Prison Journal: Day 8,179
December 31, 2009
It’s the last day of 2009, and I look forward to waking tomorrow, healthy and full of energy, to begin the New Year. My birthday is two weeks away (I’ll turn 46), and during the year 2010 I intend to work every day toward preparing the for exciting life I will lead once I walk free from prison boundaries.
Keeping physically fit remains a priority for me, and I’ll record my progress through my daily journal. This morning, after a few hours of early writing, I went outside for to run. I exercised every day of 2009, and I continue to expand my workouts in 2010 by striving to run every day, as well as adding more strength training. By this time next year, assuming I’m still in prison, I expect to add another 3,000 consecutive miles to my running log, as well as 100,000 pushups.
When I returned from my run I looked through my planner and I took notes that I’ll use to write my fourth quarter report. Although I can’t access my web site, with Carole’s help I’ve been publishing quarterly reports since 2003. If my memory is correct, that means the web site features quarterly reports for the past 28 quarters. When I’m released, I’ll enjoy reviewing those quarterly reports and reading the journey of my imprisonment.
I’ve been documenting my time through prison for much longer than seven years, but before 2003 I didn’t have Carole in my life to keep my Internet site current. Yet articles and publications exist from as far back as 1988 that chronicle my commitment to preparing for a contributing life while serving this lengthy sentence. I’m glad I created those records, as they will serve as a useful resource when speak and teach about creating a meaningful life through life struggle.
I don’t know how many more days, weeks, months, or years I will serve as a prisoner. But I’m glad to have completed 8,179 days of my sentence, and I’m optimistic that the work I’ve done over the past 22-plus years will help me triumph over the challenges I encounter upon release. I’ve been blessed with a strong spirit, and I thank God for the blessing, as my positive attitude has made it easier to master this prison term.
[Consecutive running log: 3.400 miles over the past 384 days]
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Prison Journal: Day 8,178
December 30, 2009
This morning I had a long conversation with a young man who has been a white supremacist gang member since 1999. I’ll call him” S.”
S shaves his head and has a goatee. Demonic tattoos cover his wiry body, from his wrists to his neck, and his teeth have the rotting appearance of a meth addict. He boasts that he is a ranking member of a prison-based gang knows as the Fourth Reich.
S has served seven years of a sentence that will keep him in prison for another seven years. He began serving time in his early 20s, and was in and out of prison numerous times before he received the lengthy sentence that he now serves. I asked him what it was that compelled him to devote his life to a prison gang.
Like many young men who begin serving a prison term, S shook with fear when he thought about the challenges he would face as a prisoner. Being a “white guy” defined him, and he found solidarity with others who identified themselves as “white guys,” or “woods” as they’re called in some prison systems. S told me that he admired the “woods” (white guys with shaved heads) because, from his perspective, others prisoners respected them and he wanted to become a part of what they stood for–white pride.
When I asked S what he intended to do with his life upon release, he didn’t have a solid answer. All of his personal identification, it seemed, was rooted in being white, and the energy level of his expressions rose when he spoke about prison legends, infamous gang members, and the importance of tattoos.
Part of my role as a long-term prisoner who aspires to teach and lead is to open the eyes of young prisoners like S. I explain to them what I’ve learned from serving more than two decades in prison, and what I’ve learned from listening to others who’ve been confined with me. Instead of thinking about life in prison, I urged S to contemplate steps he could take to lead a meaningful life outside of prison. When he spoke about the “respect” that he perceived is given to his fellow gang members, I asked him to question whether he was confusing respect with fear. Respect, I suggested, is a virtue earned by good works, and admiration. A person deserving of respect could live in society with his head held high, never hiding, always strong in his demeanor. When I asked S whether gang members could ever hope for such honorable roles in society, he said that he hadn’t thought of respect in such terms.
I’d like to persuade S to value a better way of life, but prisons seem to radicalize so many men who are lost and meander through life in a quest for something to belong to. They live without hope; they’re incapable of grasping steps they can take to create meaning in their lives. I consider it my duty to educate these young prisoners, or at least try to inspire them to think differently and to make positive changes.
This morning I ran eight miles in the rain. I had the track to myself, and I appreciated the solitude. I ran a shorter distance, and I’ll do so again tomorrow, because I want to end the year with an even number.
[Consecutive running log: 3,392 miles over the past 383 days]
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Prison Journal: Day 8,158
December 10, 2009
Weldon Long pointed a gun at two strangers as they exited a restaurant while his accomplice demanded money and jewelry from the victims. The two committed that armed robbery in 1987, when Long was 23. Long’s judge later sentenced him to 10 years for the crime, but then reduced the prison term to eight years because the robbery at gun point was Long’s first prison term.
