Chapter 14: Protective Custody #2
River CI Annex — The Box, Dorm P
This is part of a series. For more please go to the Table of Contents.
By evening I was back where I’d been five months before — checked in to protective custody in a two-man cell with another check-in roommate. This time my roommate was a 40 year old black man named Smith, who had deliberately made up a story to check in because he hated River CI so much he was ready to do or say anything to get a transfer. He was one of River’s many psych patients but he took his medications daily and seemed like a calm, reasonable guy. He’d checked in earlier that same day.
The story Smith had invented was that he had racked up a $150 toochie bill with a known gangster (a “Bones,” like Crawfish in Chapters 10–12), and now that man was threatening to kill him if he didn’t pay. Now that he’d snitched on this guy in order to check in he was stuck between a rock & a hard place because if they put him back on the compound that guy probably would kill him (see Chapter 11, subheading “What’s really going on here” for a discussion about my experience with snitching).
The Box at River CI Annex was different from either Swift Annex or Hayes. First, the cells were different in each camp . They were all the same width but at River CI they were longer because instead of having upper & lower bunks there were two single bunks. And, like the rest of River CI Annex, the Box had air conditioning. So in some ways it was an improvement over the other jails I’d been to.
However, River’s policies concerning what properties inmates were allowed to bring with them into confinement were far more restrictive than at the other two institutions. Unlike Swift, where they gave me most of my stuff including canteen items & books & all my accumulated mail, and unlike Hayes, which denied my books but let me & my roommate have our radios and MP3/MP4 players and where books were being passed around from cell to cell, at river CI we were allowed to bring almost nothing. They gave me my soap & deodorant and nothing else.
While it was good to have deodorant, what I really needed was paper, stamped envelopes and my “confinement pen” (a crappy little pen you are allowed to have in confinement and which I’d hung onto “just in case” since being in the Box at Hayes), all of which were in my property that they put in storage instead of giving to me. Without these things I was completely isolated and couldn’t even write to my ex-wife & brother to tell them about the very dangerous situation I was in. Remember, phone calls are not allowed from the Box.
Very fortunately my roommate Smith had had the presence of mind to stuff a few generic USPS postcards in his Bible before checking in. They allowed him to have his Bible while in jail but of course did not let me have my Buddhist religious books because they had no idea what they were.
Just call me MacGyver
After sitting in the Box for two days doing absolutely nothing, with no books, no radio, and no way to communicate with the outside world, I came up with an idea for how to fashion my own pen and ink so my roommate & I could use his postcards to contact our families. I asked him to save one of those little packets of ketchup they sometimes included in our food trays. I’d save mine too, and also save one of those little plastic sporks. Then I said, I will fashion the spork into a pen by breaking off all but one of the tines, and we will use ketchup as ink!
At first Smith didn’t think this idea would work, and after all I was talking about using his postcards for this project. So while he continued his fruitless efforts to borrow a pen from one of the officers (from past trips to the Box I knew that was a waste of time) I decided to test my method by drawing a calendar on the back side of my “Impounded Personal Property” list using mustard. I didn’t want to use any of my precious ketchup and Smith agreed we needed a calendar or else we’d lose track of what day it was and how long we’d been in the Box. After my success with that I asked Smith for just one of his postcards with which to write to my ex-wife, and he allowed that. It took hours to make just that one postcard but so what? I had nothing else to do anyway. I told my ex what happened (very briefly), told her to contact my brother and that they should both call the warden and urge him to approve my transfer.
When Smith saw that using ketchup and a modified spork would actually work he asked me to make a postcard to send to his mother — which I was more than happy to do in return for one more postcard to write to my brother. Lastly I filled out an Inmate Request form asking to be given my confinement pen, stamped envelopes, paper and three Buddhist religious books from my property storage. All this with two little packets of ketchup!
It was the weekend by this time so we had to wait until Sunday night mail pick-up to send out our pleas for help. I estimated it would take four days for these postcards to get thru the internal & external mail systems and to their final destinations, so that would be the following Thursday. Meanwhile, out of desperation for something to read while we waited for all this to happen I asked Smith if I could borrow his Bible (King James Version), which he let me do.
The last MacGyverish thing I did was to begin using the few slivers of sunlight that came thru the window, which was mostly glazed over like the one at the Swift Annex jail, to make marks on the cell walls to represent 8:00 AM, noon & 4:00 PM — meal times. With those in place we could estimate any other time of day.
