I have people I need to contact. Calls to make. Emails I need to send. Today is winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. It’s 19 degrees out. A veritable heatwave after weeks hovering around zero. We just got off a weeklong lockdown and it’s only a couple days before Christmas so the phones are gonna be packed. I’ll get out of my cell in just a couple minutes for an hour of flag time. It’s a small unit. 52 cells. On a normal day we’ll use the hour of flag time to shower, maybe cook up a dish. I usually hit the unit weight room with a couple of the fellas — more talking than working out — then I might hang out on the west end of flag by the laundry area. Other guys hang out by the phones, leaning against the railing, talking about whatever. I’ll make a couple phone calls. Wish people a happy holiday. Send an email to a pen pal overseas.
***
The doors pop. The phones fill up immediately. I’ll try later. I put my canteen order slip in the box next to the outgoing mail.
***
I try to stay connected with the outside world. The longer you’ve been inside the less you have out there. Even with phone and email keeping in contact with loved ones on the outside is difficult under the best of circumstances. We reach out, hope we get ahold of someone. People have lives to live; they don’t just drop whatever they’re doing to pick up a call. We get out of our cells get on the phone and sync our tablets to the unit kiosk. Then it’s time to go back in for the day. Try again tomorrow.
I’ve got a couple big events coming up in the next few years. I have a 27-year review set for early 2028 and my “constructive parole” hearing in 2030 which determines if I can start my next life sentence. They’ll want to know what kind of positive programming I’ve partaken in and what kind of contacts and support system I have waiting for me were they to consider kicking me loose some day in the distant future. Contacts and a solid support system are key. The more outside contacts I have the better off I’ll be.
Keeping in touch — contact with your friends, family, and loved ones outside is your lifeline, the thing that keeps you sane. Losing regular contact with them can feel a whole lot like drowning. That phone call, email or letter is lifeblood to a person inside — it doesn’t matter how long they’ve been down or when they’re getting out. It’s the air we breathe.
***
I stop and talk to the laundry man for a minute. Show a little sympathy. He’s already buried in bags of dirty laundry with us coming off lockdown. I’ll wait a day or two. It’s like living with a dog or dogs. The smell becomes part of the habitat after a while. You don’t even notice anymore. Not that much anyhow.
I get a pitcher of ice and drop a letter in the mailbox. I hang out for a minute, chat with the fellas and swing past the phones. There’s a line. I check the kiosk. There’s a line. I’ll try both again a little later. There’s an ebb and flow. You develop a feel for it over time. I head up to the weight room.
***
In prison we’ve had phones for decades but the system of tablets and a unit kiosk for email is a relatively new thing. Less than ten years for us here in Minnesota. But certainly, long enough to become a normalized part of prison life and more importantly prison routine. Over the last decade the tablet and kiosk have become a reliable cornerstone, even bedrock for our ability to keep in regular contact with our loved ones via email. We can use the tablets (which we buy with our own money from the service provider) to read, write, send and receive emails with our people.
It’s easy to overlook and/or underestimate the importance of these tablets. Too often it can feel like people think of a prisoner with their tablet as a child with a toy. A neat toy with which we can play games and music on (all paid for out of our own money). The fact that these tablets are synonymous with the ability to contact our people and any resources we may have outside feels, at least from an incarcerated perspective, systematically ignored or minimized.
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In cowboy days they gave you a horse and a gun when you got out of prison.
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I’d like to think we’ve evolved as a society.
Today, instead of a horse and a gun the corrections system offers programs to prepare us for our reentry into society and provide us with the tools we need to succeed after release. Sounds good on paper, good intentions and all that. But resources are finite. The DOCs of the world simply don’t have the funding, staff, etc. needed.
They do what they can, but the hard cold reality is that the greatest predictor of success or failure upon release, your very future, will be the strength of your support system. Your network. It’s not something you can participate in as a bystander, stuck on the sidelines waiting. You are the center, it is all built by you, for you, around you. Or it’s not — it’s something you cling onto the edge of, hanging on with your fingernails, praying someone sees you there and gives you more than a handout. Gives you a hand up, a foothold, a chance to succeed, or at least have a fighting chance in the free world.
***
The weight room overlooks flag and the phones. When I see a phone open up, I hustle down the steps and beeline across the flag, telegraphing my intent. If you see a guy going for a phone, you respect that. Or should.
