Text File

Newsgroups: alt.prisons From: kfl@access.digex.net (Keith F. Lynch) Subject: My Prison Saga (long) (1 of 5) Date: 7 May 1993 21:18:37 -0400 Organization: Express Access Public Access UNIX, Greenbelt, Maryland USA NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.net Lines: 276

[This contains all 5 parts, concatenated.]

I wrote the following about a decade ago. Since this list has been so quiet lately, I though I'd post it here.

Well, it all started in 1977. I was 20 years old and had recently moved away from home and started renting an apartment in Rosslyn (northeast Arlington) Virginia. The apartment was on the 6th floor, and had a great view of the Potomac river, the Capitol, and the Washington monument. I could also see the Lincoln memorial if I leaned out the window.

The rent was $182. My other expenses were very low, as I ate only inexpensive food, and little of that. My entertainments were the public library (a three mile walk) and the museums on the mall (a four mile walk).

The only problem is that I had no income. I had never had a real job, so my resume was blank.

I fished TVs and stereos out of the garbage, repaired them, and sold them. I bought and sold books. I babysat a few times. I went to a lot of job interviews. I walked to the FCC headquarters and took all their tests and passed them all, which got me a Radiotelephone First Class license with Radar Endorsement and an Amateur Extra Class amateur radio license (I had already had a General Class amateur radio license). (They wouldn't let me take the Radiotelegraph license test, since you have to have worked as a telegrapher for five years first.) I would not have taken these tests except that the FCC had recently waived their previous $4 test fee, so the tests were free. I thought the licenses would help me get a job. They did, but not until much later...

I decided I needed to get a roomate, so I could pay less rent. A fellow name of Bill Sheilds was recommended to me by a friend of a friend. Bill lived with his parents and his 13 year old sister about two miles away. He attended Yorktown High School.

I started hanging around with him a lot. I discovered he shared my interests in computers and electronics. He told me about how unpleasant life with his parents was, and about how authoritarian his father (a General in the Air Force) was. He was quite eager to move in with me, and his parents agreed to it. I met his parents and his sister on Thursday, December 1st 1977 when they invited me to dinner.

That day is still just as vivid as yesterday. More vivid. I don't remember what I ate yesterday but I remember exactly what I ate that day. I can close my eyes and visualize all of the furniture and decorations, even though I was only there that one day and once more two days later when his parents helped him move his belongings to my apartment. He had lots of neat stuff, including a bicycle, a stereo, and an 8 inch telescope.

He lived there for eleven days. After school, he would bring home some new things, such as a toolbox, a pager, an answering machine, and a somewhat decrepit printing terminal (a TI silent 700). He said that some of this was in his school locker all along, and that the terminal had been discarded by the Air Force, and had been given to him as a going away present by his father.

Then, on Wednesday Decemeber 14th, at about 3 pm, as I was reading Olaf Stapledon's "Odd John", and as Bill was listening to his stereo, there was a knock on the door. I looked out the door lens to see who was there. Nobody was in the field of view, so I sat back down. A few seconds later the knocking resumed. I angrily asked "Who's there?". I stood there for a minute waiting for an answer, then I sat back down. When the knocking resumed a few seconds later, I opened the door and looked into the hall. A policeman kicked the door all the way open, tearing a chunk of skin off my wrist. Several policemen poured in, some with guns drawn. One read me my rights and told me he had a search warrant for four stolen terminals and a bunch of other stuff, while two others started ransacking the apartment. One terminal was in plain sight. Another one was in Bill's closet, and I didn't know it was there since I respected his privacy. I later learned that two more were found at the home of a friend of his, whom he implicated.

Bill and I were made to stand leaned over with hands against the wall. When I turned my head to see what the police were smashing, one of them hit me in the side of the head with his pistol and told me not to move or turn my head or he would 'blow me away'.

Bill and I were handcuffed and led away. We were taken through the apartment lobby, in which we were stared at by what seemed at the time to be every tenant of the building. We were driven a mile up Wilson boulevard to the Arlington Courthouse in seperate cars. We were photographed and fingerprinted at the same time. Bill didn't seem too concerned about the whole thing. He was joking with the police woman who was taking the pictures, asking if he could keep a copy as a 'souvenir'. I started to ask him to please tell the police that I had nothing to do with any thefts, but I was interrupted by a policeman who told me not to talk. I was lead away into a holding cell. It was the last time I ever saw Bill Shields. For someone who had such an effect on my life, I knew him for only about a month, and had lived with him for only eleven days.

A few eternities later, I was taken out and told that my bail was $2500 and I was given my one phone call. I called my mother, who was soon in tears. She said she didn't have the money, but would try to raise it the same day. I remember asking her the time and date (it was the same day, December 14th). For some reason, knowing the time seemed very important to me.

I was left in the holding cell overnight. I didn't sleep at all. The holding cell had a view of the police desk, and I just sat there and stared at it, and listened to the drunks and prostitutes they brought in.

The next morning, I was asked if I wanted to confess. I told them I had nothing to confess, and tried to explain. They didn't want to hear my explanations. They took me upstairs to the real jail, where I was locked into an isolation cell. I still had my own clothes on, which were starting to smell. My belt (which I needed to keep my pants up) and my shoelaces were taken away.

The isolation cell had nothing to distract me. No police or prisoners to talk to. Nothing to read. Nothing to look at or listen to. At first I said to myself "this isn't too bad" I paced back and forth for a few minutes (not easy to do in a 5' * 7' cell) , then said to myself "let me the hell out of here I can't stand it any longer!".

The same day, I was taken to court, where I was arraigned for one count of of burglary. I said "I plead not guilty your honor". The judge looked at me (my hands on my pants to keep them from falling) with disgust, and said "You can't do that. This is an arraignment. Take him away." I was taken back to my cell.

The cell contained a sink/toilet and a bunk. I could drink all the water I wanted (with my hands) but there was no food. Eventually my fear and shock began to become exceeded by my hunger. I started hollering for some food. I kept doing so. After my voice was completely hoarse, I was brought some. I also insisted on a phone call, but I was not allowed one.

I was in there for three days. Three times a day, I was brought some food. (The food wasn't much worse than what you get in a high school cafateria). The guard who brought it said nothing, and responded to none of my questions.

After three days, at about 3 am I was taken to a room filled with police. They asked me if I was ready to confess. I told them I was innocent. One of them said "ok, lets take him back". I pleaded with them to let me explain. So they let me stay and explain. They didn't seem to believe a word I said. Then one of them said that they had found my fingerprints and my handwriting at the scene of the crime, and asked me how I explained that. It didn't occur to me that they were lying (they were) nor did I wonder why a burglar's handwriting would be found at the crime scene. (Much later, I learned that the burglar had written "YOU LOST SOMETHING" on the wall in one of the offices that was burglarized, in block letters that look nothing like mine (yes, I saw them myself, eventually)).

