Tag: books

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:

1. To receive individuals pending arraignment and hold them awaiting trial, conviction or sentencing.
2. To readmit probation, parole, and bail bond violators and absconders.
3. To temporarily detain minors pending transfer to juvenile authorities.
4. To hold mentally ill people until they can be transferred to appropriate health facilities.
5. To hold individuals for the military for protective custody, for contempt and for the courts as witnesses.
6. To release convicted inmates to the community upon completion of a sentence.
7. To transfer inmates to federal, state or other authorities.
8. To house inmates for state or other authorities when prisons are overcrowded.
9. To sometimes operate community-based programs as alternatives to incarceration.
10. 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”

December 30th, 2024

Monday

2:40pm

Tiger didn’t answer the phone when I called her for her birthday. The boys went to her party and said it was nice, so that’s good.

Zuko and I have been getting a lot of comments about us being together. She tells me that several people have told her they’re “Team Jess.” I laughed it off and thought that probably Zuko’s friends just don’t want her to be with nasty bitch Tyson, who reminds me of a satanic, abusive little elf, but then Daisy said that I’m giving Zuko the wrong impression, like I’m leading her on by being her friend. I have a hard time believing that. We’re just friends and I’ve made it clear to Zuko that I’m not gay. 

Then again, I feel like everybody is a little gay, and what if we were together? 

Who cares? 

Zuko has made it clear that she prefers monogamy, so it wouldn’t work anyway, but what’s the big deal?

Is Daisy a homophobe?

I just don’t understand. 

Daisy says that Zuko is using me to make Tyson jealous.

Hm. 

December 31st, 2024

Tuesday

3:29pm

Today Zuko took all of her notes and stuff from Tyson and put them in a bucket and poured water all over the whole mess. Then she ripped them up and threw them out. When I walked into the bathroom in the middle of this, she said, “Of course you would come in here.”

I don’t know what that means.

In other news, I got called into the new counselor’s office (used to be Ms. Reese, now Mr. Burns) because he was doing my parole vote sheet. He asked where I was going if I got out. I said I have to go to the Potter County Women’s Center. He said there was nothing like that on my status sheet and asked who told me that. 

I said a judge.

Then he said, “I hate getting these cases that are all fucked up,” and told me I could leave.

Okay, whatever dude.

Book:

“Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America’s Prisons” by Alan Elsner © 2006

Excerpts:

P. 25

“‘Jails and prisons have become the final destination for the mentally ill in America–it’s the most pressing issue facing psychiatry today,’ said Steven Lamberti, a psychiatrist at the University of Rochester.

In 2000, the BJS estimated that around 16 percent of inmates in state prisons were mentally ill–191,000 individuals. Adding the federal prison system and county jails dramatically raises that number, probably to at least 300,000. With such numbers, an unbiased outsider could be forgiven for concluding that being mentally ill has itself become a crime in the United States.

In recent years, women have been the fastest growing sector of the prison system. For most of the 20th century, the United States had incarcerated only around 5,000 to 10,000 women. The number held in the state prisons passed the 100,000 mark in 2003. By mid-2004, the BJS found over 190,000 women held in prisons and jails, more than double the 1990 figure. Notes criminologist Meda Chesney-Lind, ‘The war against drugs was a largely unannounced war on women.’

Statistically, African American women were two-and-a-half times more likely than Hispanics and five times more likely than Hispanics and five times more likely as whites to end up behind bars. Even more alarmingly, around 65 percent of women in state prisons had children under 18; around 5 percent were pregnant when they entered.”

P. 26

“Children are some of the saddest invisible casualties of the U.S. prison binge. The BJS, in 2000, estimated that 721,500 of America’s prisoners, excluding jail inmates, were parents of at least one child, while at least 1.5 million children had a parent in prison. One in every 14 black children has a parent in prison on any given day, but of course, over the duration of an entire childhood, the figure is much higher. Children whose parents are incarcerated experience a broad range of problems, including rage, guilt, low self-esteem and depression. They are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to suffer abuse at the hands of caregivers, more likely to fail at school, more likely to take drugs and more likely to end up in juvenile jail. Half of all juveniles in custody have a parent or close relative in prison.”