By Tuesday morning I was both surprised and relieved to find that the run-around brought me the pen, paper, stamped envelopes & the books I requested. I was able to write to my family with a much more detailed account of what had become of me and a more urgent request for their assistance in calling the warden to get me transferred out of the River Annex. Of course, I later discovered that the run-around had swiped stuff out of my property to pay himself for his delivery service.
River Annex Jail: where everybody knows your business
In Chapter 6 I explained why it was so important that the identities of the protective custody inmates were not revealed to the disciplinary custody inmates. After all, if somebody out on the compound wants to kill you and he has buddies or gang brothers in the Box and they discover you, they could be a threat.
Well guess what? At River Annex the custody status of every inmate in the Box was prominently identified by a color code on the outside of their door! A yellow card taped to your door meant protective custody (yellow signifying cowardice I suppose), white & blue meant disciplinary custody further divided into pending & post Disciplinary Court status. Pink meant you were in for gunning. Red meant an inmate who had attacked an officer! Everybody knew who was who!
I assume this was done at River CI because at some point there had been a mix-up on the part of the jail officers as to the custody status of some inmate(s) — probably resulting in somebody getting killed. Therefore, to dumb everything down to the (low) intelligence level of the officers & staff, they came up with this color-coding system.
Although I at first found this color-coding system quite disturbing, I also have to admit that it provided useful information to me about the other inmates in my “quad” of the Jail building, which was divided into four identical quads. For example, I could see which cells the other check-ins were in and whether my own neighbors were check-ins or disciplinary cases. As it happened, throughout my time at the River CI Jail there were always a surprisingly high number of check-ins. River was such a fucked-up camp that, much like me and my roommate, guys were desperate for transfers.
Before moving on I’d also like to point out that the policies of the River Annex Jail concerning clothing and personal hygiene also sucked. The first time I was offered a change of clothing other than boxers was three weeks after I got in — you can just imagine. Also, it was two weeks before I was given a shave, and since it had been a week on the day I’d checked in this meant by the time I did get a shave my beard was itching like crazy and my mustache was crawling into my mouth. My next shave was over a month later! It was all rather disgusting.
Holy shit! What have I got myself into?!
So the days of that second week dragged slowly on until Thursday, when my roommate and I were both called into our “Protective Custody Hearings,” staged by the little “classification” staff committee that readily approved my transfer the previous time I’d been in protective custody (see Chapter 7, subheading “One surprise after another”). Except that this committee DID NOT approve either one of our transfers!! In my case they told me there wasn’t enough evidence that I’d been threatened. The investigator had interviewed Mr. Bunk 6 and of course he denied everything, and she’d also asked around my dorm to see if there was anyone willing to testify and of course there was not!
I protested, “But the camera is my witness!” (All prison dorms in my state have camera surveillance nowadays). “All you need to do is look at the camera footage for that morning and you’ll see that Bunk 6 came right up to me and got right in my face and threatened me, and then he walked around the dorm several times threatening me and cussing at me!”
The investigator was not impressed and apparently had not bothered to look at the camera recording. “Besides,” she said, “the camera doesn’t have sound.” So what?!
Transfer DENIED! This committee recommends putting Inmate Z back out on the compound.
In my roommate’s case they actually laughed at him and called him a liar (well, okay, he was a liar, but the laughing part was a little harsh, don’t you think?). The investigator had asked around his dorm and everyone had said, “What? Smith? He doesn’t even smoke toochie! How could he have a $150 bill?” And of course, the “Bones” gangster denied everything.
Transfer DENIED!! And what’s more, this committee recommends that Inmate Smith receive a Disciplinary Summons for “lying to staff”! Thirty days in the Hole, and then you get dumped back on the compound.
As to why our transfers had really been denied — as it turned out most transfers were at River CI — the answer is pretty obvious in hindsight. There were so many check-ins in that prison — so many inmates trying anything to escape from that fucked-up camp — that the Protective Custody Hearing committee had to be very stingy with transfers. Unless an inmate could show blood flowing from a stab wound or bruises from having the shit beaten out of him, then they were denied. If the committee ever got a reputation for approving transfers for uninjured check-ins, that would open up the flood gates and almost everybody would be checking in!
