Reading behind Bars

by Jill Grunenwald

  Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, just for a flash. Then she smiled. “Good!” she said, straightening. “Glad to know we are on the same page.”

  She turned to leave; today was a short visit apparently. As she passed through the vestibule, she pointed to the whiteboard hanging on the wall. “I like the new addition,” she said on her way out the door.

  The whiteboard was not new. My use of it, however, was. For months it had sat empty, since I was just never entirely sure how to fill all that white space. Then, one quiet afternoon, I was wasting time online. One of my favorite websites to visit when I had downtime was History.com, the website for the History channel. They always had a feature called This day in History where they compiled a list of various events that happened on that day in history and I always found it interesting to see what happened when. That, I realized, was a perfect use of the whiteboard! Every morning, I would pick a different history factoid to highlight and put it on the whiteboard. Even if the inmates never paid attention to it, I’d at least know I was doing something productive to try and draw the inmates into the library.

  Another thing I had started doing to draw inmates in was to revamp the interlibrary loan program. This was something that Dr. Harald had suggested early on in my time here, and while it sounded like a very simple request, after taking a look at the situation, I knew that it was going to be far more complicated and require so much more time.

  The program had required a complete restart, beginning with mailing back all of the State Library titles currently in our possession and long overdue. Once they were checked back into their home library, Dr. Harald signed the necessary paperwork to have the couple hundred dollar late fees paid off so we had a clean slate, financially at least, with the system.

  From what limited paperwork I could find related to how Miss Christy had managed the previous ILL program, the inmates were told they would be held responsible if books were returned late, but there hadn’t been any accountability or follow-through.

  There also didn’t appear to even be a list of any kind to keep track of the books. The State Library had an online portal I could sign into to request books, so I was able to identify which books were supposed to be in our possession, but there was no paper trail once they arrived here at the prison. I had searched through every file on my computer and dug through every drawer of the filing cabinet. It’s as if the books arrived here and Miss Christy sent them out into the general population and just hoped the inmates would return them.

  Granted, that’s what we do with library books every day, but it’s different when they are books the library is borrowing from another library. There needs to be some kind of system in place. Otherwise, libraries end up in the mess that I had, with overdue books and missing books and books that ended up on our own library shelves. More than once, I had one of my porters bring me a book that somebody wanted to check out but they couldn’t find the card in the back. This, of course, was because there was no card, because it wasn’t one of the prison’s books, but an ILL book that had been mis-shelved.

  Miss Christy, I was finding, had not been the most organized individual.

  With Dr. Harald, and now Highland’s blessing, I had reworked the system from the ground up. Now, I kept a running log of all books requested via ILL. I knew the date when the inmate requested it, when I had ordered it, when it arrived at the prison, what day the inmate returned it to me and, finally, what day I put it in the mail to be returned to the State Library.

  No longer would there be books lost in the prison. At least that was the plan, and to help make sure inmates returned them, I instituted a fine policy.

  Incarcerated individuals are given a sort of bank account inside. All money they earn from their job goes there, in addition to any money family and friends add to the account. If they have a need to pay for something, like commissary or copies made in the library, they sign a cash slip that indicates how much will be removed from their account.

  If I wanted the inmates to take this seriously, to understand the ramifications that came with losing a book that didn’t belong to us, then I needed to hold them financially accountable. So before I would release an ILL book to an inmate, I made him pre-sign a cash slip made out for the list price on the book. The cash slip was collateral: if the book was lost or damaged, I would turn that into Administration and he’d be charged for the replacement cost of the book.

  Once the ILL system was up and running, I had some inmates who would return the book and ask to watch me destroy the cash slip right there in front of them, which I was always more than happy to do. So far, all books had been returned to me on time and back to the State Library on time, too. No fines on my watch.

  Even better, when developing the system, I had carefully and deliberately documented all of the steps to request books, and log books, and check out books, so that on my days off, there wasn’t any disruption of the ILL service and inmates would still get their books.

  At least, that’s how it was supposed to work. In reality, Kim would just tell the inmates to come back on Tuesday when I returned.

  Unfortunately for the inmates, after providing a steady and consistent presence for the past few months, I had my own orientation coming up and was about to be out of the library for two full weeks. I just had to hope that all of the systems I’d implemented over the past several months meant the library would still be standing when I returned.

  Chapter 9

  Finder’s Keepers

  The institution library staff shall develop a written plan for the selection of inmates to work as library aides. Institution staff shall ensure that inmate library staffing is accomplished in an equitable manner, reflecting the composition of the inmate population.

  —ODRC Policy 58-LIB-02

  Hands on hips, I cocked my head to the side, sizing up the bed in front of me. It was a narrow twin, tucked into one corner of the small concrete room. A solitary window sat high above. The frame was dark metal, the mattress slim and worn. As someone who slept on a quilted-top, queen-sized mattress, I couldn’t fathom getting any sleep on such a paltry piece of bedding. Then again, I suppose if you’re in prison, you shouldn’t presume to be allowed a luxurious bed. After all, as the saying goes, it’s “three hots and a cot.” Nowhere does it promise anything of quality, in either the food or the bed choice.