The relatively short sentence entitled Long to transfer to a halfway house after he had served about three years in prison. While in the halfway house, administrators overlooked Long’s drinking and gave him chance after chance. For employment, Long took a job with a telemarketing company that conned people out of money. Then he got a gun, and he used it to rob cashiers in small businesses. Authorities returned Long to prison, but each time he returned to society he continued to rob people at gunpoint or scheme through telemarketing scams until FBI agents arrested him on new criminal charges in the mid-1990s.
While incarcerated for the third or fourth time, Long began reading self-help books that convinced him to change his life. He began chanting a mantra about being a good person and a man of integrity, trying to visualize all that he was not. The exercise gave him hope. He enrolled in a correspondence school with a reputation as a diploma mill, but through the work he disciplined himself while working toward academic credentials.
The new criminal charges for telemarketing fraud and armed robbery resulted in Mr. Long serving a few more years in prison. He attributes his education to changing his life, and the criminal justice system seemed to have cut Mr. Long another break, releasing him in 2002. He began a relationship with a woman who became his third wife, he built a career selling heating equipment, launched a business, and authored a book called The Upside of Fear that I recently finished reading.
When I read Mr. Long’s book, his stories about violent crime and the numerous, brief sentences he served frustrated me. Both Mr. Long and I became prisoners when we were 23, in 1987. His crimes included pointing guns in the faces of his victims and demanding their money, and scheming over the telephone to con gullible people out of tens of thousands of dollars. I’ll never understand how the criminal justice system considers such crimes less severe than my crime. Despite numerous chances to leave prison and begin a responsible life, Mr. Long kept reverting to crime, yet he finally reformed. Now he has a family, a business, and a new outlook on life. I applaud his change, but reading about his liberty while I serve my 23rd consecutive Christmas season in prison challenges me to accept that I must embrace my predicament, find meaning through it, and not resent those who follow a different journey.
I’ve since let my frustrations go. I wish Mr. Long success and peace, recognizing that although I may remain in prison, many blessings have come my way. I have good health, my education, a growing support network, resources I can count on upon my release, and a wonderful wife who devotes her life to me. I may serve a few more years in prison, but I’ll find ways to bring meaning to my life, to contribute to the lives of others, and to prove worthy of the support I’ve received.
This morning I ran 10 miles.
[consecutive running log: 3,236 miles in 362 days]
Prison Journal: Day 8,157
December 9, 2009
Early this year, or perhaps it was the final days of last year, I wrote out the Values and Goals that would drive my actions throughout 2009. Now we’re coming to the end of the year, and it’s almost time to report on my progress. The year was productive on many levels, but one area where I did not exceed—or even meet—expectations was my reading. I did even worse with regard to writing book reports.
I set the goal of reading 25 books during the year and of writing a book report that would record the reasons why I chose the books, what I learned from them, and how the investment of my reading time would contribute to my success upon release. But as of this writing, on 9 December, I’ve only finished reading 20 books, and I was far behind on writing my book reports.
I don’t know how many more books I’ll finish reading by the end of this year, but it looks rather certain that I’ll miss my goal by at least two, and possibly by four books. That’s a 20 percent miss. My only excuse is that I spent more time writing this year than I had originally intended. The reading list doesn’t take into account the numerous times I’ve read Earning Freedom, the lengthy manuscript I wrote to describe my journey through prison.
Today I brought myself current by writing book reports for the past 10 books that I read. At least I’m up to date with the book reports now. It’s important for me to keep these kinds of records, as I intend to use the book reports as teaching resources. It’s one thing to say a person prepares for success, but a true, lifelong investment in self-improvement requires deliberate steps. These book reports will help me convey the message.
My running and exercise schedule will do the same. This morning I ran 10 miles and I followed with 300 pushups.
[consecutive running log: 3,226 miles in 361 days]
Prison Journal: Day 8,153
December 5, 2009
I’m sitting in the library of Taft Camp, sharing a Formica-topped table with an elderly man. He has a full head of gray hair, and he wears thin, wire-framed glasses with rectangular lenses that remind me of the type Sarah Palin made famous. He’s flipping through the pages of a National Geographic magazine.
Although we’ve never spoken, I’ve been observing him for the 30 minutes or so that we’ve been sharing this table. I wonder what goes through an elderly man’s mind on a Saturday afternoon in prison, only a few weeks before the Christmas holiday.
