Free Charlie Norman Now!

DOING TIME: 25 Years of Prison Writing,” A review

2012-02-05T23:10:00.000-05:00

Dateline: Jan. 26, 2012

Accolades are due Bell Chevigny’s opening of the prison literary vaults at PEN for the world to see in DOING TIME: 25 Years of Prison Writing. As one of the original prisoner contributors, with “Pearl Got Stabbed,” to the 1999 edition, I was anxious to see not only how well the writings held up against the passage of time, but also whether the works retained their relevance in the “modern” world of corrections. I needn’t have been concerned.

I’d scarcely returned with my copy of the new book to the rec yard, crowded with prisoners when an old convict spied the provocative cover art of a hand grasping steel bars, and asked, “What you got there? Can I see that?”

Several curious men crowded around to see. Prisoners are nosy. I explained where I got the book and read some passages out loud. They were captivated. Old timers nodded in recognition of the universality of prison experiences and young prisoners, “newcocks,” stood transfixed in thought. The reaction by the guards was even more revealing.

I asked an older, experienced correctional officer for his opinion, handing him the book. In between his duties, he seemed rapt in concentration, reading. Then a younger, more gung ho “hotshot” guard, one of those who come into prison needing to prove their toughness, joined the older man, who passed him the book. Two hours later I finally got my book back.

The younger man looked at me, shook his head, seemingly chastened, and said, “I had no idea.”

The older man said, “Wow!”

DOING TIME is a timeless work of prison literature that should be required reading for those involved in the world of corrections, from prisoners and guards, corrections officials, legislators who pass increasingly draconian laws, lawyers and judges, to the state governors who sign the death warrants and free those souls from Hell.

Ms. Chevigny’s insightful additions to the 2011 volume, her masterful introduction and commentaries, the significance of encouraging America’s prisoners to write, what their words say about our society, and what became of the fifty-one women and men chosen to represent the other 2.3 million people incarcerated in this country, provide a poignant counterpoint to the selections. We owe her a debt of gratitude.

I am honored to have been included in such rare company.

Charles P. Norman Wakulla C.I. Annex, Crawfordville, FL

ORDERING INFORMATION — DOING TIME: 25 Years of Prison Writing, A PEN American Center Prize Anthology, edited by Bell Gale Chevigny, Foreword by Sister Helen Prejean, Copyright 2011 by PEN American Center, Arcade Publishing, New York City, NY, ISBN: 978-1-61145-144-3 $17.95.

DOING TIME is available from the publisher at www.arcadepub.com, amd www.amazon.com ($12.21) or your local bookstore.

Charlie

Who Am I? Who Are You? What’s On Your iPod?

2012-01-21T19:03:00.000-05:00

Trying To Keep Pace With The Modern World From Prison

Dateline: January 22, 2012

A fellow prisoner’s mother sent him the current best-selling biography, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Simon and Shuster, 627 pages, $35.00), and he let me read it. Mired deep in prison, isolated from the fast-spinning technoworld “outside,’ the exhaustive story of the Apple Computer co-founder and inventor of the Mac, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, brought me almost up to date on what I’d missed over the past thirty-four years. No matter how hard I’ve tried: reading newspapers, magazines and books, educating myself, taking every class and program available, it has been next to impossible to keep up with the marvels of the modern age from “inside.”

I’ve never listened to Bob Dylan on an iPod, never held one in my hand, never downloaded music from the iTunes Store, never “swiped” a multi-touch screen of an iPad, never used an app on an iPhone, but after reading the fascinating story of Steve Jobs, a brilliant genius and world-class a__hole, who lost his battle with cancer in 2011, whose drive to change the world was partly fueled by his birth mother’s abandonment and his subsequent adoption, I realize why so many people need them. Steve Jobs’ inventions indeed changed the world.

My own computer experience began as a freshman at the University of South Florida in 1968. the first class I enrolled in was “Fortran Programming” for the IBM 360, a behemoth computer that took up an entire floor of the College of Engineering. The concept, “user friendly,” had not been invented yet, and everything about Fortran Programming was a trial. Each student had to buy a box of blank IBM punch cards in the bookstore, find the key punch machines on a different floor, and figure out how to turn on the machine, how to load the cards, and then to punch the little holes in them. This was before we could even think of writing a program, which usually came back with “Error, Error, Error” printed across the wide sheets of white and green computer paper.

My first encounter with an Apple computer began in 1980, in prison at Union C.I., Raiford, when I became the clerk of the Golab, the groundbreaking prisoner self-improvement program in the Southwest Unit. The only computers in prison then were a few in the classification office, connected directly to the DOC mainframe in Tallahassee. No prisoner had access to a computer.

A newly-arrived prisoner who’d been a radio Shack manager, told me he had a brand new Apple II computer and a couple hundred floppy disks at home, and if I could figure out the paperwork and get the approvals, he would donate the equipment to the Golab. He would teach me how to use the new computer if he could have access to it. Deal. Only months before, I’d convinced the Golab president, Martin J. “Lucky” Stack, to buy an RCA color camera, VCR, and color TV for the program, which we used for video feedback of mock job and parole interviews, making teaching/training tapes, and other innovative uses we made up as we went along. When “Lucky” Stack, a retired U. S. Navy captain and decorated war hero, saw how useful the video equipment was, he jumped on the tech train. He got the computer donation approved, saw the potential, and bought one for himself.

