The last days of the month are difficult for many prisoners and those who love them, because 300 minutes of telephone access just isn’t enough. Prior to the election of George Bush, prisoners did not have a telephone limitation. We could use the phone to call approved numbers whenever we were not locked in our cells. Bush’s more hard-nosed administrators thought our access to telephone needed to be curtailed in the interest of security. Since that decision, we’ve been limited to 300 minutes of telephone access each month.
Even though more than eight years have passed since Attorney Ashcroft’s Department of Justice made that change, I’ve still not gotten used to it. Because of the telephone limitation, I’ve limited myself to calling only my wife. I have to preserve our marriage, and since I’m limited to only one visit per week, I use all 300 minutes to keep our husband-and-wife connection alive. It feels like I’m hanging over a cliff by my fingertips, but each month’s passing brings one hand over the other as I inch to the other side.
At the end of the month, I don’t have any contact over the phone at all. When I dial my wife’s number, an automated message tells me I’ve used all my phone minutes. It’s very disturbing for both Carole and me, worse for my mother and sisters, because I never get to call them.
I had hoped that President Obama would appoint a new Director of the BOP, or I suppose Attorney General Eric Holder would make that appointment. I’d like to see someone in charge of this agency who understood the value of family and community relationships, someone who would recognize the value of telephone access. But we’re more than nine months into the Obama administration, and he’s been too busy with other national and global issues to bring his vision of change to the prisoners who live locked in American prisons.
Either way, tomorrow brings a new month, and when the telephones turn on at 6:05 in the morning, I’ll have a new bank of 300 phone minutes. I’ll splurge with a four or five minute call to Carole, and I’ll call her once again in the late afternoon. We’ll have to budget our minutes over the next 31 days in October, and I’ll try to refrain from burning up too many phone minutes early in the month in order to avoid the pain that comes from not being able to talk with my wife at the end of the month.
Toady I edited chapter eight, then I spent the day writing to people who are working with me in preparation for my release. Envisioning my life as a normal citizen is still challenging, as I can’t see beyond prison boundaries and obstructions, but I need to prepare for my release. This morning I ran 10 miles, increasing my tally to 2,596 miles over the past 292 days.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
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