Category Archives: Legitimate Penological Objectives

(Part 1) “Say, what time is it, kids?” “IT’S CENSORSHIP TIME!”

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It is at this time of the rolling year that our Department Education Division – a rather robust leader of our rehabilitative effort to help aid convicted felons in turning their lives around—extends some welcome and generous financial support to the DOC’s 17 library collections.

“Generous” because the support can be anywhere from $1,000-$3,000; “welcome” because it’s money spent where it’s needed most. By this I mean that, like most things in life, there’s a catch, and Education purchases for the prison’s lending libraries are no exceptions.

The caveat, we are told, is this: the money can only be spent for the following topics:

  • Spanish-language
  • Large-print
  • Community Re-entry/re-integration
  • Recovery/ self-help
  • Job/ Career guides

Well, that’s hardly a concession, when you consider the mission statement of the Department: “To promote public safety by managing offenders while providing care and appropriate programming in preparation for successful re-entry into the community.”

The Department also has something called a Vision Statement, which adds: “To effect positive behavioral change in order to eliminate violence, victimization, and recidivism.”

Seems like the Education Division Director has paid close attention to the intentions of the current Commissioner to move MA corrections to a more pro-active stance to help the incarcerated mend their lives. Because of this, she agrees that this is the way library services should be heading, too.

In a few minutes, I’ll be taking my approved purchase order for $1,900 to the Shire, armed also with my trusty laptop and manila envelope containing lists of specific titles I want to look out for. Included in this envelope are written requests from the prisoners. This is because I publicize my book buying beforehand, and want their input.

They are also informed of the purchase limitations. “Why can’t we get what we want?” some invariably exclaim.

“You can,” is my response. “Through ILL, through your own purchases, through purchases made on your behalf by family and friends, through purchases made by the Inmate Education Committee, and through the myriad prisoner reading organizations that have sprouted up all over the country.” All of which is true. Some inmates, I’ve learned, even have relatives working in the publishing world, who send them galley proofs on the regular. I also remind them that, because it’s Education money and not prison funds, Education may dictate all day long how they want their own money to be spent.

So — let’s go get some good books for crooks….

OK, we made it to the store. We use this store because we believe in keeping used bookstores afloat. Plus, they give you 30% off if you arrive with check in hand, which is what we’ve done. Buying books is fun — saving money while doing it, doubly so.   They have a small shopping cart for people like me, so I grab that and head out onto the main floor.

Let’s start with the self-help section. Not a lot here today, at least not a lot that’s new since the last book buy. What should we toss in our cart? How about:

  • New Rules
  • Going Postal
  • Cows of our Planet
  • Politically, Fashionably, and Aerodynamically Incorrect
  • Winter’s Tales
  • Baseball & the Meaning of Life
  • Men in Love
  • Sexual Health for Men: the Complete Guide
  • License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives
  • Some American Men
  • Male MENnopause
  • Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man
  • Men Confront Pornography
  • Beyond Feelings: Guide to Critical Thinking
  • Hurdle: the Book of Business Planning
  • Small Business Start-Up Kit
  • Why is God Laughing? Path to Joy & Spiritual Optimism
  • Before It’s Too Late: Why Some Kids Get Into Trouble–And What Parents Can Do about It
  • Coming Home to a Place You’ve Never Been Before
  • When the mind hears: a history of the deaf
  • Mind to crime: controversial link between the mind & criminal behavior
  • Freedom will conquer racism & sexism
  • Readings in contemporary criminological thinking
  • In the belly of the beast
  • Winnie-the-pooh on problem solving
  • American red cross first aid & safety handbook
  • Who survives cancer?
  • Finding beauty in a broken world
  • Plain & simple: a woman’s journey to the Amish
  • How good do we have to be?
  • Is there life after stress?
  • Escaping the shadows/seeking the light: Christians & sex abuse
  • Owning your own shadow: dark side of the psyche
  • Full catastrophe living: using your body & mind to face stress, illness & pain
  • For your own good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing & the root of violence
  • Character disorders in parents of delinquents
  • Anxiety cure: 8-step program for getting well
  • We weep for ourselves and for our children
  • How Proust can change your life

Actually, there was more here than I realized. That’s because I scrutinized several different sections of the store to find this stuff. I’ve learned to broaden my outlook on what constitutes a ‘self-help’ book for the incarcerated. In other words — I don’t limit ‘self-help’ to the Self Help section. If you notice, the first several titles in this list are humor books. And this is because, from the reading and research I’ve done, I see humor as just as important a coping tool as any other strategy recommended by any self-help guru in any pop-psych section of any bookstore or library. Humor is coping and humor is healing and humor is fun. You need all three to get through a day in the Pokey….