That was the first computer in the Florida prison system accessible to prisoners. Once we got it, nobody in the power structure paid any attention to it, and we worked with it unimpeded seven days a week, for years. In the following years, prison education programs obtained grants for computer instruction, and my early training with the Apple II positioned me to jump into these programs and teach various computer classes up to college level, including instructing prison administrators how to use their newfangled machines.

Over thirty years later, with the epidemic of sexual predators going to prison for kiddie porn and other computer-related crimes, a paranoid prison system has severely limited prisoner computer access. Convicted murderers are known as the most reliable, trusted workers, at the top of the prison social hierarchy, with sex offenders at the bottom of the barrel, but so many of them have filled the prisons in recent years that sheer numbers of prisoners with sex charges have made them seemingly more accepted. But the prison authorities forbid sex offenders computer access, and rightly so.

Steve Jobs would have approved of that policy. Criticized by some for his refusal to permit any apps on the iPhone that allowed pornography, he defended his position by saying, “You might care more about porn when you have kids. It’s not about freedom, it’s about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users.”

The iPod story spawned a question that I’ve never been asked, but has been asked of most everyone with white earbuds: “What’s on your iPod?” When she asked President George W. Bush what was on his iPod in 2005, Elizabeth Burmiller reported in the New York Times that he had selections from traditional country music singers including Bush favorites by Van Morrison and John Fogerty. A Rolling Stone editor analyzed Bush’s selections and commented, “One thing that’s interesting is that the president likes artists who don’t like him.”

Someone said that simply handing over your iPod to another opens you up like a book, that your musical selections define not just what you like, but who you are. If that is true, I am Steve Jobs. Or at least we have the same taste in music.

Steve Jobs’ iPod was heavy in Bob Dylan albums, his hero, and also the Bealtles. He had songs from seven Beatle albums, including A Hard Day’s Night, Abbey Road, Help!, Let It Be, Magical Mystery Tour, Meet The Beatles! and Sgt. Pepper’s Loney Hearts Club Band. The Rolling Stones were represented, as were many sixties artists such as Aretha, B.B. King, Buddy Holly, Buffalo Springfield, Don McLean, Donavan, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, John Mellencamp, Simon and Garfunkel, and even The Monkees and Sam the Sham. Show your age — if you’re not at least fifty, you’ve probably never heard of some of those artists.

As he neared death, Steve Jobs thought more of getting older and his birth, as many people do. One of his favorite artists was Joni Mitchell, who put up her daughter for adoption and wrote the song, “Little Green,” about her little girl. He played Joni Mitchell’s greatest song, “Both Sides Now,” with its lyrics about being older and wiser: “I’ve looked at life from both sides now/From win and lose, and still somehow/ It’s life’s illusions I recall/ I really don’t know life at all.” She had recorded that song many years apart, first in 1969, and then ‘an excruciatingly haunting slow version” in 2000. Playing the latter version, Jobs noted, “It’s interesting how people age.”

I agree.

Perhaps when I am freed, I can ask Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell, to download a copy of his iPod playlist, since we thought so much alike.

By the way, what’s on your iPod?

Charlie

“Ye of Little Faith:” The Lost Boys Christmas Party Follow Up

2012-01-16T16:49:00.001-05:00

Dateline: January 10, 2012

The response to the December essay about Christmas in prison surprised me. Something about the experience touched more than a few people. I am grateful for the positive comments and encouragement, and want to follow up on how the event turned out.

One of the crucial ways of developing Christmas spirit in the negative environment of prison is through singing Christmas carols. Only a few people have radios in here, which have poor reception and limited pick up out here in the middle of nowhere, so if you want music you have to make your own. Two weeks before Christmas, I’d only enlisted two carolers, but I wasn’t worried. Getting them to sing a few Christmas carols every night as practice was the hard part. As the men heard the songs over a two week period, more and more began humming the tunes, subtly infusing them with Christmas spirit.

When I first went around the housing unit ─ we call them, “dorms,” but the term has nothing else in common with college housing ─ a number of prisoners, the “haves,” quickly signed on, agreeing to participate. A minority of scoffers and doubters ─ mostly “have-nots,” but some “haves,” said they weren’t interested. I told them they were welcome to share in the food and celebration, whether they contributed or not. Prisoners are distrustful. They’ve been conned, lied to and tricked so many times, and have conned, lied to and tricked others in turn, to the point where they look on anything that sounds good with suspicion and skepticism. That’s okay. I’ve learned how to deal with the hard cases.

Two days before Christmas, five men ─ “haves” ─ had made major commitments to purchase canteen food to feed the dorm, but it only works if more prisoners contribute, even if it is only a ramen noodle soup or some saltines. On Friday night, two major contributors and I went from bunk to bunk with a mesh bag seeking donations from the fence sitters.

“Is this thing really gonna go down?” one asked.

“I don’t think it will work, but I’ll throw in a bag of beans and rice,” another said. “Thanks.”

