Here's the Truth about Fictional Prison Claims

 I have a background in Internet marketing and public relations, so I tend to notice marketing ploys and public relation strategies. Lately, I've noticed a concerted effort by the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) to improve their public image, through a fanciful marketing campaign and more recently through media stories intended to generate good will. 

For years the MDOC has claimed that its focus is on rehabilitation. While they have offered some rehabilitative programming over the years, it has often been low quality curriculum or apathetic instruction. Programming that prisoners are required to take prior to their paroles have often been provided late, even delaying many prisoners' paroles. Required programming is, by some instructors (but definitely not all), treated as something to check off a list rather than as an honest attempt to change hearts and minds. 

To be fair, though, education, especially that's designed to change thinking and behavior, cannot be coerced. It simply isn't effective; however, prisoner initiated education and rehabilitation is, but only if it is allowed. 

In recent years, the MDOC has allowed college programs to operate within prison. This began after then President Obama initiated a limited return of PELL grant funding for prisoners. Now, the MDOC is touting its new focus on educating prisoners, but its messaging is deceptive. 

The MDOC director and perhaps a few others may genuinely desire to educate prisoners since research has shown a direct correlation between education and reduced re-offense rates. However, college programs are sometimes poorly supported by the MDOC, and their motivation appears to be driven more by money and public image than a true desire to change hearts and minds. 

A recent local news story touted the MDOC's push for more prisoner education, and its recruitment commercials laughingly claim, "compassion works here...unfriendly does not." Meanwhile, administrators at SMT (and most certainly at other Michigan prisons) are facilitating the extreme censorship of educational materials. Free educational programs available to prisoners, like the PEN Writing Program and Cornell University's Prisoner Express, are rejected due to "voluminous mail" limits. Policy now limits the number of pages to 12, far fewer than what is mailed out in free educational programs. 

Exceptions to this page limit policy do not exist, even for educational, rehabilitative, and religious materials. Consequently, the MDOC sells to the public its "educational and rehabilitative focus" while actually thwarting prisoners' efforts to educate and rehabilitate themselves. 

Apparently, if there's no money in it for the MDOC it's not allowed. 

One thing I have learned through Restorative Justice literature, prior to the MDOC's recent extreme censorship practices, is that honesty is critically important. One cannot expect to find any genuine restoration without a radical commitment to truth. This and other important truths are critical for prisoners to learn, if they are to genuinely change their hearts and minds and become safe citizens who positively contribute to their communities. 

Perhaps more prisoners would learn the importance of truth telling if the MDOC also committed to honesty and truth in its marketing and communication with the tax paying public.

Prison Mail Restrictions Work Against Rehabilitation Efforts

 I have to imagine that writing rules for how prisons run is difficult and extremely complex. You'd think with hundreds of years of experience, they'd have it all figured out, but new situations constantly arise. But, perhaps more problematic is when rules are created to solve one problem and yet cause many others. 

Michigan's prison rules regarding mail handling is one area where whoever creates the rules have actually caused more than they intended to solve. At least from a prisoner's perspective. 

When I first came to prison in 2009, prisoners could receive photographs, crayon drawings, glitter held on by glue, publications prisoners themselves wrote, and mail of any "reasonable" volume. But in the last nearly 15 years, much has changed. 

Today, Michigan prisoners cannot receive any photographs on photo paper, nothing on the paper other than pen ink, any publication they themselves have written and published, and nothing with more than 12 single sided or 6 double sided pages. Furthermore, we only receive photocopies of our mail and not the originals. That makes it impossible to get a color photo on regular paper through the mail, for example, because it will be photocopied before being delivered to us. 

Whoever makes these rules likely has good reasons for why they make them, but they don't often think through the full implications. Photocopying mail might stop illicit material from coming through on the paper, but it also stops us from receiving emotionally important drawings and creations from our children or grandchildren. Most people have even stopped sending prisoners holiday cards, because we can't get anything but a photocopy of them anyway. Furthermore, these mail restrictions haven't in any way slowed or stopped the influx of drugs into the prison system. Those come in through officers and other ways, not through the regular mail system. 

Volume limits are a recent problem, the latest in a string of increasingly restrictive mail rules. For example, I have recently had several pieces of mail rejected due to volume restrictions. I had signed up for several free educational programs for prisoners, including the PEN Writing Program. However, their mailings are more than 6 double sided pages, so their mail was rejected. I also participate in a Bible study through the mail, and that too, was recently rejected for volume reasons. (This is a lawsuit waiting to happen as it violates religious liberties.)

