I grew up watching the television
program M.A.S.H. One of my favorite characters was “Radar”, the
unassuming clerk with an uncanny ability to sense incoming casualties well before
the sound of helicopters could be detected by human ears. He could anticipate
the commander’s orders before they left his lips, and often had work completed
before anyone else knew it was needed.
In prison, I met someone exactly
like Radar. He was the gas garage clerk for the large mechanical shop where I
was assigned. The department managed the entire fleet of gas-powered vehicles
for the largest prison system in the country, and my co-worker seemed to know
the mechanical history of nearly every vehicle in the fleet. You could give him
the six-digit vehicle number, and he’d be able to tell you where it was
assigned as well as its maintenance schedule.
During my time in prison, Texas
cut state agency budgets dramatically, and prohibited the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice from purchasing new vehicles. The departmental bosses relied
so heavily on my co-worker to anticipate repairs before they were needed that
they were able to keep vehicles with more than 400,000 miles on the road long
past their life cycles.
I learned that the man had the
same standard in his personal affairs as he did on the job. He volunteered in
the Chapel and was a leader in the 12-step community. He practiced the
principles of recovery, treating people with dignity and
volunteering to help anyone seeking to recover from addiction. He became my
mentor and my trusted friend.
My friend was serving a 40-year sentence for stealing a package of cigarettes.
He had experienced a traumatic childhood,
and struggled his entire life with addiction. He had been arrested twice before
for burglarizing vehicles, always to feed his addiction. After his second
release from prison, he was able to stay sober for nearly five years before
relapsing. On his last night of freedom, he pocketed cigarettes from a convenience
store and fled in his car as the clerk ran after him to get his license plate.
The prosecutor decided to charge him with robbery instead of theft, and claimed
that my friend’s car was a deadly weapon because it could have harmed the convenience
store clerk.
My friend refused to characterize
his circumstance as injustice. He took responsibility for all of his mistakes,
and believed that his work ethic and personal standards needed to be higher
than anyone else’s if he were to be of use to others.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t paid anything for his work behind bars; he just needed to know that his efforts were valued by others.
He was not alone. During my time
in prison, I met countless men who were driven by the same motivation. I will
never forget the look of determination on the cook’s face when the kitchen boss
allowed him to prepare chicken Parmesan for nearly 1600 men using frozen chicken
patties and the limited ingredients available in prison. He beamed with pride when
he returned to the cell block after a twelve hour unpaid shift.
In the mechanical shop, I knew a
transmission expert who was small enough to fit into the engine compartment. He
had no qualms about getting covered in grease and climb into the engine in
order to avoid having to send a vehicle to an outside shop for a costly repair.
Similarly, maintenance workers gladly sprang from bed in the middle of the
night when called upon to fix toilets or electrical issues. Working around these men taught me to value my work in ways that I never had
before.
Prison officials and state
leaders often taut the occupational opportunities available to people in Texas
prisons, framing them as an essential to rehabilitation. What is missing in
this narrative is the fact that prisoners are doing the work of keeping the
prisons operating, prisons that wouldn’t need to exist if we were to adequately
address the factors that lead to crime in the first place.
The reality of Texas prisons is one
of incapacitation, not of rehabilitation. People like my friend were thrown
away by their communities; men who would have otherwise been productive members
of the community had they had an opportunity for treatment or vocational
programming. It should come as no surprise that Texas ranks near the bottom in
terms of substance abuse treatment availability, yet ranks number one in the
number of state prisoners.
I was proud to get to work alongside these men. They taught
me to rise to the highest standard, even when there was no reward. It pains me
to think about their children who will grow up without getting to learn from the
example these men set for me.
When I think about the human resources locked away behind our prison walls, I think of Texas as one of the most wasteful states in the entire world.