They also claimed that my footprints, that is, the prints of the shoes I was then wearing, had been found in one of the offices (another lie) and asked me how I would explain that. I once again insisted that I had never been inside the building in question, and suggested that possibly Bill had borrowed my shoes (since it didn't occur to me that they were lying or that they were out to get me).

They seemed to be happiest when I tried to recount the last two weeks in minute detail. They were taking notes. They kept trying to catch me in contradictions. They insisted that they succeeded. I told them they were all crazy and demanded that they let me go. They took me back to my cell, and left me there for three more days, after which they took me out and interrogated me again. They kept threatening to take me back to the cell and leave me in there for weeks if I didn't "cooperate". They started misquoting what I had told them three days ago. I kept insisting I hadn't said those things. I was getting very confused. It was the middle of the night again. I had been cut off from all outside contact except for one phone call for a week. A very long week. I statrted doubting my own senses and my sanity. This, I have since learned, is all too common when someone is in an unfamiliar environment, cut off from friends and family, deprived of sleep, and surrounded by people who seem to all agree when someone says something false, and disagree with everything you say. Especially among young people. In fact, there are many cases where someone "freely" confessed after several days in police custody, to a crime it was later proven that they did not commit. This is what the "Miranda warning" and the "free phone call" rules are designed to help prevent.

After an hour of this, when I tried to remain calm and say "No I didn't say that, let me explain what happened", "No, you are mistaken", "No, I have never been in that building", "Yes, I am sure", "No, I have never been in that building", "Yes, I am sure", "No, I have never been in that building", "Yes, I am sure", trying to be a sane island in an insane sea, I finally lost it and started screaming "GET ME OUT OF HERE. GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE" over and over again. I continued to scream that as they lead me back to the cell.

The next day (in the daytime this time) they tried a different tack. Two really mean looking redneck types (just like the Evil Sheriff in all those TV shows) started talking to me "man to man". They told me that I had a bad attitude, that they wanted to help me, but that I apparently thought that it was all a game. They said that they had put me in solitary as a great favor to me, and that I was acting ungrateful. They told me that if I didn't start cooperating, they would have to put me in the "population". They told me in disgusting detail what a "buck nigger" with a "twelve inch dick" would do to me within the first hour, and told me that if convicted for all my crimes I would receive 260 years.

I just sat there, hoping none of it was true. After an hour of this, I was returned to the cell. That evening, I was awakened, given a jail uniform, and put in the "population". I didn't make a very good first impression with the other prisoners, as my first questions made it clear that I thought that it was the following morning rather than the same evening. But they soon decided I was better than the previous inhabitant of the cellblock, who had been sent to a mental hospital for attacking a guard with a spoon.

I got along much better with the prisoners than with the guards and the police. We spent most of our time playing cards and reading books from the jail library (mostly relgious books, but better than nothing). And one prisoner loaned me some books by F.M. Busby, whom I had never heard of before, and who is now one of my favorite authors.

I was allowed one five minute local phone call per week. I usually called my parents, who told me that they were still trying to raise money for the bail. They told me the court would appoint a lawyer for me (I already knew this) so they wouldn't have to pay for one.

I met with the lawyer they appointed for me. He seemed kind of bored by the whole thing. He kept glancing at his watch. He told me that he would not be available for my indictments, but that all I had to do was answer "not guilty" to everything. He said he thought they had two or three indictments on me. He refused to speculate on what would happen.

I was taken to the courtroom. The judge slowly read 16 felony indictments, "... did with malice aforethought, on or about the night of December 4th 1977, take, steal, and carry away ... having value in excess of one hundred dollars ...". I said my lines. "Not guilty". "Not guilty, your honor". "Not guilty". Someone in the back of the courtroom started snickering after the tenth indictment or so. Not funny.

Trial was set for February 8th. February 8th? 1978? That was EONS away! My bail was raised to $5000.

My lawyer met with me twice. He told me that things looked bad. He said that he had spoken with my parents and my friends, and there was no hope that I would be bailed out. He said that if it went to trial, that they would have a seperate trial with a seperate jury for each of the sixteen charges, and the whole thing would take a year or more. He also said it was virtually certain that I would be found guilty on some of them, and receive a ten or twenty year sentence for each one I was found guilty of. He said that the only reasonable course for me was to "plea bargain". He explained that since the prosecutor's case was so weak, he would be willing to throw out most of the indictments in return for my pleading guilty to one or two, and that I would get a suspended sentence, and I would be out by February. The only bad part is that I would have a felony record. He explained that this was no longer considered very important, and that lots of people had them and it was no impediment at all. He said that if I didn't go along with this, that he would withdraw from my case. He conceded that the court would appoint another lawyer if this happens, but he pointed out that not only is he a close personal friend with the judge and the prosecutor, he is an "officer of the court". He also said any other competent lawyer would do exactly as he did, since no lawyer wants to see his client screw himself. And finally, he said he though he could try some of his influence to see if he can't get the date moved up a little earlier, so that it will be all over with sooner.

Well, I believed all of it. What a fool I was. EVERY lawyer is an "officer of the court". This guy is payed by the state a fixed, and rather low, rate for every case. Not only does he not get any more for working extra on a case, but if he does that, the state is likely to replace him with someone more cooperative. And without state revenue, I imagine he would have to find some honest line of work. If he were any good at lawyering, he would be making a lot more, working for clients who can pay. Most of the rest of what he said was lies. If only I had it on tape or in writing, how I could burn the bastard!

I was supposed to be given the plea bargain agreement, to read and to sign, several days before the "trial" (which remained February 8th). I first saw the things when I was in the courtroom, with everyone waiting on me. There was a stack of about 20 of them, supposedly all identical. My lawyer dumped them in front of me and said "sign these" just when the judge was talking to me. I started to read the fine print on the first one, then said to myself "The heck with this. I've got to trust him. The alternative is too horrible to think about." So I signed them all. The judge asked me if I was admitting guilt of my free will and wasn't coerced. I said that I was doing it of my free will. He then asked me if I was really guilty. I said no. He asked me again. My lawyer whispered into my ear "dammit, say yes, its just legaleese, it doesn't mean what it sounds like". I thought for a moment about the year of trials followed by ten or more years in the state penitentiary (which I had been told was the certain outcome if I didn't say "yes"). I said "yes".

The judge set sentencing for March 23rd. Six weeks! That's nearly as long as I had already been in there for! But what could I say.

This was to give the probation department time to write a pre- sentencing report, which the judge would use in deciding what sentence to give me.

Well, the six endless weeks passed, an hour at a time, a minute at a time. I finally (around March 1st) got a copy of the agreement I had signed. I was upset that it didn't mention any limitations on the sentence. Also, the other charges were not dropped, but were "nolle prosequied" (pronounced null prossed) which means they aren't going to prosecute now, but reserve the right to do so at any future time.

