Guest post by Timothy White

It never fails; Whenever those of us on death row are granted even the smallest blessing, favor or minor look-out, one of our fellow prisoners comes along and screws it up for everyone.
 
This article was published in collaboration with Vice.
 
Sometimes it’s a matter of greed. Other times it’s pure nastiness. Then there is stupidity, for which there is little excuse. As if being condemned to die isn’t enough, some seem to believe we should continue to heap punishment upon ourselves.
 
Take what happened with our gym equipment: Years ago, we could work out with weights, but this privilege was taken away after an altercation during which one malcontent bashed another in the head with a dumbbell, nearly killing him. When I first arrived on the row nearly 18 years back, this kind of thing was a never-ending source of frustration and anger for me. With the passage of time, I have come to accept that it’s just the way things are. Still, there are moments when I can only shake my head with disgust. This morning was one of those times.
 
The newly-constructed Central Prison chow hall isn’t too unlike a school or hospital cafeteria, except for the rows of steel tables bolted to the floor, and the small waist-high window from which trays are served. We don’t see the regular population prisoners who work in the kitchen unless we bend down to look through the serving window, and this is frowned upon by the gray and black uniformed officers, or C.O.s who usually lurk somewhere nearby. The tables are dirty, the floor sticky and strewn with crumbs, used plastic spoons and other detritus
 
As we stood in the breakfast line, my buddy Greg, up front as usual, turned to announce: “Man behind the serving line says he’s gonna look out for everyone with a boiled egg and piece of cheese. It ain’t on the menu, so don’t bitch cause you only get 1 egg.”
 
Enough said. It felt like the universe was smiling upon us. A boiled egg and a slice of cheese would go well with the S.O.S – that’s shit on a shingle”, or the chipped beef and biscuits that were on the menu – and would make an otherwise bland, pitiful breakfast much better. I waited my turn, grateful that the server would risk trouble by providing us with extra food. When a tray appeared in the window, I grabbed it and made my way to the table where Greg was already seated.
 
Watching the line as I began to eat, I saw Jazzy Jimmy approach the window.
 
“I bet ol’ Jazzy’ll try to sell his egg,” I predicted. “One boiled egg – with shell – for a stamped envelope.”
 
“Oh, he’ll try to get more than that,” Greg said with a chuckle.
 
Jazzy Jimmy is a 60-something man who acts as if his 12th birthday is still a few years off. He fancies himself a singer, rapper, a musician, and an all-around entertainer, but is, in reality, a minor annoyance. If not for his blatant narcissism and penchant for telling dubious stories about having once performed with James Brown, his behavior might be endearing.
 
After a short wait, Jazzy took his tray and began to walk away before halting mid-stride. Wait a minute, I only got 1 egg,” he said, looking down at his tray. He then turned back to the serving window and bent down to speak to the prisoner behind the line. “You only gave me 1 egg. Ain’t we s’posed to get 2?”
 
“You idiot!” yelled Little Chuck from across the cafeteria. “Everybody got 1 egg. Don’t you listen?”
 
“But . . .but . . ,” Jazzy looked crestfallen. There went his opportunity to make an extra stamped envelope.
 
By this time a C.O. – alerted by the scene Jazzy had caused – made her way to the window and called for the kitchen steward. The stewards are uniformed correctional officers tasked with overseeing the prisoners who prepare and serve our meals. “What’s going on here?” the C.O demanded. “Are they supposed to get 1 egg or 2?”
 
“They aren’t supposed to get any eggs. Eggs aren’t even on the menu!”
 
The kitchen steward was on the verge of a full-blown rage, his round face glowing bright red. “I’ll see to it that somebody goes to lockup for this.” He stomped away from the window to apprehend the server responsible for this terrible misdeed.
 
“Way to go, asshole.” An inmate called Mean Joe’s voice broke the silence left in the wake of the steward’s departure. “You’d fuck up a wet dream.”
 
The abuse continued from every corner of the cafeteria. As Jazzy Jimmy ate his breakfast in silence, not seeming to care, I wondered: is it possible to dislike someone and feel sorry for him at the same time?
 
Lunch was turkey-ham and cheese sandwich with vegetable soup, and predictably, the steward loomed at the serving window handing out trays. Under his close watch, nary an extra piece of turkey-ham or spoonful of soup got past him. In fact, we were lucky to receive what little the menu allotted.
 
Thanks a lot, Jazzy Jimmy.