6:50pm

Great. Zuko’s girlfriend is creating a lot of drama. 

Involving me.

People are saying Daisy should go to Med Line with me to protect me. 

Fuck that. 

This is great.

7:25pm

I survived Med Line. No one even said anything to me. I have a sneaking suspicion that Zuko likes drama.

I don’t.

She apologized to me in the bathroom.

I’ll never understand abusive relationships.

P. 29

“By 2000, over 650,000 prisoners a year were being released on parole or after completing their terms. A large number remained addicted to drugs and alcohol. Those who sincerely wanted to go straight faced crushing obstacles to rebuilding their lives. Many jobs and housing options were permanently closed to them; many social benefits were permanently denied. Little surprise that a BJS study found that over two-thirds of those released were rearrested within three years, either for parole violations or for new crimes.

While states struggled, thousands of businesses got fat off supplying prisons. As early as 1994, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed the birth of a ‘prison-industrial complex.’ The law enforcement technology industry, which produces high-tech items like the latest stab-proof vests, helmets, stun guns, sheilds, batons and chemical agents, is worth over $1 billion a year. With 2.3 million people engaged in catching criminals and putting and keeping them behind bars, accounting for a monthly payroll of $8.1 billion, the ‘correctional industry’ had become one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined worldwide workforces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest corporate employers in the country. If a nation was defined by what it produced, the United States had become a prison nation.”

P. 32

“In the summer of 1971, four young professors conducted one of the most famous psychological studies ever devised–the Stanford Prison Experiment. The researchers, Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, W. Curtis Banks and David Jaffe, transformed a section in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology department into a mock prison.”

How It Worked

24 male college students volunteered.

They were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners.

A mock prison was set up in Stanford’s psychology department basement.

The study was planned to last two weeks.

Guards were given uniforms, mirrored sunglasses (to prevent eye contact), and authority. Prisoners were arrested at home, fingerprinted, and given numbers instead of names.

⚠️ What Happened

Things escalated quickly:

Guards began displaying authoritarian and abusive behaviors.

Prisoners showed signs of extreme stress, anxiety, and depression.

Some prisoners had emotional breakdowns within days.

Guards enforced humiliating punishments and psychological intimidation.

The environment became so intense that the experiment was terminated after only 6 days.

Outcome & Conclusions

Zimbardo concluded that:

Situational forces and social roles can strongly influence behavior.

Ordinary individuals can engage in cruel behavior when placed in positions of power.

Institutional settings (like prisons) can foster dehumanization.

The study became one of the most famous demonstrations of the power of social situations over individual personality.

P. 126-127

“In California, the State Auditor reported in 2001 that it cost the state $3.2 million a year to collect $5 co-payments for every visit to a prison doctor, while the program only generated $654,000 in income.”

P. 133

“In the past decade, women have been the fastest growing segment of the U.S. prison population. The number of women incarcerated in prisons or jails more than doubled, from 44,065 in 1990 to 103,310 by midyear 2004. Since 1995, the number of women in state or federal prisons has grown by an average of 5 percent a year–much higher than the 3.3 percent yearly increase in the male population.

9:55pm

Lights out.

People around here are saying they’re staying up for New Years. Two hours left of 2024.
Good riddance.

Martha made us party hats that say, “Happy New Year, bitches.”

I feel bad for Zuko.

She says she has to get out of this relationship carefully so she doesn’t get shipped to Cambridge Springs. 

Daisy says we have to come up with three resolutions for the new year–one spiritual, on physical, and one emotional. 

Emotional–be more emotionally vulnerable and open.

Physical–exercise at least once weekly.

Spiritual–pray more–once daily.