The other titles in the list are more-or-less self-evident.

“It’s all about me!” INMATE CLERKS AND THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST

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I sometimes forget I’m in jail.

In the free world, we naturally and necessarily place trust in the people we work with. We study the character of each, and we trust one more over the other, as Time and discernment help to reveal the true selves of these relative strangers.

Corrections tells you to be wary of inmates. You sometimes hear that you can’t trust any of them. You sometimes hear that you can’t let your guard down. You sometimes hear that inmates are like children, and will get away with anything they can get away with.

And then corrections tells you: “Here’re the prison’s libraries, here’re the services we want you to provide, and here’re the inmates who are going to help you.”

“But you just told me I can’t trust them….”

“Well — let’s say that you shouldn’t. This is jail, not Yale.”

“But I’m the only professional you have supervising them — I can’t be everywhere at once. i HAVE to trust them.”

“Just do the best you can.”

What follows is an account of what can happen while you’re busy doing the best you can.

I rely on 19 paid library clerks to help run library services in a population law library, a population lending library, a segregation unit law library, and services to the Hospital Services Unit as well. I also have classroom assistants for a law clerk training program, a book discussion group, and a literature-based consequential thinking seminar. That’s a lot of responsibility, and a lot of clerks to supervise. As you can imagine, I can’t be everywhere at once. Because of that, I have to place an extraordinary level of trust in the library clerks who work for me. At times, that extraordinary level of trust is betrayed. That happened recently, when I had to fire a clerk for using his clerk computer to write his legal work.

Well, he shouldn’t do that, you see. This is because the computer he’s been entrusted with is for library work only. Well, you gotta have SOME limits, and that statement certainly rings true in a prison. The morality of some men become warped and perverted to the point where they actually believe that if there is no written rule prohibiting a specific act, then they are free to do it! Strange and dangerous thinking for an adult to travel through life with. Why, that kind of thinking could land you in prison!

So one recent afternoon, I entered one of the offices just off the lending library floor and caught site of my computer programmer (he builds databases in Access) with paperwork spread out over his desk, and he’s typing on his computer. I say: “What are you doing, George?”

George looks up from the screen and says, “My legal work?”

Now understand — this is happening in the same month precisely one calendar year ago when all 19 of my clerks were fired after it was discovered that some of them were — among other things — using their clerk computers to make greeting cards and writing college papers. This fellow George here was in that number. He didn’t have his job returned to him until four months later. But now, one year later, he’s at it again.

I said to George, “For God’s sake, George, been there, done that, remember? You’re not allowed to do personal work on these machines. Stop what you’re doing.” Then I walked back to my law library office.

Notice I didn’t stand there until I made sure that he made a move. That’s because, even given the circumstances, I put trust in him that he’d do what I directed him to do. This is because of the character I know him to have. Yes, he’s just been pinched for breaking the rules. But he’s worked in the library for seven years, and in that time he’s succeeded in heeding the rules. That’s the character I’m drawing from.

I have a friend who is a recreation officer assigned to provide security in the library of the Walpole State Prison. He once admonished me thus: “Billy, you and a con can be golden for five years. But the first time you have to tell him ‘No,’ he’s a different person.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the situation here, but it bears repeating. The situation here was born of selfishness. This clerk decided that his desire to use a word processor on his work computer to complete his legal writing outweighed his chances of getting caught, losing his job, and damaging his credibility with me. All this I found out only because I brought him into my office later that evening and asked him just what the hell he meant by throwing a good job away?

