Celling

I’ve been reading with great interest the Transitionish series by Thomas Whitaker, describing his path from Texas death row to general population. My experiences transferring from San Quentin’s death row are different in details, but distilled to essence, eerily, scarily, the same. 

After celling solo for year after relentless year, suddenly we’re crammed inside a small, locked space with another felon. One of my first facilities had five housing units, each containing one hundred cells. Top bunks had been welded, so a thousand prisoners could be wedged inside. More bunks, stacked three high, were installed in the gym, allowing the facility to operate at more than two hundred percent capacity. The numbers strained the facility’s resources, engendered aggressive competition for the phones, showers, jobs, access to canteen which often led to violence. Initially housed on Orientation, I was scheduled for Classification. The Committee asked me if I was gay or trans. Surprised, I said no. I was bounced from Orientation later that day, assigned to another housing unit in a random empty bunk. Later, I discovered prisoners engaged in alternate lifestyle remained in Orientation housing for another week and given access to all housing units to find a cellie that would accept them. Prisoners often speak about finding a good cellie. Alcoholics want alcoholics, gangsters want gangsters. Nightmares to me. The truth is you’re not looking for good, you’re looking for compatible. My first cellie wanted me out of the cell after breakfast on Saturdays, so he could tattoo and then get faded. We were not compatible. As Thomas wrote about in Transitionish Episode Five, time for a move. You have to evaluate the unrepentant felons around you, find someone you might be compatible with and then try to discern if he might consider celling with you while trying not to be stabbed by his or your current cellie. Daunting. 

Once you find a new cellie, the move is problematic. All prisoners moving and their cellmates have to sign off on the move in writing. The request has to be endorsed by the housing unit officers and submitted to the program sergeant on the weekend. The chances of the move actually happening is just about zero unless you pay off your housing unit clerk to work magic. Two jars of coffee from each cell involved in the move usually makes it happen. Although it took a few weeks, my move went down. A few years later, I was assigned as a law library clerk, a job that was interesting, when I was recruited for the sergeant’s clerk position. One of the reasons I accepted, sergeants look after their clerks’ housing. If I needed a move, I could bypass housing unit staff and go directly to the sergeant. 

Seems like a small benefit but it’s really huge. Sometimes, housing unit clerks would hand me their cell moves as I went into work. One clerk was outside the program door every Sunday, and I’d drop his forms on the sergeant’s desk. I did wonder why the other housing unit clerks got at me only occasionally, but he was at me every Sunday for months. One Sunday, the sergeant asked me what officer had given me the cell moves. “No officer,” I answered. “The housing unit clerk, he’s been handling them in for months.” Minutes later, the clerk was escorted handcuffed and locked in the cages. He admitted to forging the paperwork, and said I had no knowledge of his crimes. I was an amiable dunce. The sergeant said I hadn’t done anything wrong, part of my job was to move documents around the facility. Just from now on, I was to give him a head’s up if anything I dropped on his desk was from a prisoner. He’d then phone and check. The clerk lost his job and banned from positions of trust. We spoke. I told him he cleared me, so I was cool. We shook hands, and he said fraudulent cell moves were highly lucrative while they lasted. 

Sometimes to force a cell move, cellies will stage a cell fight to force the sergeant to separate them. Of course sometimes the cell fights are real. Generally, staff can tell the difference because a small cell designed for one prisoner with a steel top bunk and locker welded inside has hard surfaces all around at close proximity. When prisoners cell fight in earnest, they almost always end up with contusions across their heads and faces that require stitches. Whether the fight is thought real or fake, the cellies have to be separated. One of my tasks as a program clerk was to keep track of cells where drugs or alcohol had been discovered. If a cell fight goes down, one of the combatants goes into a contraband cell, and one of the cellies caught with contraband goes into the combat cell. After the prisoner swap if there’s immediately a second cell fight, those new combatants go to the hole. I was walking to work one day and some sort of fat, random white guy with ugly prison tattoos blasted across his head and face seemed to have lost his mind. Standing about ten feet from a cluster of trans prisoners, he spewed hate. Abominations, God’s mistakes, whores were some of the words. Jimmy, now known as Kayla, eyed him coldly. When I met Jimmy years ago, it was on a higher security facility, and he’d been an enforcer, a hitter, and he’d butchered a few guys before he went off to do an indeterminate security housing unit (SHU) term. Now, Jimmy had come out of security housing and the closet, took estrogen and identified as Kayla. Jimmy scared me back in the day, Kayla frightened me even more now. I wasn’t certain how much abuse she was going to soak up from trailer trash. Suddenly, Kayla spun away from her gaggle and cracked the white boy on his nose. Blood spouted, two more trans followed Kayla, they bum rushed him, pinning him to the ground and rained pain. Alarm. Guards came quite slowly to rescue the white boy. 

Cuffed, the guards started to gaffle away the white guy when Kayla said lazily but piercingly, “Tell the woodpile you got handled by faggots.” Staring at Kayla with sad eyes, the white boy started to cry. Tears mixing with blood smeared across his face. Confused, I wondered if what I had read as hate had really been hurt and rejection. Was he going to come out of the hole with splinters all over him like Kayla? Didn’t know but did know Kayla was real, and he was a wannabe poser. Alarm cleared, I went to work and a floater sergeant, assigned to my facility program office for just one shift, asked me to write the incident reports. When I delivered the packet, he flipped through and said idly, “We give them special treatment, cater to their housing needs, and the stupid bitches still act out.” I didn’t say anything. Prison is hard, prison when you’re openly gay, trans, or engage in an alternative lifestyle has to be even harder. These were issues beyond my understanding, and I wasn’t going to be able to add much insight. “Isn’t that right, Hunter? We let them run around and find their boyfriends.” “I think everyone coming off Orientation should have a week to find a bunk. If you don’t find a place, then you go wherever.” “No way,” he scoffed. “This is prison, you go where you’re told.” “How would you like it if a cop showed up at your house and tried to move someone in?” “Never happen,” he snapped. “Could happen,” I disagreed. “Some kind of disaster, earthquake, fires, the Governor declares an emergency and displaced people need shelter. Wouldn’t you rather meet with a few people and find one to invite to stay with you than have some cop force some random stranger on you?” “You go where you’re ordered!” I nodded and thought, that’s why there’s so many alarms, use of force, stitches, lockup orders, because we go where we’re ordered.