Even though I have a First Amendment right to write whatever comes to mind, as a prisoner this does not mean I’m free to write without consequence. Prisons have policies, but they also have numerous unwritten rules. I know and hear about fascinating insider stories all the time, but writing them is risky business. As was demonstrated to me last year, any prisoner can be put “in the hole” under investigation for an indefinite period of time, however illegitimate the reason. Prison officials need only to declare it a matter of safety and security.
                With that said it’s important to remember this blog and any page containing my writing walks a careful line between facts as they occur in Central Prison and my opinion. I generally lean toward fact and logic in my writing to minimize any problems with “the man”. Unfortunately, anything I say can be used against me. It makes editorializing tricky, but not impossible. That is the writer’s challenge after all – persuading the largest audience and rebutting the opposition. Effective communication from a prison cell isn’t supposed to be easy.
                I was on the phone with Fr. Jude (a priest and friend who has visited me since Mule’s execution in ’05) when it happened.
                “LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN! EVERYBODY LOCKDOWN NOW!” The voice screamed over the intercom, anxious and panicky, but authoritative all the same. I hung up the phone after telling Jude I’d call him another time and went to my cell.
                Locking in our cells on death row usually happens at certain times of the day for “count” (when staff count everyone in the prison), tornado and fire drills, and whenever maintenance comes on the block to fix something. Sometimes an incident will occur that requires everyone on a particular block to lock down, such as the rare fight or once when E. Boogie hanged himself. If the entire unit was ordered to lockdown something serious happened.
                We could see it on the faces of staff who came through the block hours later, that look that says “oh crap”. One of them finally let slip there had been a stabbing. We ended up with more information from the local news. Lt. Brent Soucier, CP hospital unit manager, feared and loathed former head of Internal Affairs, was stabbed and beaten by two general population prisoners. The attack sent shock waves through CP, which had not experienced a serious violent incident involving prison brass in my two decades on death row.
                In the days following the attack rumors about Soucier’s condition changed with each person. He lost an eye. He was stabbed in the throat. Several bones in his face were shattered. All the media reported was that Soucier remained hospitalized in serious but stable condition.
                The two prisoners who attacked Soucier were also “briefly hospitalized”. One was immediately transferred to a prison in Western North Carolina, whereas the younger of the two went to CP’s hospital. Rumors drifted back to Unit 3 (death row is a building isolated from the rest of the prison, but we get prison news from guys in the chow hall, in passing through the tunnel, in the hole and on the mental health unit) that the younger attacker was so severely beaten by Soucier’s cronies he suffered brain damage. They beat him with batons for nearly five minutes before other guards arrived and stopped it. Of course no newspaper will report the reciprocal attack unless the prisoner dies.
                In the weeks after the attack on Soucier, the tension between staff and the inmate population reached a point similar to executions. Fresh in everyone’s mind were the guards killed at Bertie and Pasquotank Correctional Institutions in 2017. Though Soucier would recover it was lost on no one he was prison brass and an attack on the administration signaled a dangerous turn in the NC penal system. The looks of animosity guards now level at prisoners moving through the tunnel to and from the chow hall or hospital say it all.
                I can’t help but wonder if security conscious prison officials will bother to look beyond the immediate causes of the attack. The violence in NC prisons is a direct result of a fundamentally flawed system of “corrections”, a term that is itself a misnomer. No effort is made to positively impact behavior of prisoners. No psychotherapeutic programs exist to curtail conflict or otherwise inform those who engage in violent acts that it hurts the entire community. Solutions exist, but prison officials, legislators and the law enforcement organizations that blindly call for greater punishments refuse to see them. The penal system isn’t merely broken, it is backward; and coercion of the inmate population has left a body of evidence impossible to ignore.

Since the murder of five North Carolina prison guards in 2017 there has been intense scrutiny on prison security; specious thinking that ignores long-standing causes of violence. Poor training and overly aggressive, revenge-minded guards increase hostilities with prisoners with nothing to lose. Mentally ill prisoners are perceived as malingerers and allowed to kill themselves. A lack of incentivized sentences and rehabilitative programs leave idle prisoners to grow increasingly agitated. Under these circumstances, violence is inevitable. Although prison security is essential to public safety, it fails to address the causes of violence and recidivism; prison officials ignore the necessity of rehabilitative programs at their peril.
 
                Media sensationalism cultivates the misperception that casualties in corrections is a new trend in violence rather than a boiling point. Sound bytes and quotes from outraged politicians make it seem like they were ignorant of the growing crisis or the human element at stake. Diverted funds, excessively punitive laws, and inflexible sentences come at a cost. Political obliviousness is especially disingenuous when the News and Observer and local television stations regularly report on the corruption and dysfunction of North Carolina’s prison system. One would think, instead of taking NCDPS officials at their word, there would be more of a public reckoning.
 
                The NC General Assembly shows little interest in changing the culture of corrections. When House bills intended to impact prisons are presented, only those that align with tough-on-crime rhetoric seem to pass. HB 969 makes it a felony to masturbate in view of a prison guard. The law criminalizes normal sexual urges in an environment devoid of privacy and fails to account for mentally ill offenders in solitary confinement.
 