When this kind of thing happens, it’s hard not to take it as a personal betrayal. In his case, I had him working for me for seven (7) years. Seven years is a long time to hold a job in jail. What it tells the Administration is that you’re very well satisfied with the job performance of this individual. And this certainly was true. The man did much good for his library in that time, so much that, hours after this first happened, I had to sit still and imagine library services without him. I actually considered turning a blind eye so I could keep him. Because of his past work, peaceful demeanor, good sense of humor, and ability to forgive my many faults, this was one of the toughest decisions I’ve made in recent years.

But good sense outweighed sentimentality. If last year hadn’t happened, MAYBE the blind eye could’ve been justified. But not this time. He was suspended. I wrote an Incident report. The Administration read it & asked me to write a Disciplinary report, which I did. The man had his hearing, during which he pled guilty. And one of his sanctions is that he lost his library clerk job.

Trust had been betrayed. I made that clear to him in our talk. He actually felt shamed by what he’d done.  But his earlier choice was to take the chance that I wouldn’t catch him, and would never know that trust had been betrayed.

They say, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

When it comes to trust — do those words ring true?

DAMNED IF YOU DON’T / FIRED IF YOU DO

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Regarding the American workplace, many people seem to exercise two separate levels of trust — one for friends & family (folks they care about) and one for their coworkers (folks they don’t care so much about). This dichotomy seems to exist for the purpose of keeping private lives separate from professional lives. Time and human nature have taught that blending the two causes many emotional quagmires that we can all do without — and these quagmires are easily enough avoided if we all just behave ‘professionally.’

Fair enough. Now — What happens when you care about your coworkers? Specifically — what  happens when your ‘coworkers’ are convicted felons, people you have a sworn duty to try and help?

We’ve all noticed that crime is an emotional topic. Prison is an emotional topic. Punishment is an emotional topic.

Getting out of jail is an emotional topic for inmate law library users. Trying to stop drinking and drugging is an emotional topic for lending library users reading self-help texts. The very fact of incarceration is emotional for the Keepers as well as for the Kept.

Where we come into the correctional picture — “we” meaning the librarians and educators  — then socialization itself becomes an emotional topic. Why should that be? Because we’re hired and paid and trained and vested to care. Our job then is, by this definition, an emotional one.

Some prison librarians say, “Trust the inmates to perform their job responsibilities….” Let’s look at that. How does one trust the inmate clerks? How far does one trust inmate clerks? Are inmate clerks worth trusting? Remember, these are people who, on the whole, you’re going to end up spending more time with on a given day then your fellow correctional coworkers. And these are the same people you’ve sworn to correct and socialize. A very bizarre emotional mix for the workplace, not a mix you commonly see. And yet you own it, here in your correctional library. Some of these people also participate in your socialization programs, and these classes as we’ve discussed are fraught with emotional resistance and revelation. Some of the inmates you hire have certain emotional problems that they’re taking positive steps to try to resolve (maybe they’re in group therapy, or trying out a new drug regimen). What happens when they have a bad day? Or a bad moment?

The same librarians then say, “Trust the COs to care for and correct the inmates….” We hope and pray that this can be done daily, consistently, and fairly. We’ve already discussed the important responsibilities of the CO who takes ‘care’ as seriously as he does ‘custody.’ But something always gets in the way of this duty, something called human nature. Officers have bad days. Inmates manipulate. And there are sadistic people, on both sides of the fence. Some officers are just incompetent. And sometimes these incompetents are assigned to your area. There’re few things worse than having to work with a bad officer. It’s embarrassing, humiliating, frustrating…all negative emotions. When inmates feel they’ve been wronged by such a person, they’ll search you out & ask you to lend a sympathetic ear. If you’re willing, there’s more emotion in your day.

The librarians also say, “Trust administration to put security above all other needs,” which is probably the least emotional of the three. Although I can tell you that ‘Security comes first’ doesn’t always happen; it doesn’t always happen consistently; and it doesn’t always happen to the same degree between one Administration and the next, between one shift and the next, between one officer and his replacement. Sometimes this inconsistency can cause its own level of frustration.