He’s a relatively new prisoner, or so I assume, because I haven’t noticed the man before today. I could introduce myself and ask how he’s getting along, but I’m enjoying my solitude. More than 500 prisoners share the boundaries of the prison camp, but since I keep an unusual schedule of sleeping very early each evening and rising before three each morning, I don’t always notice the daily changes in our prison population. People come and go, and when I think about that, I realize my neighbor may have been here for several weeks.
Like other prisoners, he wears gray cotton sweats–the type we used to wear in junior high PE class, and the only type the prison commissary sells. A gold wedding band is present on his right pinky finger rather than on the traditional wedding finger. Perhaps his wife left him, maybe because of his prison term, and he keeps the ring for sentimental reasons. Perhaps he is a widower, and the ring is a loving memory of his wife. He has a grandfatherly look about him, with a fleshy face and a hanging chin that rests on his chest as he stares at the glossy photographs in the magazine. I can’t tell for sure, but I think his eyes may be closed. Prison may have taken the energy out of him, or perhaps he’s taken a rest to dream of happier times far away from the boundaries of federal prison.
This is what I sometimes do on slow Saturday afternoon. I come to this library, surround myself with millions of written words that fill the thousands of books around me. I pull books from shelves, sometimes randomly, sometimes in search of particular authors, just to see how much more beautifully those authors write than me. When I tire of reading, I watch the people around me, like the elderly man in the gray sweats, and I wonder about their lives.
Earlier this morning I wrote a lengthy letter to a friend, then I ran ten miles and followed with 300 pushups.
[consecutive running log: 3,186 miles over 357 days]
Prison Journal: Day 8,152
December 4, 2009
Prison Journal: Day 8,152
Yesterday I heard a news report on NPR and CNN announcing that the Deputy Attorney General had resigned. He said that goals had been achieved, but the reporters insinuated that the Deputy Attorney General—who is like the Chief Operating Officer of the Department of Justice—did not have the requisite expertise to oversee the criminal justice system. I hope that when Attorney General Eric Holder appoints a new Deputy to oversee the Department of Justice, reforms will come to make the prison system more conducive to preparing offenders for the challenges that await release.
The prison system is exceptionally effective at warehousing human beings, isolating them from society, and perpetuating a cycle of failure. An appointment of a new Director of the Bureau of Prisons may bring reforms that allow more people in prison to work toward earning freedom. People respond better to the promise of incentives than they do to the threat of further punishments, and I’m hoping that Mr. Holder will appoint a Deputy Attorney General who orders the Director of the Bureau of Prisons to rely upon research in bringing about a smarter criminal justice system.
A smarter criminal justice system would protect society and save taxpayers billions of dollars by reducing recidivism. The method to achieve such goals, I think, is to recognize that although violent and recalcitrant offenders require prolonged imprisonment, separating non-violent and non-threatening prisoners from society for too long eradicates hope, lessening the chances for those inside prison to reform or prepare for law abiding lives upon release.
Instead of eradicating hope, incentives would encourage those in prison to commit toward gradual, measurable change. They could work toward more educational or vocational opportunities, more telephone or visiting privileges, improved access to community. These reforms could begin with a Deputy Attorney General’s appointment of a new BOP Director, and I’m looking forward to one who embraces President Obama’s vision for hope and one who believes in an individual’s capacity to reform.
This morning I ran only three miles because I was expecting Carole to visit me.
[consecutive running log: 3,176 miles over 356 days]
Prison Journal: Day 8,151
December 3, 2009
I’ve frequently described my perceptions of this lengthy prison term with the metaphor of a ladder. I’m in a pit and I’ve created my own ladder to climb out. When I set clearly-defined goals I chart my course, with each incremental success bringing me closer. The strategy helps me through each month but the climb isn’t always easy. The month of December is particularly difficult this year.
I attribute several reasons to changes in my perception. The Christmas season is an obvious reminder of my separation from home, but this Christmas has more significance because it is my 23rd Christmas as a prisoner, meaning that I’ve served as many holidays in prison as I have with family. Sometimes I allow the delusions that relief in some form will come, that either the judicial system or legislature will pass an order leading to an advanced release date or reform that eases the pain of confinement. But in time I shake the delusions like a wet dog shakes off water, realizing they’re only fantasy. I’ve set my plan for 2010, and once I resume my work, the climb will go more smoothly.
