Prison Personalities

They assigned me to cell block 10, cell 1. My roommate was a young man named Tony. He was from Arizona and got busted for transporting meth to Rapid. He was twenty-seven, a nice looking kid of Mexican descent. We got along pretty well. He had a child in Arizona he was trying to support. He was pretty streetwise and had a lot of ambitions he wanted to accomplish in life. What he didn't realize was that he was dreaming the impossible dream.

It wasn't long before I realized what his problem really was. He couldn't read much and could understand less. He had me read all the legal documents and try to explain them to him. How he was able to get out of the educational system doesn't register in my head. Having spent twenty years in the education business, I realized that the educational system was also guilty for putting him where he was. He was facing seven years for sure.

On cellblock 10 there were 54 inmates and of those only 15 were white. Most were Indians of some degree. I thought that was a disproportionate number.

One Indian came in because of a case of domestic violence. He was a pretty rough and tumble guy and pretty angry. He griped for about three days and was pretty angry with his woman. On about the fourth day he had a visitor. It was his woman wanting him to get out and come home. She never wanted him in jail but the law in South Dakota's is that domestic abuse is prosecuted by the state regardless of the desire of the "victim."  It was plain to me that this strategy was not working. What was going to happen was that he was going to blame his jail time on his woman and when they got angry the violence would intense, not become less. His return to jail was guaranteed.

That is only one instance of the catch 22. There were several more and not all were Indians.

As I was sitting at the table listening to more interesting stories, I heard one man say he was in for not supporting his children. I asked him how many children he had. He said he had three. I asked how old the youngest was. He said 24. I asked how he could be in jail for that. The explanation stunned me. He never had a job that paid enough to survive on and pay child support. It was enough when the family was together to keep from starving, but that is all. When he had to try to support two homes, nobody could survive. As the years went by, he found himself getting more and more behind. Then the legislators decided, I guess, to try to collect back child support. Those who could not pay a certain percent found themselves in jail for a while. Now, as he explained, he could not get a job because he would be honest and tell the potential employer that they were probably going to throw him in jail because he could not make enough to survive and pay the percentage. What employer wants to hire someone who will be getting in and out of jail all the time?

I asked him how long this could go on. He told me it looked like it would be going on forever. I think he is right. The system of "reason" was really crazy. Apparently, this made sense to lawmakers.

One evening we got two new inmates. These were just young kids still in their teens in think. They both were Janklow's Boot Camp graduates. They went into telling about their experiences. It was pretty clear they thought it was a joke. The fact they were there validated that idea. We laughed and poked fun at he whole stupid idea. They explained to me that the reason why the boot camp seemed to work was because they got better at getting away with the illegal activity, which would not show up on the statistics and give the appearance of success.

They had not given up smoking dope, drinking and having lots of fun. Since they felt they were better equipped to outsmart the law, the activity actually increased. They were not in for more for the more serious violations they were committing, but for very minor things. They were fun kids in "THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS."

While there I also got to be good friends with Dick. Dick was a drug dealer. That is not why he was in though. It was another domestic abuse deal where his wife violated her own protection order and wrote him a love letter while he was in jail. I read it. This I found was a pretty common practice.

Dick explained how his operation worked and who some of his clients were, not that I knew any of them. He wanted me to hook up with him to expand his business. I told him I wasn't that desperate yet.

The good stuff came in from Oregon I learned. His sons were keeping his customers supplied while he was in the lock up. While he was in, he received an insurance policy settlement for about fifty thousand. His lawyer learned about that. All of a sudden there were a host of strategies the lawyer came up with to spring him.

It scares me to know how the psychology works when a person is incarcerated and how they can be deluded into doing absolutely unreasonable thinking when being promised the HOPE for freedom. There is no doubt what happened. Dick kept writing me after I got out. That chicken was getting seriously plucked by those who made him think they had his best interest in mind- his lawyers.

I don't think I had ever met a cold-blooded killer until I was locked up with one myself. I remembered reading about Albert Lewis murdering his wife in the Rapid City Journal. Little did I know how small the world is.

The papers made a villain of Albert effectively by giving the gruesome details of the murder. Albert had murdered his wife of many years by crushing her head with a hammer, calling the police and then continuing to bash her brains all over.

Albert, as I found for myself, was actually a feeble old man. He was mild mannered and seemed genuinely gentle. He always had on long sleeved shirts and a little foam headset used for a radio. I asked him once if he had a radio. He said he didn't. I asked him why he wore the headset. He replied that he had poor circulation and was constantly in misery because he always felt cold and the headset helped keep his ears warm. He was not able to eat much of what was served and was constantly hungry as well.

As I understood it, he had lots of medication to take and, being old and losing his memory, he had gotten them all mixed up and had not been taking them right. He lived in a private hell knowing what he did. He was in extreme emotional pain and knew he did not have long to live and didn't want to. I did not come away with the feeling he murdered his wife of many years on anger or some other cause. It was clear to me he loved her and the knowledge of what had happened was too much to bear.

What should have happened to Albert I do not know. Imprisonment was not helping anything other than the lawyers and the system. I will never forget shaking his hand when I left. His hand was soft, chilly and had a feeling of gentleness about it, yet it had taken a life. These feelings would not reconcile in my mind. I wouldn't have objected to rooming with him.

With out a doubt, the strangest man I ever met was one who was in for shaving the pubic hair from a very young teen-age girl. It interesting to hear how he had this all justified in his head and how convincing his story could seem. He had concocted an elaborate scheme on how he was going to get out. It was amazing how this mind worked - or didn't work. He had a loan-floating scheme to get his bail money that required the manipulation of his girlfriend who had been living with him in the back of a pickup camper.

I never did get to see his girlfriend, but his scheme did not work. I remember looking into his Charles Manson eyes and seeing the Helter Skelter going on in his head. It scared the hell out of me. Some day he was going to get out. They were not interested in fixing anything in his head. It was just punishment they were interested. They were going to let him out some day after years of abuse and deprivation. I have no idea how that was going to help other than postponing a huge problem. But that is how the system works.