Scenes of Prison
39. The Head Banger
B ANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
I was playing tennis at a park near Irving Middle School in Lincoln one day when rapid, loud, banging sounds drew my attention to a playground near the courts. School had recently let out, and middle school students were walking past the courts and toward the playground.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The loud sounds continued, and I became alarmed. Something violent was happening. Perhaps a student was being harmed, but the wind screens attached to the fence surrounding the courts obscured my view.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
I had to find out what was happening. I went to the side of the court for a closer view.
A boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen-years-old, was standing next to a slide on the playground. He repeatedly and viciously struck the middle of the slide with his closed, bare, right fist, while showing no signs of pain or of doing any damage to his hand (or to the slide). He was acting out some frustration from his day, taking it out on the slide, and soon enough, his hand would tell him that it could take no more abuse. It was an all-too-familiar sight for me. I had witnessed many, many similar outbursts among the inmates at the prison, where prisoners found other targets to help them release pent up frustration besides playground slides.
The walls and doors of our prison do not cushion the blows of closed fists struck against them with the strength of an adult male. Bones do fracture, and tissues do lacerate and bleed. Our medical people are well practiced in treating this kind of injury, and, fortunately, a period of weeks in a cast will allow most such injuries to heal. There was one young man, however, who had a different part of his body to abuse.
His name was Carl, and I met Carl at U-4, a room in our Disciplinary Segregation Unit. Carl had some mental health issues. When I visited with him, he was not reasonable in his conversation. He made demands, but he didn’t listen to any explanations that frustrated his desires. He knew what he wanted, and he cursed and paced in his Segregation cell in wide, striding steps when his demands weren’t met.
One day, I was forced to refuse some demand that he was certain I would grant. As I looked at his face through the windows of his closed room door, a wild look came over his eyes. Suddenly, he threw himself at the door and struck it with his forehead. His head struck the narrow space between the two long, narrow windows in the door. I was standing just outside the door, and I was surprised. I took a step back. I’d never seen this behavior. He stepped back, too, and then came at the door again.
WHAM! And again, WHAM! And yet again, WHAM!
Again and again he struck the door with his forehead! The door shuddered. It bent slightly with each blow. This was no closed fist! This blow carried the weight of his whole body behind it, and his forehead was the point of contact.
“Stop,” I cried. “You’re going to kill yourself!”
He did not stop. On and on it went.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Between each strike, he stepped back to put momentum on the next blow. Surely, he could not endure many more blows to his head.
Fortunately, we have medical and mental health staff on site who will respond to emergencies, and this was an emergency. Soon, very soon, I had a couple of experts up at his room working their magic to calm him down and save his head from suffering any more abuse.
Somehow, he got through the experience with no apparent damage, at least none I could see. Most likely, it was not the first time that he had tried to persuade someone with violent banging of his forehead against an obstacle. It also may not have been the last time. It’s possible that his mental illness was actually some sort of brain damage caused by previous assaults upon solid objects with his head. I didn’t know. These were all questions for the experts to consider.
One day, Carl left us, and I never saw him again.
Discussion
- Have you ever engaged in self-destructive behavior?
- Do you think committing crimes is a form of self-destructive behavior because it results in incarceration?
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