My lawyer finally returned my call after a week, and explained that this was all normal, that nolle prosequied charges are never really brought back, and that the judge knew that I was innocent, but was required by law to do things this way, and that I would get probation. I asked him when do I get my copy of the pre-sentencing report. He told me it wasn't completed yet.

On March 23rd I was taken to the court for sentencing. I felt a mixture of fear (that something might go wrong) and elation (that I was surely about to go free).

The probation officer (a black woman) said that she had not yet completed the report. Sentencing was rescheduled for March 30th. What an anticlimax!

On March 30th, my lawyer gave me a copy of the report about half an hour before the sentencing. As I read it I got madder and madder. It was full of lies and half-truths. It said that I had spent most of my childhood going to "special schools". She didn't mention that they were schools for the gifted. The implication of course is that they were reform schools or something. She said I had had no previous convictions as an adult. True, but it imples that I had some as a child (they aren't allowed to mention any in such reports, apparently). I had not. I had no previous convictions, arrests, or even tickets. Ever. (Neither have I had any since then.)

She quoted my high school gym teacher (who flunked me) but not any of my other teachers (who gave me As and Bs).

She quoted a lot of stuff my parents told her out of context (I later discovered she misrepresented herself to them as a "social worker" who was gathering information on my childhood to "help me". She said I had gone to a psychiatrist for several months when I was 13. This is simply FALSE. I have NEVER gone to a psychiatrist. The closest thing to that that I can think of is that I was given a full day intelligence test by a school psychologist when I was 12.

I later learned that this particular probation officer is extremely prejudiced. She makes all black people look like saints. She makes all white people look like monsters.

I was lead into the court. My parents and several of my friends were there. The judge spoke about how "baffling" he found this case. I was visibly very angry (I was later told by my parents). This was certainly because of the pre-sentencing report. The judge asked if I had any corrections to the pre-sentencing report. My lawyer said "No, your honor" but I stood up and described all the errors I had found, in what I thought was a calm tone of voice. When I was finished, the judge then asked the prosecutor if he had any corrections to make. The prosecutor had one. The name of one of the companies I was accused of burglarizing has been misspelled. The judge directed the clerk to correct the misspelling. Not a word about my objections to it.

The judge then sentenced me to six years in the state penitentiary. I waited for him to say "suspended". When he didn't, I nearly fainted. I wish I had.

For my sentencing, I wore a suit and tie, borrowed from my father. This was only the second time in my life (that I recall) that I had worn suit and tie. The first time, I wore a rented suit and tie for my high school senior yearbook picture. I was able to fit into my fathers clothes only because I had lost so much weight in jail.

It didn't do much good, obviously. I haven't worn suit nor tie since, and don't plan to until they put me in that pine box and lower me into the ground.

I was led back to the cellblock. The cellblock was shared with six other prisoners. In the cellblock there are seven seperate cells, 5' by 7', containing a steel bunk and a sink/toilet. Three walls of the cell are cinderblock. The third wall, which includes the door, is made of vertical steel bars. I have been told that those bars contain smaller bars within them, which are free to roll, so as to make sawing through them difficult. And that the space around the smaller bars is filled with pressurized bright orange day-glo oil, to make detection of sawing attempts easy for the guards.

The door is made of identical steel bars, and leads into the dayroom. The dayroom has a TV, a sink/toilet, and a long low table. No chairs. It is about 5' by 40'. The two narrow walls are made of cinderblocks. One of the long walls is the front of all the cells. The other is also made of steel bars, and faces the hall. Across the hall is an identical cellblock. There were also identical cellblocks to the left and right of ours, and to the left and right of the one opposite ours.

A part of the long wall that faced the hall was the door. It, like the doors to the cells, can only be opened by inserting a special key into a box in the hall. The box is normally locked, and can only be opened by another key. As far as I could tell, nobody carried both keys, thuse it always took two guards to open any door. Actually, there are two doors in series to each cellblock, arranged sort of like an airlock. They are never opened at once. I guess that is to keep the prisoners from all rushing out and overwhelming the guards.

In the halls there are video cameras every few yards. The monitors are in the permanently manned control booth near the visiting room and the elevators, at the convergence of all the halls.

The jail was only about a year old at the time I was there, and was usually fairly clean. I never saw any rats, spiders, or insects there. It was heated, air conditioned, and well ventilated, which was fortunate as most of the prisoners smoked and I am allergic to smoke.

From 8 am until 4 pm the cells were locked and we were required to be in the dayroom. This was very uncomfortable as there were no chairs and the floor was cement. From 4 pm until 8 pm the cell doors were open, and we were allowed to be in our cells or in the dayroom. And from 8 pm until 8 am, the cell doors were locked and we were required to be in our cells. (These hours might not be completely correct, it's been a while.)

There wasn't much violence or rape. But there was a lot of talk about it, and about how this warn't nothing, wait until you get to the real prison.

We played cards and watched TV and read and wrote letters. We ate three (small) meals a day. All in the cellblock. We were allowed two 15 minute visits a week. For visits, you would be taken from the cellblock to the visiting room, which was just like in the comic strips. The prisoners and the visiters could see eachother through a sheet of heavy glass with chicken wire in it, and could speak to eachother on telephones. The reasons for that setup were to prevent things from being smuggled into the jail, and to make it easy for the guards to monitor conversations.

Mostly we sat around and were terribly bored in the cellblock. It was common to not leave the cellblock for weeks at a time. It was then that I did yet another thing that I greatly regret. This was before my sentencing, and I have never been sure whether the judge heard about it, and if so, whether it influenced the sentence in any way.

I became curious about the doors. The door to my cell was mostly out of the guards view. We could hear them coming down the hall, they jangled so, with all the keys and coins they carried. Prisoners were allowed neither keys nor coins nor anything else metallic, so any clinking or jangling we heard had to be guards.

Anyway, I started fooling around with the door. There was a slot in which the door rides open and closed. I tried poking around in there with my finger. I tried listening and watching closely when it was opened and closed. One time I put a book in the way when the door was about to close. The book was a bible, several organizations donated hundreds of them to the jail, so it was about the only thing in ample supply in there. When the door closed, it mashed the book right in two, and closed securely. As usual, I could not budge the door.

One day, when the door was open I started poking about in the slot with my toothbrush. It didn't quite go, so I rubbed the handle end of the toothbrush against the concrete floor until it fit. There was a thing inside the door that felt like it almost wanted to go up, but it kept sliding to one side or the other. So I managed (I forget how) to grind a kind of wide groove in the middle of the end of the handle, to make it kind of like a stubby two pronged fork. I then found, after some more fishing around, that if I got it in just the right place and pushed straight up and a little to the side with about 50 pounds of force, something gave, there was a soft click, and the door was then free to slide open and shut by hand, with about 10 pounds of force.

Having done this to the door to my cell, I did it to the doors of all the other cells in the cellblock, with all the prisoners permission. I felt I should open all the doors since that way if the guards noticed, they wouldn't have any idea which one of us did it.