                Tough laws like HB969 further punish incapacitated offenders, compounding already lengthy sentences and overcrowded prisons. Officer training and recruitment encourages the same “us against them” mentality consuming America. The “new” ideas featured by the Prison Reform Advisory Board are old methods used by former wardens. Their cronyism often facilitated the problems plaguing NC prisons by leaving in place staff responsible for egregious abuses against prisoners.
 
                Incapacitation, punishment and rehabilitation are essential components of incarceration and when one is ignored in favor of others it undermines the criminal justice system. Society generally believes that criminals deserve what they get. The problem with this view is that it warps the purpose of correctional institutions. While a prison sentence is the punishment, one’s treatment in prison should be reformative. Instead, legislators, NCDPS officials, and prison administrators use “just desserts” to guide their policy decisions. As a result, prisoners are denigrated and many in the public accept our systemic abuse as a necessary evil of confinement. The flaw in treating prisoners like enslaved enemies who deserve no help is that most will earn release and bring what they experience back into the community.
 
                Just as accountability and reformation are the responsibility of prisoners, prison officials must create an environment where that is possible. Rehabilitation is the responsibility of prisoner, guard, and prison officials alike. Punishment and incapacitation alone create violent human warehouses that post a constant threat to public safety. The culture of corrections must evolve into one where offenders are educated, officers encourage accountability and ethical conduct, and prison administrators foster a learning environment that incentivizes good behavior.
 
                Solving prison violence means implementing programs that work in other states. California’s Senate passed the 2014 California College Promise Grant, which funds community college degree programs in 34 of its 35 prisons. Although a small step, the availability of higher ed and the senate’s investment in incarcerated citizens (it is also available to low income citizens) advances the fact prison reform is an attainable goal. Legislative support of rehabilitation is acknowledgement of the direct link between corrections, reentry, and public safety. New York and Texas also support extensive higher education and rehabilitative programming. Together, America’s three largest state prison systems embrace rehabilitation without seeming to coddle prisoners.
 
                To be effective, prison must be a transformative experience, but without parole-eligible sentences and higher education this becomes less likely. Public, legislative and judicial understanding of prison must reject the policies of mass incarcerations. Public safety requires a conscious decision to rehabilitate people in prison and treat them as investments in the community. Until this becomes the culture of confinement, prison will remain a violent place, one that puts everybody in danger.

Note to Readers: The following post is a departure from the topics I typically write. It was an assignment for English Composition and Rhetoric, a correspondence course I’m enrolled in through Ohio University. Writing about gay marriage or sexuality is not something I typically relate to prison. As a straight man this does not mean the subject is beyond my sphere of understanding or the prison I live in. One of my closest friends is bisexual, though in prison the distinction is irrelevant. He faces a great deal of verbal abuse and, were we in a place where there is more movement among other prisoners, likely physical abuse too. To me, my friend is not less than other people I know – he is simply different. His sexuality is his business; but, in prison, just because you believe something is strictly personal does not mean other people are oblivious. On death row outright homosexuality is rare. There are four people that I know who claim such feelings. Regardless, my mother taught me as a child that everybody is different, and those differences don’t necessarily make us better or worse than them. Just different.
 
Marriage and Culture: evolving standards of relationships
 
                In Obergefell v Hodges (2015) the US Supreme Court rules that state bans on same-sex marriage violated same-sex couples’ rights under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. The Court’s decision, while controversial, is now the law of the land and whether anyone disagrees is a moot point. Ultimately, the Court’s ruling is influenced by evolving cultural standards, science and technology.
                Humanity evolved through natural selection: traits and behaviors that promote survival and reproductive fitness are inherited by or taught to offspring, whereas traits and behaviors that do not promote survival and reproductive fitness die with the offspring. The environment culls the weak. Civilization made survival and reproduction easier, reducing the impact of natural selection, but in terms of social behavior it grew more complicated.
                Civilization needed laws to protect its structural integrity, making it safe to belong. Traditions, mores, and religion intermingled with the complexity of communities, adding nuance to the concept of monogamy; thus, the social contract of marriage was created. As it relates to reproductive fitness, devotion to one mate is as counterintuitive as homosexuality, but the former is more likely to produce offspring than the latter. Advances in bioscience and technology have changed that.
                Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, frozen eggs and sperm, and genetic engineering enable reproductive fitness among same-sex couples. This defeats the belief only opposite-sex couples can further a lineage and degrades the original purpose of marriage. Moreover, legacies typically passed down to offspring can be bestowed on any child, regardless or origin, and is not exclusive to marital status or a particular gender.
                Is marriage a social contract that solidifies the idea of monogamy, a belief one should only have a single sexual partner over time? Does this extend to the creation of a family? If the first is true, marriage is merely a symbolic devotion to one’s mate and any argument about which genders comprise a valid marriage is irrelevant. If the second is true – marriage leads to the generation of a family – again gender is irrelevant because bioengineering can provide same-sex couples with offspring as readily as opposite-sex couples.
                Furthermore, claims about the sanctity of marriage is undermined by divorce, which has maintained a steady rate over the last fifty years while the number of people entering into marriage has declined. Traditionalists who decry same-sex marriage as a perversion of matrimony fail to account for how divorce undermines the value of that social contract. It seems more people prefer the freedom to continue choosing new partners just as natural selection dictates.
                Therefore, marriage is largely symbolic, a tradition increasingly diminished by modern culture. Static traditions are unlikely to last in a society that continues to innovate and, over time, those ideas that constrict growth will fall away. Traits once believed to be a weakness are no more than differences that add complexity and nuance to humanity. Those who hold views counter to the evolving cultural standard will either adapt or go extinct.