The job of providing library services to convicted felons is an emotional one. You take rational and reasonable steps to sustain your professional distance, and still emotion elbows its way in. And I say that it’s not necessarily bad. You need to care about your work. And, in the case of correctional librarianship, your ‘work’ is people — prisoners and their social reclamation.

If each day you went inside as cold as ice, or as an automaton, that would be cause for concern. That path leads to indifference; perhaps not necessarily, but you’re on the right road.

When I tell you it’s a balancing act, I tell you truly. You have to be artful, and vigilant. The sorry consequence of letting your guard down is a level of inappropriate familiarity and bonding that may become injurious to your career and may even compromise your safety.

REHABILITATIVE MATERIALS SELECTION: OR, “Books for crooks!”

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[In which we discuss the relative merits of murder mysteries for murderers, porno for pyros, and Parent Magazine for child molesters….]

When a patron walks into any other kind of library in the world, the mental, emotional, and physical problems she brings with her are her own. Unless her actions compel us to call the security guard or police, we’re not concerned if she’s got anger issues, or drinks too much, or reacts before thinking a problem through.

But in corrections, they pay you to be concerned about your service community’s problems. It’s because of their problems that the incarcerated are now part of your service community.

Which always gets gets me to thinking about the type of fiction prisoners often find on the prison library shelves of the United States of America. Can certain kinds of fiction be considered therapeutic as well as entertaining? There are certainly gratuitous fiction that your common sense would compel you to stay away from — you could name some, and so could I. But let’s shine a brighter spotlight on our correctional lending library collection to see what’s actually ‘tween them pages….

Take, for example, science fiction, of which there are various sub-genres, and certainly there are morality tales from certain authors who believe that the good guys must triumph over some particular evil. Same with fantasy, although with fantasy the themes seem to be more obvious, and here I’m thinking particularly of Tolkien and the gargantuan sweep of good versus evil in much of his work for public consumption. Since the 50s Tolkien has certainly had his imitators, dozens of writers the world over who have created their own worlds and peopled them with creatures falling heavily to one side of the good/evil dichotomy.

Westerns! Who’da thunk that Louis L’Amour was out there in the American southwest crafting dozens upon dozens of morality plays? But that’s what he was up to. I never read one of his books until I used his Daybreakers in ABLE MINDS, and discovered that there is true substance to the man’s work, a do-the-right-thing philosophy coupled with careful studies in good human character, therapeutic elements that rarely get preserved for the big or small screens.

Last year I had a conversation with a prisoner who said he read murder mysteries because they’re morality plays where the good guys & gals pursue the baddie until he’s brought to justice. That certainly gave me food for thought.

It could creditably be argued that Crichton’s Jurassic Park — at least in the hands of Spielberg — was a re-telling of Mary Shelley’s Frankensein.

What about the plays of Camus? Satre? Tennessee Williams? Eugene O’Neil? The poetry of Donne? The novels of Dickens, or the short stories of Shirley Jackson? I’ve made a study of the Twilight Zone stories of Rod Serling, which are collected in at least four paperback anthologies, and much of his stuff centered on human frailty/ immorality and the sometimes terrible consequences of such behavior. These stories are in the fantasy section of the Norfolk library.

There are some who’d argue that the smut ‘n’ fluff of romance novels qualify not only as good, dumb fun but also as therapy, because you’ve got the pursued & the pursuer in a healthy social setting and usually the characters you want to see ending up together end up together and live happily ever after. Is Pride & Prejudice therapeutic? What would Jane herself say? Perhaps she’d agree, at least to see her work in the context of a correctional lending library.

All I’m asking you to do is to be thoughtful in your choice of reading material for the people you serve, where those that you serve have problems to overcome that might not be helped and even hindered by the type of material you provide. To me, that’s worth giving thought to.

To me, that’s part of the responsibility of a caring correctional librarian.

To me, that’s a professional way of serving your employer.

To me, it’s a good way of being accountable to the public.

To me, it makes the librarianship meaningful, challenging, even fun.

And you certainly will never look at your collection in the same way again.