  I surveyed the room. Everyone else was focused on what they could see right in front of them, the taller people taking advantage of their height by extending an arm into the hard-to-reach nooks of the room.

  When I was growing up, my mom had gifted me her original hardcover copies of Nancy Drew. I had devoured the series, the collection of yellow books given their own shelf on my bookcase. As a young writer myself, I entertained dreams of writing my own character that would be as iconic in the American lexicon as Nancy Drew. Only later did I learn that Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym used by multiple ghostwriters over the years. Carolyn didn’t exist; she never had. She was a literary patchwork, Nancy her quilt.

  Still, Nancy Drew, along with Harriet the Spy, fostered my early love of mysteries. They were a game, murder mystery novels. A race against the pages: could I solve the end before I got to the big reveal? Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. Either way, my love of reading mysteries had instilled in me a curious eye, an ability to read outside the box and look for clues.

  That’s when I realized that everyone else in the room was looking up. Nobody was looking down.

  I smiled to myself.

  Crouching, I got on my stomach and scooted forward to peer under the bed. The mattress above blocked out all light, but even as I peered into the shadows I knew there was nothing but cobwebs under there. Damn. I’d been so sure.

  Dusting the front of my clothes off, I stood up. I grabbed one of the metal bed posts at the head of the bed for balance, then hoisted myself up onto the mattress.

  Standing on top of the thin mattress, I was able to look out the window onto the yard. From this v
antage, I spotted the small square patch of land that had been roped off and utilized by the dog trainers. Everywhere else around the yard, the dogs had to be on a leash and kept close, but the prison had set up the corner of grass as a mini dog park; an area where the canines at least could get a small taste of freedom.

  I looked down slightly and spotted a tube of toothpaste sitting on the concrete ledge of the window. Beside it was a crusty, used toothbrush. With its bristles going every which way, the toothbrush appeared to have woken up with a bad case of bedhead.

  After putting the toothbrush back down, I picked up the tube of toothpaste. It looked full, new almost. Yet, sitting in the palm of my hand, it was too light to be full of toothpaste. It was too light to be full of anything, really. But something was definitely in there. I just had to figure out what and how it got in there to begin with.

  I unscrewed the cap and peered down the mouth of the tube but was unable to see anything. Hmmm. Maybe if I felt around, like a kid on Christmas trying to guess what was underneath the wrapping paper, I’d be able to figure out what was inside. I held the tube between my middle finger and thumb and squeezed. Nothing happened.

  But when I squeezed at the sides, the bottom of the tube of toothpaste flared open, like the gaping mouth of a fish. My eyes widened. I flipped the toothpaste over and stared down into the belly of the tube: snaked and coiled inside was a cluster of black wire.

  Grinning, I raised my hand triumphant. “Found one!” I cried.

  From his spot leaning against the door frame, Williard beamed. “Miss G found a tattoo gun,” he informed the room. The others paused in their own searches to pass along their congratulations.

  Huh. A tattoo gun. I knew I had found something, I just wasn’t sure what. Staring at the pile of wires stuffed into the white plastic shell of the tube, tattoo gun was not what I was anticipating. As someone who already had a tattoo, I’m not entirely sure I would have trusted an ink job done using wires confiscated from around the facility.

  Williard’s game of hide-and-seek was part of orientation, a mandatory two-week-long program that every staff member needed to pass in order to work at the prison. And by “pass,” I mean there were tests and quizzes and everything. My particular orientation class was made up of six of us. I was the only one not training to be a correctional officer.

  I was also the only one who had already been working at the prison for six months.

  State law dictated that, technically speaking, I was supposed to have gone through orientation before I set foot in the yard. But, desperate times and all of that. Our prison was unique in that orientation was held right at our facility. Recently hired employees at other facilities in the state would have to go down to Columbus for their training. What my prison got in terms of convenience, however, they sacrificed in the name of frequency. All training was done in-house, using current staff members and pulling them away from their positions. It took coordination of schedules and shifting of security concerns to make sure orientation didn’t disrupt the ecosystem. As such, they only held it a few times a year.

  Which is how I ended up with six months under my belt before getting trained. Because of the way Christy was hastily and unceremoniously fired from the job for her alleged relationship with Jefferson, the prison had been forced to quickly fill the position, training be damned. The only part of the onboarding process they could not hold off was the unarmed self-defense class I took a few days before starting.

  For the past few days, my new coworkers and I had sat in a classroom in the Administration building watching training videos and listening to other employees give presentations on all areas of prison life. We learned about the different job vocations the inmates had, including the barber services where, it turns out, employees can get their hair cut for a mere $2. As we were a facility with a strong substance-abuse program, my friend Stephanie came in and spoke about the differences between drinking and binge drinking and alcoholism. We were even taught about the differences in generations: after all, the men we managed ranged in age from the Greatest Generation all the way down to boys barely out of high school.