It happened on the morning of my birthday, February 16th. “Code Blue! Code Blue!” Boots squeaked on concrete before the thump-thump-thump of a guard running down the stairs. During the 6am live count when guards check on every inmate to make sure he is alive and in the cell, they stopped at IU-134. Bangbangbangbang. The noise of a metal baton striking the metal commode left no doubt something happened to Hector between 6am and 5am, the last time the guards walked through the block.
                “Mr. Juarez!” A pause. “Mr. Juarez, why are you on the floor?” No response. “Mr. Juarez! Mr. Juarez!” Several minutes later four guards jogged through the open pod door and up the stairs to Hector’s cell. They carried no backboard or medical bag. Louis, the guard who found Hector on the floor, asked, “Where is medical?” His African accent was unmistakable. “Code Blue! Pod 3! Code Blue! Pod 3!” A radio squawked with garbled sound and static.
                I stood at my cell door and watched through the window, unable to see what happened on the tier above me. While brushing my teeth four more guards streamed through the open door and walked up the stairs. Ten minutes had passed since Louis found Hector unresponsive on the floor. Another minute and a group of nurses arrived carrying a red Emergency Response duffle bag. Six more guards rushed in behind them, out of breath after running from the other end of Central Prison.  After fifteen minutes a doctor strolled in at a brisk walk with two more nurses in street clothes. Two guards pushed a gurney behind them.
                Somehow twenty-one staff were crowded along the narrow tier above me. I tried to imagine what it looked like with so many people clustered near Hector’s cell. Only two or three could squeeze into the cell with him. What were all of the guards for?
                It took a bit over twenty minutes from the time Louis radioed in the Code Blue to the point where Hector was strapped to a backboard, carried down the stairs, and checked by a doctor. Finally, upon making some decision I couldn’t see a guard and two nurses wheeled Hector out of the block. The rest of the guards milled around for a few minutes before they too left.
                Weeks later we learned Hector had a stroke and was paralyzed on the right side of his body. It would be another month before he gained enough strength to walk with a cane and return to the block.
                While Hector was gone I stood in the canteen line one day, waiting for my turn at the window when two guards’ radios squawked “Code Blue! Code Blue! Unit Three!” Again a parade of guards ran, jogged and fast-walked down the hallway and out of a unit door to a plot of ground used for Native American service. A prisoner was having a seizure. Those of us standing in the canteen line, our unit sergeant and a guard stood dumbfounded, counting. Twenty-one, two, three – a doctor and two plain clothes nurses brought up the rear. Twenty-six staff responding to a medical emergency that, at most, might have required two nurses, a few staff from the unit and a doctor.
                Why so many staff in one area after the incidents at Bertie and Pasquotank Correctional Facilities, where similar ploys were used to draw staff away from other parts of the prison? This couldn’t be the new Security Response Team, not when there are still staffing vacancies that need to be filled. This must be the training element where response time of new hires were measured against the notoriously slow nursing staff. It makes me wonder if next, as a way of rating their response time, prisoners who are hospitalized, and still alive, will be given surveys. How did we do? Check one of these boxes:
 

•  I feel safe and secure
  
•  I feel okay about staff’s response
  
•  Needs Improvement
•  God help us!

Short Journey is a nondenominational Christian retreat for prisoners, a three day blitz of song, food and the Word of God. A group of older men called “Kairos” conduct the Short Journey on death row and other area prisons. In doing so they are effective stewards of The Way, The Truth and The Light.

April 10-12 was my third Short Journey in the last four years and the anticipation among those of us selected to attend was not any less than the previous times. Admittedly, our excitement had a lot to do with the food, catered by Central Prison’s “Test Kitchen”, the place where prison staff go to eat. Compared to food served in our chow hall, meals from the Test Kitchen (also known as the Officers’ Dining Hall) is restaurant quality. You might not think three days of good food does much for your capacity to listen and absorb an important message; you would be wrong.

