I wake up early this morning and something feels really strange. I can’t quite put my finger on it until I realize, oh yeah – it’s quiet. The kids are gone and after a week of holiday madness, it’s time to get back to prison.
Not so fast.
I see the notification on my cellphone before I even get to the kitchen to make some raisin toast and coffee: “Breaking – inmate escapes from San Quentin.” I turn on the TV and there’s a picture of a man who looks somewhat familiar. Or at least the tattoo above his eye does. (And by the way, it’s probably not the smartest idea to brand your face if there’s a possibility that you might want to go unnoticed at some point in your life.)
The next notification on my phone alerted me that San Quentin was on lockdown. I have to say that getting notifications from San Quentin is always a jolt. A few months ago, when I was visiting my Mom in Manhattan, I met an old friend for lunch and when my phone displayed, “San Quentin Prison” my friend looked at me quizzically - so I told him I was on parole. Then of course, I explained what I was doing.
Except I was having a hard time doing what I was doing. This was the third or fourth lockdown since I started volunteering in May. I could only do so much from home and there was no Internet access or other forms of communication with the inmates, so we constantly had to backtrack and review what we had done. And then there was the fact that there was one shared computer and most of the equipment is outdated; we needed software, mics, mixers, etc. and there’s a process for making that happen and it takes a lot of time.
That’s the thing about prison. Everything takes time and you do a lot of waiting. Doesn’t matter what it is, you have to be patient. I remind myself the men I’m working with have been waiting anywhere from a few years to a few decades and I don’t know how they get through a week. I ask them and they tell me – they have no choice.
The details of the escape last night are sketchy. The man, Shalom, was sentenced to five years which seems like a fairly short time considering. If they catch him, he will be transferred to another prison and his sentence will most likely be changed to life. I’m ready to go back to work, but I don’t know how long this lockdown will last. I have to wait.
When I walk from the parking lot to the media center at San Quentin, I look out at the water and see the Golden Gate ferry scooting commuters to work. I used to ride that ferry from Larkspur Landing, adjacent to San Quentin, to my job in the city. I never forgot the feeling of creeping by San Quentin and the juxtaposition of its location on prime real estate in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation. Some days I felt like I was the one in prison, going to a job with an abusive boss that could have been the poster child for the “me too” movement. Golden handcuffs – ha!
Sometimes the inmates talk about their sentences and plea deals and politics and pardons. Some will try to convince me that they are a “political prisoner” while others have told me that going to prison saved their life. It’s an imperfect system and there are a lot of people working for prison reform. And I still can’t get a plausible explanation of what a sentence for life plus ten or twenty-nine is supposed to mean.
There’s a lot about prison that makes no sense at all. And I’m sure that along with plenty of others these days, America, the home of the free and our government in general – well, there’s a lot about the system that just escapes me.
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