REMEMBER WHOM YOU’RE SERVING

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“If you have an ILL arrangement with a public library would you prevent someone from ordering murder mysteries (especially since it seems like they are in virtually all collections as donations or library purchases)? I can understand and support the idea that the correctional library might focus purchasing dollars on more positive materials; I am not sure I would be able to explain why if allowed by the administration an inmate would be barred from ordering that stuff through ILL.”

This comment is quite similar to a student post in the 2008 class, except that the answer is included in the question:

“…if allowed by the administration….”

If the Department advances no reason why this material should be forbidden, then the Librarian has no administrative support; therefore there’s nothing you can do. When inmates are permitted to buy these books for themselves, they’re certainly free to request them thru ILL.

I can trace back the source of my attitude about such material to one morning years ago when I received a call from one of the ILL librarians from the public library we deal with. She was concerned about a couple ‘true crime’ title. “Are you joking? Do you really let them read this kind of stuff?” It was the first time I’d heard a member of the public objecting to the type of material that inmates were reading. We talked about it at some length, and it gave me something to think about.

After that conversation, I made this part of our library procedures: If the Librarian believes that a request runs counter to the legitimate penological objectives of the Department, the request will be denied and the inmate will be called to the library and informed. He then may appeal to the Superintendent, and the Superintendent may over-rule the Librarian.

Since that addition to our procedures, I’ve had that exchange with probably a half-dozen inmates, and I’ve never been directed to get the books in (no doubt the inmates had someone buy them and send them in….)

But with me, it’s a matter of conscience, and if the Superintendent ever does overrule me, then that’s on the Superintendent, and I can live with that.

Again, it comes down to “Remember whom you’re helping.” This is a special population of people with very specific behavioral problems who have destroyed lives, including their own. Ask yourself, “Whom am I helping by providing this book/ magazine/ newspaper/ DVD/ etc.?”

You also must ask:

  • “Whom am I hurting by providing this material?”
  • “Does this further an inmate’s unstructured socialization?”
  • “Would sensible, reasonable members of the public object to seeing this material in this library?”

I think correctional librarianship illustrates one instance in our profession where the rights of the individual are subservient to the greater good of the larger society. As Librarians, we’re not really trained to handle situations like this. It smacks of pontification, or moralizing.

Perhaps that’s what it is. But if it is, it is for very sound, articulate reasons that are designed to serve both Keepers and the Kept.

PATRONIZING INMATE PATRONS

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[In which we contemplate exactly what it takes to be a competent corrections employee, and how librarianship sometimes gets in the way….]

 

In his fascinating text Libraries in Prisons: a Blending of Institutions, author Bill Coyle rocked the prison library world with this simple truth:

Prisoners do not legitimize prison library services — the State does.

What Coyle means by this is simply that the inmate’s relationship to the prison, the prison’s library, and the prison’s librarians are different than those of free-world library users. The prisoner does not pay for library services like his free-world library-using counterparts. Nor is the inmate in a position to dictate library services, due to his temporary status as ward of the State.  Indeed, his presence in the prison is involuntary, he doesn’t give a plug nickle to the building or its contents, nor does he collaborate with the librarian or the prison or the State with any library programming efforts.

On the other hand, every free-world library user coming through the library doors is a bona fide patron of that library, because his taxes help to support the building, the grounds, the librarians, library staff, maintenance crew, the library collection, and every business meeting and program the community wants. Free-world library users are stakeholders in their community libraries, and therefore have a say as to what goes on in them. This cannot be said for the incarcerated and correctional library services.

For many librarians, this is at least a sea-change in service philosophy, if not outright professional blasphemy. Each library science program proclaims that it is the library patron who legitimizes library services. Without the user there’d be no libraries, library services, librarians, or library staff. So the idea is — Give the people what they want. Why? So they keep coming back. If you have patrons, you have a reason  for being.

Well, you can’t do that in jail. You cannot give the inmates what they want, the same way you cannot give an alcoholic or a gambler or an arsonist or a junkie or a rapist or a cat burglar or child molester what he wants. When it comes to people with problems, common sense dictates certain limits. If your best friend who is an alcoholic and has been on the wagon for 13 weeks tonight begs you for a drink, you will not give her one. And you do not give her one because you have a vested interest in her well-being, that vested interest being that you love her and want to see her get well.