“Man, I ain’t got nothing to give.”

“That’s okay. It’s Christmas. We’ll have something or everyone, even if it isn’t much.”

“I don’t believe in Christmas. This is just a scam.”

“No, it’s not.”

So it went. We collected a surprising amount of food, mostly the dry ramen noodles, beans, and cheese puffs, but also tuna fish, chili and beans, and beef stew in the bag. It still wasn’t enough to feed eighty-five men on Christmas night. When one man said that, I told him they told Jesus the same thing two thousand years ago, right before He fed the multitude with a few fishes and loaves, and we would feed everybody in the building even if it was only a spoonful of tuna salad on a saltine. As it turned out, we had a lot more than that.

One man brought three bags of instant coffee and gave out spoons of coffee to all who wanted it, all Christmas day. Coffee is a big deal in prison. Most men drink it, but most don’t have any. Anyone who buys a bag quickly learns to say no, or risk finding himself bum-rushed by beggars who will drink his last cupful if he lets them. To drink several cups throughout the day without the guilt of having to ask someone if they could spare a spoon “until my money come in from home,” knowing none is coming, was truly a welcome Christmas gift to many “have-nots.”

Several men who couldn’t contribute food offered their labor in preparation. Sixty packs of the ramen noodles and other dry ingredients went into a large plastic bag. That wasn’t going to be enough. A few men got the Christmas spirit, went to the canteen, and came back with more supplies. Into the bag. Add gallons of hot water. Mix it all together. Get the choir organized and singing Christmas carols, the louder the better. All it takes is one spark to get a fire going. Men began drifting over to see how it was coming. Mattresses had been rolled back so the steel bunks could be used as prep areas. Old newspapers were laid down to contain the mess. The carolers sang on. The food was ready.

Most everyone got out their bowls and spoons and lined up. In prison we know how to line up. The chow line, the canteen line, the mail line, the laundry line, the line to go to work, to go to medical, to the chapel. Everywhere is a line. Hurry up and wait. Someone once suggested that the judge should just say, “I sentence you to life standing in line,” and get it over with.

We didn’t know how far the food would go, so the first time through, the bowls were only half filled. Then they came back through a second time. After several Christmas songs, a lively rendition of “Jingle Bells” broke through the tough guy façades, and the singing got boisterous with more people joining in. Several men stayed off to the side, trying to ignore the celebration, but the Christmas spirit was contagious, and the other men went to them.

“Don’t you want something to eat?”

“It’s really good. Where’s your bowl? Try a little.”

Some people have to be convinced it’s okay to have fun and share with others. It’s a good thing we set some aside for the singers, or there would have been little left after a couple of dozen men went through the line a fourth time. I went through twice myself and was full.

One of the scoffers came to me later and said that he’d served nine years in prison, and this was the best Christmas he’d ever had, even on the street. He thanked me for talking him into it, getting him involved, and for putting it all together. That was thanks enough for me. To see so many normally scowling, angry and unhappy men laughing and singing “Joy To The World,” eating and sharing with others, getting along, not arguing, made all the effort worthwhile. I wanted to prove a point ─ that we could rise above our circumstances if we worked together. Point proved. Let us show them what “faith-based” means.

A twenty year old prisoner approached me hesitantly. TWENTY years old! Was I ever that young? He looked fourteen. I shuddered to think of the hell he’d gone through, being sent to an adult prison as a teenager. “Tender vittles,” they call those boys. You’d better fight, and learn to “wear an ass-
whuppin,’ ” to keep your manhood and self-respect in such an environment. I added it up ─ when he was born, I was serving my thirteenth year in prison at Polk C.I., working in the chapel, painting, writing, and growing flowers, besides my other duties. He could have been my grandson. He called me Mr. Norman.

“Mr. Norman,” he said, eyes averted. I waited him out. He looked up at me. “Could I see that picture you took again?”

The previous week, Libby and I had taken a photo in front of the Christmas tree in the visiting park. I had showed it to several fellows when I came back, so they could see how nice the Christmas tree looked, since few of them would be going for a visit.

“Sure.” I got it out and handed it to him. He looked at it for about a minute.

“That’s a good picture of you, Mr. Norman. You look happy.”

“It’s good to have someone who loves you.”

“I don’t have anybody who loves me,” he said, eyes downcast again.

“Surely someone loves you,” I said. “What about your mother?”

“You don’t know my mother. Leave her out of this,” he said. “You know, I never had a Christmas. We didn’t do that. But, today, this Christmas party and all that, the singing, it made me feel different, like someone cares.”

“I care.”

“Thanks.”

He walked away.

Charlie

THE PASSING OF A PRISON ORIGINAL

2011-12-27T14:27:00.000-05:00

Dateline December 27, 2011

One of the drawbacks of long-term imprisonment is the social exile and isolation. Being shipped off in crowded, creaky buses to distant, anonymous Florida prison backwaters far from family and friends causes one to identify with the despair of the European Jews shipped away in cattle trains to Polish concentration camps and unknown fates in the Holocaust. Limited access to hometown news and news in general contributes to the feelings of loss, separation and despair. Few people get newspapers. I can’t afford them.