The simple pleasure of palatable, seasoned food and a full stomach is a powerful draw in prison. On death row it’s akin to Christmas. Not only are you spared the drama of standing in line for 20 minutes to get a tray of something that is often tasteless or disgusting, the atmosphere of Short Journey is buoyant and friendly. The Kairos have done this ministry for many years and know the secret to getting a stubborn man to listen lies in meeting his most basic need. They call this “the hook”. Dee, one of the oldest Kairos said:

“We know many of you guys come here for the food; we want you to. Eat your fill and tell others. And when you’re sated we’ll feed you with an entirely different kind of food, the sort that will feed you for a lifetime and beyond.”

Over the course of three eight-hour days we dissected the Lord’s Prayer line-by-line, discussed prayer in our confinement, and read a number of different passages from the Bible, reflecting on how they applied in our lives. A lot of our table discussions--twenty death row prisoners were divided into four tables entitled, “Luke”, “John”, “Mark”, and “Matthew”--tended to be lively. Not every prisoner who participated professed Christianity as their faith and some who did had very strange views. Needless to say there existed an opportunity for everyone to learn from his neighbor.

Our table discussions were facilitated by the Kairos’ “talks”. These speeches, often harrowing accounts out of their own personal hells, inspired and provoked thought. One particular talk caught my interest the most because it touched on the topic of forgiveness from Jesus as he hung from the cross, in Luke 13:34

“ Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,”

Ken the Kairo interpreting the passage said:
“I often think of what Jesus said that day he was crucified, imagining there to be so much more in between the lines. ‘Father, heal them of their wounded pride and their soul sickness that leads to the death of their own souls; the death of sane, rational thinking; the death of their trusting relationship to you, Father; the death of relationships with others who suffer the same soul sickness they themselves have.’”

As I listened to Ken it struck me how much truth can cut through the debris of our lives to fulfill a need that had yet to exist until that moment. Soul sickness described an ache I can never quite soothe on my own, a place my spirit weeps, just as Jesus cried out “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”

I go to the Short Journey to get fed in what is quite literally a mountaintop experience of fun, fellowship, and fulfillment. It is a respite from the daily grind of life in prison. The challenge is carrying the light of God down into the shadow of the valley so others who stumble along in their soul sickness might be shown The Way. The challenge is in making certain the light is not extinguished.

​

A February 2018 News & Observer editorial described an alarming increase in jail deaths as “supervision failures”, then recommended these solutions:

1. Improve staff training
2. Hire more guards
3. Investigate the cause of these inmate deaths

 
“Supervision failures” imply lapses in judgement on the job, poor management of underlings, or a department’s collective incompetence led to dysfunction and inefficiency. Not a sixteen year old girl hanging herself with a bed sheet in a jail cell. Not an ill man dying of pneumonia in a jail cell because he was denied medical attention. At best, the solutions suggested by the editorial oversimplify the problems inherent in mass incarceration; at worst it obfuscates a culture of abuse and neglect, then suggests funding the problem instead of addressing the cause.
                Yes, train and properly staff every jail and prison; investigate every lapse in supervision, and not just the incidents resulting in death but each medical emergency and attempted suicide; call on the general assembly to appropriate and invest more funds in the safety and security of the state prison system. These are necessary responses to the increased number of suicides and “supervision failures” in North Carolina jails and prisons.
                The NC Republican legislature can also vote to give judges greater discretion in sentencing and eliminate mandatory minimum sentences allowing courts the ability to divert more offenders to mental health facilities and drug treatment centers. Legislators could also hold prosecutors accountable for over-incarcerating addicts for simple things like paraphernalia and public intoxication charges. The general assembly could even release the remaining 3 of 12 million dollars allocated for the NCDPS mental health department in 2014. These changes would directly impact jail and prison populations across the state, and remove some of the burden put on overworked, underpaid staff.
                Does being charged with a crime mean one deserves less adequate medical care and consideration as a human being? Focusing on a jail’s bureaucracy and staffing policies underscores a fundamental flaw in how incarcerated citizens are perceived. Rather than be recognized as complex beings with more needs than the average person, prisoners are devalued beneath the shade of incarceral policies. Instead of acknowledging how deinstitutionalizing the mental health system has wrought catastrophic damage on the penal system – there are calls for more guards. The N&O editorial, in its reasoning, fails to mention how the courts criminalize mental illness because draconian drug laws show no mercy to addicts, and city ordinances and the VA further alienate homeless veterans. Not even a token word about drug courts, involuntary commitments from the jail to mental health facilities, intake screening, or other viable alternatives to jail.
                Overrelying on incarceration as a panacea to crime exposes every weakness in the criminal justice system. More suicides occur in jail because more addicts and mentally ill people are incarcerated, not treated. Jailors are not orderlies or mental health professionals and expecting them to fill such roles is disastrous policy. Jails are not asylums. Before lasting changes can be made to the safety and security of NC’s jails and prisons their occupants must be treated humanely, and with the recognition by staff they are not things in a warehouse. Maybe then the general assembly and NC Prison Reform Commission can address every failure in the criminal justice system, not just those that support their tough-on-crime rhetoric.