That evening, the doors all closed normally, and proved to be firmly locked. I was able to reach through the bars and unlock it, as I had done when it was open. Having unlocked it, I left it closed, so nobody could tell.

This went on for a couple more days. I showed some other prisoners how to do it, at their insistence. I didn't think anyone could escape even with this knowledge, since the halls are patrolled all day and all night and only lead to other cellblocks and to the permanently manned control booth adjacent to a different kind of locked door.

One day, some guards took me into a room and told me that they needed my help. They said that the door to the hall in one of the cellblocks refused to work with the electrical keybox, and they knew that I had a way to open doors without that. They promised me that this would not be used against me if I was to help them by opening the door, and show them how I had done it.

They took me to the door in question and I opened it in about 3 seconds. They were all visibly impressed, as were the prisoners in the cellblock, who had not seen that trick before. I showed them a couple more times how to do it.

The next day, I was given a short hearing in which I was accused of opening the cell doors over a period of several days. In my defense, I pointed out that I had not done this since I was promised I would not be prosecuted for it. The guards pointed out that this was not a court hearing, but an internal jail matter, and nobody had promised that that would not happen. I was sentenced to 15 days in solitary confinement, and 30 days 'good-time' lost. I appealed in writing to the sheriff (who supposedly ran the jail but was never seen there). I later learned he had denied my appeal.

Solitary was pretty boring. No TV, no reading or writing, no visitors, no personal posessions except a toothbrush. A new toothbrush. They had confiscated the hacked one.

The door was of a more old fashioned kind. I didn't try to open it. On the other side of the door (made of bars) was a room no larger then the cell I was in. The door to that room was solid steel, and I could not see or hear beyond it. In the other room, out of reach, was a spotlight and a camera, both pointed at me. The spotlight never went out, not even at night.

I was fed the usual meals, by a guard apparently under orders not to talk to me.

I tried to scratch the days into the wall, as prisoners always do in the comics, but I had nothing that would leave a mark on the wall. So I soon managed to loose all track of how many of the 15 days had gone by. I amused myself by doing long calculations in my head, such as calculating the digits of e (pi is too hard without pencil and paper) and factoring random integers.

Finally, the 15 days were over and I was taken to a different cellblock (apparently my place had been taken in my old cellblock).

The next day, some welders came in and welded on the doors to make my trick impossible.

A few days later was my sentencing.

Nothing much happened for a month. Than a friend visited and gave me important and exciting news. A friend of a friend's friend was a lawyer, and he had agreed to take my case. Not only that, but he felt that he had a good chance of having the sentence thrown out or radically reduced as the judge had neglected to take into account some special law regarding sentencing people who are under 21.

In late April, a friend visited and told me that a friend of a friend's friend was a lawyer, and had agreed to take my case. Not only that, but he felt that he had a good chance of having the sentence thrown out or radically reduced as the judge had neglected to take into account some special law regarding sentencing people who are under 21.

Actually, I had been sentenced not to six years, but to two consecutive three year terms. My new lawyer told me that what was most likely is that I would be granted resentencing by the judge and the judge would make the two consecutive terms concurrent instead.

After a few weeks, I got a letter saying that the resentencing had been approved! It was scheduled for June 23rd, less than a month away by then. I was finally satisfied that it would be over soon. Surely the judge would decide he had put enough of a scare into me, and commute the sentence to 'time served'. Even if he made the senteces concurrent, I would be eligible for parole three months from then. Never did I dream of what actually ended up happening.

A psychiatrist was hired at the lawyers insistence. He interviewed me for about 20 minutes. A week later I saw his report on me. It wasn't very accurate or very complimentary, but it did say that it was impossible that I was guilty, and that sending me to the penitentiary would be the worst possible thing.

In the middle of the night on June 22nd I was awakened and moved to a solitary cell. I was told that I was going to be taken to the penitentiary in the morning. I explained that I had a court date that day, and demanded a phone call. I was not given a phone call, or materials with which to write a letter.

In the morning, several prisoners including me were taken down the elevator, led into a sealed garage, and handcuffed inside a windowless van. There were chains around my ankles and my wrists, and the chains were bolted to part of the van. There were no seatbelts.

We sat in there for maybe an hour or two before the van started moving. You have no idea how boring a trip can be when you can't see anything. It was uncomfortably hot.

After several hours we were let out, into another sealed garage. We were led to some toilets (two of the prisoners had already wet their pants on the trip) and were then told to strip and led to a shower. I recalled something about a shower at Aushwitz...

Evil smelling liquids were sprayed on us, and after we had been in the shower for a while, we were taken out and had all our hair cut off. We were still naked.

After that, we were issued prison uniforms. They had large numbers stenciled on the back, but they did not have vertical stripes. We were photographed and fingerprinted and given two minute medical examinations.

Then we were given a lecture by the warden. He explained that there was a fence around the compound and anyone caught trying to cross it would be shot, unless they were electrocuted first. He said only one person had ever managed to get over the fence, and he was found drowned in quicksand in the swamp outside. He told us that we were at the "Southampton Reception and Classification Center", a part of the Southampton prison complex, in which all new prisoners are given numbers and at which it is determined which of several prisons or road camps in Virginia each prisoner will be sent to. The center was only a few months old. Apparently it hadn't yet been opened when I was arrested.

I told the warden, the chaplain, and everyone else who would listen that I was supposed to be in court in Arlington. Nobody seemed terribly excited about it. I wasn't allowed a to make a phone call or to mail a letter.

We were all issued plastic cards like you get at a high-tech firm. The card had my picture on it and my height and weight and my arrest date and my discharge date. My discharge date was December 14, 1983. Of course at the time that was somewhere in the far distant future. As distant as May of 1988 is now. My weight was 199 pounds. (I had lost a lot of weight in the jail.)

I was put in my cell. It was larger than the one at Arlington jail. And it had a window! I looked out the window in amazement. Only then did it occur to me that I had not seen the outdoors for over six months, and that I had managed to miss the whole winter and the whole spring. I had a fine ground level view of the grass, and of the fence, and of the woods beyond the fence. I was even able to open and close the window. There were square bars in it to keep people from crawling out.

There was an ordinary looking screen in the window, behind the bars. I removed it to get a better view. It fell outside. Fortunately, I was able to get it back by fishing for it by dangling my shoe with the shoelace.

I explored the cell. Other than being larger, it was much like the one in Arlington jail. I noticed that the caulking between the cinderblocks wasn't ordinary mortar but was a rubbery stuff. I saw that someone had a hiding place, where a piece of it came out. I searched for more such hiding places, on the chance that there were more and one was not empty and I was being set up for something. I didn't find any more. There was a flourescent light above the sink/toilet. Unlike everything at Arlington jail, it was vulnerable, like something you might find in a house. In the jail, everything was built so that nobody could possibly break it. It was very depressing. And this light, with a light switch, was quite pleasing. Also, we were served meals in a cafeteria. And in the daytime we were allowed to stay in our cells or to go down the hall and watch TV in the TV room, which had benches you could sit on.

