A Free Man

“San Quentin, what good do you think you do?
Do you think I’ll be different when you’re through?
You bent my heart and mind and you may my soul,
And your stone walls turn my blood a little cold.”

-Johnny Cash - “San Quentin”

I’ve not been blogging long enough to start running repeats of old posts, I think I need a year or so under my belt. That being said, after my third visit to Bullingdon Prison this week, I thought it would be fun to revisit the post I wrote after my first visit back in July. So if you’ll indulge me a bit of repetition, what follows in italics is the original “Bullingdon Prison Blues” followed by some thoughts after subsequent visits.

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It’s funny where life takes you. I spent yesterday afternoon at Her Majesty’s Prison Bullingdon doing some volunteer work regarding drugs and alcohol, forgive me if I’m not more specific. But if it was good enough for The Man in Black, then it’s good enough for me. And, no it wasn’t court ordered…

I have never been in a jail cell, never mind a prison (not for lack of trying). The closest I came was in high school when a guy I knew named, in the interest of anonymity let’s call him “J”, was driving with my friend Jamie and I from Gainesville back to Lake City. I think he must have been speeding because we saw those characteristic red and blue lights behind us that only mean one thing. One thing, right - you stop. Jason didn’t stop. I don’t remember what kind of car it was (Jamie, a little help?), but it was a something “Turbo”. I hesitate to guess what was going on in J’s head, but I think he maybe figured something like this: “Turbo means fast, if we make the Columbia County line, the Alachua County Sheriff will be out of his jurisdiction. Just like in ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’”. I am here to tell you that the laws of Hazzard County don’t apply in the State of Florida. . So, Jamie and I had to sit in the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office until one of our Mom’s came and got us. Can’t remember what happened to J.

That was enough time in custody for me for the next nearly twenty years. So, this visit
to Bullingdon was something I’ve been dreading since I agreed to do it. About a month ago I went up for security training. The man who did this was a short, yet big Scot who started the training by saying: “Now most of your prison experience is from the TV or prison lesbian movies, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t know shit.” (I paraphrase, but this is what I heard and he definitely said the thing about prison lesbian movies). And then proceeded to spend three hours telling us about all the things that can go wrong in a prison and what sort of things he’s found in various orifices. It was very entertaining but when I got home I couldn’t remember for the life of me what I was supposed to do in the case of being taken hostage.

Now, I am not a prison-hating kind of liberal. In fact, I think if you are sent to prison, you should do the time you are sentence to do. There’s a shortage of space in British prisons and all kinds of offenders, including violent offenders, are being released early. I think that the answer to this is obvious - build more prisons. However, I think that a lot of people go to prison and come out worse than they went in. A recent study by the British prison service said that prisons were serving as breeding grounds for Islamist extremists. If we’re alienating Muslims in prisons being watched over carefully by the European Human Rights Courts, imagine what’s happening in Guantanamo.

Sorry, off topic - I’ve heard estimates that 75 - 85% of people serving time in British and American prisons are there directly or indirectly due to drug and/or alcohol abuse. Since you’ve got a captive audience (huh huh?), seems the time to try and help get those problems sorted. That’s why I was there. If you’re not part of the solution then you can’t complain, right?

Yes, I was scared. A prison is a scary place, it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to sap your spirit. I will never complain about how well prisoners are treated, three squares and a bed, leisure time, etc. because at the end of the day, they can not leave that place and all those gates lock. The thing is, that the guys I talked to where not what I thought. They didn’t look like “prisoners”, they looked like me. They were polite and grateful that we had taken the time to come and talk to them. When we were done we shook hands and in some cases, hugged in that manly way where you don’t touch much. And they went back to be locked up in their cells and I walked out of the main gates.

It’s funny where life take you. And it’s funny how the road twists and turns. A twist or two in the wrong direction and who knows.

“This wall divides us, we’re on two different sides
But this wall is not real; how can it be real?
It’s only made of concrete and barbed wire
Concrete and barbed wire, concrete and barbed wire
It’s only made of concrete and barbed wire….”

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-Lucinda Williams “Concrete and Barbed Wire”

I recently saw one of the guys that I met on that first visit back in July, let’s call him K. He was down in the Oxford city center in a heated argument with another guy, clearly off his head on something. K was in one of those drunken debates that never end well for either party. And I don’t think it was going to end well for K. I know better than to get in the middle of two drunk, angry guys, so I moved on.

I never had any illusion that every guy I talked to was going to immediately put down the booze and drugs and become a model citizen for the rest of their lives. But seeing K down in town well on his way back to Bullingdon threw me for a loop and this visit I came into to Her Majesty’s Prison with a slightly more skeptical attitude. This time I tried to really pay attention to what the guys were saying and most of them say the right things - a recognition that drugs or alcohol got them into their current predicament. Many of them are aware that if they wanted to stay out of jail they would need to steer clear of drugs and booze. I’m pretty sure that some of the guys were only there to try and get their sentence reduced. I think the most honest among them were those that said when they got out they were pretty sure that a drink or a fix would be one of the first things on their list. It was kind of disconcerting and demoralizing.

But, like any volunteer work, the reward comes from making the effort. Whether or not any of these guys get anything from my visit is neither here nor there. Just like after my first visit, as I was walking out of the final gate of Bullingdon Prison I was overcome with feelings of release and having done something useful. I don’t know if I did anything for the guys inside, but I had certainly done something for myself.

“San Quentin, you’ve been livin’ hell to me
You’ve hosted me since nineteen sixty three
I’ve seen ‘em come and go and I’ve seen them die
And long ago I stopped askin’ why…”

Image Credits:

Razor wire

All images of Bullingdon from the Beeb

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