3) I validate Mr. Hartman's observation that the "construction bubble" in CA drove developers to within yelling distance of the fences of some of CA's meanest and highest security correctional facilities. Perhaps it's time to finally jump on one sitting 100 yards outside the gates of CIM (see post below)? While the CDCR did, in fact, attach the "R" (as in "Rehabilitation") to its nomme de guerre, Hartman is incorrect in stating “Costs be damned; lock ’em up and be done with it” was an unofficial motto. Oh, and an all-inmates' shout out to scumbag Richard Allen Davis who pretty much single-handedly sealed the "3 Strike" crime sweep nationally by murdering Polly Klass. Mr. Hartman is in the "life-with-no-parole" category for murder, and while I do not mock his "redemption" in the least, better it was achieved at the State Prison at Lancaster, rather than any institutions I might frequent. You always knew when a once great Russian priest & scholar began his eulogy with, "We are not his/her judge, God is his/her judge..." that there was a question, undoubtedly related to truth. And so it goes...

And finally, I ponder the physicians' - and in specific, the psychiatrist's - role in this forensic moral, medical, & fiscal "recession" of the Golden State? Appear "medical" & don't be a sucker? And in the words of another gifted writer, Walter Chinaski, "Drinks for all my friends!"

The Roof, the roof, the roof is on fire...

2009-08-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Because of my imposed silence, I was unable to comment on the recent riot at the California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino, CA. Chino is an odd place, approximately 2 hours north of San Diego, which, as near as I can tell, constitutes nothing but a significant number of God-awful smelling cow farms (and I raise the stakes in summer), and 3 CA prisons: CIM, CIW (for women, including the last identifiable women of the Manson family), and CRC (rehab center), all of which I have had the pleasure to serve. CIM is a grossly over-crowded prison & reception center and the site of the last murder of a CA Corrections Officer, Manuel Gonzalez, in 2005.

Approximately 200 inmates were injured, but no staff were harmed. You would have to imagine if no staff was injured, the inmates had "other fish to fry," as it were. I suspect that for a significant portion of the 200, a riot simply constituted a "setting" for retribution otherwise unleashed because of confinement and inaccessibility. I've heard both wardens and CO's say, "They (inmates) let us run the prison, because we are so outnumbered." CO's rule inside by attitude, voice, pepper-spray, and a baton. Oh, and a whistle. The real power is on the outside, and to my observation, just waiting to come in. I still wonder what they do with those gigantic rubber mallets I saw in the armory closet at San Quentin...

My recollection is walking across a silent yard, so dry and bereft of any form of vegetation that I fully expected tumble weeds to blow by. Most times you must bang (hard) on the door for an officer to hear you and unlock the door. This is simply because it is so deafeningly noisy that you can barely be heard at a low yell. Giant "hurricane" fans are blowing in all directions, and even those who should seriously reconsider has his shirt off because of the heat. Directly in front of the control center ( a bunker of sorts that houses the mechanisms to electronically open and close some doors, generally (purposely?) dark, where officers sit with feet propped up on desks reading, writing, and whatever...) is a massive single cell, formerly serving as a "day room," and now filled with bunk beds. Home to a massive number of men.Back in the far right corner hangs a TV, and nearly every time I was in there, Jerry Springer was blasting at a pitch suitable for Madison Square Garden (could there actually be a Jerry Springer station?) Secondly, if no "offices" were available, you had to "improvise," standing in a niche in hallway to conduct your confidential psychiatric assessment. And behind the control center are the showers, hot moisture blowing from the hurricane fans into the "halls & day room." It is sad to say, but, by far, the "nicest" facility is reserved for those chronically ill and/or dying, HIV/AIDS, transvestites, and the seriously mentally ill. It was clean quiet, with a low inmate-to-CO ratio, a real medical facility, and a nurse 24/7. The ill are actually treated humanely.

All I can say to those I know working there, thank goodness you're safe, albeit terrorized. Let it always be this way, and better you than me.