In corrections, you are paid to serve the inmate community. But that ‘service’ is not defined to mean “Anything goes, as long as they’re quiet.” ‘Service’ in the correctional sense means Helping people overcome problems that brought them to prison. In order to be successful at this, you have to have a vested interest in the incarcerated. You have to care.

The correctional librarian needs to construct a service philosophy based on the therapeutic and programmatic needs of the incarcerated human being. Why? Because the State expects corrections to correct. The State does not require its public libraries to correct its patrons, therefore the materials and services there can be more recreational in scope. This is folly in the correctional library. Your ‘patrons’ are not patrons — they are wounded, down-and-out women and men who’ve hit rock-bottom, and wouldn’t mind a helping hand up out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. If as the Librarian you can help lend a hand, you must.

How? Offer consequential thinking seminars. Offer bibliotherapy programs. Offer every kind of self-help and recovery book, tape, and DVD that there is. Offer career information and materials. Offer book discussion programs. Offer re-entry and reintegration material specifically written with the ex-con in mind. Instead of just the typical and often destructive (as opposed to constructive) reading material from the popular best seller lists, offer positive-recreational novels and classic literature — go out of your way to find uplifting fiction and nonfiction for these folks to try.  Offer program support for as many rehabilitative and socialization programs in your prison as you can. And let every department head in that prison know that you’re there to support them, from the education staff on down to the contract vendors.

In the public sector, you can afford to be passive and let the patron guide what you do for them. Below is a concise illustration of the typical patron-librarian dynamic:

PATRON: “Gimme.”

LIBRARIAN: “Here.”

In correctional librarianship, we focus on what are the programming needs of the incarcerated, and not so much on what they want out of the library. And when an inmate indignantly tells you “It’s my library!” you say “Let me disabuse you of that notion. This library belongs to the State — it’s not yours, and it’s not mine.”

You cannot be passive in correctional librarianship. The State–in the form of taxpayers and politicians, crime victims and the long-suffering families of criminals–says to you “These people need help. That’s why they’re here. Your role here is socialization and program support. You’ve also been trained to find information. Go find information that can help these people turn their lives around.”

You cannot wait until an inmate decides to try this text or watch this video or see what this program is like. You have to take it to the streets, and hit them where they live. You have to advertise and make them know what’s going on in the library for them to take full advantage. You gather therapeutic and socialization material, make it available, advertise, and develop programs around this material to see who bites. Also, many inmates will open up to you and confide exactly what brought them to prison. Those moments are golden opportunities to recommend a book, to encourage program attendance, to talk about the seminar you’re teaching. You get them involved. And you get yourself involved.

There is a legitimate penological objective at stake in the correctional libraries of the nation. That objective is to rehabilitate and socialize. This effort includes the incarcerated women and men who frequent the libraries. You owe it to them. You owe it to their families. You owe it to yourself and your loved ones. And you damn sure owe it to the State, your employer. The State has hired you to to simultaneously fill the roles of Authoritarian, Disciplinarian, Humanitarian, and Librarian. And all of these roles are compatible with one another; in fact, it’s the first two that make the last two possible. You establish authority and consistency so that socialization has a fighting chance to happen. You cannot have rehabilitation without good reliable security. Security and good order are paramount to the socialization efforts of the correctional librarian.

In prison, daily routine negativity is a palpable part of the air you breathe. Your efforts at socialization through the library and its services help to cut down on that negativity so that all may breathe a little easier. Any time you do something to offer the incarcerated some hope, you participate in a human miracle called redemption.  And only then is the State getting their money’s worth out of you.

You also need to encourage what we in this course refer to as unstructured socialization. This is when inmates, for reasons known only to themselves, refuse to attend any structured programming taught by prison staff, contract vendors, university professors, or volunteers. Instead, they seek self-help information on their own, and prefer reading,  watching DVDs, or writing in workbooks to participating in a classroom. Unstructured socialization is a frequent occurrence in correctional libraries. There are more of these inmates that you might think, and you must provide material for them to use. Otherwise, the State wastes many helping opportunities.

