Prison Camp: Daily Life
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
Following are more depictions of daily prison life which I’ve been publishing for the past few weeks. Prison strips life down to routines and fragments. These excerpts from my essay, Becoming an Inmate, reflect some of the small worlds that emerge inside a federal prison camp.
Recreation
I walked the track mostly. The main prison in the foreground: its long, looming profile, the barbed wire surrounding it, and the cars in the huge parking lot flashing light on nice days, the crumbling structure of the recreation area in its foothills, decaying like the camp’s interior. There was a field in the middle of the track, overgrown, and a baseball field, a fallow wreck of dirt. But for the inmates, it’s still an escape of sorts, an amenity even. The track, reduced to a crumbling path of ash and mud, remains every inmate’s daily prayer. In any weather, solo, in pairs, groups even, running, walking (most popular), guys in the dog program walking their dogs, picking up their poop along the way and even once in a while, this one inmate walking with a guitar playing and composing and always, Crazy Lou with his wild routine of stopping every fifty feet or so, leaning to the right and left and spitting.
There was some basketball play. Less than I thought. The court not bad. No one very good. Sometimes 20 or more back-and-forths before a basket. It looked like form over substance. Baseball the same. Except the Spanish guys liked to challenge a team of ‘others.’ Balls through the wickets, ground ball home runs, outfielders dashing in and dashing out, plenty of arguments and shouting. Bocci had a following, as did horseshoes. Same guys at handball. And the hardwood, dented, damaged picnic tables that guys used to exercise on: pushups, sit-ups, and the like. Some creative moves I couldn’t figure out. The workout trailer had two treadmills and an aerobic machine, vintage 1955. Barbells are not allowed in federal prisons. Fear by the staff, I’m told.
In the early days, I walked with Steve for a few months before he departed. After, I walked alone, talking to myself, as had become my way with just my radio most of the time. There was a Native American area. A teepee and all. Always some fires burning there. Steve said the guys were there mainly to smoke. A rag-tag fence of fragile planks surrounds the teepee. A sign in front: “Only Native Americans allowed.” No one there looked like an Indian.
Entertainment
The time before the final count was the dreaded hour. The longest hours of every day. Ironic that the war stories got me through. Its own separate trauma. You’d think in prison, something else would carry you. Maybe it was just me.
Every night at seven. It was called adult education, which assured a small crowd. Only a few as desperate as me. I couldn’t get enough of it. Ken Burns and his wars: The Civil War, World War II, and finally Vietnam, the war of my time and place. But all the same. Pillage and dying.
In Nam, it was charging and taking hills, only to withdraw because there was nothing there. So they’d retreat, leaving only remnants of dead trees and Vietnamese bodies (they’d take their own dead) or invading villages and only old couples and children, the enemy, but kill them just the same, and endless back and forth, capturing and retreating with no tangible outcomes, only continual battles that provided neither victory nor consequence. Only the next day, more fighting and dying assured.
And then we watched the Civil War, the worst kind of dying: lying wounded in open fields, limbs turning gangrene, or worse, some unskilled soldier sawing off your leg with no anesthesia, or bludgeoned and bleeding slowly to death. And the battles: lines of men charging at each other in open fields, shooting at each other point-blank until more of the other side would fall, retreat, and then do it again in an hour or the next day. After a while, it’s hard to believe they remembered what they were fighting for.
World War II at least brought some context. But still brutal, more dying and trauma. I’d leave those meetings in a daze. The interviews, the words of all those dying men, wouldn’t leave me. But I’d go back every night. Looked forward to it. They’re still there. It was the only prescription for me.
I’m in prison, looking for answers. And all I found was war and death. A cleansing, somehow. I haven’t figured out what that says about me. But it’s probably not good.
Reading
Mostly old news from the major journals: WSJ, NY Times, Post, all the Boston papers. Guys pass them to their friends. A kind of pecking order emerges. All the issues are late. At first, you care. Important in the beginning. News back home and the like. Eventually, it’s less and less. After a while, I stopped reading them. My eyesight’s fading didn’t help.
In the library, I found New England papers from towns I never heard of. I read their obituaries, the best place to discover a world. Lives that read like 1955, some other America than the one I know. Surprising comfort from those. You grasp at straws in prison.
My daughter sent me The New Yorker. For books, I’d scour the computer room’s selections for large-print volumes. Not a great collection. A lot of Stephen King and James Patterson. I found Elena Ferrante surprisingly. Must have been somebody before I arrived. No one I met would read that. The library was mostly like the back of CVS. And nothing in any order. Once an inmate organized them. But a CO on a rampage one morning dumped all the books on the floor, and that was that.
My sister sent me some large print I could read. It was a battle. And then when I could find something with print large enough to read. It would be too cold to stay in my bunk and read. Nothing’s easy in prison.
Television
The remote was everything. Ralph controlled it in the big room. It moved around in the kitchen. My bunkie Mike started a war over that one. Put him in the SHU eventually. I never went near it. Watched it less and less and missed it less and less.
Only my radio, after lights out, huddled in my bunk, earphones glued to my ears, blocking the sounds of the dorm and the Spanish guys praying, provided the solace I craved.
Games
The game room was part of the dorm. Plastic tables, all beaten up and cracked. No chairs. Inmates would have to bring the chairs from their bunks. It was a noisy place at night. Lots of shouting, arguing, laughing too, but mostly shouting.
In my first weeks at camp, my bunk was right next to that room. An inmate named Outlaw (his real name) played poker every night and fought with somebody every night. Seemed like he would jump up at the end of every hand, throw down his cards, and “Mother fuck” everyone in the room. And he was loud and scary. He was gone early after I arrived. Guys told me he wasn’t a bad guy. Glad I never had to find out.
Cards and chess were the favored games. Poker games most nights. A lot of gambling, mostly for commissary items. A poker elimination game the most popular. Ten, twelve guys playing poker. The last two would share the pot. That was always a noisy game. Lots of laughing, kibitzing, and arguing. The older white guys played gin or pinochle. No Bridge at Devens. At least I never saw it.
There was a lot of chess. Two guys, especially, played almost every day. A former white-collar doctor, indicted for prescription violations, and a black street guy who looked like Richard Pryor had a lot of his personality as well. They went back and forth, their games loud and contentious. Despite that, they bunked together. Couldn’t have been a more unlikely pair.
I liked Picket. Couldn’t stand the doctor. A weird guy. He stole several quarts of milk every morning at breakfast. (Who does that?) He was serving twenty years. Who’s to know what that does to you?
If this piece resonated with you, consider sharing it or leaving a comment. To support this work and help spread awareness about justice reform for white-collar defendants, subscribe to White-Collar Journal and stay connected. John DiMenna is a member of the White Collar Support Group.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison
If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.
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If this piece resonated with you, consider sharing it or leaving a comment. To support this work and help spread awareness about justice reform for white-collar defendants, subscribe to White-Collar Journal and stay connected. John DiMenna is a member of the White Collar Support Group.
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