That first evening there was a thunderstorm. Great show! The power was out for hours. Lightning was crashing within a mile of us. The rain was coming down as hard as rain ever comes down. I never realized just how wonderful the sight, sound, and smell of a thunderstorm could be.

The next day we were let outside. Most of the prisoners were playing soccer. I just sat on a bench and soaked up sunlight. I found a piece of string. That evening, I discovered I had a nasty sunburn.

That evening I tied the string I had found to the lampcord, and the other end to the side of the bed. That way, I could turn the light on and off without getting out of bed. True luxury!

During inspection the next day, the string was confiscated.

We were given a sort of IQ test in a room just like a classroom. The test was pretty simple. A few questions near the end were challenging, but I had time to devote to them since I had finished the earlier questions quickly. At least it was something to get my mind of the situation. Later, I was retested in a one-to-one session with a psychologist.

Finally, I got some mail. My friends and my lawyer had discovered the situation and were trying to get the resentencing moved to June 30th.

There was a canteen at which food and cigarettes could be bought if you had money in the prison account. You just had to show your plastic card. After a few days a friend sent me ten dollars, and I bought some Pringles potato chips.

Days went by. June 30th came and went. Finally, I got word that the judge said he could not resentence me or order me brought back for resentencing because I was "outside the jurisdiction". The judge claimed that I had been moved because of a mistake made by a clerk. My lawyer said he would appeal it to the state supreme court.

I decided that the place I was at was as good as any place to serve my sentence. There were positions for a small number of prisoners to work in the cafeteria and the laundry. I decided this would be a good place since it was new and since most of the prisoners are there too short a time to start forming networks of trouble.

My request was denied.

In mid-July I was moved to another prison in the Southampton complex. I was told this was temporary. The place was somewhat older and had a more permanent prisoner population. Also, it had a library. Instead of cells, there were a sort of barracks consisting of trailers stuck end to end to make a kind of plus sign shape. A plus sign of plus signs, consisting of 16 trailers, with a small real building in the center. We were pretty much free to wander around. A feature I didn't like was that we had to do our own laundry. A feature I did like was that we were allowed unlimitted collect phone calls during certain hours. We were allowed to be outside during all daylight hours.

After seven days, three of us were put in the back seat of a prison car, and driven to the Bland Correctional Farm (named for Bland county, in which it is located). It was an all day drive, since we started in southeastern Virginia and ended up in southwestern Virginia, which is closer to Cleveland than to DC, and where the nearest 'big city' is Bristol Tennessee, population 14,000, which is about 80 miles away. The 'city' of Bland is 20 miles away and has a population of 369.

On the road, I had fun waving at astonished children in cars going by. I looked eagerly at the cars to see if they looked any different than they had seven months earlier. I couldn't really tell.

With great difficulty I was able to pocket a dime I found on the floor of the car (I was handcuffed). Later in the trip, I was somehow able to slip the handcuffs off, which got the driver real worried when he noticed at the end of the trip.

So I had finally arrived at Bland, where I was to serve the rest of my sentence.

I was given a bunk in a 'dorm' in building 1. This 'dorm' is a sort of barracks, with bunk beds about 2 feet apart down both long walls. There were 4 such 'dorms' in the building, 2 on each of the 2 floors. There were 4 buildings, and one would move from building to building over the months or years that you were there. Building 2 had no additional privileges. Building 3 had something minor, I forget. Beds farther apart, I think. Building 4 was the 'honor' building. Prisoners housed in building 4 had individual cells. And they were allowed out on 'yard' 30 minutes earlier than everyone else. 'Yard' was 2 hours in the evening when prisoners were allowed to wander around outdoors within the compound. They could just walk around, they could go to the canteen, and they could visit with prisoners in other 'dorms'.

The 'dorm' had plenty of (barred) windows, from which the wire-enforced glass was mostly missing. This didn't bother me since it meant there was plenty of ventilation, and the place wasn't air-conditioned anyway. The ventilation was important to me since most of the prisoners smoked, and I am very bothered by smoke.

The canteen, open only during yard, was a small store run by guards. You could buy snack foods, cigarettes, tobacco and rolling paper, combs, razors, padlocks, fingernail clippers, batteries, writing paper, envelopes, pens, and stamps, there. If you had money in the prison account, you could get canteen tickets which were 3 inch by 5 inch cardboard cards with 1s and 5s and 10s all over them, representing cents. They could be spent in the canteen, and were marked off by using a hole punch on the 1s and 5s and 10s. They were also used as currency between prisoners, although stamps and cigarettes were a more common currency. Prisoners weren't allowed to have cash on them, and incoming mail was always inspected for cash, which would be deposited in the prisoner's account. Occasionally they missed seeing some money in an incoming letter, or money was smuggled in. Since real currency was quite rare for those reasons, it could be traded for twice face value.

Prisoner's accounts did not earn any interest.

The canteen was all metal mesh on the front, and had only a narrow slit for handing the guard your canteen ticket and getting the food or whatever. One major problem was that the prisoners in the 'honor' building were let out 30 minutes earlier than the rest of us, and they would immediately head for the canteen, find out what was in short supply, buy all of it, and sell it to the other prisoners at a considerable profit. Stamps were a favorite for this trick. I often had to pay 25 cents for a stamp. This was when they were 13 cents.

Next to your bunk was a small metal locker. You could buy a padlock for it. It was strongly recommended that you keep everything in there. Things were stolen if you literally turned your back for 10 seconds.

Prisoners were allowed to have radios, cassette players, and calculators, so long as they were shipped straight from the retailers or manufacturers in unopened boxes. I noticed that nearly half of the prisoners had these things. This seemed odd, since most of the prisoners were probably broke, as I was. I asked about it, and found that there was widespread abuse of credit cards. People would get credit card numbers, either make them up or have some friend not in prison get some from a dumpster. They would then mail order all sorts of stuff. The return address was 'BCC', which I guess many retailers thought was a community college (in Virginia there are several community colleges, such as NVCC and SSCC). Also, the local post office knew to send any letters that went to an unknown address in Bland to BCC. So prisoners sometimes used return addresses like "Joe Smith, president/Hypertech Inc./Suite 1200/1600 Pennsylvania Avenue/Bland VA 24315" and it would get to Joe Smith, inmate 912345.

Retailers would finally discover they were duped and send dunning letters. But there wasn't much they could do. One, just one, once had the nerve to show up there and, escorted by guards, reclaim his tape player. (Several months later this scam was discovered by the Washington Post, and the guards started returning all packages not marked PREPAID).

Adjacent to the room with all the beds was a bathroom with several stalls and one shower. I should say several toilets not several stalls as there were no walls between them. And there was no shower curtain. No privacy anywhere. Those were the only places you could be at night.

