MUNCY STATE PRISON
January 2nd, 2025
Thursday
7:09pm
I have a big zit in the middle of my forehead.
My feelings are hurt.
Zuko and I were supposed to play Jeopardy tonight, and Martha was going to be the host, but Martha didn’t want to sit at a certain table. Zuko wanted to sit at a table where her girlfriend couldn’t see her across the Unit, so she decided not to play at all.
Like–what?
You can only play some stupid, harmless game with me if you’re hiding?
That doesn’t even make any sense!
Plus it makes me feel worthless!
Then she wants to talk to me later like nothing’s wrong.
Fuck that.
I don’t even play games like that in my romantic relationships, much less platonic ones.
What the fuck?
Maybe Daisy is right, and I’m just a pawn in this stupid game they seem to think is a relationship.
January 3rd, 2025
Book:
“Gates of Injustice” by Alan Elsner © 2006
P. 158
“The problem with the ‘worst of the worst’ argument is that experience has shown that it just isn’t true. A better slogan would have been, ‘Build it and they will come.’ Once a state built a supermax, it was under enormous political pressure to fill it. After spending tens of millions of dollars to erect these costly penal palaces, governors were not anxious to have them standing half-empty. In state after state, it became abundantly clear that a high proportion of supermax inmates were severely mentally ill.
They were not so much the ‘worst of the worst’ as the ‘sickest of the sick.’ Wardens of other prisons were all too happy to get rid of them because they were disruptive and difficult to control.
Supermax wardens took them to fill as many beds as possible.”
P. 166
“Psychiatrist Terry Kupers has also studied SHU syndrome. He said even those inmates who did not become completely psychotic manifested a number of psychosis-like symptoms, including massive anxiety, hyper-responiveness to external stimuli, perception distortions and hallucinations, acute confusion, difficulties with concentration and memory and others. Kupers made the point that most supermax prisoners would eventually be released to the community on completing their sentences. They would emerge from years of total isolation mentally destroyed and full of rage.”
P. 175
“In Oklahoma, where death row is underground so there is no natural light, a death sentence means never seeing the sun again, which perhaps explains why one in three inmates give up their appeals and ask to be put to death quickly. This phenomenon, known as volunteerism, is growing throughout the country.
From 1995 through 2001, at least 61 of the 409 people put to death in the United States were ‘volunteers.’ Some were clearly mentally incompetent; others were deeply depressed.
‘With inadequate medical and psychiatric attention, I have seen rapid deterioration and personality changes in these men, which is what is leading to volunteerism,’ said Texas defense lawyer Yolanda Torres.”
P. 188
“Jails have a much more complex and varied mission than prisons. The key point is that for a great number of people, jails are not supposed to be places of punishment. They are holding facilities. According to the Department of Justice, jails have ten distinct tasks:
- To receive individuals pending arraignment and hold them awaiting trial, conviction or sentencing.
- To readmit probation, parole, and bail bond violators and absconders.
- To temporarily detain minors pending transfer to juvenile authorities.
- To hold mentally ill people until they can be transferred to appropriate health facilities.
- To hold individuals for the military for protective custody, for contempt and for the courts as witnesses.
- To release convicted inmates to the community upon completion of a sentence.
- To transfer inmates to federal, state or other authorities.
- To house inmates for state or other authorities when prisons are overcrowded.
- To sometimes operate community-based programs as alternatives to incarceration.
- To hold inmates sentenced to short terms, generally of one year or less.”
P. 191
“The most prestigious units in many jail systems are the special squads that many sheriffs deploy, called CERT or SERT teams (Corrections or Sheriff’s Emergency Response Teams). Dressed in paramilitary black uniforms or camouflage fatigues and armed to the teeth with the latest supposedly nonlethal weapons, members of these teams are a carefully selected elite. They undergo elaborate weapons and physical training and stand ready around the clock in many facilities to quell not only riots, but any form of inmate unrest or disobedience.
Each year, the best get to strut their stuff and compete against one another at industry fairs, such as the Mock Prison Riot sponsored by the federal National Institute of Justice’s Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization, which is held in a disused prison in Wheeling, West Virginia.”
P. 204
“One reason the city [of Buckeye, Arizona] was so anxious to expand its limits was that the U.S. Census Bureau counts inmates as if they were citizens of the towns and counties where they are incarcerated rather than of where they actually come from. More residents means more federal aid and grants. Buckeye stood to gain subsidies of $600 per inmate per year from the 2000 census. When this effect was multiplied across America, the result was to drain a significant amount of money away from inner cities, where most prisoners originate, to white, rural areas where most prisons are sited.
‘The near-doubling of the prison population since the last census and a rural prison boom during the 1990s portends a substantial transfer of economic and political power from urban to rural America,’ wrote criminologist Tracy Huling. ‘The prisoner “share” of the nearly $2 trillion in federal funds tied to population counts distributed nationwide over the next decade will go to the mostly rural hometowns of their keepers.’”
P. 204
“Moreover, since prisoners earn little or no money, they also artificially drive down average income rates, making towns and counties eligible for federal housing funds. Census figures are also used to redraw political boundaries. Even though most prisoners cannot vote, their presence helps boost the political clout of rural districts, most of which are staunchly conservative.”
January 4th, 2025
Saturday
Book:
“Gates of Injustice” by Alan Elsner © 2006 excerpts:
P. 206
“Whether or not local communities reap the full benefit, there is no doubt that there is big money to be made in prisons. As recently as 1980, there were no private companies operating U.S. prisons and jails for profit. The change began in 1984 when Hamilton County, Tennessee, awarded a contract to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to run a jail. That year, the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service also turned to CCA to run a lockup in Houston. In 1985, Kentucky became the first state to hire a company to run a prison. Privatization picked up steam in 1987 when Texas awarded two 500-bed facilities to CCA and another two to Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the other leader in the field.”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
P. 222
“What we see here is the emergence of a permanent criminal class. Prisoners are told to reform, but they are given few tools to do so. Once they are entangled in the prison system, many belong to it for life. They may spend stretches of time inside prison and periods outside, but they are never truly free. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy commented, ‘A decent and free society, founded in respect for an individual, ought not to run a system with a sign at the entrance for inmates saying, “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.’”
P. 223
“In Los Angeles, thousands of parolees congregate in a 50-block area of downtown known as Skid Row, the largest concentration of homelessness in the United States. The unwary visitor who stumbles on this part of the city might be excused for thinking he had suddenly been transported to Bangladesh. Thousands of people live in makeshift tents or cardboard boxes on the streets or crowd into cheap hotels or flophouses. Prostitutes ply their trade, looking for enough money for their next fix. People urinate and defecate in public; flies swarm over foul-smelling streets. Los Angeles County makes little effort to deal with its homeless population, which may reach as high as 100,000 on any given night. The county offers only 14,000 beds in homeless shelters.”
“Remember those who are in prison as if you were in prison with them.” –Hebrews 3:13”
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