These new volume rules are limiting prisoners' ability to participate in educational and religious programs through the mail. The prison system has now made it very difficult for prisoners to voluntarily participate in things that will help them spend their time in prison constructively. While the Department touts its focus on "rehabilitation," it actively undermines rehabilitation efforts. 

Prisoners are allowed to appeal these decisions, but I have personally experienced a significant push back against my right to appeal these decisions. In fact, the prison refuses to follow the same policy that restricts our mail when it comes to our right to appeals. They do whatever they want to and make it impossible, other than through lawsuits, to have reason guide their decision making. 

If one appeals too often, which happens when a prisoner is actively pursuing constructive things to do with his time, he is labeled a "troublemaker." Prison administrators would rather prisoners spend their time mindlessly watching TV or playing cards, dominoes, and chess. I personally want to spend my time learning and developing as a person, not in mindless activities that keep me engaged in the destructive prison culture. 

I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but I know that when administrators do not use reason and discretion in their application of rules, they undermine prisoner rehabilitation and cost the state money in senseless lawsuits. Someone in administration needs to take accountability for these stupid policies, or at least the stupid application of them. Instead, they pass the buck and blame someone else. Funny. They urge us to take responsibility for our behavior and not shift blame to others, but they provide a pretty example of doing just the opposite. Typical.

As If Prisoners Need Any Other Cause for Cognitive Decline

This past week, I saw on the news a story about recent research into sleep deprivation. Studies have linked sleep deprivation with cognitive decline, not surprisingly. The study also showed that 1 in 3 Americans do not get sufficient sleep. 

One would think that prisoners are not among those numbers. After all, we have nothing better to do than sleep, right? Well, sadly, prisoners are often sleep deprived. 

It's true that some prisoners sleep a lot. Some are heavily medicated because medication is the cheapest and easiest way to deal with mental health and behavior problems. I know many prisoners who take medications at night that knock them out by 8PM. But I know many, many more who don't get enough sleep. 

When I was in the county jail, awaiting either a trial or a plea offer, I was astonished at how difficult it is to get decent sleep in jail. Lights were turned out at 9PM, but emergency lights stayed on all night. Some of these lights shined directly in the cell, making it difficult to fall asleep. Some prisoners, too, either stay up late hollering back and forth with each other or banging on their metal toilets while "rapping" out loud. 

If, by some miracle, I was able to fall asleep somewhat early, officers still made rounds all night, jangling their keys loudly. Often, when they would open the pod door, it would wake me. Some officers would shine flashlights directly in the prisoners' eyes and wake them, calling out, "I just wanted to make sure you are alive." It was intentional torture. In fact, the Geneva convention classifies sleep deprivation as torture. 

One officer, in particular, took pleasure in torturing prisoners, including those of us who were in jail as pre-trial detainees. We had not even been convicted of any crime yet. It takes a special kind of sadist to treat us as he did, with sleep deprivation and in other ways. 

Even when all was quiet, no prisoners yelling, no officers jangling keys or waking people up for haircuts at 3AM, no flashlights in my eyes or banging on the bars, I still had my tortured thoughts making sleep difficult. Yeah, the county jail is no place to catch up on sleep.

Now, in prison, sleep is still difficult to come by. Emergency lights still shine in my eyes, officers still jangle keys, and prisoners still shout back and forth hours into the night. Sometimes, prisoners in the segregation cells across from my cell loudly express their anger late into the night. Fortunately, I have earplugs if I need them, and I cover my eyes to dim the lights. 

Some prisoners, though, are not so fortunate. Those on suicide watch are in cells with bright lights on 24/7. I don't know how bright lights that make sleeping difficult are supposed to help those struggling with thoughts of self-harm. Other prisoners are housed in pole barns where officers violate their own rules and use the PA system late into the night, and where lights shine right into the eyes of those on the top bunks. 

I'm sure that for a population who already largely struggles with cognitive issues, good decision making, and anger issues, sleep deprivation doesn't help at all. I don't expect prison to be a summer camp, but I do at least think its leaders ought to make every effort to avoid deliberately causing conditions that reinforce negative outcomes, like cognitive decline. 

All this talk about sleep, though, is making me want to go take a nap. Perhaps I'll try, through all the hollering back and forth, slamming of dominoes, incessant arguing about nothing, and the hundreds of other noises that make sleeping in prison a challenge.