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One of the main barriers
to effective teaching in a correctional setting is
overcoming the degrading and dehumanizing world that the
student only leaves for the short time they are in class. To
illustrate this, let's look at a typical day for an inmate
student at Visions Adult School, located inside Corcoran
State Prison. Most of the prisons in California are located
in remote areas, far from the communities where the inmates'
families live. The first thing that comes into view is the
immense array of lights, looming in the distance as an oasis
of pale trees in the desert. These are visible in the early
morning dawn from over twenty miles away. Light poles
towering 120' high flood the entire prison in a surreal
light from dusk to dawn. For security reasons, all
vegetation for 100 yards around the perimeter fence has been
disked to bare dirt. The perimeter fence is actually three
fences; the outer two are fifteen feet high, topped with
coiled razor wire, spaced twenty feet apart, and in the
center is a third fence. This looks flimsy compared to the
other fences, but closer examination reveals tiny wires,
spaced twelve inches apart, that are electrically isolated
from the supports. This fence is labeled "DANGER - Deadly
High Voltage - Keep Out" and "PELIGRO - Mortal Alta Voltaje
- No Entre" at regular intervals. Sometimes in the morning
you can hear what sounds like a pot of popcorn exploding
over a loudspeaker. This is the sharp staccato of rifle
rounds from the shooting range, where each of the twelve
hundred Correctional Officers must qualify
yearly.
The prison complex is
divided into six yards, with two-story concrete cell blocks
arranged in a semicircle around an exercise yard about the
size of a football field, enclosed by another fifteen foot
high fence topped with razor wire. Each housing unit has one
hundred cells; however, due to an ever increasing prison
population, two inmates must share the six and one half foot
wide by twelve foot deep cells. Try to imagine your first
night in one of these cells. The door opens and the first
thing you see is the stainless steel combination toilet and
washbasin. You probably won't notice the lack of a seat
until the first contact of cold steel against warm flesh. To
one side are two beds, one over the other, welded to steel
imbeds in the concrete walls; to the other side is a set of
steel shelves, again welded to imbeds in the
wall.
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There is a
window that looks to me like the loopholes in a
medieval castle, except the 5" x 36" opening has 1"
thick laminated bulletproof glass in the opening.
Next to the window is a small steel shelf for a
desk, with a 10" round steel seat under it, again
both welded firmly in place. Then you see your cell
mate, and a thousand thoughts rush through your
head. You wonder what his crime was: passing bad
checks, drug dealer, child molester,
murderer...Then you notice that you can't go from
the toilet to the desk without brushing against
him. You begin to wonder, do you dare sleep
tonight?
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Due to prison overcrowding the gyms have been converted to
army barracks style housing units with fifty bunk beds
packed on the basketball court-sized gym floors. Only men
with six months or less to serve on their sentences are
housed here. The reasoning behind this is that an inmate can
have work incentive credits restored that were taken away
for a rules infraction if he remains disciplinary free for
six months; however, with less than six months left to serve
any good time lost will not be restorable. Still, with one
hundred men living in such a small space, it sounds, feels,
and smells more like a locker room than a housing
unit.
Breakfast starts at 0530,
and ends at 0700. This only gives 90 minutes for a thousand
men to eat. A Correctional Officer is positioned outside the
dining room, and as the inmates leave conducts random
searches; the inmate stands with his feet spread wide and
his arms straight out, leaning against the concrete wall, as
the officer frisks him to make sure he is not taking any
food out of the dining room. Then back to the housing unit
for just enough time to brush their teeth before work
release at 0730. The inmates must stand in front of the
vocational work change gate until 0745, when they are
processed in according to the class they are assigned to.
They form a line and shuffle to a window inside the work
change area and give the officer there their work number so
the officer can check their gate pass (a separate picture
ID). This is done for strict accountability of all inmate
movement. Then the inmates report to their classes (average
class quota is 27), give the instructor their ID cards, and
are issued metal chits, stamped with their work assignment
number, which they must use to check out tools.
Now they are students,
although this is a very subtle change in status that can be
tenuous given the custodial duties instructors must perform.
If one of the students has a priority ducat (a special pass
for a doctor's appointment, or something similar) he must
show it to the instructor, who must check it against the DMS
(daily movement sheet). Reporting to work late by five
minutes or more past the fifteen minute reporting window can
result in loss of work incentive credit for that day (most
inmates receive a day off their sentence for each day they
go to school, called "day for day").
