I-ME-MINE? NOT IN THE POKEY, MR. HARRISON….

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When people have their apartments or houses broken into, they tell us that they feel ‘violated.’ They explain that it’s as if someone has stolen something of great value from them.  And that is, of course, what has happened. The sanctity of their home has been betrayed by a stranger with utter contempt for that sanctity. No one but you and your family has any business in your home, unless you welcome him in; anyone who cannot conform their behavior to this sacred societal trust is rightly accused, tried, convicted, and punished as a criminal. “A man’s home is his castle,” as one English legal precept has been insisting for 300 years.

But when you’re working for corrections and your internal peace officers come to shake down the libraries, it’s not the same. That’s when you discover that your libraries, your office, your work desk, and the contents of your libraries/ office/work desk have nothing whatever to do with you.

In corrections, you own nothing. That desk you’ve worked at for 20 years? Property of the state. That office? Belongs to the prison. That substantial collection of library material in those shelves/ rooms/cabinets? Taxpayers paid for that. The chair in which you sit? Not yours. Never was. Librarians are even fond of saying “my patrons” or “my clerks” or “my students.” Sorry. They were someone else’s clerks/ patrons/ students before you, and they’ll be someone else’s clerks/ patrons/ students when you’re gone.

Quite naturally, when adult human beings take a vested interest in their work, they become territorial. It’s human nature. But nothing reminds you of just how limited your actual territory is until your libraries are shaken down.

When you sign on with corrections, you must lose the personal concept of ‘mine.’  This is because the only thing you own is something you had before they hired you and something you take home with you each day — your reputation. Everything else you make use of or consume has been bought with state money and is, literally and logically, the property of the state.

The last week of January, our institution conducted a shakedown of the law and lending libraries. The great news is that no drugs or weapons were found. The bad logistical news is that, in every shakedown, the place is left a mess. Not the libraries: the officers were careful to keep the shelves orderly, even though each book had to be searched for contraband. The libraries were fine. But the offices in which work the librarian and inmate library clerks — different story. It will probably take two days before everything is organized and back to normal.

As it should be. When those officers are searching for contraband, that is their main focus and concern – nothing else matters. They come in unannounced, take their time doing what they need to do, and leave unannounced. And by the way: while they’re searching the libraries, you are nowhere near the area. The institution asks you to work temporarily in another office. The librarian is not security staff, and is therefore not a part of this operation. You must allow yourself to be moved out of the way.

After the shakedown, one of my ABLE MINDS assistants heard me mutter something about the contents of an office drawer being in disarray. This was his cue. “They don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I’ll admit I was upset at first. ‘Righteous indignation,’ I think they call it. But let me ask you– who did I choose to work for?”

“The DOC, but–”

“–then I know that occasionally my office will be left a wreck.”

“I can understand them treating us that way. But you’re staff, you’re not doing time!”

“They’re trying to run a prison. Everyone has to be treated the same. They have to shake me down, they cannot assume because I’m an employee that I’m above reproach. Look at the things employees bring into prisons! Everyone is subject to search and no one can be above suspicion.”

“But we’re human beings!”

“Look about you, in this room you and I call the librarian’s office. Nothing in this room is mine. It all belongs to the Governor. Now, if they took my coat or damaged it — something I’ve worked for, something I’ve paid for — that’s a different story.”

“I’ll concede that. But what about your dignity?”

“My office needs straightening, but my dignity’s intact. What do you think?”

“I think you’re taking this a lot easier than I would if I were you.”

“Everyone has their burdens. If you must, be glad you’re not me.”

“Be glad you’re not me,” he said, smiling.

With that he reminded me of something esle that’s mine — my correctional mantra, which is  ‘There–but for the grace of God–go I.’

Kinda keeps me humble.

Kinda.

“What we’ve got here is failure to…um….”

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Didja ever notice, in this swinging Information Age of ours, that each time you’re compelled to communicate in a slightly different form than that to which you’ve grown accustomed (e.g., iPhones, PDAs, Facebook) you have to learn how to cry/crawl/toddle/walk/run all over again? Kinda defeats the need and desire for immediate, concise communication, don’tcha think? Me too.

Take this blog. Please.