During yard the door to the outside was open and you could go in and out, or visit with prisoners in other 'dorms'.

Every two hours or so was 'count' when you had to stand at attention next to your bed (or wherever you were working). Count was not taken at night. At night the guards all left. Guards were still in the towers outside the fence, but none were within the fence. It was made clear that at night they shoot not only prisoners trying to get over the fence but anyone seen outdoors. They had spotlights, rifles, and shotguns. I don't know whether they had machine guns.

There were six buildings. At the front was the administration building, which was adjacent to the only gate in the fences. On the left were buldings 1 and 4. On the right were buildings 2 and 3. Those 4 buildings contained all the beds (about 1000) and building 3 also contained the canteen and the laundry. In the rear was a building containing the cafeteria and its kitchen.

Surrounding all the buildings were two 20 foot chain link fences seperated by 30 feet. The fences were electrified at the top, and immediately outside the outer fence at each corner and a few places between there were permanently manned 30 foot guard towers. At the top of both fences was electrified barbed wire. On the ground between the fences was lots of semi-rolled-up razor wire. Like something from World War I. Outside the fences was about 100 feet of cleared area before the woods start. Two prisoners were shot trying to get over the fence while I was there. One of them had had a shorter sentence than mine.

I mentioned that we had all been issued ID cards, which had our picture and our discharge date on them. These cards weren't actually used for anything at Bland. Anyway, people would show off how far away their discharge date was. In Virginia a life sentence is the same as 100 years, for purposes of computing discharge date. Anyhow, we were all suitably impressed by this fellow whose discharge date was in the 22nd century (2106 I think) until this guy with lots of tattoos showed us his, which said Monday, December 14th, 4291. Psyched us all out! Though the guy really was pretty mild. Don't know what he was convicted of. I never could figure out if it was for real or a clever forgery. I think it was for real. That date was easy for me to remember since December 14th was the day I was arrested, and the year 4291 is, believe it or not, mentioned in a Heinlein novel. And it really is a Monday, I later figured out. Wonder how the state knew that.

The prison population can roughly be divided between long-timers and short-timers. It had little to do with the length of your sentence. It had to do with one's attitude. A long timer is someone who doesn't give a damn anymore. He plans on never getting out. So he figures he can do as he pleases while he's in, since it's all he's got. A short timer is someone who is expecting to get out. He tries not to get into any additional trouble.

There were short timers with multiple life sentences, and long timers with two year sentences. It was impossible to predict.

The long timers essentially ran the place. I, of course, was a short timer. I was hoping that my lawyer would get me rescheduled for resentencing within a few weeks, and in any case I would be eligible for parole in June of 1979, 11 months away.

In some ways Bland was much more liberal than Arlington jail. For instance prisoners were allowed to have dangerous things like razors and padlocks, and were allowed outdoors, and were allowed to have contact visits (meaning you could sit in the same room with your visitor, rather than being seperated by a wall of glass) (but not conjugal visits (meaning you could be alone with your visitor)). The guards exerted much less authority at Bland than at Arlington. Everyone knew that the long-timer prisoners were running things at Bland.

There were 4 security grades. Minimum security prisoners, mostly those whose discharge date was within a few months, were allowed to do all sorts of things such as work alone outside the fence and even drive trucks between prisons. Medium security prisoners (of which I was one) were taken outside the fence in the daytime and made to work on the farm. We were guarded at gunpoint. High security prisoners were not taken outside the fence. Maximum security prisoners were not at Bland at all, but at maximum security prisons such as Mecklenberg (I was astonished to recently read of a successful escape of 6 death row prisoners from Mecklenberg (they have all since been recaptured and some of them executed)).

Two kinds of prisoners that prison culture does not tolerate are child molesters and snitches. I don't know just how, but the prisoners who ran the place always knew everything in one's prison record. No child molestor could get away with claiming he was in fact in for something like robbery or mugging little old ladies. At Arlington jail all that ever happened to molesters was that they got cursed at and spit at a lot, and sometimes got beat up. At Bland, they were simply killed. Within 24 hours. And it did them no good to claim that they were actually innocent. The prisoners have a very low standard of evidence. I was very thankful that my supposed crime, burglary, was considered perfectly respectable.

Snitches were given similar treatment. It was a very bad idea to be even seen alone with a guard. The first week I was there, a suspected snitch was found dead in the 'honor' building. His head had been bashed in by the usual weapon of choice, a padlock in a sock. As far as I know, they never found out who did it.

Another favorite weapon is a 'shank', a knife made out of any random piece of steel, and sharpened for many hours until it is razor sharp. Razor blades were seldom used in weapons, but were popular for suicide.

At first I thought that prisoner's aversion to snitches was for the practical reason that they didn't want anyone to snitch on them. And because they were too scared to snitch for fear some prisoner would discover this and take action against them. But I later discovered that this feeling runs much deeper in a lot of prisoners, as proven by the many cases where a dying prisoner refused to say who knifed him.

Not that this means there weren't a lot of snitches. There were plenty. The events described in Paul Brickhill's true story _The_ Great_Escape_, in which several hundred American and British prisoners of war in Nazi Germany were able, in a compound very similar to BCC, despite minimal resources and constant surveillance, to construct realistic looking documents, uniforms, guns, working compasses, several tunnels with ventilation, electric lights, and trolley tracks, and to escape, would be quite impossible at BCC because of snitches and the general lack of cooperation between prisoners.

I found my many conversations with the other prisoners very instructive. The great majority of them did not claim to be innocent. What they did claim was that almost everyone in the world was also guilty. Many of them would go on for hours about how people committing 'white collar crime' are running the country. Many of them were on many junk mail lists, and showed me the junk mail to prove their point. I did have to admit that a lot of the junk mail did seem to fit their world view, in that instead of offering an honest product at an honest price, it would make extravagant claims such as 'you have already won ten million dollars' or 'you will get either a thousand dollars in cash, a solid gold bar, or a new Rolls Royce, if you visit foobar estates at no obligation', and it came in envelopes that pretended to be telegrams or messages from government agencies.

Prisoners had nothing but disgust for guards, describing them as 'too lazy to work and too chicken to steal'. It was interesting that they did not really have contempt for honest hard working citizens, but did feel that they were all either suckers who were being ripped off by their employers, the government, landlords, and stores, or else that they weren't really as honest as they seemed. Prisoners did not really have anything against policemen, judges, juries, or people who call the police. I never heard of anyone saying that when they got out they wold take revenge on anyone who was just doing their job, such as the owner of the house they burglarized, or the judge, or the police. A few did say they planned to avenge themselves on fellow crooks who had let them 'take the rap' or occasionally on a judge they described as crooked.

