Scenes of Prison
52. Lessons learned by Bruising
I t was a cold morning, and the exercise yard had been shoveled clean. Four or five inches of new snow had fallen overnight on an ice-covered, concrete yard, but now, in the early morning light, only the icy surface remained with a light dusting of wind-blown snow sprinkled on top. Piles of recently shoveled snow lay in hard, frozen heaps around the perimeter.
A few inmates ambled slowly on the ice going nowhere in particular while doing their best to stay warm as they milled around. It was cold, but it was fresh air, and they were outside. They could tolerate it, at least for a while. I was watching through the large windows of the warm pantry that looked down on the compound below.
Suddenly, there were loud voices on the yard, followed by fighting postures which led to punches being thrown. Henry, a young inmate whom I knew very well, was fighting with another inmate. I rushed down the stairs and out into the compound to stop them.
“Stop fighting,” I shouted as I rushed toward them. I wanted to stop them before anyone got hurt, but a surprise was waiting for me on the yard.
As I began to run, in an instant, my feet had no traction on the icy surface, and I found myself hurtling backwards. First, there was just the clear blue sky which now appeared directly in front of me. Then came the “thud” of my head and body hitting the pavement. I landed flat on my back, but I had been running when I fell, so I slid into the fighting inmates, flat on my back, with my legs pointing straight up at the sky.
The inmates stopped fighting immediately when I slid into them and stared down at me on the ground. They were unsure what to do next. I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could, and I carried on with the task at hand. There would be no more fighting today. Both inmates were too busy laughing at me and helping me get up to remember why they had been fighting. Fortunately, I wasn’t seriously hurt. A few aches and pains, and a bump on my head.
Lesson learned: make sure it’s safe to respond to an emergency before you act. You help no one if you merely become another victim who needs attention and care.
Another learning experience for me occurred soon after transferring to E Unit. It all started with cigarettes.
One day, three inmates came to me with a complaint. Another inmate was going into their rooms and stealing their cigarettes. There was proof of it, too, they insisted.
“Just go into his room and look inside his pack of cigarettes,” they said. “You’ll see that the brand of the cigarettes inside the pack doesn’t match the brand outside on the package. That’s because they’re our cigarettes,” they said, “and he stole them.”
It was an appealing mission. I’d arrive on the scene of the crime while the evidence was fresh, and I’d play the role of the local sheriff riding to the rescue to capture the thief red-handed and give the stolen items back to their rightful owners. Unfortunately for me, I did exactly what they hoped I would do. I went into his room, with the thief watching at the door, and I found the cigarettes just as the inmates had described. He’d been caught red-handed.
Suddenly, the thief rushed into the room, picked me up, and hurtled me backwards into the wall behind his bed. One moment, I was the triumphant sheriff holding the stolen cigarettes in my hand, and the next, I was sitting where I had landed on the inmate's bed with a threatening inmate shouting insults, curses, and warnings at me, cigarettes scattered on the floor. There were no other co-workers anywhere nearby, and I had no way to summon help. We did not carry radios at this time. He hadn’t hit me, yet, so I wasn’t injured. I was terrified, but I prepared myself for a fight. The pen in my hand became a hard pointed weapon gripped tightly in my right fist. My legs curled up to my chest with my heavy shoes poised ready to strike upward toward the face and chest of my attacker like a rattlesnake prepared to strike. Other inmates began gathering around the door to observe what was happening, and they began to urge the inmate to engage me and continue the attack.
“Hit him again. Hit him again,” said one.
“You’re going to the Control Unit anyway,” said another. “You might just as well do some more damage. You wouldn’t get any worse penalty if you do.”
I was frightened, but I spoke to the inmate, too. I used soothing language, and I tried to calm him down. I suggested that he not listen to this encouragement to continue attacking me. Thankfully, he didn’t. He gathered his stolen cigarettes from the floor, closed and locked me into his room and then went outside to the yard. Soon enough, my supervisor appeared at the door and let me out. Security caught up to the inmate on the yard, and he was locked up in our Control Unit with a charge of assaulting staff.
I wasn’t injured, but I was shaken, and I learned several lessons that day. Inmates can be dangerous. Don’t try any heroics, especially when you are alone with dozens of inmates all around you. Beware inmates manipulating you to become their weapon when they want to get rid of another inmate. Finally, caseworkers need to carry two-way radios with emergency alerts (fortunately, they did give us radios). It was a painful way to learn lessons about prison.
Another learning experience for me involved an inmate named Larry.
Larry was a small man in his mid fifties. He was serving a forever sentence, and he had been locked up since he was a young man. He was mentally ill, but his mental illness had been controlled by strong psychotropic medication which he had taken every day for many years. Unfortunately, this medication had made him lethargic, and years of lethargy had created a stooped, weak, soft-as-a-kitten physical presence.
Larry kept to himself. He wasn’t a problem for anyone, so it came as a surprise to me one day when I heard loud voices and found Larry in the middle of an angry exchange of words with another inmate. It didn't last long. Larry turned away from the confrontation and quickly retreated to his room and closed the door, and that was the end of it. There was nothing for me to do.
Later in the day, I went to his room and spoke to him. I reminded him of the incident, and I complimented him on how he had handled himself, and, for some long-forgotten reason, this came out of my mouth.