Students check out their
tools and work on their class projects or on institutional
projects. In the class I teach, Vocational Sheet Metal, they
start out with geometric construction problems. After this
they work on the layout and fabrication of sheet metal
ductwork, fittings, and transitions. The more advanced
students get to work on institutional projects. We have made
the ductwork for 90 tons of air conditioning for Avenal
State Prison, and have fabricated and installed several
complete evaporative cooling systems (including
manufacturing the evaporative cooling equipment) for
Corcoran State Prison to name some of the projects. One
project that you can see for yourself is the sign they made
for TCOVE, that is mounted on the administration building
located south of Vsalia on Mooney Blvd. They work until
1030, when it is time to check in their tools and clean up
for lunch. The instructor then checks to insure that all the
tools are turned in.
Tool control is a
particular concern in a prison, as they can be used for an
escape, and there is an elaborate tool control in effect.
All of the tools are inscribed with a code (my code is
310CE) and painted (my color code is blue-pink). In addition
to this, the tool rooms (one for critical tools that only
the instructor can issue, and one with an inmate tool room
attendant) have the outline of each tool in them shadowed on
the walls, numbered, with an inventory sheet for each wall
that has both the tool number and the description of each
tool on that wall. There is a sheet for the instructor to
sign three times each day verifying that they counted the
tools, and none are missing. In the event that one has not
been returned, custody must be notified, and no one may
leave until the tool is found. After the tools are cleared
the students are released to eat lunch in the vocational
lunch room.
Now they are inmates
again. Lunch is from 1100 to 1130. The officers pass out
sack lunches which usually contain four pieces of bread, two
vacuum packed pieces of unidentifiable lunch meat, a pack
each of mustard and mayonnaise, a piece of fruit, and a bag
of potato chips. Lunches must be consumed in the lunch room,
although occasionally some smuggle fruit and bread back to
the shops to make pruno (an alcoholic beverage) in plastic
bags that are hidden in ingenious places as the contents
ferment. The hiding places, such as hall-full trash cans are
usually only fond when the bag seal leaks, allowing the
pungent combination of fruit and yeast to escape, allowing
the odor of "fine wine" to permeate the shop. Another
favorite place to hide pruno bags to ferment over the
weekend is in the toilet (the toilets in the prison do not
have tanks like houses do so the bag is forced down the bowl
into the trap, and the other inmates are told not to use the
toilet until the bag is retrieved...YUCK!).
After lunch they go back
to their shops and are now students again. They check out
tolls and work until 1415, when it is time to turn in their
tools and clean up the shop. Four hours a week of formal
related classroom training are required, although most
instructors have one hour of related training each day. In
my class we go through a six month course on the Uniform
Mechanical Code as one of the topics. With the tool control
and inmate accountability, the six and one half hours of
contact time we have with the students is eroded to closer
to five hours, and assuming no time is spent with discipline
problems this works out to only 11 minutes per student per
day; consequently it can take months to develop the
student/teacher relationship necessary to impart employable
skills to those who have previously fallen through the
cracks in our educational system.
Now the day is almost
over, and with it comes the most degrading and dehumanizing
part: the strip search for inmate manufactured weapons
conducted before the inmates can leave the vocational area.
At precisely 1445 all of the classes release their students
(now inmates) to the work change gate. Over one hundred men
line up in a corridor only twelve feet wide, waiting their
turn. The stench is overpowering, making a locker room tame
in comparison as sweat from the unwashed bodies mingles with
oil and grease from the various shops (Machine Shop, Sheet
Metal, Welding, and Auto Mechanics). Each man strips to only
his under shorts until he approaches the two officers
conducting the searches. Then he removes these and goes
through a precise procedure: placing his fingers on the
sides of his mouth he opens his mouth to expose his gums,
then moves his tongue around in his mouth; next he runs his
fingers through his hair, and folds his ear down; then he
raises his hands and arms over his head with his fingers
spread wide open and slowly rotates three hundred and sixty
degrees; after this he must life his penis and testicles;
then he turns, with his back to the officer, and show him
the bottom of first one foot, then the other; finally, he
grasps both buttocks, spreads them, squats, then coughs
trice. This last humiliation to insure he is not trying to
kiester anything (smuggle a weapon in his rectum). The
officers and inmates go through the entire process with a
mechanical precision, none liking it, but all knowing the
necessity.
The inmates dress quickly
and silently after the strip search, with resigned, mildly
embarrassed looks on their faces. Dinner is from 1530 to
1700, so after leaving the work change area they must hustle
in order to get into their housing unit to try to be one of
the few that get a shower before dinner (there are only six
showers in each housing unit). Seeing all that an inmate
goes through when is assigned to a vocational program, it is
not surprising that few volunteer to go to school. Inmates
are placed in vocational programs by the institutional
Classification Committee with little regard to their
interest in order to allow the inmates to learn a trade and
to receive their "day to day". This makes motivation one of
the major challenges of a correctional educator.
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