For the past several weeks, some of those sensations have been assuaged. A fellow prisoner with the finances to afford a daily newspaper mailed into the prison shares the Gainesville Sun with me, a few days late, which is how I learned of the death of Dr. Laura Parado, a psychiatrist and prison original, and one of the most delightful and intriguing people I’ve met during my incarceration. She died at age 80 in Gainesville, Florida.

Over thirty-one years ago, in 1980, as I began serving this fresh life sentence, I participated in and then joined the GOLAB Program at Union Correctional Institution, “The Rock,” Raiford, arguably the most effective and life-changing prison program before or since. The GOLAB Program, “Growth Orientation Laboratory, Inc.,” was a private corporation with a contract from the Department of Corrections to provide prisoner self-help and self-improvement programs in Florida prisons.

“GOLAB” was conceived when DOC Secretary Louis Wainwright, Assistant Secretary Ron Jones, and Florida Parole Commission Chairman Anabel Mitchell participated in a week-long executive management training program sponsored by Jerome Barnum at the Key Biscayne Hotel in Miami. Retired U. S. Navy Captain Martin J. “Lucky” Stack was their group facilitator, leading them through a series of structured exercises designed to build the confidence, self-esteem, and self-awareness of corporate CEO”s and managers, sending them back to their companies and government agencies more capable of understanding themselves and others. The program had such life-changing effects on the three state officials that during a brainstorming session (which they learned to do that week), they had a “Eureka” moment. If this self-awareness program has such a positive effect on competent, accomplished business and government executives, what would happen if prisoners, who could never afford the hefty fee or ever hope to attend executive training seminars, had the opportunity to participate in such a program? The seeds of GOLAB were planted and quickly grew to fruition.

“Lucky” Stack left Jerome Barnum, formed a corporation, obtained a state contract to provide a prisoner self-help program, and GOLAB was born. Its trial by fire began quickly. The first class was held at Florida State Prison (FSP) in Starke, Florida’s worst prison, home of Death Row, the electric chair, “Old Sparky,” and 1198 of the most desperate and dangerous prisoners, the end of the line. If GOLAB worked at FSP, it would work anywhere.

“Lucky” Stack led the first class, in December, 1975, and the results were amazing. Jack “Murf the Surf” Murphy signed up for that first class, and he and several others men who completed the class became facilitators and instructors in the classes that followed.

The point of the GOLAB was “peer-to-peer facilitation,” prisoners helping prisoners, without “free people” involved, something mandated today by the Florida Legislature in the growing “faith-based initiative,” but highly-controversial and contested when first proposed by Lucky Stack at FSP.

“You are going to allow inmates to be alone in a classroom with other inmates, with no teachers or guards watching them?” No way would that work, they said. Prisoners couldn’t be trusted, they were always up to something, and no telling what would go wrong. Prisoners would not accept other prisoners as teachers or class leaders. No good would come of it, the argument went.

They were wrong. Perhaps the original incentive for some prisoners was to get out of their locked-down solitary cells for a few hours a day to associate with other prisoners, but the results couldn’t be denied. As more and more of the most dangerous, violent prisoners completed the eight-day GOLAB Basic Workshop, FSP’s violence level against prisoners and guards fell. Rather than fighting, stabbing, and killing each other, the prisoners began talking more to solve their conflicts and problems. And for prison officials who had to deal with the highest murder rate in Florida, reducing violence got their attention. Soon, they expanded the GOLAB Program across the New River to Union C.I., Florida’s oldest and largest prison, with 2600 equally desperate, violent men with little hope for salvation.

It turned out that serious, dedicated prisoners determined to improve themselves and assist their fellows in gaining insight and self-awareness of who they were, how they came to be where they were, and how to become better people in the worst environment imaginable were far more successful in achieving life-changing, palpable results than the most accomplished “professionals.” The con games and manipulation that prisoners tried to run on therapists and psychologists in their mandated groups didn’t work on experienced, jaded prisoners who’d seen and done it all. The prisoner group leaders and participants saw through the facades and masks, demanding truthfulness, honesty and self-revelation, decidedly foreign concepts and attributes in a system built on falsehood and injustice. For the first time in many of the men’s lives, they had to hold up a mirror to their true selves, and make decisions as to what kind of person they wanted to be from here on out.

Enter Dr. Laura Parado, head psychiatrist, a petite Filipina in her late forties, in charge of the prison’s psychology department and all its programs. It took me awhile, in a roundabout way, to get back to my subject, but in order to appreciate who she was and the role she played in prison, and with the GOLAB, I needed to put that time and place in perspective.

I first met Dr. Parado one day in 1980 when she led a group of “professionals,” newly-hired psychologists filled with trepidation at walking the open grounds of a maximum security prison populated with droves of prisoners passing by and gawking at them hungrily, to the GOLAB classroom complex in “C” Area, of the Southwest Unit of Union C.I. We had a class in session, but we welcomed the opportunity to introduce ourselves to people who might one day be making decisions whether some of us were psychologically fit for freedom.