As a correctional librarian, the patrons of the library are not the people who come through its doors – it’s the people you never see. And these are the very people you must forever keep in mind, if the time that the incarcerated spend in the library is to have meaning, value, and purpose for the State — that is, for the much greater free-world community, the real patrons.

IN JAIL, EVERY DAY IS FRIDAY THE 13TH

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Into my 3rd decade of this curious call to correctional librarianship, I’ve noticed an inexplicable, personal immunity to whatever real or imagined powers that Friday the 13th holds over the collective cultural psyche of we mortal men. Perhaps it can be explained by the general negativity and social perversion of the place but, during my work shift, each Friday the 13th always seems to turn out well. I am self-consciously aware when the strange and terrible day/date arrives, but thus far no calamity has befallen to compel me to lament at shift’s end, “What did you expect–it’s Friday the 13th!” In a place where violence, tension, squalor, uncertainty, and boredom are the norms, Friday the 13th hasn’t got a chance.

A constant in the lives of the incarcerated is that one day is indistinguishable from the next. That’s not to say that nothing different or diverting ever happens, but when the prison-wide movie system plays Groundhog Day, most can relate to the sufferings of Bill Murray’s tortured character Phil Connors. The spiritual & emotional purgatory of the prison routine begins at morning’s first light when prisoners are awakened at a specified time by housing unit officers needing to account for their presence. Prisoners then dress in the same clothes they wore yesterday, and break their fast with food that they’ve had dozens of times before. The stuff of the new day between wake-up and lights-out is just marking time. Even the nightly respite, coming after the final evening count, is terrifyingly familiar: slumping exhausted in the familiar arms of Morpheus, then tossing and turning through a fitful night’s sleep in which the same memories haunt and taunt them, only to be awakened 8 hours later by the same housing unit officers performing the same morning count, dressing in the same clothes and then partaking of the same breakfast. “I got you, Babe.” Indeed.

Prisoners don’t mark Friday the 13th except in idle chit-chat. To quote Paul McCartney: It’s Just Another Day. In 23 years with the Kept and their Keepers, I have suffered an unbroken string of disturbingly pleasant Fridays-the-13th. Put it down to the perverted social nature of prison. Or chock it up to unpardonable coincidence. Or maybe it’s because Friday the 13th just doesn’t matter.

I type these words in the morning, as I prepare myself in both body and mind to provide library services to convicted felons. I am also prepared to attribute every negative occurrence to the date of this day. We shall now let Life have its contrary way with us, and observe how events unfold. Upon returning from work–if, indeed, I return at all–I’ll chronicle what took place to determine if the dread power and majesty of the ages-old superstition has finally caught up with me….

______________________________________________________

*     I made it home (“‘Well, I’m back,’ said Sam”).

*     It didn’t start out so great. One of the law library clerks felt his on-the-job training was being ignored. This was my fault for not letting him know that I’d made arrangements for him to be tutored by a former clerk. The fact that we’re both hotheads and tend to nurture notions that aren’t quite on a par with the truth meant that it took a while before tempers and nostrils ceased flaring, voices were lowered, and the world was made right again. But it was, much to our mutual delight and satisfaction. “All’s well that ends well” the Bard reminds & reassures us and, as you know, he is rarely wrong.

*     I then hosted a cross-training visit from another Department librarian, who needed practice on the law library electronic research system that the person’s law library will soon have in place. I got to teach, they got to learn, and we had fun doing it.

*     I ended the day participating in a meeting that was actually necessary and productive.

*     And in between, we aided inmates in their further education, rehabilitation, and unstructured socialization.

*     Oh yes, and the lady selling lunch tickets gave me my visitor’s meal for free.

All in all, it seems that bad karma was thwarted again. It occurs to me that the 13th falls on a Friday in another four weeks. I look forward to it, filled as it should be with pleasantries and accomplishments.

As a child, certain of us recall saying indignantly to our mothers, “There’s Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but what about Kid’s Day?” Mom’s answer was one despised by children the world over: “EVERY day is ‘Kid’s Day.”

