I had to see what was on that piece of paper. It might be gang information. It might be notes about an assault or an escape. This wasn’t a power play. It was about obtaining information from an inmate who was trying to hide it. I glanced at the wall clock; it was 10:50 A.M. In ten minutes, the inmates would head downstairs for lunch. They would go directly to their cells, where they would be locked in, counted, and then wait for lunch to be served.
I tried again. I quietly and respectfully asked the inmate to accompany me to the hallway.
Depending on how he answered, this situation could have unfolded in several ways. In a best-case scenario, he would agree to follow me out to the empty hallway. Another likely possibility is that he would simply refuse. In that case, I would go to Plan B: wait. His actions were not affecting the immediate security of the institution, and with lunch fast approaching, staff could watch him for ten minutes to make sure he didn’t pass the sheet of paper to anyone else or destroy it. We could shut off the water in his room so he couldn’t flush the paper down the toilet. Once all the inmates were safely locked in their cells, staff could enter his room and obtain the material. He would then quietly be taken to Segregation. This wasn’t about an immediate victory. It wasn’t about who was the toughest. It was about safety–the safety garnered by retrieving that piece of paper, and the safety assured by preventing a group disturbance. We would get done what had to be done, but in a safe and patient manner. Remember, we hold all the cards.
In a worst-case scenario, he would become aggressive and violent. In that case, we would remove him from the library by force. This was always a possibility, though unlikely.
Thankfully, the mysterious sheet of paper did not cause a riot in the library that day. The inmate followed me out to the hallway, where I advised him that there is nothing “personal” in a prison. Respectfully, I asked him to retrieve the paper and bring it to me. He did as directed.
It turned out to be a simple letter to his girlfriend. It wasn’t critical to prison security, nor did it contain information that placed anyone’s life in danger. It didn’t contain escape plans or gang information. It was just a love letter. He should not have had it during school, so I directed him to give it to the instructor, which he did. The potentially explosive incident was over.
In the same situation, some officers would have insisted on seeing the sheet of paper right there in the library. It would have been a macho duel. They would have wanted to control the inmate by forcing him into immediate submission, when in fact their insistence would have created a less-controlled situation.
We hold all the cards. We can lay them down right away, all at once, and feel a brief, petty surge of pride over beating the empty-handed. Or we can hold onto them–less satisfying for the ego, perhaps, but much healthier for the environment of a prison. The bottom line is we always win.
Once, in a crowded dormitory in another facility, I saw an officer standing toe to toe with an inmate, screaming at him. He was trying–and failing–to take the inmate to Segregation. It was a precarious battle for supremacy. The officer, oblivious to the consequences, wanted to show the inmate who was boss. He cared more about his power and manhood than the safety of the group. His training had escaped him, and we were all about to pay for it.
As superintendent, I intervened and ordered the officer out of the area. He was furious. I instructed him to go down to the Captain’s office and, via intercom, ask the inmate to report to the office. The inmate reported as directed. When he arrived, five officers escorted him to Segregation without a hitch.
If the inmate had not come downstairs as directed, force may have been necessary, but we would have first cleared the dormitory of the other inmates. There is no reason to take a hostile inmate out with twenty inmates present, nor did we need to move him with just one officer to show our toughness. It takes several officers to safely control an aggressive inmate. In fact, it’s critical to accomplishing a goal without incident.
The bottom line was, in a short time, the inmate would be in Segregation. That was a given. How we got him there was flexible so long as no one got hurt. In the end, he went on our terms and in a responsible, safe manner.
Warden Frank Wood once told me of a potentially serious situation he had experienced. Early in his career, Wood worked in a juvenile institution. One day, he was working alone in a severely understaffed area. A young inmate became aggressive, destroying his cell and verbally abusing staff. He needed to be removed from his cell and taken to Segregation.
The boy refused all directives and prepared for battle. He told Wood, “You’re in for the fight of your life.”
“Look,” Wood said calmly, “we can go to Segregation your way, or we can go quietly and cooperatively, my way. That will be up to you. It may take longer your way, and there may be some difficulty in getting there. However, I do know one thing for sure, and there is absolutely no question about this. At 3:30 this afternoon, I will be going home. And when I walk out that front door, you will be in Segregation. There is no doubt about this. You know it and I know it.”
The boy was smart enough to see the truth in Wood’s words. He went cooperatively. Wood held all the cards and played them right.
A few years after Oak Park Heights opened, Governor Rudy Perpich scheduled a tour. Frank Wood was warden at the time, and I was his executive assistant. A reliable snitch told us inmate Edwin Macalester was bragging he would confront the governor and tell him the truth about the way Wood ran the prison.
The day of the tour, Wood did not remove Macalester from the Industry Unit for the day or confine him in his cell. He said he would deal with Macalester when the time came. The Governor arrived and the tour began well. As they entered the shop, Wood asked the governor to come with him. They walked directly up to Macalester.