In her charming, Filipino-accented voice, Dr. Parado said, “I don’t know what happens down here in this GOLAB. All I know is, it works. I tell people I can do nothing with, to sign up for GOLAB, before I give up on them. And when they come out, they are different. It is a good program. I wish we had their results.”

She won me over the day we met. Every month or so she would lead a new group to our classroom and sing the praises of GOLAB,and frequently prisoners would show up at my office with a referral from Dr. Parado to sign up. We took them all.

As an aspiring writer, I was always writing down ideas in my journals for essays, short stories and books that I wanted to write based on my experiences, or things other people told me. And so it was with this life sentence hanging over my head.

Someone once said that facing the hangman tends to sharpen one’s senses. The same holds true when one is at the beginning of a life sentence, with little chance of early release. I had to confront my mortality. Would I give up, or fight to live and survive? In GOLAB I met men who had served ten, twenty, or thirty years imprisonment, for better or mostly worse, and I listened to their stories of travails, loss, and survival. I decided that I would emulate their determination and do my best not just to survive, but to constantly improve myself and become a better person. The GOLAB experience equipped me with the tools I needed to do just that.

Considering “life in prison,” what it meant to a mortal man, I mused about a story idea of a person who was immortal, who would not die, but was trapped in a life sentence in a prison he could not escape from, what would become of him. It would be one thing for someone to serve thirty or forty years in prison and not appreciably age, but to spend fifty, sixty, seventy or more years in the same prison, as the men you came in with aged, withered and died, and you didn’t change, would present an entirely different problem. How would that immortal being deal with the issues? How would that person’s psychology develop and change as he lived decades longer than anyone else, through all the societal and world changes, passing eighty, ninety, or one hundred years, and more, mentally, but physically being a much younger man?

My idea coalesced, and my protagonist became a scientist in the nineteenth century who discovered the secret to eternal life, who made no permanent attachments over the next century, to avoid discovery, but then one day found himself imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, trapped in prison, with no way out. Would he be a grumpy, cantankerous old man in a younger man’s body, a person with nineteenth century mentality stranded in a future world, alien to all he knew, or would he perhaps go insane from the stress and futility? I wondered how to develop such a character, and where I could find the answers. The light bulb in my mind lit up. Dr. Parado, of course! I could ask her.

The next time she brought a tour group to GOLAB, I asked her if I could make an appointment to talk to her. I told her I was working on a story idea with psychological implications, and I would appreciate it if she would give me the benefit of her insight as a psychiatrist, off the record.

“Most certainly,” she said. “Come to my office first thing in the morning.”

I did.

The Union C.I. prison hospital was a throw back to a different time, a two-story building with concrete walls as solid and foreboding as the neighboring “Main Housing Unit,” built decades earlier, its fortress-like construction looking like it could withstand cannon fire and a siege of Assyrians. For many years the U.C.I. hospital was the only hospital in Union County, Florida’s smallest county and one of its poorest. In years past the prison hospital was the only place available for emergencies, and many guards and their families availed themselves of treatment there. Richard Dugger, the warden of FSP at one time and later Secretary of the Department of Corrections under Governor Bob Martinez, considered it a badge of honor that he was born in the prison hospital. Cradle to grave, state-raised.

Dr. Parado’s office was deep inside the hospital, and I had to ask directions a couple of times to find it. She welcomed me, continued to read the file before her, then closed it and smiled. She’d been reading my file, she said, curious about me, and told me that I appeared to be a well-balanced young man, based upon the tests I’d taken when I entered prison at the Lake Butler Reception and Medical Center. What did I want to discuss with her, she asked?

I told her that I was kicking around an idea for a book I’d like to write, and explained the plot to her, just like I explained it to you a page or so back, about the immortal person trapped in a prison with a life sentence, what would be the psychological implications? Since she was a trained psychiatrist, perhaps she would share her insights.

Dr. Parado lowered her reading glasses from her nose and peered over them, studying me, saying nothing. Then she said, very slowly, deliberately. “I have just one question, Charles.”

“Of course.”

She leaned forward over her desk and asked very seriously, “Just how old ¬are you, really?”

I thought for a moment, then laughed. “No, Dr. Parado, you have the wrong idea,” I said. “This is fiction, a product of my imagination. I just made it up. This is not about me. I’m thirty-one.”

“Of course you are,” she said, smirking. She stood. “It was very interesting talking with you. I must think about this. Please come back any time. My door is always open.”

I left. In the months and years that followed, until I left Raiford in 1983 to open a new GOLAB Program at Zephryhills C. I., I saw Dr. Parado several more times when she came again to our classroom with a group, or if I met her in passing on the sidewalk, but I never returned to her office in the prison hospital. She would always greet me like an old friend or colleague, her face lighting up, and she would reach up and pat my shoulder or squeeze my arm. She would give me a warm introduction to the groups, expound on the miracles worked in “that GOLAB,” but we never mentioned my book idea again. I shelved the book idea of how an immortal man would survive a life sentence, and focused instead on how a mortal man ─ myself ─ would survive. I learned to set and achieve long-term goals for self-improvement, taught the principles to over two thousand other men, and developed skills that would serve me for the rest of my life. I never really knew if Dr. Parado actually thought my immortal prisoner was a thinly-veiled reference to myself, or she was just putting me on, playing a head game, using her intellect to match wits with me in some way. It didn’t matter. She was a fascinating, intriguing lady who loved her work with prisoners and genuinely wanted to help them navigate and emerge from the maze of madness many of them found themselves lost inside.