In jail, may each day be Friday the 13th.

A CATCH-22 IN THE HOOSEGOW

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Then there’s the apocryphal statement, invented in the 1960’s by war correspondent Peter Arnett, of a fictional US soldier explaining to his commander about the flattening of Vietnam’s Ben Tre : “Sir, it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”  Arnett must have read Joe Heller’s Catch-22 one too many times. Although this statement was a product of Arnett’s shell-shocked imagination, absurdist language like this allowed folks like comedian George Carlin to carve out a top-grossing social satirist career for over five decades.

Approximately 35 years after the fall of Saigon, something akin to Arnett’s dubious attribution happened in my library. Prison security discovered that certain of my lending library clerks had been writing personal letters and completing homework assignments using word processors on their work computers. They’re not authorized to do this, and an investigation ensued.

While the investigation was in progress, a decision had to be made: how do we suspend these workers and get new clerks for the librarian to train? It was decided that the clerks would be fired pending investigation, and new temporary clerks would then be hired. The caveat would be that, if any of the original clerks were vindicated, they’d be returned to their former positions and the temps would have to hit the bricks.

Putting a new spin on his old fabrication, Arnett could write of this situation: “Sir, we had to fire everyone to keep them on the payroll.”

Administratively, it was the sensible solution, because:

* The original clerks were suspended pending investigation

* The library can’t provide services without clerks

* Temporary clerks won’t work without pay

When you run a one-person library, you’re only as good as the people you have. Between the lending library, law library, and segregation library, I have 24 clerk positions to fill:

Legal research – 5  *  Janitors – 2

Regulations/legal forms – 1   *  Accounts/Receiving – 1

Book binder – 1   *  Typewriter loaner program – 1

Interlibrary loan – 1   *  Cataloger/ classifier – 1

Circulation – 3   *  Spanish-language – 2

Legal copiers – 3   *  Segregation janitor/shelving – 1

Classroom assistants – 3

What are the real-world job pool logistics of a medium-security adult male prison? Most inmates have never:

*  Owned a library card

*   Walked inside a library

*   Checked out a book

*   Developed a ‘read-for-pleasure’ habit

*  Finished high school

*   Used computers

*   Served the public

So what kind of library staff can you realistically expect to end up with? I will now pass on a prison employee secret of how to find good correctional library clerks who care about doing a competent job — Hire lifers. Lifers make the best library clerks, because lifers make the best prison clerks, period. Their maturity level is higher, in general they’re more intelligent, sensible, and creative, and they’ve had more time to make peace with the prison routine. They’re invested in their work, and self-motivated. Personally, I’d put these men up against any library staff anywhere in the world.

Another aspect of inmate library clerk hiring that cannot be ignored is staff chemistry. Everyone has to get along with each other. It doesn’t have to be overt displays of brotherly love, but cooperation, reliability, and a good healthy dose of self-effacement goes a long way.

Here’re some things to find out about a potential hire:

1    Does the inmate get along with the librarian?

2   How long has the librarian known the inmate?

3   How well does the inmate know the other library clerks?

4   Will there be any racial tension?

5   What kind of prison work history does the inmate have?

6   What is the inmate’s disciplinary history like?

7   Will the inmate’s criminal history be a problem?

8   Does the inmate have a sense of humor?

9   Is the inmate a thief?

When it comes to correctional libraries, staff chemistry might be more important in jail then in the free world. Prisoners have a social pecking order based on a person’s conviction. Depending on what the guy’s doing time for, he can be ostracized or even hurt. Race can be a polarizing issue. Whether the inmate is seen as a standup con or an informer is important. If you know that the inmate hates corrections staff or talks bad about the department, you probably don’t want him around. And if the guy doesn’t play well with others, let him be somebody else’s headache.

So the only way to temporarily replace lifers was to — hire more lifers. Which is what I did. A bunch of inexperienced men who never worked in a prison library before. And then I truly had a problem, because two of them eventually worked out so well, I dreaded the thought of losing them!

Ah, well. Feast or felons. I mean famine.

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.

YOUR CORRECTIONAL MANTRA: “Security comes first!”

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