I symathize with a lot of this. Of course much of it is just rationalizations, but they do have a point. It would be interesting to see whether it would indeed reduce the crime rate if government would stop lying to the people, if stupid junk mail and TV ads were to become a thing of the past, if we heard less about coupons, rebates, 50% off sales, and bait-and-switch, and if more employers and landlords were to give people a fair deal.

They feel that it is acceptable to steal from anyone except children, and to kill anyone but children. Of course there are exceptions to these rules. One prisoner was telling me that he had burglarized hundreds of houses without being caught, and then one time some children in bed saw him while he was burglarizing a house he had thought nobody was in (he tested houses by knocking hard on the door for several minutes before breaking in). The children later testified against him in court and he got 40 years. He was paroled after 10 years, and immediately went back to burglary. He had nothing personally against the children who had testified against him, and he did not attempt to seek them out and harm them. But one time when he was burglarizing a house he thought nobody was in, once more he found some children in bed.

This time he killed them all, for his own protection.

Well, the parents were coming in just as he was leaving, so he did get caught, and he was given three life sentences for the three children (this was before the death penalty was reinstated in Virginia) and one more for the burglary. Of course he denied everything in court, but once he was convicted he didn't mind admitting it to anyone. (He is one of the few people I met who I think really deserved to be locked up forever.)

I heard all sorts of strange stories. I don't know how many are true, but that doesn't mean they aren't quite instructive on prison culture. Most people there weren't worth talking to. Half the prisoners were black, and I couldn't understand what most of them were saying. Many of the whites were from southwest Virginia, and I couldn't understand them either. (I have been told by MA and CA types that I have a Virginia accent. I don't believe I do. In any case, there are several Virginia accents. I find the southeastern accent understandable enough, but the southwestern accent might as well be Greek.) The people I could understand generally shared few interests with me, and were only good for an hour's conversation. But there were a few people in there who were worth talking to.

One prisoner claimed to be a doctor. He had a German accent. Lots of people accused him of being a Nazi doctor. But apparently he had simply had sex with a teenage patient of his, and her parents found out and were not amused. Actually, he didn't seem very bright for a doctor. I bet him $100 that sodium was a metal. He accepted the bet, but refused to pay when I proved I was right.

Another prisoner claimed he had been a crewman on a nuclear submarine. He gave me enough detail about the sub and about shipboard life that I was convinced he was telling the truth. The story of his arrest was quite fantastic. He said he was ashore in Norfolk late one night and really hungry with no money. He said that he then broke into a 7-11 or something like that to get some food. He said he had never done anything like that before. And he was walking down the road a few minutes later when the police picked him up. It turned out that they did not want him for the burglary but for rape, though at first he thought that was just a ploy to get him to admit to the burglary. The woman said she was not sure if he was the guy or not, but the police kept interrogating him all night long, and finally told him that if he signed a confession, they would ask the woman one more time and if she still wasn't sure they would let him go. At the court, the woman was sure it was him and he got 40 years. And he never was even accused of the store burglary.

One thing I found fascinating was to explore prisoner's perception of the world. It was quite a distorted view. Some of them thought that one third of the population was in jails and prisons. And that only ten percent of the population had graduated high school. And less than one percent had graduated college. (I recently asked a yuppie friend of mine what percent of adults in the USA had some college degree. He estimated 80%. The correct percentage is 25%.)

A lot of prisoners thought that my story was unusual. I suppose it was. Many of them thought that I was some sort of computer criminal mastermind. One of them said that he knew that all programmers played chess, and insisted that I play chess with him. He became violent when I refused and told him that I do not play chess. He wasn't interested in playing Qubic, my favorite game.

One prisoner insisted that I teach him how to make millions of dollars through computer crime. He paid no attention when I told him I had been convicted of the mundane crime of burglary, and that I knew very little about how one could steal with computers. So I decided to see how persistent he was. I had no intention of telling him anything useful. I might have, had he claimed he was innocent and wanted to learn something constructive. But he said he was just out to rip people off. He had no idea how much was involved in computers. He was a high school dropout whose math ended with fractions.

So I taught him how to convert whole numbers from decimal to hexadecimal, binary, and octal, and vice versa. When he had mastered that (after several weeks) I taught him how to convert fractional numbers as well. After that, I started teaching him PDP-8 machine language. Shortly after I began that, he gave up.

A few of the prisoners were quite good scrabble players, and often beat me at it. Various card games were the favorite games, but I soon learned not to try playing cards with these crooks. I never did talk anyone into playing Qubic with me.

One thing that really bothered me about the whole system is the way they renamed everything. The jail was not called a jail, but a 'detention center'. Prisons are 'correctional centers'. Guards are either 'sheriff's deputies' (in the jail) or 'correctional officers' (in the prison). Prisoners are 'inmates' or 'offenders'. Former prisoners are 'ex-offenders'. (I am no great fan of the alternative term 'ex-con' but at least it's more accurate. 'Con' to mean you were convicted of something, which I was. But 'offender' implies that I did the crime, which I didn't. I prefer 'former prisoner' which also handles the case of people who spent time in jail and were not found guilty, or whose convictions were later overturned.)

We would be awakened in the morning (I don't recall the hour but it was before sunrise part of the year) and taken out through the gate and assembled in the parking lot in front of the admin building. We were then either marched or taken in an open bed truck to the work site. My first full day, I was given a dull sickle and told to mow some grass. Now I've always considered myself to be kind of macho when it comes to grass. When I was a kid I used to mow grass with a non-power mower. None of the kids I knew in the mid 1970s had that experience. But a sickle? A dull sickle? I had never used such a thing. I didn't know they still had any, except on Russian flags.

Anyhow, I was written up for not sickling hard enough. This was a sort of kangaroo court, held the following evening. I was given a reprimand and a mark in my record, and told that if it happened again I would be put in solitary for two weeks and have some good time taken away.

Good time is short for 'time off for good behavior'. All prisoners get it automatically. One day for every three. This means that a six year sentence is actually a four year sentence, unless your good time is taken away, which it can be in kangaroo court. Of course they can't keep someone with a six year sentence more than six years without taking him to a REAL court, and getting him convicted of something new. And refusing to work is not a crime.

In less than a week, I was moved to building 2. It was just about the same as building 1.

I soon settled into a routine. Breakfast, 12 hours of work in the fields, dinner, lying around the 'dorm', yard, lying around the 'dorm', bedtime. Once a week was laundry day. Once a day was mail call.

The land was much too hilly for mechanized farming. We had to carry manure buckets up and down 45 degree hillsides, and spread the manure by hand. Picking and planting were done mostly by hand. There was a hay baling machine, and a truck for taking the bales to a barn. I was one of the people, for several weeks, who had the job of getting the bales out of the truck into the barn, and stacking it in the barn.

I had never realized that cows needed so much hay. We must have stacked about 10,000 hundred pound bales in the barn. And after that there was another barn to fill. And after that, two more.