Dr. Laura Parado was survived by children and grandchildren. She was loved. And if she could work in prison for over thirty years and survive the experience, so could I. My condolences to her family. She was quite a person, and I’ll never forget her.

Charlie

A PRISON CHRISTMAS PARTY WITH THE LOST BOYS

2011-12-21T23:28:00.000-05:00

DATELINE: Dec. 21, 2011

I was the first person called to the visiting park last Saturday when my dear friend, Libby, drove across Florida from Jacksonville to Tallahassee and then south to the Wakulla Annex to spend a few hours with me.

The visiting area was still uncrowded at nine AM. A brightly-decorated Christmas tree drew my eyes to the far corner. The prison Christmas season had officially begun, in one small way, weeks later than the commercial hoopla in “free America.”

Since Wakulla Annex began the conversion to a “faith- and character- based” correctional institution a few months ago, the weekend visiting population has steadily increased. There were times in the past year that only ten to fifteen prisoners were in the visiting park at the Noon count, but more recently it has been crowded with sixty to ninety or so visitors coming in to see thirty prisoners. On Thanksgiving Day some people waited over one and a half hours to buy sandwiches from the canteen, then lined up for an hour to heat their purchases in the two anemic microwave ovens.

That may sound like a crowd, but out of 1500 prisoners in this camp, thirty men receiving visits comprises only two per cent of the prison population. Ninety-eight per cent of the prisoners do not receive visits from family or friends, and that is a shame. That fact should worry “society.”

Why? Because the vast majority of the 100,000 Florida prisoners will leave prison one day, and without a support group of family and friends to help them adjust to freedom, to have a place to stay, to help find a job, to lead a law-abiding life, many of those released will be rootless, unemployed, and on the fast-track back to prison after they return to a life of crime. Those are the Lost Boys.

Holidays are hard times in prison. No one is immune! We watch the news clips of families shopping in the malls, spending money, smiling, laughing, carrying i-Pads, i-Phones and plasma TV’s to their brand new SUV’s, juxtaposed with scenes of homeless families living in their junk cars, ragamuffin children with tousled hair carrying canned goods from the food bank or waiting in a long line for a tray at the church soup kitchen, and wonder if our own families and children are in similar lines.

Many do not know. Their telephones were cut off months ago. They cannot expect to receive any money from home when their families have already lost the foreclosure struggle. The jobs dried up and the unemployment ran out. The poor feel like political pawns in the health care and prescription drug battle being waged in Washington. For many men the joy of Christmas is buried beneath worries for their loved ones’ predicaments. Such situations make for short tempers and harsh words spoken in frustration, leading to violence.

There are prisoners with money and support from home, the “haves,” but times are so hard that most keep their money and canteen food purchases to themselves, resulting in the “have-nots” staring enviously at better-off prisoners sharing with other prisoners with money. The ones whose families sacrifice to send their loved ones something hold tight to what they have, fearing when that runs out, there will be no more. I decided to try to do something about it.

There is nothing new under the sun, and the same holds true in prison. Over ten years ago, at a very tough prison, we had a similar situation. The haves and the have-nots were sharply divided, and there was no Christmas spirit. The prison certainly had no plans to make things better. If anything happened, it was up to us to put it together.

We put together a Christmas party. Those who were blessed with money pledged to chip in for enough food to feed everyone in our housing unit. Even the greediest crabs contributed a few dollars a-piece. Fixing up a large quantity of Ramen noodles, adding cheese squeezers, chopped up beef and cheese sticks and other canteen items, served with saltines and Ritz crackers, sharing with everyone, it wasn’t a feast, but the closest we’d get to one where we were.

The guards freaked when we began singing Christmas carols. They watched from their glass booth, but didn’t intervene, and became even more puzzled when sixty men stood in a large circle holding hands and reciting the Lord’s prayer. Someone read from the Gospel of Luke, the Christmas story, and a few men said prayers. Everyone was welcomed, and in that circle stood a couple of Jewish prisoners and several Muslims. Our only avowed atheist sat on a bench during the prayers, but he was seen saying the words to “Silent Night” when we sang the Christmas carols.

That little Christmas party changed the atmosphere in our unit. Men were friendlier. More “haves” shared what they had with the “have-nots.” One man said he never realized how good giving things away could make you feel. The guards looked at us differently, too, a grudging respect.

If it worked then, it could work now. A couple weeks ago, I approached a few better-off prisoners and asked them to participate in a Christmas party. I told them it would cost them some money. Everyone agreed instantly. Great idea. They went around to their friends and recruited them. Soon, over half the eighty-plus prisoners in this unit had signed on pledging to chip in what they could to the group party. Others volunteered to form the core of our Christmas carolers, to lead the rest in Christmas songs for a week ahead of time, to seed the Christmas spirit. The Muslims agreed to contribute food, too. We are all People of the Book, they say. We respect their beliefs, and they respect ours.

