Scenes of Prison
10. Bill Foster
I n 1979, the decision of the Nebraska Legislature to replace all the prisons in Nebraska reflected a recognition that our existing prisons could not provide humane living conditions for our inmates. Nebraska inmates lived in cages of steel bars and concrete, stacked one on top of the other, especially at the Men’s Reformatory. When inmates left these facilities, they were not rehabilitated, and they often returned to a life of crime. Too often, when they left prison, they were more dangerous than when they had arrived, anxious to try new crimes they had learned in prison.
The answer for the Legislature was to start over with new prisons and a new approach to managing the new prisons and correcting inmates’ criminal behavior.
The new prisons would be humane places to live. There would be no bars. No cages. Inmates would no longer live like animals. They would live in individual rooms and have some privacy, like normal people. Prison guards would be pulled back from daily contact with inmates and be replaced with unit caseworkers which was a new position created within the Department with responsibilities that overlapped security, counseling, and casework in an arrangement called Unit Management.
It all took shape during the summer. The new prison was nearly finished, and new employees were hired and meeting in the Cell House to organize themselves and practice their duties.
But outside, where the inmates gathered on the yard that stretched between the several buildings of the prison campus, outside the meeting room on the second floor of the Cell House where plans and decisions were being made and new duties practiced, outside in the inmate population, the inmates most affected by these changes were making up their own stories, and they were getting nervous. They were talking amongst themselves, scaring each other, and creating alarm.
At first, we knew nothing of it. We would soon find out the seriousness of their fears. The simmering emotions continued to build as the weeks passed.
By late summer, when the weather was brutally hot, and broken windows that would not be repaired dotted the large bank of windows facing the three-story rows of iron-bar cages.
In the hot, crowded Cell House, the prisoners were rapidly coalescing into a dangerous soup of roiling, contradicting emotions, and it was to this inmate population the Superintendent of the Men’s Reformatory addressed one morning to announce a target day and a procedure we would follow to accomplish the move into the new prison, the Lincoln Correctional Center, and to abandon the old Men's Reformatory.
The gleaming new prison was right there, just across the cornfield. Everyone could see it. It was white with red trimmed windows, air conditioning, and private rooms. No one would want to stay at the old Reformatory. No one would be reluctant to move into the new prison. Why would they?
If anyone consulted with the inmates and asked them if they wanted to move into the new prison, I hadn’t heard of it. It was ironic. The leaders implementing the new Unit Management system of corrections, which had an emphasis on including each inmate in important decisions regarding his imprisonment, had neglected to involve the inmates in this move. When we asked rhetorically who among us had tried to prepare the inmates for the move, we had to admit that we had missed a need.
A new prison!?
Moving!?
No cell mates!?
Inmates had personal hiding places where they kept their drugs and weapons. These would be left behind and lost. Many inmates also had cellmates who met some of the needs a spouse would fill. These pairings would all be separated, too.
As moving day approached, and inmate grumbling and milling about on the yard increased, the moment arrived one day when emotions finally settled into action. Suddenly, inmates began sitting down in the yard. A few at first, there were a few, then more, and finally all of them. The entire inmate population sat down in the yard and formed tightly packed racial patches, like the changing colors and patterns on the top of a pizza. They became a living mass of bodies sizzling in the noonday summer sun. They were surprisingly quiet as if they were worried about what we were going to do.
We were quiet, too. We worried about what they were going to do.
I’d only been working at the Reformatory a couple of months, and suddenly, without warning, I was in the midst of a sit-down strike. Security tried calling in the yard, but the inmates didn’t budge. They ignored the order. I was unsure what to do or what to expect. Were they about to riot? Would they take hostages? Start fires? I didn’t know. It occurred to me that I should run for cover, but then I spotted our Superintendent, Bill Foster, who had emerged from the Administration Building and began to walk among the inmates. I took my cue of what I should do from him.
Bill Foster was a tall man with a calm demeanor. He lived in a home located just outside the perimeter fence in a large shaded lot on the east side of the prison. He had been blinded in one eye years earlier when an inmate had attacked him with an iron pipe. When people saw his blinded eye and knew that he had returned to the prison after surviving the attack, they admired his courage. He was like a wounded soldier who returns to combat duty once he is able to return. On this day, dressed in his cowboy boots and Stetson, he appeared on the yard and strolled among the inmates sprawled out on the ground, and he listened to what they had to say. It was a courageous thing to do. They could have taken him hostage. They could have blinded his other eye. They could have taken all of us hostage. We were unarmed and badly outnumbered. The armed tower guards seemed far away. I stood and watched. We all just stood and watched.
After a while, Bill Foster began to zero in on particular inmates. He knew his prison, and he knew which inmates were influential. He picked out these inmates and chatted with them. Then, he invited them to go up to the new prison with him for a tour. It was an invitation none of them had ever before received, and a small bus load of inmates and guards soon left the grounds driving down the same dusty gravel road I had driven that led up to the prison.
On the yard, the inmates watched the bus carrying their leaders pull away from the gate. No one moved. Should they wait? Riot? Take hostages? Burn the place down? The air was electric with tension. Some inmates were restless and wanted to act right away. Others were reluctant, and they wanted to wait.
We waited.
In due time, the bus returned, and the inmates who had been to the new prison scattered into the throng of men sprawled out on the ground. The new prison was actually pretty nice, they reported. Some inmates rose to their feet. Others remained on the ground. Finally, a consensus emerged. They would give it a try. They would move into the new prison.
The inmates returned to their cells and began to pack their belongings. Trash cans quickly filled with items that could not be taken with them. The next day would bring the biggest change that any of them would experience while they were in prison. They would move into a brand new prison.
Beginning bright and early the next morning, security officers called individual inmates one at a time to a central meeting place, and they searched the inmate’s packed belongings. Finally, inmates took their turns carrying all their possessions, loading them onto buses, and settling themselves into seats for a ride to the new prison. They moved out of the old Men's Reformatory and into the brand new Lincoln Correctional Center.
The old Reformatory would be abandoned and stand empty for many years, deteriorating as the years went by. The new prison would become a buzz of activity before the day had ended. The kitchen would prepare supper, and unit staff would supervise the ten pantries in the new prison where the inmates ate their first meals. Finally, the inmates would settle themselves into their own air conditioned, private rooms for the night.
The old Reformatory was never like this.
Discussion
- Looking back, did you ever resist a change that turned out to be very beneficial? Why were you afraid?
Next |