Inmates And One Shower

One of the many drawbacks about being an inmate in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Center (this is the proper name yet, all of the prison issued clothing has CDC printed conspicuously leaving out the “R” - I wonder why?) is the severe overcrowding. All of the statistics are out there; a system which was built to house 100,000 inmates now houses 173,000 and climbing. A direct result of the overcrowding is the dorm where I reside. This was built to house 16 inmates and now houses 36 a 110% increase? The inmate count has gone up dramatically, yet the infrastructure remains the same. Yes, there are 36 inmates and one shower which is designed to service two inmates at a time but one shower is inoperable, just as well because there is only enough room for one person. Thankfully, we have a good system of getting into the shower. When an inmate is ready, he places his ID card down. Inmates who come directly back from work or firefighting training have priority over the inmates who do not work or train. These inmates place their ID card on the right hand side perpendicular to the other ID cards. They have first dibs when the shower becomes available and everyone appears to honor this system.

Unfortunately, it is not pleasant to wait over an hour, sometimes two, when you are hot and sweaty coming back from working out during yard. I have had to wait this long and now I know the first thing to do when I come back into the dorm from working out is to go directly into the bathroom and place my ID card on the mirror. I did this today and only had to wait 30 minutes for a shower which is quite an improvement over the other day when I had to wait two hours and twenty minutes. These are things I must live with and I have been told that the shower situation gets much better at fire camp. Most of these camps house 120 inmates in total and have dormitories to match the number of inmates. Apparently, the overcrowding hasn’t filtered down to the camps as of yet.

I think I have touched on this before, but it bears repeating. Not everywhere here at SCC gets to go to an actual camp. Also, even though an inmate goes to one, it does not mean that he can’t be sent back here. In fact, as recent as last week an entire fire camp was sent back here – commonly referred to as “rolled up”. I heard that everyone of them tested positive for drugs. One of the many positives of residing at an actual camp is the relative freedom of coming and going. The inmates are treated as adults and are expected to act that way. However, sometimes the inmates take advantage of these freedoms. I certainly do not intend to abuse the privilege of being placed into a fire camp; however, I cannot control the behavior of others. When an inmate is “rolled up”, he must serve 90 days here before being placed again. Presumably, the 35 % reduction of sentence time, reverts back to the 50% during this period. It is certainly enough incentive for me to obey the rules because the sooner I get to a fire camp and stay there the sooner I get to being with my family.

There are also inmates here who are ineligible for camp because of medical conditions, type of crime, length of crime, and other disciplinary reasons. I don’t know the overall percentage of inmates who are ineligible, but my guess is that at least 50 % fit into this category. With all that stated, I do not know I am fire camp eligible and hopefully my time here will be sooner than the expected six months. If it is not then so be it.

Along the lines of the overcrowding – before I departed the reception center – there was a memorandum circulated that if any inmate was interested in transferring to an out of state prison they should watch a video on the prison system and sign the attached form stating their interest. I was able to view this video out of curiosity because even though my family resides in NJ, this is not one of the states where the prisoners will be transferred. I believe the states are Indiana, Michigan, Arizona, Louisiana, Washington and Oklahoma. The CDCR is currently negotiating with these states and others. According to the video, any inmate who is interested will have the same rights as if they were housed in California. Their sentence will not be reduced and one month prior to their release date, they will be sent back to California where they will prepare for parole. There seems to be more programs available in other states for these inmates, but I fail to see how an inmate benefits by being transferred unless they have family in one of these states. Also, once and inmate commits, he will be sent to a state where the CDCR places him – not necessarily where he may want to go.

According to a news article, Governor Schwarzenegger stated that if 5000 inmates were placed out of state, it would “buy” the prison system another 10 months before they run out of space to house the prisoners. According to the same article, the California Prison System will run out of room by June 2007 and could possibly not accept any new prisoners. My opinion – it certainly appears the prison system has run out of room already since the previous statistic of 173,000 inmates are housed where there is space for 100,000 seems to prove the point. What is interesting is the very powerful Correction Officers Union which opposes the plan of sending inmates to other states. However, due to the fact that the Governor has declared a “state of emergency” in the prison system, he can apparently do what he wants to do. It will be interesting to see how many inmates volunteer to be sent out of state. No one in the reception center signed up and I have spoken with only one inmate who has. According to this person, there were seven others beside himself.

The Governor is opposed to reducing sentences for any felon which is understandable because this is an election year and having to free 40,000 plus felons may not be an astute political move. I do not have any solutions for this problem. I have to concentrate on myself and getting through the time I have left to serve as a better person - in order to never have to go through this awful process again.

I have written about the 70% Recidivism Rate in the system and judging by the fact that I am the only inmate out off 36 who is a first termer, this statistic may be rising. I did hear another prisoner speaking about how he got released earlier this year and only ONE WEEK later, he was picked up on a parole violation charge. I heard what the charge was and it seems to me this inmate likes to be incarcerated. I am not sure if any new laws or rehabilitation efforts would have helped so again I have no solution. On the flip side – when I was at the center I overheard a Correction Officer say, “How can you rehabilitate an inmate if he doesn’t want to be?” This is a very valid question, but I believe there needs to be a system available because once we as a society stop trying to help other human beings then we become something less than human. The entire process has given me such a great learning experience in sociology and hopefully, I can gain personally from this knowledge to improve myself.

I did get to make another telephone call to my wife this afternoon. She sounded much better than she did last Monday and we had a great talk even though my children were not at home. My mom was kind enough to take them along with their cousins for the weekend. This is such a wonderful thing because my wife and children are surrounded by love and things continue to work out well. Of course we ran through the allotted 15 minutes as if they were 15 seconds and the phone cut off with my wife in mid sentence. Maybe we won’t figure out the telephone system but it sure is wonderful to speak to her on a regular basis. She was kind enough to order my quarterly package which I should receive in a week or two. I will be able to have some of the comforts of home and some food I can eat. I did report I may have put on a few pounds at the reception center especially since I worked in the kitchen. However, whatever weight I have gained has definitely been lost in the last 8 days. I am working out more and eating less because I no longer work in the kitchen and the lunches don’t contain tuna fish. Five days a week it is some kind of lunchmeat and the remaining two days are peanut butter and strawberry jam.

Fortunately, I arrived here with a full jar of peanut butter and 14 soups. The jar of peanut butter is already gone and it cost me 10 soups for headphones. My neighbor was kind enough to lend me a full jar and 5 soups until I get to go to the store in 2 weeks. I am able to trade out my eggs and meat at breakfast for hot cereal. Also, I am able to trade my meat for vegetables at dinner. Since I am working out more, come breakfast I am starving. Needless to say, I am looking forward to receiving my package and being able to go to the store so I can purchase some fillers like rice and tuna fish. The one food snack I miss the most are pretzels. For some unknown reason, these are not available from the catalogue or the prison store. Yet, we can purchase pork rinds and potato chips galore! It is one more thing, I just don’t understand.