  The best lessons were the ones that dug in deep and got into the dirty side of the prison. In one of the more memorable sessions, Catalina, former Ohio State Patrolman and our in-house investigator, came in and spoke to us about Security Threat Groups.

  In other words, gangs.

  HH. 88. Lightning bolts. These are all signifiers of white supremacist groups. HH is a call out to “Heil Hitler.” H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. The SS lightning bolts are taken from the Schutzstaffel (SS), the organization in charge of the police state in Nazi Germany. Their ranks included the Gestapo and the armed officers at the concentration camps.

  Within the context of gangs, these symbols are utilized as callouts to other members of the group. They are identifiers, sort of like the Deathly Hallows or Dark Mark symbols in the Harry Potter series.

  Even now, ten years after the final book was published, the Deathly Hallows symbol holds a meta status. Not only does it continue to exist the way it always has in the books, but that status as an identifier has transcended the written word. I know when I see someone with any kind of Deathly Hallows insignia that they are a fellow fan of the series. I wear my own bracelet with the Deathly Hallows charm so fellow fans can identify me.

  Gang tattoos operate under a similar fashion, albeit a bit more permanently. That’s not a coincidence, of course, as members usually don’t have the option to just casually walk away from a gang as one can from a fandom.

  But they are also a code because, of course, white supremacists aren’t stupid: they know that tattooing the name of Adolf Hitler on their body would get them a serious side-eye outside of the prison, while inside it would be like painting a target on their back when it came to the Administration and correctional officers.

  But, the security side of things isn’t stupid, either. This is why my orientation classmates and I sat through slideshow after slideshow of insignias that have gang affiliations, so we can identify them when out in the yard.

  It’s not just white supremacists, either. Notorious rival gangs Crips and Bloods have their own symbols and tattoos as well. It goes even deeper than that, though. For certain security threat groups, it’s not just some organization you are a member of. It’s a community, a family. It’s a way of life.

  Part of the intake and reception process upon arrival at the prison includes having all of an inmate’s identifying marks, such as tattoos, logged. This way, it’s easier to know when an inmate gets a new tattoo while incarcerated.

  Which is where Williard’s game came in.

  For his orientation section, Williard spoke about contraband. Contraband is basically anything that is not approved by Administration and Security. Both inmates and staff can be guilty of bringing in contraband. It’s why staff bags were searched every day when we came in for work.

  After his presentation, Williard took us out of the concrete classroom that had been our home for the past two weeks, and led us down the walkway to the medical unit. I’d never been inside before, though I had heard plenty of inmates talk about it when it came to having doctor and dentist appointments. It’s not like they could book an appointment at their doctor back home, so medical treatments were done in-house. I didn’t know what to expect, but it looked just like a regular doctor’s office. I don’t know why this surprised me so much—after all, the prison library looked just like a regular library. Why shouldn’t the medical unit be the same?

  One of the empty medical units had been outfitted with examples of contraband, tucked and hidden all over the room. Our job was to find it all. My history of reading mysteries served me well, because of all the contraband hidden in that room, I was the first one to find anything.

  While I was up in Administration for my two weeks of orientation, the library was managed by my coworkers on a rotating shift. I wasn’t too worried though: in the six months since I started, I had be
en afforded the opportunity to start bringing in my own porters to work the circulation desk and law library.

  First there was Lincoln.

  Lincoln was a gentle giant. He’d been on the wait list to work in the library since his first day. After several months of asking when it would be his turn, I finally had an opening, needed an African American to keep the ratio balanced, and Lincoln’s name was next on the list. He was well-read and articulate, and would come in and work even when he wasn’t on the schedule. For him, the library was a safe haven. He knew that if he was in the library, it meant he wasn’t going to be in a situation where he could possibly get into trouble.

  Next was Booker. Quiet and shy, Booker reminded me of myself when I first started working in my hometown library and would get panic attacks when asked to work the circulation desk. Booker would work the circulation desk if asked, but he much preferred being in the stacks, putting recently returned books away or shelf reading and making sure things were in order. Most of the other inmates disliked that part of the job—they preferred interacting with all the patrons that came in to read books or magazines. But I understand how Booker felt and as long as there was enough coverage at the desk, I was more than happy to let him be the one to voluntarily put the books away. Someone had to do it, after all.

  After Booker had been on the job for a while, he recommended his friend Hoskins when there was an open position that needed to be filled. Hoskins was slightly older than Booker—in his fifties or sixties—and wore thin, wiry glasses that matched his thin, wiry frame.

  Friendships in prison are fascinating to watch, especially with men who didn’t know each other on the outside. It’s not uncommon to have guys from the same block or even relatives end up in prison together. Those natural bonds of companionship extend into the prison, a natural friendship in an extreme situation.

  But for men like Booker and Hoskins, who didn’t have friends or family inside (at least not at our prison), friendships still sprout among the garden of incarceration. Neither Booker nor Hoskins had loved ones in the immediate area, so they were always willing to work on the weekends—with visitation every Saturday, it was sometimes difficult to find men to work that day when they knew they had a standing visiting appointment.