Because if I have to learn one more line of ASCII characters, HTML code, or  cPanel jargon, I will never actually communicate — talk/ write/ gesture — again. All we do is read manuals, watch tutorial videos, and email the computer gurus in our lives whose sad lot it is to hoist us out of whatever learning-curve quagmire we’ve fallen into face-first after misunderstanding what we’ve read /watched/ been told.

[audio:failure-to-communicate-boss1.mp3]

Now I know why the Yellow Pages are crammed to overflowing with web site design businesses. It’s ’cause everyone wants a web site, but no one has the time to learn how to build one. These designers are the first to say, “All this code stuff is easy. Anyone can do it!” So you take their word and you look at the code and a half-hour later you’re still looking at the code and then you suddenly channel your kindergarten Reading class when first you cracked a Fun With Dick and Jane text and start weeping & shaking the same way you did all those happy, care-free years ago until your teacher got disgusted & sent your crying a$$ out in the hall.

Communication in corrections is a lot different. More stable. Traditional, if you will. The librarian’s communications arsenal consists of an impressive contemporary array of techno-wonders, including:

1     A corded land line

2     A battery-operated two-way radio secured to their person from a belt clip

3     A ‘panic button’ alarm, either mounted to the librarian’s desk or to the wall behind the office chair

4     A God-given ability to yell, scream, or holler

Recently, corrections has made communications advances that have launched all Departments into the latter half of the 20th century. These include:

1     An email system for staff to annoy each other with

2     Voicemail (in case email isn’t annoying enough); and

3     A severely-filtered internet portal, allowing librarians the whole of the commercial web at their fingertips, provided that the web they use is limited to certain government home pages, the Google search engine, and Wikipedia. This is because Security Comes First.

I’d tell you more about communications technology in the prison library, but I have to go watch a WordPress video on how to save this blog entry.

[audio:an-extremely-good-example-of-2-way-communication.mp3]

MOLLYCODDLING MISCREANTS: Or, “Palm trees? In prison?”

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If your own foibles strike you with bemused embarrassment, then the instant you realize that the current one you’ve been nurturing is particularly asinine, you face two rather similar choices:

1     Take your own life; or

2     Batter your bespattered self-esteem further by posting it on your blog

F’rinstance:  The first time I walked inside the courtyard of the California Institute for Men, I saw something I couldn’t believe–palm trees. They had palm trees in the prison. Everywhere you looked, there was another one. I thought (& nearly said out loud, thank God for small favors): “Palm trees? In a prison? I know California’s a permissive, libertarian land, but this is absurd! They really do mollycoddle criminals out here!”

In my cryptic defense, this was 2001, and it was my first time in CA. I’d only been there a week when these thoughts occurred to me. In that week leading up to that moment, I’d spent all my time in a Cal State-Fullerton computer lab learning PowerPoint and constructing a 63-slide presentation that I intended to use in my first-ever correctional library management course. Except for the morning walk to the school, I never saw the light of day–only the inside of that lab. Yes, of a morning I walked from the hotel & across the beautifully-landscaped eastern side of the campus. Yes, there were palm trees there! But these were the grounds of a major California university, and you’d expect to see palm trees in a place like that.

After the 6-day course was over, I had three days to myself before my return flight home. So I drove places. I walked places. And I saw my first palm trees outside of a prison. I began to see them in people’s yards, which I considered a tad extravagant. Until I realized what everyone else with commonsense already knew — they were in everyone’s yard. They were on the grounds of the In-N-Out burger chain. In the parking lots of used bookstores. Framing the front entrances of churches. They were so commonplace it became an odd site not to see them as part of the landscape. Finally, the light went on.

I’d realized that all my life I’d equated palm trees with luxury and leisure. It never occurred to me that palm trees were as ubiquitous here as evergreens & pines were back home. I thought you had to be stinking rich to own a palm tree. Myself, I blame Robin Leach.

