Prison Propaganda

PRISON PROPAGANDA! PRISON PROPAGANDA! A prison employee in a suite yelled as we waited. There were no CO’s in sight (except for the one behind the window), the prison was completely dead from the outside. I had never seen the prison like this before. Every Thursday evening the lobby will be filled with prison volunteers and CO’s quickly rushing us along, and through the check-in process so that they won’t hold up the entire prison with the volunteers. This week was different. It was completely quite, it seemed like time was standing still.

As I cut through the silence like a doctor making his first incision… I knew something was wrong. I walked up to the man behind the window and gave him my driver’s license as always. He asked me what my number was... “C68, I think” – everything was normal so far. I was confused, I could feel the intensity – something clearly wasn’t right. As the CO behind the window finally passed me my visitor ID (after frantically searching for the right one)– he opens his mouth. Oh no here it comes! “It’s going to be about an hour wait before the CO’s get back to take you across the yard.” –What? An hour for what? Where are the CO’s? “The prison is on lock-down right now, all the CO’s are needed inside. There is no one to take you back, until they are finished back there you will just have to wait!” – For how long? –“At a minimum an hour, you can leave or you can wait. Who’s next?”

I walked away feeling as if my heart had just sunk in. I turned and look around. We have to wait now. I explained the situation to my fellow volunteers. No one knew what to do. There are not chair to wait in the lobby of the prison. Will we stand for an hour? I slowly backed myself against the wall and sunk down to the floor. As my body hit the ground I began to think about the prisoners. What if we don’t get in this week? What if someone is beating them? What if someone is hurt? A riot… what cause the riot? What if they think we are forgetting them this week? If we can’t get in someone has to let them know that we were here! Oh no…

PRISON PROPAGANDA! PRISON PROPAGANDA! The prison employee in the suit was walking around with a prison news letter. He was handing it out to everyone as we waited. He so politely shoved the news letter into our faces. Prison propaganda huh? I opened the news letter and began to glance over the article. Most of the articles were about prison programs, ones like the GED or the College program that volunteers like us were there for. I skimmed over some of the articles. They bored me, we spent the rest of the hour learning numbers and different languages, and having political conversations. About an hour or so later, we had stopped watching the clock because time really doesn’t exist in the prison.

The CO’s suddenly reappeared and began herding us through the security procedures. When we finally got to the other side of the prison, in the school building, we began to take down chairs and set up our classroom. At that time we were told that we would have to wait another 45 minutes before the prisoners would be allowed into the room for our weekly sessions. The guard apologized and left us all to wait. With 20 minutes left for our tutoring session the inmates slowly began to trickle in.

Everyone seemed a little off today, and the class was unusually large. Every single person on the roster was in class today – we barely had enough chairs. I must admit this was a little intimidating, especially because there were a lot of new faces. 20 minutes wasn’t enough time to make a connection… well maybe...

The class ended… our 20 minute discussion of Haiku’s was successful. As we slowly walked down the hallway of the school… like clockwork the lights turned out as we exited to walk across the yard, and leave the prison. As I began to look around at all the men standing in the yard, I began to wonder… a riot in the prison… a lockdown…

What could have caused it? “PRISON PROPAGANDA, PRISON PROPAGANDA” – he said.