Libby copied twenty-four of the best-known Christmas songs and mailed them to me, so we’d have the words and music. I gave a set to our choir leader, and that set off a medley of impromptu Christmas caroling.

“I like this one.”

“Let’s sing this one.”

“This is my favorite.”

“Man, it’s been so long.”

I am not immune to the power of Christmas songs. Each year I try to go to at least a couple of chapel Christmas programs just for the chance to sing those old favorites in a group. There is a healing effect. But intermingled with that healing effect can come some emotional pain as the significance of our separation from family and loved ones sinks in. So it was for me with “Silver Bells,” for some reason.

“Silver bells, silver bells…it’s Christmas time in the city. Ring-a-ling, hear them ring…soon it will be Christmas Day."

Singing those first two verses to myself triggered an upwelling of emotion as it hit me again, what I had lost as I approached my thirty-fourth Christmas in prison, far from home.

“City sidewalks, busy sidewalks…dressed in holiday style. In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas…children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile…and on every street corner you’ll hear...

Silver bells, silver bells…It’s Christmas time in the city. Ring-a-ling, hear them ring…soon it will be Christmas Day.”

For some reason my sinuses became severely congested. No, those weren’t tears. It was just an allergy. Whatever it was, I had to blow my nose and wipe my eyes. The images evoked by those simple words created a longing for a regular life “out there,” from whence I am banished and exiled, where bright lights and decorations are everywhere, even with the economy, and families come together to celebrate Christ’s birth despite the commercialization. We are denied that.

When you join with family and friends to exchange gifts, and sit down to share your turkey, ham, or Christmas goose with loved ones, we’ll be having our own celebration in prison. Our noodles and cheese on saltines, and peanut butter squeezed onto cookies may not be as traditional and delectable as the food you get at Publix, but it will be much-appreciated by those who share it with their less-fortunate brethren. Isn’t that some part of what Christmas is all about?
Charlie

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

2011-12-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you!

We wish for you to be surrounded by those you love,

not only at Christmas, but all year.

With love,

Charlie and Libby

TESTIMONY OF JACK MURPHY ON BEHALF OF CHARLES NORMAN

2011-11-26T19:36:00.000-05:00

TESTIMONY OF JACK MURPHY ON BEHALF OF CHARLES NORMAN
BEFORE THE FLORIDA PAROLE COMMISSION, OCTOBER 26, 2011

Attorney William J. Sheppard and my friend, Jack Murphy, represented me at the parole hearing and will return to again lobby for my release at the December 14, 2011, re-hearing. Murf’s words were so powerful that I’ve been asked to make them available to our readers. He has previously stated that “If Charlie Norman can’t get a parole, NOBODY can.”

Thanks, Jack, for the endorsement.

Charlie

“Mr. Sheppard: I would yield to Jack Murphy, who is here on behalf of Charlie Norman.

Mr. Murphy: Good morning. I was there when Charlie Norman drove up to Raiford. I was the inmate coordinator of the very first human behavior program, college accredited program in the state, a program called the Growth Orientation Laboratory, the GOLAB.

Charlie went through that program, and because of his intelligence, his background, his education and his participation, we put him on staff. This is in the ‘70’s. He continues in programs to this day, not as a participant, but as a major, major force in impacting and changing men’s lives in prison. He was sent from Raiford to Zephyrhills to start the program down there.

Everywhere he has gone, he has gone, not as a participant, not as just a moderator, but as a leader in the programs in a system that is waving the re-entry flag, the program flag. I can think of no one in the entire history of this prison system that has had the influence, the impact and the passion to help change people’s lives as Charlie has.

Okay. He gets in trouble for writing some articles that receive standing ovations in New York, and in Chicago, and in Denver, at these international writers’ conventions. And he writes, as Attorney Sheppard said, about the system. No DR. There’s no contraband. There’s no violence. There’s no weapons. It’s something that he wrote.

If the man who wrote 'Cool Hand Luke' had put that stuff in the mail, he would probably get a DR for writing that award-winning movie then.

Charlie voices the conversation and the attitude that you hear every single day in prisons. They have an animosity towards the parole board, towards the system, towards everything, but that’s just, that’s just talk, and all that is, is talk. You talk about society, a safeness of society.

And Mr. Scriven, you can remember this, because I came before you, years ago, seven out of the nine people voted for me. You didn’t vote for me, and I understand why. A guy with my kind of background isn’t supposed to get a whole lot of favor.

Recently, another official said, 'Oh, Murphy, you got lucky.' After 19 years in prison with a double life sentence, I got lucky. But there were people who believed in me, people who went to bat for me.

And the thing is, I’ve been working with the largest prison ministry in the entire world for the last 24 years. I’ve been in over 2,500 prisons. I spoke in Chicago Saturday at a large convention, because people believed in me and went to bat for me. And I’m going to bat for Charlie Norman, because I know that sitting in the room over here are some men coming in here for other cases that are products. We’re the products of programs. And it’s men like Charlie Norman who make these programs work.

And people say, well, 'We’re afraid of that guy.' Well, he’s not going back to Hillsborough. They didn’t let me back to Miami or Dade County for years, and years, and years. The county doesn’t have to worry about him going back there.