That same day, we spent the afternoon at the CA Institute for Women. They had palm trees in their courtyard, too. The Lieutenant giving the tour told us of the time an inmate hid in one of these trees for nearly three full days, and no one but the inmates periodically sneaking food out to her knew where she was. I very much wanted to ask the good Lieutenant why for pity’s sake didn’t they cut the tree down, but dare not embarrass a fellow corrections employee who also happened to outrank me. But soon after the story I saw something that compelled comment — a palm tree right next to their outer-perimeter cyclone fence, a tree which had grown tall enough potentially to tempt some enterprising lady to shimmy up & leap over the razor wire and into freedom. When I took the Lieutenant aside & mentioned this, he sighed. “We’ve all told them again and again about that, but nothing gets done.” He then looked at me and repeated the same observation I’ve heard offered too many times in my career to count: “It’s corrections.’

Understood. “Palm trees in a prison! The very idea!”

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YOUR CORRECTIONAL MANTRA: “Security comes first!”

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ASSIGNMENT — PRISON LIBRARIAN INTERVIEW

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Way Back When–before SJSU’s distance learning program took off into the stratosphere–I’d take the students out for a full-day field trip to two prisons. We’d meet administrators, enjoy a tour of the prisons, and end up in the libraries, where the librarians would give informative presentations and field questions. Now that we engage each other through an ethernet cable, those days are sadly over. A pity –prison tours helped make the course content more relevant for the students.

HOWEVER — we still can talk with a working prison librarian to see what it is they do all day, and what they have to say about it all. That’s where this assignment comes in. The purpose of the assignment is to discover how applicable the 14 management principles actually are in the correctional library environment.

Although you don’t need to set up a personal interview at their place of work, that would be ideal. Short of this, you may conduct the interview over the phone or via email. Whatever makes the most sense for you.

The only caveat is that you cannot interview me.

Click the link below & open the Directory of State Prison Libraries. Here you’ll find correctional librarians galore. Choose one. Contact them. Ask them politely to participate. And remember to thank your interview subject profusely for helping you to complete a course assignment.

http://ce.msde.state.md.us/library/Directory04/directory0407.htm

It’s been our experience in the past that some librarians will have a lot to say. And others have very little to say. Let’s hope you all choose gregarious librarians who have no trouble talking about what it takes to do what they do.

JUST A DROP OF WATER…

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…in an endless sea. For your consideration we offer Jailfire, another in a long cyberspace conga line of adjunct graduate course web pages. You’ll quickly discern that I have not the slightest, teensy-tiniest idea of what the hell I’m doing. But that’s not what makes jailfire remarkable. No way Nelly! Because in this ever-expanding world of cyber-communications, we’ve all of us visited the blogs of folks who have no business running blogs, so this by itself is no mark of distinction.

As for starting a blog, I recall here the words of Stephen Stills at the iconic 1969 music festival in Woodstock New York, when he and his obscure-but-soon-to-be-staggeringly-famous band took the stage for the first time. Stephen confided in the intimate audience of 500,000: “This is the second time we’ve played in front of people, man. We’re scared sh**less.” Sorta like that.

The remarkable part is this — the site was created thru the website wizardry of a website design company called Digital Stax. Digital Stax is owned and operated by one of my ex-pupils, a Mr. Raymond Dean, by name. And when I say ‘pupil’ (no one uses ‘pupil’ to mean ‘student’ anymore, and that’s just silly) I should explain that the San Jose State University, particularly their School of Library and Information Science, has asked me six times in the last eight years to instruct certain of their more adventurous (foolhardy?) graduate students in a seminar that I boringly dubbed Correctional Library Management. This seminar is how, in early 2008, I had the good fortune to meet & greet the tenacious Mr. Dean. Almost from our first series of flippant email exchanges, we struck up a satisfying professional relationship built upon a reverence for each other’s command of the mother tongue, a mutual penchant for the base, vulgar, and common, and a shared value of directness and bare-faced honesty.

Judge for yourself: when I approached him with the idea for this site after not having heard from me for one solar year, the very first sentence of my ex-pupil’s email (it should be distinctly understood that I gave him an ‘A’ ) read: “I thought I had rid my life of you completely.” I’m quoting, by the by, and not paraphrasing. Well, I have this affect on people.

And Mr. Raymond Dean is a people, and he’s good people. Whatever good comes out of jailfire, it’ll be due to Raymond and his self-taught, hard-won, practiced talent for stacking things digitally.

Raymond, glad to have you in my corner of the Cosmos. Just please scooch over a bit, my legs’re cramping! There.

Thanks, man.