Prison Camp: Becoming an Inmate
A Forum for Stories of Incarceration, Justice, and Redemption
On certain days, prison feels like the afterlife, on other days, like a typical work day, and on most days, a bad dream enduring the slow torture of meaningless, menial tasks. I lived among one hundred other inmates, more wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.
I was assigned to a satellite camp at FMC Devens, a regional prison north of Boston, formerly a military base where the Spanish flu began. Federal prison camps represent the lowest level of security in the Bureau of Prisons’ system. Camp facilities are not like traditional prisons. There are no cells, or bars, or perimeter walls to climb. They are more like military barracks where inmates reside in a dormitory. Residents there are primarily non-violent offenders and others who have earned a place there based on good behavior at higher security institutions. Most were close to their release date and motivated not to cause trouble. It was a diverse group of inmates, including drug dealers, gang members, violent offenders, and white-collar criminals. The Bureau of Prisons— BOP in inmate parlance—is the federal agency that manages the entire federal prison system and the community of criminals who have violated federal laws. Its mission is purportedly to protect the community and reclaim the criminal citizenry—the measure of its viability as a social institution. Unfortunately, like most bureaucracies, its primary mission has become its own preservation. For inmates, the BOP is an all-encompassing amalgam of every oppressive institution that has confronted them during their lifetimes, whether familial, academic, religious, or governmental authority. And for many, its authority extended to their funeral and burial. At Devens, the cemetery for departed inmates lay next to the camp’s recreation area, perfect rows of pure white crosses. An eerie tableau and a portent of things to come.
The camp was only a short distance from the main prison, a regional medical prison that treated criminals of all ages and crimes. Many of them were elderly and critically ill, and many died there. Inmates of the camp who violated camp protocols were relocated to the main prison, a frightening prospect that fostered good behavior at the camp. Relocations to the main prison often resulted in time in the Shoe, a euphemism for solitary confinement in dungeon-like conditions. Many inmates who were relocated there never returned to the camp, and their period of release was often delayed. The camp facility comprised a low-lying industrial building resembling a giant storage shed and a crumbling recreation area adjacent. It was situated in the middle of a former golf course. The golf course had been an amenity for the servicemen at the military base. Remnants of fairways and cutouts of greens were visible from the recreation area. Tall pine trees surrounded the camp’s perimeter, but through them, the main prison was visible, separated by a sunken area of shrubs, old fairways from the golf course and a narrow brook that was probably a water hazard for golfers. It was a long building of concrete block, no windows and three tiers of barbed wire. The gnarled circles flashed their steel teeth day and night, more frightening in the night light, their true fierceness revealed. In daylight, the barbed wire disappears into the background. But in the early evening, when the lights came on, those circles flashed bright, their shiny, unmistakable message that you were a prisoner. We’re here to hurt you, and you’re not getting out. A vast parking lot beside the building was acres of black pavement. The steel glint from hundreds of parked cars flashed its own message, the depth of staff there and its overwhelming numbers to preserve our confinement.
The camp building was initially constructed to house seventy-two inmates, but by the time I arrived, it housed one hundred and twenty-eight, all cramped into tiny cubicles in an open-floor environment of approximately ten thousand square feet. Decay was pervasive there. Mold in the showers, broken urinals and sinks, frayed sheets, stained blankets, dented lockers, a foul smell in the bathrooms and a mossy film everywhere. The dorm for inmates was a maze of dark corridors and cubicles that were more barracks than dorm. From a bird’s-eye view, it resembled an experiment for mice. Fluorescent lights hung from exposed steel beams and iron pipes, some bulbs always missing or flashing. The pods were eight by seven feet, six feet high and had no privacy. Each cubicle housed two inmates with a bunk bed, two low-lying lockers, two plastic chairs and a narrow drawer that fit under the bunks. Every surface was hard: cinder block walls, plastic chairs, steel beds and concrete floors. Windows that surprisingly opened lined the perimeter. But more of a curse than a benefit, and a source of conflict in the winter months. A series of fans hung on the interior walls in no particular configuration. They were turned on day and night in every season. In winter, they shaded the sound of illegal cell phones. In the summer, they were a source of conflict: “Fan-wars,” named by the inmates to describe the battles to determine the direction of the fans during the oppressive days of summer. There was no Air Conditioning. Some inmates couldn’t sleep without that noise, and others complained bitterly. I slept regardless. In prison, sleep was the only balm.
The above excerpt is from an essay, “White Collar Prison,” published in Minutes Before Six, a literary journal that features work by writers with lived experience in incarceration.
🔗 Read the full essay here
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Homecoming The struggle to reenter the community
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/verse continued. Fragmented reflections from inside
Sunday (Prison Camp): Becoming an Inmate The Brotherhood, profiles and coded alliances.