Hard Times

Last night I watched most of a program on MSNBC. It's called Lockup, and it provides a glimpse into life in a number of American prisons. The one last night was about San Quentin. San Quentin is a true heavy hitter - a maximum-security adult joint. It brought back memories, because I used to work in just such a prison. I was a correctional officer, back in the early '80s, at the Joliet Correctional Center, on Collins Street in Joliet, Illinois.

The Joliet Correctional Center was the setting for the opening scenes of the movie The Blues Brothers. That movie may have been the best thing that happened to that prison. Before that movie, the east truck gate, situated in the middle of the wall that faces Collins Street, hadn't worked for years. Anything that had to be trucked in had to come through the west truck gate, on the back wall of the prison. The east gate was much easier to use, except for that issue of its not working. The movie people decided that they just HAD to have the east gate working, so they had it fixed. Everyone was happy. The state got part of its prison fixed, and saved thousands of dollars in the process. The movie people got their scene just the way they wanted it.

I didn't see The Blue Brothers until years after my career as a correctional officer was finished. When I did see it, I think I bored my wife with the guided tour of the place. I could still give such a tour from memory then. I still can. Max joints like Joliet change everyone who encounters them, whether inmate or staff. Inmates that are unskilled at being criminals sharpen those skills greatly in there. For those of us staffers - well, a lot of us come away having lost much of our faith in human nature. I came to the conclusion that a lot of those who wore the green - the officers - weren't very different from those who wore blue - the inmates. I still have, and probably always will have, a strong streak of the skeptic, even the cynic, in me. I think I always will. I may not always show it, but it's always there.

The tour. See that long building on the north wall? On the lower floor are the inmates' commissary, some storage. On the top floor is the Honor Dorm. Inmates with a long track record with no violent behavior may wind up in the Honor Dorm.

Those walls are limestone, about 20' high, I think, with coiled razor wire on top. Notice that on each corner there are towers; the nest on top of the towers where we worked were, I think, about 15' above the top of the wall. Someone once told me that they really didn't want the inmates to know what weaponry we had in the towers. That made no sense to me. I wanted to put a big sign on the outside of the towers: "Hey there Bad Dude, I have a .38, a 12-gauge with some buckshot and - check this out - some deer slugs. They'll tear you up! Lessee, what else  - oh, yeah, check out this .30-.30, and lots of rounds for that, and oh yeah, CS gas and grenade laiunchers. Yep, all the stuff to ruin your day!"

Beside the Honor Dorm there's a big open space - The Yard. The yard is a place where lots and lost of inmates are out of their cellhouses at the same time. There may be three guards in the yard with maybe a couple of hundred bad guys. If you had to pick a place where violence was most likely to erupt, the yard would be one of them. The dining hall would be the other. There's a reason that there are three towers in sight - and aiming distance - of the yard.

A career as a correctional office may be years and years of boredom - nothing at all happening. Or, it may be that except for the minute that an inmate is carving you up. I'm all for boredom.

In the very middle of the prison is a small building that has its own tower. That's the North Segregation unit. The worst of the worst go there - inmates who would stab you in the heart in a second, if given the chance.

To the south and east of North Seg is the dining hall. The long building along the west wall has the laundry. On the second floor is a library. Most of the library consists of legal materials. A lot of the inmates are as familiar with the criminal codes and appellate procedures as any lawyer.

The residential buildings - OK, cellhouses - that house the vast majority of inmates are the East Cellhouse and the West Cellhouse. They are like wings along the front - south - side of the institution. East and West have different functions from each other - West has another seg unit and Protective Custody, along with permanent population. But, 'nuff of that for now.

I'm giving away nothing now. Some years back I saw in the newspapers that the Collins Street prison was closing. Funny thing - even when I worked there almost 30 years ago there were people who had lived in Joliet all their lives, who thought that Collins Street was already closed. It is now.

I think it no coincidence that my drinking reached its crisis points - the depths - when I worked at the place.

I think it no coincidence that I started treating my family like they were inmates - like they were just an extension of my work.

I am convinced I got out just in time.

But if you've ever been in a place and thought, "Man, if these walls could only talk. . ." I have been in such a place. And the walls may have done some talking. And I may have a story or two.

Thanks for hanging out for a few. Loved being with you, and I'd really love your reaction.