“You don’t look like much of a fighter to me,” I said.
Big mistake.
We finished our conversation, and I left and resumed other duties. An hour or two passed, and I was walking out of the pantry away from Larry’s side of the Unit.
Suddenly, someone jumped up onto my back and began punching the side of my head. A quick shrug, and a quick turn, and I found Larry standing perfectly still with his hands at his sides facing me. He wasn’t sure what to do next.
“So I don’t look like much of a fighter, eh?” he said, but his voice had little bravado in it.
There was no more fight left in Larry. He eagerly complied with my order to get down on the floor and put his arms behind his back. I think he was afraid that I might hit him if he refused.
I was not injured, and Larry was soon led off the Unit in handcuffs. He would spend the next few weeks in our Control Unit.
As I thought about Larry later in the day, I imagined he had a very different scene in mind as he approached me from behind. In his imagination, he would leap high into the air, and his arrival on my back would cause me to stagger and fall forward. With me face down on the floor and Larry on top of me, Larry would curl his left arm tightly around my neck, and with powerful blows with his right fist to the right side of my head, he would reduce me to a bloody pulp. He would have to be dragged off of me, and I would know for sure that this Larry was some kind of a dangerous fighter, one bad dude!
Of course, that’s not what happened. His short, overweight, weak-as-a-kitten frame managed only to climb part way up my back and deliver only a couple of weak punches before he found himself face-to-face with someone who was bigger, taller, stronger, faster, and younger than he was. It was no surprise that he didn't want to fight and was eager to get down on the floor and put his arms behind his back before he got hurt.
The lesson? Don’t say anything to an inmate that might challenge his manhood and make him want to prove you wrong. If he wants to think of himself as a bad dude, let him.
Lesson learned.
There was also a learning moment that involved Dan.
Poor Dan. Dan was also mentally ill, but his mental illness was not well controlled. Dan was more of a basket case than Larry. Our psychiatrist did his best to manage his medications to keep his hallucinations at bay. Sometimes, they were effective, but mostly, they weren’t. I would find poor Dan anxiously watching something no one else could see. Once, it was throngs of large, black spiders pouring over the top of his toilet and onto the floor of his room. Dan could say to himself: “This isn’t real,” but it sure seemed real to Dan. It was a daily struggle, and I felt sorry for him.
One day, I was sitting quietly in the pantry looking to my left at activity occurring on that side of the Unit when I felt a mild touch to the right side of my chin. I wasn’t expecting it, and it took me a moment to realize that I had been punched. It was the kind of punch that a parent might deliver to a child to invite some rough-house play. I wasn't hurt. I looked to my right, and I stood to face my attacker, and there was Dan, standing with his arms at his sides, with no interest in having a fistfight with me.
“I wanna go to the hole,” he said, mournfully.
“We have a hole, our Control Unit,” I said.
Our Control Unit is a serious lock up where we take uncontrollable inmates, especially ones who have assaulted staff. Only the most uncontrollable inmates ever see the inside of the Control Unit, but if you go there, other inmates won’t bother you, and that’s what Dan wanted. Dan needed a break from all these other people who surrounded him all day every day. They provided overwhelming stimulation for Dan. The “hole” was his answer. He wanted a little isolation to clear his head.
“Well, Dan,” I said. “That’s where you’re going to go.”
Soon, Dan was led off of our Unit in handcuffs and went to the Control Unit.
A few weeks passed, and Dan returned to our Unit. I checked him back into his old room, and Dan was very apologetic about his actions.
“I’m sorry I hit you, Mister Larsen,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I hope you’re not mad at me.”
I assured him I held no grudges, and I resumed my normal duties.
It was mid-morning when I next saw Dan, or rather, the next time I felt Dan. Once again, I felt the slight punch on the right side of my chin when I was looking the other direction, and, once again, I turned to my right and rose to my feet and faced Dan whose arms were now at his sides with no interest in fighting.
“Not again, Dan,” I said.
“I wanna go back to the hole,” he cried mournfully.
It was pitiful.
“Okay,” I said, so Dan went back to the Control Unit once again.
So, what’s the lesson? I’m not sure. Don’t look to your left when Dan is on your right?
I last saw Dan outside the prison at the entrance of a municipal swimming pool in central Lincoln. It was in the summer several years later. He had been released from prison, and he was living in a sheltered setting. His sheltered community was on an outing to go swimming, and it was probably the first time he’d been swimming in many years, perhaps ever. He looked good. His psychiatrist must have prescribed the optimum combination of drugs for him to look this good.
“Hi, Dan,” I said, walking up to him. “You’re looking real good.” Dan responded with a big grin and nothing more. Still, it made me smile to see him.
In thirty-five years at the prison, there were a few other bruising learning experiences.
I learned that an outstretched hand will not prevent an inmate from flushing contraband down a toilet if he thinks he can avoid the consequences of being caught with a forbidden substance hidden in his sock. The incident involved an inmate who was bigger, stronger, younger, and quicker than I was. He was naked, he had stripped to his socks during a search, but that didn’t slow him down. I got a broken finger and a lesson from the encounter: don’t use force if you’re sure to lose.
Discussion
- Are there any lessons you have learned the hard way - by suffering a physical injury? What are they?
- Have you ever experienced violence on the job? Have you ever been injured? Do you suffer from PTSD?
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