Stories from Prison

 I get so many questions about what it is like to work in a prison, that I have decided to  periodically  include in my blog, some of the things I wrote over the years.  The stories are all true. The titles are my own, names have been changed.

Don't Do That Again: The Correctional Educator and the Inmate

A scream resounded from her two hundred plus frame.  Swift as a bullet he catapulted from his desk, headed for the door with his hands up in the air.  He spreadeagled himself against the wall, looking backward towards her with a frightened, puzzled look.
"A roach." she panted, pointing to the ground.
With  a sigh of relief,  the inmate returned to the room, this time his hands at his sides.
"Don't ever scream like that again miss, " he said to his teacher. 
"If you scream like that, the officers will run inside thinking we are doing you some harm."

My inmate worker was still laughing when he told me this story about his cell mate.

***
Don't Do that:  The Inmate and the Librarian

"Don't do that, don't do that," he whispered  with a sort of feigned desperation in his voice.
I looked up and  a half dozen pairs of eyes, wary, hungry, speculating, amused, were focused on me.
"What's the matter? " I asked the inmate workers who were in library waiting for the correction officer to give them permission to leave.
Came the simple  guileless reply, "Trev was getting excited Miss S.  Its been such a long time since any of us see a woman comb her hair."
I had just returned from lunch, and was running a comb through my wind-blown hair.  I was in my office, door closed but they could see  through the glass window.  I never combed my hair when inmates were around again. 

***
A Woman's Laugh
The library was closed the day so the Principals and Instructors from across the state could have their meetings.
Inmate workers were allowed in the library to work, but not the general population.  The entire area is usually cleared of inmates during lunch.  When they returned from lunch, they had to wait outside until the officer gave permission to enter.
Staff used this time to joke around.  One instructor had a very "healthy laugh".
"Miss S. you don't understand how good that sound.' one inmate said.  "Around here we don't generally hear women laughing ."

Prison Writings

Many individuals are curious about the life of inmates, so I will list  a few  of the books books that I have read by and about prisoners. There are many more.  These just came to mind. I will add from time to time.

• Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness. Pete Earley (The journalist, whose son suffers from mental illness states that "Our Nation's prisons have become our new mental hospitals")
• Eager Street: A Life on the Corner and Behind Bars, by Arlando "Tray" Jones.  Tray is an inmate in one of Maryland's prisons.  He details his life selling drugs in Baltimore, where by age 14, he was the trigger man for a drug dealer. ( I never get curious about the crimes of any of my patrons, so this book was an eye opener)  Tray got his degree in prison.
• A Place to Stand. Jimmy Santiago Baca. (Baca taught himself to read and write)
• Prison Stories. Seth Ferranti
• Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun  Dance, by Leonard Peltier (Native American)
• Willow in a Storm: a Memoir, James Peter Taylor & Kathleen Murphy-Taylor (After over 40 years in prison, the  69 year old parolee married his social worker in 1996)