When prison time feels difficult, as it does for me now, I’m less creative. Instead of writing, I read more and recharge my energy levels with forecasts on what I’ll accomplish in the months ahead, once I resume more steady progress. Soon we’ll cross into January, into a new month, a new year, a new decade. I’ve simply got to climb through the next few weeks of December and I know that I can.
This morning I ran 10 miles and followed with 300 pushups.
[consecutive running tally: 3,173 miles over the past 355 days]
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Prison Journal: Day 8,150
December 2, 2009
This time of year frequently lulls me into a spell of counting days. It happens because I don’t know for certain how many days I will serve in prison before release. I know the length of my sentence, but since I was convicted in accordance with laws the existed in 1987—and those laws were changed not long after I was convicted—I have factors in my sentence that don’t apply to any other prisoner around me.
I’m sentenced in accordance with rules of the old law. Those rules entitle me to receive more credit toward the completion of my sentence than prisoners who were convicted under rules of the new law. I’m also entitled to parole consideration for a portion of my sentence. Whenever I reach the last month of the year, I begin computing my sentence repeatedly, trying to figure out how much more time I’ll have to serve.
I know that as of today I’ve served 8,150 calendar days. Besides those calendar days, the Bureau of Prisons has credited my sentence with 5,400 days known as statutory good time (SGT). Taken together, the calendar days and SGT days amount to 13,550 days toward the completion of my sentence. But there’s more.
In addition to the calendar days and the SGT days, I also receive credit on my sentence from Earned Good Time (EGT), provided I don’t violate the disciplinary code. The length of my sentence entitles me to five days of EGT for every month that I’ve served—except for the first year of my term, during which I received three days of EGT for each of my 12 initial months of confinement. Since I’ve now served 268 months, authorities have credited my sentence with more than 1,300 EGT days.
By adding my 8,150 calendar days, as of today my sentence has been credited with approximately 14,850 days. But in order for the parole board to consider me, I must first satisfy the initial portion of my sentence that doesn’t qualify for parole, and that portion is 43 years. In 43 years, there are 15,706 days. Thus, in order to calculate my parole eligibility date, I must subtract the 14,850 days of credit to date from the 15,706 days of the parole-eligible portion of my sentence. That calculation leaves me with 856 more days to complete the 43-year term for which I’m not parole eligible.
The calculation is confusing for anyone unfamiliar with the rules of old law, but when adding the 365 calendar days in a year together with the 60 days of EGT I receive every year, the BOP credits my sentence with 425 days. Therefore, next year at this time, I will have approximately 15,275 days completed toward my sentence, and by December of 2011, in only two years, I calculate that the parole board could consider me for release. If the board were to grant me a presumptive release date in December of 2011, then the BOP could release me to halfway house by next December, in 2010.
The BOP calculates my eligibility for parole differently, and that’s why I’m always counting in December. I’ll have to resolve this issue in 2010, so I’m constantly counting days. Either way, I’m closing in on the completion of my sentence.
This morning I ran 10 miles.
[daily running log: 3,163 miles in 354 days]
Prison Journal: Day 8,149
December 1, 2009
My friend Steve was released from Taft Camp yesterday morning. I was in this room writing well before dawn, and I watched through the window as Steve carried his box of belongings from the housing unit toward the camp’s exit. A few days ago another friend, David, also walked out from those same doors. I know that I’ll meet new people in the days, weeks, and months ahead, but I’ll likely pass through this final month of 2009 focusing on my exercise, reading, and planning for the goals I’ll want to achieve in 2010.
2009 was a productive year. I was able to work with my friend Justin Paperny as he wrote a book about his prison experiences, and I wrote the Earning Freedom manuscript that will launch my career upon release. The act that really carried me through the year was my daily run. I made a commitment to run every day, and keeping that commitment enabled me to control a portion of every day. As a prisoner, I’ve strengthened myself by setting goals and measuring progress by working toward them every day.
Another daily habit has been writing these journal entries. Some may find the daily entries tedious, but I think it’s important to document this long journey of confinement. I hope to demonstrate for readers how deliberate adjustment plans can be the mechanism that allows for moving through challenging times. Despite the 8,149 days that I’ve served in prison, and the many friends (like Steve, David, and Justin) who have walked out of prison boundaries after serving a term of confinement, my own goals empower me to continue this long walk to freedom. In time, I know that I’ll walk out, too, and when it’s time for me to return to society, because I’ve prepared, I will emerge successfully.
This morning I ran 10 miles and followed with 300 pushups. Then I wrote letters to friends who’ve become like family to me.
[daily running log: 3,153 miles in 353 days]
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