“Mr. Macalester,” Wood said, “I would like you to meet Governor Perpich. I understand that you have some things to say to the governor about how I am running the prison. Well, here he is.”
Macalester stammered and fell all over himself trying to get a word out. He was practically incoherent with amazement. At best, he put a couple of words together but made no sense at all. Wood played that card well.
Timing is everything. I recall several years ago at the medium-security facility at Lino Lakes, Minnesota, staff played their cards too soon.
The incident occurred in the open dining area during the noon meal. An inmate standing in line accidentally dropped his piece of chicken on the floor. When he was told he couldn’t get another piece until everyone had been served, he threw a tantrum, screaming and threatening kitchen staff.
He needed to be disciplined and sent to Segregation, but the smart thing to do would have been to wait until after lunch. A couple of seasoned inmates would have guessed what was in store for the disruptive inmate–veterans usually understand who holds the cards. The inmate could have been instructed to remain at his table until the room was clear. Then the Security Squad could have escorted him to Segregation without an audience and without incident.
Unfortunately, staff did not wait. The squad entered the packed dining room to remove the disorderly inmate by force. The inmate became even more aggressive and hostile. Worse, the other inmates grew belligerent. Even after the inmate was gone, the dining hall simmered with discontent.
Luckily, the situation did not explode into a full-blown riot, but it easily could have. Remember that inmates in a high-security institution are used to settling their problems by violence. There is no reason to give them an opportunity to act out. There is no reason to show who’s in charge. We are always in charge.
One day, a hostile inmate ambushed a staff member in the Industry Unit. Waiting for the officer to turn his back, the inmate struck him on the head with a hammer, and the man went down like a bowling pin. Other officers rushed the inmate before he could strike again, and we immediately hustled him off to Segregation and issued a unit lockup. Not wanting to get involved, the other inmates reported to
their cells, and the unit was secured.
After a serious incident like this, standard procedure requires two formal processes. First, we investigate the incident and determine whether or not to pursue outside felony prosecution. Second, we assess the unit as a whole. Before we can release the inmates from their cells, we need to determine the extent of the problem.
In this instance, unit supervisors interviewed each inmate in the unit three times; they determined the offender acted alone. They recommended ending lockup the following morning and opening the unit for regular programming.
If we had kept the unit on lockup, it would have been for the wrong reasons. The assault was an isolated act by a single foolish inmate, and opening the unit would cause no further problems. Re-opening the unit, although unpopular among staff, was the right decision.
Some of the staff reacted with disbelief: one of their own had been struck down by an inmate with a hammer, and they could be next. The assault was serious, and they demanded punishment. Although no other inmates were involved in this isolated assault, the us-versus-them mentality rose to a high level, and officers wanted all the inmates punished for a crime of which just one was guilty. But that tactic doesn’t work in the free world, and it certainly wasn’t going to work now in a supermax prison.
We hold all the cards. When we play them fairly, we gain the respect of inmates and the assurance of a safe environment. The successful operation of a prison comes from understanding what you are capable of doing, and knowing when and how to wield that power.
One time, we were forced to make an unpopular policy change: due to severe budget constraints, the prison would be locked down on weekends. After the announcement, I visited a unit and asked a long-term federal inmate how the other inmates had reacted. This inmate had killed three times inside other facilities, but his stay at Oak Park Heights had been peaceful–so far. He said most inmates accepted the lockdown, but one young inmate had come to him and excitedly asked what they were going to do about it.
“You are going to go to your cell,” the federal inmate said, “shut your mouth, and be thankful they didn’t take more from us.”
He knew who held the cards.
Sentenced to Life
One day, a seventeen-year-old boy arrived at the Oak Park Heights prison. This kid looked like your all-American boy with his crew- cut blond hair and brilliant blue eyes. And he was just a boy; I figured he was barely old enough to shave. But that didn’t mitigate what he had done. First degree murder was the verdict and life was the sentence.
In Minnesota, first degree murderers may be sentenced to life, but several changes were made to the law over the years. When I began my career, lifers became eligible for parole after seventeen years of incarceration. In 1989, two provisions were added to state law. The first statute extended the minimum life sentence to thirty years before parole eligibility. Now, here I was facing this teenager bearing a life sentence and no chance of parole for thirty years. I couldn’t help looking at this kid and thinking, he’ll be a forty-seven-year-old man before he is first even considered for parole.
The second statute denied parole in certain cases, such as the murder of a police officer or the sexual assault of a murder victim. Not long after the seventeen-year-old showed up at Oak Park Heights, another offender arrived. I asked him about his sentence. It really hit me when he responded.
“I’m here for the rest of my life,” he said.
Lifers are an unusual lot. They are different from other inmates, and if given the choice, I’d prefer a prison population composed solely of lifers. It might sound senseless to want to house those who commit the most serious crimes, but they are generally the best-behaved inmates. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because they age within the rigorous control of a prison. Over the years, they seem to mature into acceptance of their situation. Many take on a leadership role, setting a positive example of compliance for other inmates.