We were hurt when chaplain Chestnut left the prison to pursue other opportunities in the free world; but, also, to save his marriage. Months before Chestnut left, he let slip that his wife was angry he spent more time on death row than he did at home. We were grateful. Chaplain Chestnut provided counsel before and after the executions of our friends. He grieved with us and some guards hated him for it. Chestnut treated us fairly, maybe even favorably, going out of his way to lessen the harshness of our confinement by valuing our humanity as much as any of his parishioners in the free world. He treated us like equals.
    The chaplains who replaced Chestnut were policy wonks, sticklers for following the rules and making the guards feel more comfortable than the “inmates”. Their use of the word “inmate” was like that of the N-word on a plantation--intended to segregate, isolate and belittle.
    Chestnut left in 2004 and none of us thought to connect his departure to any unwritten rule regarding death row. Prison is full of unwritten and unspoken rules that guide interaction between prisoners, but the idea of an unspoken or unwritten rule controlling interaction between staff and prisoners was the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Or so I thought.
    The written policy of no fraternizing between guard and prisoner poisons the purpose of a chaplain, but with regular guards it is easy to understand. The problem is that human beings are social creatures and no matter how much you indoctrinate or denigrate a person, humanity wins out. Guards are not emotionless robots any more than death row prisoners are solely the crimes for which we are convicted and sentenced.
    Over the years some guards have gone out of their way to be kind, patient, and compassionate toward us. They show leniency without violating any policies and are not blinded by the idea of their job; humanity guides how they respond to us. In prison, where humanity is intentionally devalued as a form of punishment, where empathy is withheld lest it be construed as sympathy for enemies of the State, being treated as a guard’s equal is as rare as potable water in the Sahara.
    When we are devalued it negatively impacts our sense of self-worth and influences how we respond to orders. It is hard to see our keepers as anything more than a uniform enforcing a set of rules; it’s actually easier for us to devalue them in return. Humanity does not depart if an external force fails to recognize or validate it; it’s intrinsic to personhood. Except, the unwritten rule works to deny this claim, forging an identity defined as “condemned”, and pushing out any who cannot abide it.
    Before my friend Earl was executed in ‘05 a guard who befriended him quit: she couldn’t stand the thought that her continued employment on death row signaled participation in his execution. Months later another guard quite because his live-and-let-live attitude was unacceptable to a unit manager who would rather see us pick up rocks than go unpunished for the slightest transgression. Many have asked for transfers to other units because accepting the unwritten rule means squelching your natural inclination to show compassion. Other guards have been put on notice by management for taking sides against the abuses of their co-workers. Two unit managers and assistant unit managers were transferred because they were too willing to challenge nonsensical or poorly made administrative decisions regarding death row.
    The unwritten rule on death row requires disinterest, allegiance to policy, and a frequent changing of the guards to reduce the development of familiarity. The rule holds that working for the State does not mean you leave your humanity at the door, it means you must forget about ours. Flouting the idea that we are “less than” is unacceptable.
    From 2013 to the end of 2017 Dr. Kuhns directed psychological programs for the mental health department at Central Prison. A man of conviction and compassion, Kuhns established a number of therapeutic programs on death row. Creative writing, yoga, drama group, chess therapy, Toastmasters and more -- these groups changed the way we prisoners saw our value as human beings and promoted emotional maturity. Dr. Kuhns enlisted the aid of like-minded volunteers from the free world, people who recognized our potential for growth. The problem, and ultimately end of Dr. Kuhn’s employment at CP, is that he ignored the unwritten rule on death row. We are not meant to be rehabilitated or treated as if there is worth in our potential. Since Dr. Kuhns was forced out of the prison the programs he established on death row have been eliminated along with the volunteers. There is no psychologist in the prison who even looks in the direction of death row despite a legislative mandate requiring their presence on the unit.
    Early January of 2018 a sergeant retired after twenty-five years of dedicated service to the prison. I remember meeting him for the first time in 1997, when I came to CP as a 19 year old safekeeper facing a capital murder trial. Because of his proximity to us, many knew this man better than their own families. We all knew he participated on death watch squads--groups of guards assigned to watch condemned prisoners in the final 72 hours before execution.
    I asked him about this before he left. He said, “Some guys ask for me to be there. At least then they can die with somebody close by who knew them, despite everything.”
    After his retirement this sergeant returned to death row in street clothes, his wife and son at his side as he pointed out death row prisoners he knew for decades. Then he left with a wave; it was the goodbye for someone who was as much a part of our lives as we are of his, regardless of the rules.