I try to call “home”. It’s not my home. It’s barely their home. They recently moved so it’s a new residence for my people. I haven’t even seen a photo of it yet. But since it’s the location of my people, those I care about most, it is ” home”. I call. They aren’t home. That is to say they didn’t answer their cellphone — which of course goes wherever they do. I’ll try again before we go in.
***
Contacts, support systems and people to keep you on track are critical. Once you’re in a spot where you no longer have anything you care about, feel like you have nothing left to lose, bad choices can quickly become exponentially worse. People are often your only saving grace. The question becomes not only how do we keep in touch; but how do we build all those strong, meaningful, complex and (hopefully) ultimately lasting connections we need to survive and maybe even thrive? The friends, family and community you can rely on. Regular contact. Strong relationships. Built over time and maintained with effort and persistence while we’re locked behind fences and walls and in prisons buried into suburban hillsides.
Pen and paper letters via the U.S.P.S. are awesome — when all of your correspondents are senior citizens. Or other prisoners. Or part of that 5% of the population who still keeps stamps and envelopes and stationery on hand.
The one reliable consistent form of correspondence for Minnesota prisoners for nearly a decade has been emails.
But now we’re headed in the wrong direction. We’ve been in limbo while the infrastructure collapses slowly over time. Contract disputes between the state and the service provider and various litigation issues around those contracts and services have tossed a King Kong-sized monkey wrench into the works. Tablets wear out or break and replacement tablets are no longer available for purchase by Minnesota inmates. New inmates can’t buy one and current inmates have no way to replace the one they have. It’s been like this for the last couple years and as of this writing there’s no reason to think this will be fixed any time soon…
Technically email provisions still exist. Everyone has access to the community kiosk in the unit. It is possible to hop on this public terminal and glance at incoming and even send a quick outgoing email. A comparable free world equivalent would be tossing your smartphone/laptop/device out the window and instead relying on a crowded shopping mall kiosk to conduct your day-to-day affairs.
***
The kiosk is open. I hop on. Plug in my tablet. Send an email.
One of my people is going through a big break up from a long-term relationship compounded with medical problems that require powerful pain meds. This scares me. We are an easily addicted bunch and physical and emotional pain piled together is not good. But there’s nothing I can do besides offer a few words of warning and support. Not necessarily in that order. Support is mostly a one-way street. I’ve been locked up a long time. Sealed fate and all that. Still, it’s nice to at least talk to people whose day-to-day life doesn’t start and end with incarceration.
On the kiosk screen the confirmation box pops up. I click okay. My email is sent. I log off.
***
Whether or not the gradual loss of tablets will continue to be the new norm for communication with our people; taken away in a de facto fashion through attrition or a privilege revoked, the reason and methodology hardly matter. Ultimately the result is reduced contact with loved ones because after years of efficient service it’s like someone slammed on the brakes in the middle of rush hour traffic, the flow cut to a trickle. Shorter and fewer emails beget even shorter and fewer emails. A chain reaction over time for inmates when their tablets inevitably conk out.
Is it malice?
Willful indifference?
Some part of a grand plan?
Who’s to blame?
Does it even matter?
While having a support system, connections and contacts are not absolute guarantors of success upon release from prison; the absence of connection, a strong support system and contacts is usually a one-way ticket right back to prison. In which case the best we can hope for is that it’s nothing too serious.
And maybe even now, a quarter century into the new millennium, having a tablet with email capability is a privilege, at least as far as the incarcerated population is concerned. If so, it means having the privilege to compose one’s thoughts carefully. The privilege to take your time and clearly communicate what you need to say. The privilege to put whatever it was down on permanent record in the form of a time and date stamped email sent and received. The privilege to build the kind of bonds that can last a lifetime.
***
The cop in the bubble gives the five-minute warning. The phones are clearing out as guys warm food in the microwave and grab ice and toilet paper. I make a quick call, get through and wish my people a Merry Christmas. Tell them to expect an email. Tell them I’ll call again when I can.
***
For me, the free world may forever remain a dream. But what about those scheduled to get out a few years from now? Or a few months? Or those in county jail, on their way to prison for the first time, or on their way back, whether a new charge or on a parole violation? A support system. A network. A chance of success upon release from prison may not be a right, but maybe it should be something more than a privilege.
So, for now, we the incarcerated are left scrambling, continue to do our best to build and keep in contact with our outside support network. Our lifeline to the free world.
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