during my lifetime. The power to be beaten and not have it affect me. The power to not have fear. Now, the power of no fear is a dangerous one to have, but it has made my life much more interesting than if I were normal.
EMOTIONS
Showing emotions were a sign of weakness in the environment I grew up in. Like vultures seeing a wounded animal and ripping it to pieces, some people will take advantage of that weakness.
Sometimes emotions are difficult to control, but not doing so leads to greater problems. When you let emotions take over, you can't think clearly.
Everyone is going to feel emotions at times. Most people's lives are controlled by their emotions. It's a human thing; an animal thing.
Everyone is different as to what emotions they feel, why they feel them, when they feel them and how they deal with them.
More often than not, I am able to rule emotions out of my decision making process. This makes me better able to do what has to be done, but it also makes me appear as a non caring person.
I have been alone the greater part of my life. The only one I could rely on was myself. Due to people saying things and not following through, I don't count on anyone but myself. If someone is dependable and does what they say, I appreciate that and respect that, but I also realize that there are other things that happen that could change that. I never get my hopes up or count on anything going right.
Working at this institution was like being out on the highway. You keep on trying to do exactly the right thing by going the speed limit, but there's always someone flying past you riding your ass trying to force you to do what you are not supposed to do.
NEVER LIE
As an officer in this place, I heard a lot of lies. When I instructed academies, I stressed to them that no matter what happens, what boner you pull, NEVER LIE. This is a place where it is impossible to train officers on every situation that may develop. What is correct to you, may not be correct to your superior. Most can accept that, but they cannot accept not being able to trust you.
Officers do expect inmates to lie to them, but it is a certain type of lie that would get them in trouble with me. If their lie was to try to lead me to a wrong conclusion or get someone in trouble that did nothing, that kind of lie would make me aggressive in writing them up. If they were trying to play me for a fool, that was another type of lie that would make me write up their violations.
Lies I could accept were lies that they had to tell me. For instance, if they were in a fight and needed medical help. The inmate code would not let them tell me who hurt them. They would have to tell me that they fell down or some such thing. That is an expected and necessary lie for them to tell me so they wouldn't get attacked again later. Generally if they had been assaulted, their business with the assailant had been concluded.
I would find it difficult to write up an inmate for a minor violation that they were straight up about and sincerely told me it wouldn't happen again. I found so many violations of so many types, that any that I could justify not writing was a blessing.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT
There is an important thing to realize when reading this account of my experiences in this place. Part of my job was to observe and report. When I observed violations or potential problems, my responsibility was to report it. That was the end of my responsibility.
More often than not, after I turned in my report, I did not know what happened after that. If my report caused someone to go to segregation, I would see them get hauled out, but rarely would I know what happened after that. If a deal was struck, I would not know. If they were shipped to Oak Park, I would not know. Some of these things, I could've found out if I had the time to dig or had better connections with officers that worked the areas where this information was easily accessible.
The amount of work I did, time spent manning my posts, helping offenders with their problems, supervising the swamper crew, trying to get the block in order and things repaired, and so on; filled my day and then some.
It was a challenge just to get out of there at the end of the day. Many days, I was the last one to leave from my shift. I wouldn't submit overtime unless it was someone else or the institution causing me to stay late. If I stayed late because of being aggressive at doing my job well, that wasn't normal here, so I didn't submit an overtime slip. It was easier to get out if I didn't take time to write up a slip. After over 8 hours at this job, I just wanted to get out.
What happened after writing a report was none of my business. Some people checking over this book and giving me their input stated they wanted more than just what I wrote about each incident. More often than not, I did not know or care. My job was done; as far as that incident was concerned.
There were general conclusions to most violations where the inmate was taken to segregation. Most were handled by investigation officers that would offer the violator a certain number of days in segregation. The number of days was standard per type of violation. The worse the violation and the greater the number of violations, the more segregation time they were charged with. The inmate would have to sign a paper accepting the segregation time, which was an admission of guilt, or contest it and ask for a hearing. Rarely did any of them ever contest what I had written. They would generally wind up back in my block when their time was served. They would either behave, make sure I didn't catch them again or if they did it again and I caught them, go back to segregation for another series of days there.
If their violation was extreme, they may be sent to Oak Park Heights. Violations like this would be things like them assaulting someone viciously, assaulting an officer, trying to escape, and the such.
WHY THERE ARE NOT A LOT OF BOOKS LIKE THIS
In writing these books, I realized some things.
I did not find many books on how prison life really is. There are reasons for that. When you get home, you definitely do not feel like inflicting more of this place on yourself. You need to get your head out of this place in order to try to maintain who you are and your sanity, even though that is not possible.
Working in this place 8 hours a day changes a person, and not for the better. You find out a lot of things you never knew. You have a darker perspective of life.
Sitting down and writing about this after I was out of this place, was not a pleasant experience. There were many times that those angry feelings came back; those feelings that I always worked so hard at trying to get rid of; those feelings of people that are supposed to be bad that appear to be good and those feelings of people that are supposed to be good that are bad; the feelings of friends that are enemies and enemies that become friends. The inner conflict is frustrating and confusing. It wears you down. It is difficult to maintain being the person you are or perceive yourself to be.
REGULAR MIND VS IRREGULAR MIND
Once you walk through those series of doors to start your shift, you have to force your mind into an entirely different place. I always related to it as pulling my mind out of my head and placing it on a shelf. My normal mind, at least as normal as my mind could possibly be, was not functional in this environment. Ok, instead of calling it my normal mind, let's call it my regular mind; the one I use regularly even when I'm not regular.
My abnormal mind made it so I could function in this place. Inmates told me that the way they survived and kept from going nuts was to close their eyes and imagine they were with their family, playing with their dog and many other things that made them feel good.
They told me many things that would not be appropriate for me to describe to you even in a book like this, if you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean, you are obviously quite young. Read this book again in a few years and vivid pictures will pop into your head and you will be in a place just like those guys.
The reason it was difficult going into prison with my regular mind