As you can imagine, Smith & I were both beside ourselves with panic when we got back to our cell. We feared that if we had to go back to the compound this time we really would get killed. I immediately wrote letters to my ex-wife and brother using the last two envelopes I had, explaining what had happened and imploring them to call the warden to plead my case. Thursday night would be the last mail pick-up of the week until Sunday night. We’d both been told we had the right to appeal the decisions of the committee. Knowing that the next opportunity to submit our appeals would be that Sunday night mail pick-up, Smith & I debated what to put in the appeals while I remained in a state of panic, dreading the knock on the door and the words, “Z, pack your shit — we’re cutting you loose!” (Smith wasn’t in immediate danger because he was staying in the Box for 30 days, but he was still panicking). But the weekend came and went and that knock never came.
I decided to make two appeals: First, I appealed the denial of my transfer. Second, I appealed the decision to put me back on the compound and requested to remain in protective custody during consideration of my appeal. In both cases the reason was that I was in fear for my life and safety at River CI. Smith & I both turned in our appeals Sunday night — I in fear of being cut loose before the classification committee would even get my appeal and he in fear of getting cut loose after spending 30 days in the Hole.
Just as we were both finishing up our appeal forms my pen crapped out, and I had no more ketchup either. But then it so happened that on Monday morning they passed out “canteen order forms” and I used the very last gasps of my pen to partially fill out an order for 15 stamps, 15 envelopes and three more “confinement pens.” I turned it in and hoped against hope it would be accepted and I’d have my supplies in a day or two.
Then a strange thing happened. Smith was served with his disciplinary summons all right, but not for lying to staff. Instead it was bartering! I’d never heard of bartering as a punishable offense before, but it turns out it is. Even though it’s the backbone of the entire prison economy right down to trading a soup for a roll of toilet paper, it was all technically illegal and subject to disciplinary confinement!
In this case Smith was charged with “bartering” for having bought $150 worth of toochie. He was confused by this turn of events, but I told him, “No, Smith — this is actually good news! By charging you with bartering they’ve put in writing that they accept your statement as true! Since they now say you’re telling the truth, including the part about the gangster threatening you, they now have to admit that your life would be in danger if they put you back on the compound — so they have to give you the transfer! They just want to make your life as miserable as possible before they ship you out of here.”
Why would they even do this? Probably because they’d been investigating that gangster anyway, and accepting Smith’s story created one more piece of paper to put in his file, one more incident they could charge him with whenever they finally did nail him for drug dealing. They didn’t care if Smith’s story was true or not — his story was convenient!
And the days dragged slowly on …
The next day I received a letter from my brother in which he enclosed a few stamped envelopes, and the dinner that night came with a packet of ketchup. Yey! The following day I was able to compose two (brief) ketchup letters to my ex-wife & brother, since no, the canteen orders had not come back yet.
But also that day — two weeks after I’d checked in — I received a reply to my appeals. It said, “You will get the opportunity to speak to the Senior Classification Officer (SCO) regarding this issue. You will remain in PC pending your appeal.” I decided this was good news since by granting my appeal to remain in protective custody they were admitting that I would be in danger on the compound, which meant they believed my story and would have to give me my transfer. Anyway that’s how I decided to look at it — but how long would all this take?
The days continued to drag on. I read Smith’s Bible. Then on Saturday morning I heard a rustling outside our cell and when I looked out the run-around was piling everybody’s canteen orders in front of their cells — five days after they’d been turned in. There in front of my cell was a little pile of envelopes, stamps and three crappy confinement pens! I was back in business! Of course, I immediately wrote letters to my ex-wife, brother & other family members. I also gave Smith one of the pens, a stamped envelope and some paper just to say thank you for putting up with me. This was also the time when I wrote the “open letter” that has since become my statement of purpose on the main page of my web site, under the Table of Contents.
The days continued to drag on and I heard nothing further about my appeal. Then on Tuesday morning — two days before Thanksgiving Day — Smith was called to his Disciplinary Hearing on his “bartering” charge. He came back with a big smile on his face — 15 days in the Box and a transfer! And he only lost 10 days of his “gain time” (the time accumulating monthly for his “early release”).
“I told you that bartering charge was good news!” I said. But then that afternoon Smith was transferred to a different cell to serve his disciplinary time and I was left there, alone with nothing to do and not even Smith’s Bible to read. Bo-o-ing!
On Thanksgiving Day we got a special holiday lunchtime meal — cold cut turkey sandwich, sweet potatoes, stuffing (which wasn’t half bad!), green beans, the usual cabbage & carrot salad, cranberry sauce, gravy (not enough) and pumpkin pie. All together, not too bad. But aside from that, the boredom continued …
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