Scenes of Prison
47. "I'm Gonna Put a Curse on You . . ."
E very inmate who is sentenced to a specific number of years of incarceration has a tentative release date, a TRD. It’s the day when we will open the doors and release an inmate. Everyone watches the approach of these momentous days.
Staff try to adjust the conditions of confinement as these TRDs approach to help smooth the transition to life outside the prison. We do this by moving inmates to work release centers. At work release centers, inmates leave this facility during the day and work at a job in the community. But we aren’t always able to move inmates into one of these facilities. Everything we can do depends upon the inmate staying out of trouble as his TRD approaches. If he can’t do this, then he’ll be stuck right where he is inside the prison, and when he does leave prison, he’ll jam out. This is a slang term we use to refer to an inmate who will leave prison without any preparation.
Sparkie was an inmate who would jam out, and all the other inmates in his Unit were aware of it.
We always felt a little sorry for inmates who jammed out. We expected the transition to be hard for them, and we weren’t surprised in the coming days and weeks following such a release to read newspaper accounts of an inmate’s most recent crimes in the community. When we did, we would know that this person was on his way back to prison and would have a new sentence of confinement to complete.
Sparkie was going to jam out. It was going to be one day in the following week. He was excited and nervous, but he was unsure where he would go and what he would do when he got there. Our Department would buy him a bus ticket to anywhere he wanted to go, and we’d give him one hundred dollars gate money which he would add to any money he had on his account, but Sparkie couldn’t say where he was going to go. As the big day approached when Sparkie would be released and be a free man once again, Sparkie’s nerves began to encroach on the general peace and tranquility of the Unit, the Unit where he lived and I worked.
Sparkie was loud. If it had been a radio making all the noise, we could have told him to turn it down. We could have taken the radio, but it was Sparkie’s voice that was so loud. Very loud. And early mornings were the worst.
We broke deadlock and opened all the room doors at six-thirty in the morning, and this allowed the inmates to leave their rooms. It was the first time they’d been out of their rooms since the nine-o’clock deadlock count the previous evening. We started serving breakfast right away.
First thing in the morning, as soon as Sparkie emerged from his room, he loudly announced his presence. When he did, sleep for any of the other inmates who wanted to be undisturbed became impossible. I fielded many complaints, especially on the weekends. The inmates expected me to do something to quiet him, and I tried.
I spoke to Sparkie on many occasions. I used my best persuasion strategies. Nothing helped.
“Oh, Mister Larsen,” he said, “I can’t lower my voice. That’s just the way my people are.”
It appeared that we would all have to suffer until Sparkie jammed out the following week . . . that is, until the Sunday before his last week in prison, when something completely unexpected happened.
It was early Sunday morning. Most everyone was asleep and hoped to keep sleeping as long as possible through another long, uneventful weekend day. Sparkie emerged from his room as soon we opened the doors with loud, boisterous fanfare. He was unresponsive to my efforts to get him to lower his volume. Other inmates’ sleep had now been disturbed, and they began to slowly emerge grumbling from their rooms and complaining about Sparkie. I’d already spoken to him several times that morning, and finally, in exasperation, I said:
“Sparkie, I’m going to put a curse on you.”
“Ha!” he exclaimed, and he repeated my words amplifying them for all to hear.
“Larsen’s gonna put a curse on me!” he exclaimed and laughed. “That’s what he’s a gonna do.” He laughed and mocked me, and then he went about his normal early morning activities with loud fanfare making sure no one would be able to stay asleep.
But by mid-morning, a much quieter Sparkie approached me and said:
“Mister Larsen, you don't need to put a curse on me.”
Realizing that I might finally have a way to quiet him down, I said
“Well, that all depends upon you lowering the volume of your voice and letting other inmates sleep early in the morning.”
“Oh, Mister Larsen, I can’t do that,” he said. “That’s just the way my people are. We’re just naturally loud. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Okay,” I said. “But the curse is still on unless you can quiet yourself down.”
The next morning was a Monday. Sparkie would jam out on Thursday, and when Sparkie emerged from his room, he had a sore throat, and he wanted to go on sick call to see a nurse. I made the necessary arrangements, and when he returned, he had some medicine and some instructions to follow. But over the coming days, Sparkie didn’t improve. He was quiet at breakfast and lunch and at dinner, too! He was quiet on Tuesday and on Wednesday! He was even quiet as he left the Unit on Thursday for the last time. It appeared that my curse had worked.
“No, that’s impossible,” I thought. I talked it over with some other caseworkers. Curses are superstitious nonsense. There’s nothing to them. Then, I spoke with the nurse who had treated Sparkie.
“So that’s why he didn’t get better,” she said. “It was the power of suggestion.”
“Oh, dear. What have I done?” I thought.
The nurse thought it was possible that I had caused Sparkie’s sore throat, maybe even probable.
It’s been many years now. I don’t even remember Sparkie’s real name, but I wonder if he ever regained his loud voice, a voice he couldn’t control when it annoyed those around him. Maybe I did a real service for his family, friends, and co-workers. Still, I never again told an inmate that I was putting a curse on him.
Discussion
- The author used the power of suggestion to influence an inmate’s behavior. His success came as a surprise to him. Can you think of an example where you might deliberately use the power of suggestion to help another person?
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