​

At Central Prison most prisoners cycle through a position working in the kitchen. Washing pots and pans, cleaning surfaces, preparing food, serving food on the line, and cooking, but only if you know how. Since there is no longer a cooking program at CP only those with prior experience get to cook, though this hardly makes the food better. Every once in a while somebody will be put in the baker position and do a great job; biscuits are fluffy, cakes soft and coated with icing, and cornbread not too sweet. Good bakers are rare and do not last long; they get their choice of whatever prison in the state they want to live in because good bakers are a high commodity.
                Bakers, like cooks, are paid $1 a day. Every other position earns 40-60 cents a day. Before the NC Sentencing Commission changed the law in 1994, incentive wage jobs came with gain time – time off of a prisoner’s sentence. Anyone charged with a crime after 1994 does not have access to good time (good behavior), gain time (work and school), and parole. Life without parole was implemented, and de facto life sentences became common. Federal and state funding for higher education ended, so did many other programs like the cooking school at Central Prison.
                The food at CP did not begin to get bad until several years later, when the then NC Division of Prisons decided too much money was spent on food, the old school kitchen stewards retired, and an influx of new prisoners with life sentences filled all of the kitchen positions. The wages are the only thing that remained the same: bakers and cooks are paid the most, everyone else 40-60 cents a day.
                Regular guards without cooking experience took the place of kitchen stewards, monitoring the making and doling out of food. There were too few of them to stop the black market of sugar, bacon and contraband passed out of the window where trays are received in the dish room. The guards could occasionally be bribed or were lazy enough only to pretend they cared. They knew the prisoners worked because they wanted to avoid solitary confinement. There are no other incentives. No gain time or better wages.
                There are other jobs at Central Prison – hallway and cell block janitors, clothes house workers, maintenance assistants, canteen operators, and hospital janitors. The more technical or hazardous positions – canteen operators, maintenance assistants, hospital janitors and clothes house workers earn $1 a day; every other job at CP pays 40-60 cents a day.
                It’s bad enough the NC Sentencing Commission eliminated parole and the ability for prisoners to earn time off of their sentences; but, when you try to live off a dollar a day or less in prison it makes for a miserable existence. Stamps costs more than the lowest wage. A local phone call costs nearly twice as much as the highest wage. Toiletry items and writing materials cost money too. Imagine being given life without parole, you don’t have friends or family after twenty years, no way to appeal your sentence, and nothing left to lose. What if it wasn’t LWOP? Maybe just 20-25 year and no reason to believe life will get better?
                It is no secret the food prepared in the kitchen sucks because the guys who prepare it don’t care. They have no reason to care when it’s easy to fix their own food and mix slop for everybody else. It’s not as if they are being rehabilitated anymore; in fact, with guards standing over them like plantation straw bosses it’s easy to see how a bad day often becomes much, much worse.
                Kenneth Lassiter, Director of NC prisons, made an appearance on WRAL’s Sunday morning news program “On the Record” (3-18-18). Along with the director of SEANC (State Employees Association of North Carolina), Lassiter spoke of the problems facing NC prisons as he answered questions from news anchor David Crabtree and Laura Leslie. The discussion focused on what changes will be made in NC prisons to address staffing shortages, undertraining, and general safety and security of every facility. There was a cursory question about the cause of 2017’s violence in NC prisons, to which Lassiter, made an equally cursory response about “idle minds in prison and no programs lead to violent problems . . “ (not an exact quote, but pretty close; feel free to google the broadcast for more information).
                Lassiter’s comment about “idle minds” glossed over some extremely pertinent information that directly impacts public safety.

1. Not every prisoner spends the rest of his or her life in prison. A majority will return to the free world after so many years of forced labor, and will have little to show for their time.
2. The lack of higher education and rehabilitative programs breed “idle minds”. The work done in prison is not a marketable skill to employers on the outside, unless you’re talking about absolute obedience to authority. Idle minds released from prison recidivate.
3. There are no incentives in North Carolina’s penal system, only coercive measures. There are no rewards for good behavior or doing the right thing. There is no give or leniency in the system, only a crumbling idea of what rehabilitation and human decency used to look like in prison. Now there is only despair and hatred for people who give you plenty of the stick without the benefit of a carrot.

 
I will give Mr. Lassiter credit in one thing. At least he deigned to mention “idle minds” in prison. He is aware there is more to the problem of prison safety than calling for the National Guard (Rep. Bob Steinburg) and executing people who have been sentenced to death (Rep. Bob Steinburg) so other prisoners will get the message North Carolina is tough on crime.  I have to wonder though, do any of the prison officials and legislators on the North Carolina Prisons Commission know what it’s like to work for 40 cents a day? To be told at the end of an eight hour shift you’ve got to work overtime for free; to be forced to work or get punished?
My guess is they don’t, and neither does the general public when they call for harsher laws and more punishment. By now it should be obvious to the public, as it is to Kenneth Lassiter, that violence in prison primarily comes from a lack of incentive.
 