Such was the case with lifer Theodore M. Walsh. He had been on death row in a Florida prison, and boasted the incredible credentials of having escaped from prison while awaiting his execution. His capture ensured that he would never be free again. He was now doing time at Oak Park Heights on an interstate transfer.
Walsh was an interesting character. A massive, powerful man, he had grown soft and flabby during his long years in a cell. Still, he always wore a smile and was pleasant to be around–even if he was a murderer who had once been sentenced to death for his crime. As warden, I knew Walsh well during his stay at Oak Park Heights. He made many positive changes in his life, even as the years in prison took their toll on his health. He always found a way to aid other offenders. He helped them in school, counseled them in the units, and set an example of how to turn the drudgery of years in prison into something positive.
When Oak Park Heights implemented the Choices program a few years ago, it seemed tailor-made for Walsh. Choices was an innovative counseling program that brought high-risk juvenile delinquents from a state and county correctional facility into the prison. For two-hour sessions on five consecutive Tuesdays, offenders educated the juveniles about life in prison and counseled them to make the right choices. Each of the five sessions focused on a specific message. The five or six offenders involved in the program had spent the majority of their lives in prison. They had little hope of release, and several, including Walsh, faced life without chance of parole. Under controlled and secure conditions, these dangerous offenders valiantly attempted to convince the youngsters they had choices in life–including the choice to stay out of prison.
From the beginning, Walsh threw himself into the program. His talks were incredible, and he was passionate in his conviction that he could get the kids on the right track. He told the juveniles about his life, the many mistakes he made, and where they led him. He compared the choice to stay crime-free to other choices in life. “If you were told to quit eating a certain vegetable because it was killing you,” he argued, “you’d stop.” But, he said, they didn’t seem able to stop doing something else that would kill them. He told these juvenile delinquents that they each had “criminal cancer” and would die in prison. They ingest it everyday, he said, and it would ultimately lead to their death–unless they chose to stay crime-free. They listened and they learned from Ted Walsh.
He told them about the directives, the memos, the rules, the regulations, the policies, the procedures, and all that goes with the loss of control in prison. He described the memo notifying inmates that the entire prison would be locked on Christmas Day and the closed-circuit television in the cells would air nothing but It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart–just one less choice in prison.
Over the years, Walsh’s health worsened, preventing him from continuing with the program. In 2000, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and sent to the prison’s Medical Ward. As he came closer to death, he asked me when he could get back to work with “the kids.” He never made it. He truly loved the program and the troubled youngsters, and felt he was really helping to change some young lives.
Of course, not all lifers mature and change in prison. Inmate Roland Olson was a prime example. A double murderer with a life sentence staring back at him, he was tall, well-built, and imposing, which caused you to shrink back by his mere presence. It was my duty to tell him of a new state law requiring him to pay a portion of his institutional wages into a victims restitution fund. He glared back at me and then asked, “Let me see if I understand this correctly. The law is going to take some of the wages I earn in prison, and this money is going to be sent to victims. Is that right?” When I said yes, he grew angry. “I don’t think that’s fair. My victims are all dead.”
Lifer Elton Gray was another hard case with a warped perspective on human life. I served on a parole panel for Gray, an expressionless man who appeared never to have smiled in his life. He was serving a life sentence at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Faribault for the rape and murder of a teenage girl. His sentence required him to
be eligible for parole after serving seventeen years.
At the hearing, Gray was asked to review his crime. Accordingly, he described plotting the attack. He waited outside the pizza parlor where the victim and a teenage boy were closing up. “I thought about killing the boy,” Gray said, but he decided to wait patiently until the boy had finished work and left the girl all alone. This statement brought a chill into the room, not so much for what he said as the way he said it. He spoke without emotion, merely explaining the sequence of events. He spared the boy’s life, not out of compassion, but because it was more practical to his purposes to wait. He wanted to rape and murder the girl, and if he had killed the boy, it would have been merely a necessity to get to the girl.
“I thought about killing the boy.” It was said in the same way as one might say, “I thought about going to the store.” He showed no sense of guilt or remorse, no sensation at all. The boy’s life meant nothing to Gray.
I have often thought of the boy in the pizza parlor that evening. His life was spared and he never even suspected it. Someone waited outside in the dark debating whether or not to kill him, then casually decided to let him live. I wonder, had he been present at that hearing, how he would have reacted to Gray’s comment. I wonder what he would think, knowing how little consideration had gone into the decision to let him live the rest of his life.
After Gray finished describing his crime, the panel allowed him a closing statement. This is an inmate’s opportunity to make a final plea for his release. Many inmates reiterate their belief that they are a different person now than when they came to prison. They talk about their support systems in the community or their good conduct record in prison. They show off a diploma or a record of attendance in therapy groups.
If any of the panel members were still considering Gray’s release, he sealed his fate with his closing remarks. Though Gray spoke with candid honesty, he did not make any of the usual claims. Instead, he simply said, “I might do this again.”
The Big House Page 11