It was nasty work. The only way to grab a bale was by the string holding it together. And if you didn't do it just right, the bale would come apart. The string cut into my hands, and the hay itself was horribly scratchy. I can't imagine anyone sleeping in hay, it's nasty stuff.

Once again, I was accused of not working hard enough. I was sent back to building 1 for two weeks. When the two weeks were over, I decided to stay there, as most of the building 1 people had decided, which was why one could move to building 2 so quickly. The building 1 people were more laid back in general, and I preferred their company.

But after a while I got to the point where I could toss hundred pound bales around without much difficulty. At about that time, we started working in the cannery.

The cannery is where food is canned, supposedly to be eaten later at Bland and to be shipped to other prisons in Virginia. But it seemed to me that most of it must have been leaving the system altogether, presumably at someone's great profit. It has been claimed that it costs several thousand dollars to keep a prisoner for a year. I don't believe a word of it. We grew far more than we ate at Bland, the buildings were all built many years ago and were falling apart, the guards were payed minimum wage, and there were maybe 50 prisoners per guard, and land was very cheap in that area, as it wasn't good for anything except hand farming. I am convinced that we made the state quite a profit.

Anyway, in the cannery there are leaky steam lines everywhere and the temperature and humidity were both about 100. People's clothes and even their hair got mildewed.

My first task was to sort green beans. To toss out the bad ones before they get ground up and put into cans. The person I replaced had lost a couple fingers on this task, since his hand got into the slicer. I was allowed no breaks for the 12 hours I was there, and it was made clear that if I let any bad beans get through, or discarded any good ones, that I would be in great trouble. I had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, which I was criticized for doing too often. I was on this task for several weeks before being given an easier task, putting one salt tablet in each empty can, and checking the cans for rust.

There was a huge steam vat, in which the beans, already in the cans, were cooked. One time when they opened it to take out the cans they found a dead body in there. I couldn't help but see it. And the expression on its bloated face.

There was also a huge freezer. People liked getting locked into it, as it gave them an excuse for why they stayed in there. It was the only cool place.

I wouldn't have minded the conditions at the cannery so much if I had been able to to shower when I returned to the 'dorm'. But the shower was monopolized by the long-timers. The only way to get a shower was to stay up way past midnight. Even then, your feet weren't clean since the shower was always backed up and there was sewage all over the floor, since all the toilets also leaked.

After I had been at Bland for several months, I heard from my lawyer that the state supreme court had turned down my appeal. No grounds were given. I hadn't even been appealing my conviction, but rather the fact that I had been prevented from attending my resentencing, which had then been cancelled since I wasn't present. The appeal was an attempt to gain me a resentencing. The lawyer said he had fully expected this, that the state supreme court always turns things down, but that you have to take that step before you can appeal to the federal district court. So he appealed the state supreme court's decision to the federal district court.

Prisoners often had fun by sabotaging the work. In the cannery, people often tried to wreck the boiler, jam the conveyers, smash the cans, etc. I only did something like this once. We were loading a truck with boxes full of cans of green beans and apples. I noticed that despite the prisoners seeming to exert a lot of effort in lifting the boxes, the boxes were empty! So I assisted in loading hundreds of boxes, most of them empty, into the truck. The guards never found out, at least not that I heard of, that they had been fooled.

The weather turned cold. I had never noticed that it had been a comfortable temperature for a few days. Once it turned cold it stayed cold. Now that the cannery might be comfortable, we were outside again instead. We dug up potatos and spread manure, mostly. We also did some road work, and some landscaping on the warden's house.

It became winter. We were given light jackets, but they didn't help much. As I said, the windows in the 'dorm' were mostly broken out. The wind never stopped blowing and it was always below freezing. The toilets, the sinks, and the shower became frozen solid. Then, I understood why they leaked so much when it was warmer. The only source of drinkable water was snow and ice from outside brought in and melted in coffee cans. Fires were kept burning all night in the 'dorm' in a futile attempt to stay warm. In the day, during all daylight hours we were outside doing useless things like picking rocks off a hill and loading them into a truck and then spreading them on another hill. And then moving them back a few weeks later. At least it kept you somewhat warm. I wondered how I could ever have despised the heat.

Then I was transferred to the sawmill. Logs were sawed up into boards. It was dangerous, but at least you could get warm there. There was a fire barrel and you could get warm if you stood near it and turned around. If you did not turn around, your clothes would start smoldering if you were close enough to keep warm. Fortunately, the guard who ran the sawmill was fairly humane and let us take frequent breaks at the fire barrel, since even shoveling wood chips and lifting 200 pound logs couldn't keep you warm enough. One day when it was really cold and windy, we went into a building near the sawmill instead of to the sawmill. The building had a wood stove and a thermometer and a radio. The wood stove was glowing dull red, and the temperature in there was a comfortable 65 degrees. The weatherman on the radio said the temperature was minus twenty and the wind chill factor was minus 85!

The winter of 1978/1979 was a very cold winter in the hills of southwestern Virginia. Working at the sawmill wasn't all that bad as there was a firebarrel and frequent breaks. But then one day some prisoner sabotaged the sawmill. He (or they) cut the hose to the fuel tank, letting all the kerosene leak out on the ground. He also slashed several conveyer belts and tried to jam the gearbox with ice. I don't know how he accomplished this without being seen since there were always at least three armed guards around us watching us.

The guard who was in charge was livid. He said he had tried to be lenient with us and see what it got him. He asked the culprit to step forward, and when he didn't, he promised to have all of us transfered to other work groups. Sure enough, that's just what he did.

One problem with Bland is that you could never get enough food. The food we were served at breakfast and dinner (there were no lunches) was a kind of grey porridge and sometimes bread. I don't know what happened to all the food we grew on the farm. I know that beef, chickens, apples, green beans, potatoes, and tomatoes were produced. The main sources of nourishment were what you could buy in the canteen (mostly junk food) and what you could eat on the job. I ate several whole small tomato plants that we were supposed to be planting. I later learned that most of the tomato plant is poisonous. It didn't seem to hurt me any, though.

Several prisoners froze to death in the solitary cell. The standard sentence in the unheated solitary cell was two weeks. One of the survivors told me that the trick is to sleep in the day when it is slightly warmer, and to stay awake all night and remain active, doing pushups or jumping jacks.

I heard from my lawyer that the federal district court had turned down my appeal of the state supreme court's rejection of my appeal that the circuit court should have let me attend my resentencing, which was cancelled due to my absense, which was caused by the same court. He said it was possible to appeal to the court of appeals, but recommended that I not do so since I would be up for parole in June, by which time the court would not have acted, and since the parole board always turns down a prisoner who is still appealing his sentence. I agreed to let it drop, though I said I would wish to pursue it if I was turned down for parole.

I was paroled in June. I had a job within 48 hours, thanks to the help of my friends. Two and a half years later I was uneventfully released from parole. I've been in no legal trouble since then. Not even a ticket. -- Keith Lynch, kfl@access.digex.com

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