3-18-18  On the Record
http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/17423783/

Five of us and the priest sat around the table making small talk when the chaplain stepped over and held up his hands, signaling a desire to interrupt before Mass began.
                “Gentlemen, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety has established a new Religious Practices Policy, as of February 1, 2018. The main one that applies to your Catholic service is that no offender will be allowed to consume the wine. Only the priest may do so.” He looked away, as if he had created a list of potential responses to our reaction.
                Angel’s thin mustache turned down with the corners of his mouth. “You gotta be kidding me. We litigated this before. New policy? Right. We’ll see about this crap. I’ll write to the Vatican again. We’ll just have to sue you guys again since you’ve forgotten.”
                Disgusted, Jeff dropped the front legs of his chair to the floor and unfolded his arms. “We’ll just have to write some grievances.”
                “You cannot grieve policy,” said the chaplain.
                “Really?” Jeff sat up. “What is this, a friggin’ tyranny? We can’t write grievances about policy? That’s what they’re for!”
We have to write a grievance just to get stays of execution. Writing an Administrative Remedy Procedure, or grievance, is the necessary first step before any litigation can move forward. Even if you want to sue the prison because the guards are beating you in full restraints – you have to write a grievance first. Of course doing so is a ridiculous waste of time; the patent response by the administration is to quote the very policy you are claiming has been violated or is unconstitutional; and they claim their officers are doing the job they’ve been paid to do. Grievances on the inside mean nothing, but courts on the outside require us to fill them out anyway.
Keith, Andrew and me sat and watched, knowing the chaplain didn’t really care what we thought or did, so long as it did not involve him. With a few exceptions, the chaplaincy has never really been there for us. They’re seldom more than another type of guard enforcing a specific set of rules.
Sensing it was time to move on, the priest cleared his throat and began Mass, reciting the familiar greeting and making the sign of the cross. “Saints of God. We gather in celebration . . .”
For the entirety of my nineteen years on death row I have attended Catholic Mass and celebrated the Eucharist – both the host and wine – on Thursday afternoons. There has never been a problem with, or abuse of, the Holy Sacrament by anyone on death row or anyone in the general population. The amount we consume is mixed with water – as is required by the rite—and never more than a sip, if that much. Getting a bureaucracy like the prison system to understand this requires a court.
Before the early 90s there was no Catholic Mass on death row until Angel, a devout Catholic from New York, wrote the Vatican and explained how the chaplaincy at the prison refused to acknowledge Catholicism as a Christian faith, or allow a priest to deliver Mass at the prison. It took a few months, but Angel received a letter from the Vatican representative who asked for a detailed account of the anti-Catholic sentiment at the prison. Angel responded and, about six months later, the first Catholic priest delivered Mass on NC’s death row; and one has done so – hearing confessions, delivering Mass and conveying the Holy Eucharist – every week since then.
                Of the original members in our small church only Angel, Jeff and me remain. Keith, Ryan and Andrew are our newest brethren, though Andrew is Greek Orthodox. The others I was confirmed with in 2000 have since been executed or succumbed to cancer. We are a small group because the chaplaincy refuses to allow our services to be open for just any prisoner to attend.
                Over the years we have experienced a number of petty slights and restrictions on the Catholic faith that are not experienced by Protestant denominations. While most Christian religious programs in prison are intended to be inclusive and serve all prisoners, it’s because they are sponsored almost exclusively by Baptists. Catholic prison ministry is rare, and typically rebuffed or undermined by the Religious Affairs Committee within the NCDPS.
We have received mixed reactions from the Church on this latest affront and ban on our receipt of the Blood of Christ. The previous bishop, Monsignor Burbridge, before transferring to another diocese, told us “The grace of Christ is present in both the host and the wine.” Some of the priests agreed. Some of the deacons disagreed.
The problem is less about whether we are receiving the full grace of God conferred in our celebration of the Last Supper, it has little to do with the ingrained disapproval of Catholicism’s spread into southern W.A.S.P states; our conflict is a continuing erosion of fundamental rights justified under the guise of “security”, or as Jeff pointed out: tyranny in the shape of public safety. Of course a sip of watered wine has nothing to do with safe prisons, but the programs themselves do. Maybe, rather than doing everything in our power to weaken and curtail rehabilitative programs the chaplaincy and prison administration could improve volunteer-based programs and facilitate Catholic prison ministry. Anything has to be better than ignoring the very problems that led to violence in NC prisons in 2017, then covering it up with the concern for better staffing and security. Try some better policies.