I’m talking about a man with an incredible ability to impact lives in a positive way. The few things that he wrote that caused a little bit of stir and all don’t compare to the volumes that he has written that have passion in them, that clearly illustrate what it’s like living behind bars in prison in this situation.

And as I wrote to Lawton Chiles, as I wrote to Jeb Bush, as I wrote, I’ve worked in prisons, and I’ve met many, many people that also, 'I’m innocent, I’m innocent,' and I just, I don’t even bother with it. But I was there with Pitts and Lee, I was there with James Richardson, who were innocent.

I saw Jesse Tafero die in the electric chair, who was innocent, because I know the man who killed the officer. And I was there with Daniel Grant, who spent 11 years on death row until a dying police officer said, 'I’m not going to the grave with this on my conscience.' He said, 'That man is totally innocent.'

I know that things happen in our system that we’re not proud of and that they’re uncomfortable for us.

And this situation with Charlie Norman, Charlie Norman is a safe, safe prospect for consideration, and I just pray that you would look at what he’s done, and the letters Senator Grant and so many others that have looked at the case are on the same train there. And I just appreciate the chance to go to bat for him. But he’s welcome in my home, and I’ll do everything that I can to help in his transition, as I have for many, many other people that you’ve let out that none of them have come back. They’ve all turned the corner, and they’re products of the prison. Charlie’s not a product. He’s a teacher and an innovator of the programs.

Ms. Pate: Thank you, Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Murphy: Yes, ma'am."

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

2011-11-20T12:56:00.001-05:00

Dateline: November 20, 2011

The past couple of weeks have been momentous, considering the strides toward freedom we have made. The October 26th parole hearing resulted in a “no decision,” and we will be going back for a new hearing on December 14th. Same rules apply – we need prayers and positive thoughts to give us the edge over the forces of evil. I am grateful for all the support in the past, and hope it will continue.

Since we started the “Free Charlie Norman Now” blog over 3 ½ years ago, well over one hundred blogs have been read by thousands of people in over fifty countries. The power of the Internet is amazing, and I thank Professor Chip Brantley in the Department of Journalism at the University of Alabama, for opening that door for me. Now we are trying to figure out how to get the 55-page “Life In Prison – A Photo Exhibit,” online and available. Chip, can you help with that?

The “Google Age” has resulted in some surprises and reconnections, most notably with my college friends, Sombat and Keila Tasanaprasert, of Bangkok, Thailand, who visited with me in July. They recently went through a severe flood in their country. Some people who googled my name thought I was dead, but it wasn’t me. It was the “Charlie Norman” who was a famous Swedish composer and died in his seventies. Also, courtesy of Google, there was another Charles Norman who was on “The Bounty, “ as in, Captain Bligh and the mutiny, but that wasn’t me, either. He’s been dead a couple hundred years. Interesting story, though.

My Thonotosassa Elementary schoolmate, Ruth May, also located me, alive and well, which was a great encouragement – it’s a good feeling to be remembered. The Exums, Bonnie and Sharron, surfaced a couple of times, but disappeared again. I never did hear from David Hutto, Kathy Sumner, or any others from school days fifty years ago.

My best man, Steve (Stephen John) Wyman and his brother, Bruce Wyman, seem to have vanished from view. Steve, if you’re googling yourself, click on the “Contact Us” button, and give Libby your information.

Same goes for David Tal-Mason, formerly of the RITE Program at Sumter C.I. and now a free man. David sent a nice message, but no contact information. David, if you read this, please reconnect. We need to talk.

Some sad news for our friend and investigator, Dick Rivett, who has been dealing with personal tragedies for over a year. Most recently, he suffered the death of his beloved wife, Sally Ann. Our prayers are with you, Dick. Be strong in your faith, old friend.

For those who just happened upon this blog, we’d like to hear your comments and suggestions. “Contact Us,” and Libby will add your e-mail address to our list for updates. The messages in the electronic bottle float along in cyberspace – no telling where they end up.

Charlie

DEAR EDITOR

2011-11-01T21:11:00.000-04:00

Oct. 30, 2011

Dear Editor of the St. Pete Times:

After having been the target of Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober’s false accusations for over thirty years, I offer the following observations concerning his latest rants to the Florida Parole Commission on October 26, 2011 [“Hillsborough state attorney Mark Ober fears for his safety if inmate gets parole” ]:

The only person who ever threatened to kill anyone was Mark Ober, when he threatened to have me electrocuted if I did not accept his plea bargains during my 1980 trial for a murder I did not commit. I refused his deals and was found guilty on the perjured testimony of convicted felons who received immunity from Ober. The actual killer walked free.

When Mark first voiced his fearful, “Charlie hates my guts. If he ever gets out, he will kill me,” mantra, I wrote him a letter on September 11, 1991, stating that nothing could be further from the truth, that I had forgiven him years earlier, and bore no animosity toward him whatsoever. Mark’s response to one of his prison clients who was also a friend of mine was that although he did not share my Christian beliefs, he felt that I was sincere, and he would not oppose my efforts at release.

What a difference an election makes!

For the record: No, Mark, I do not want to harm you, I’ve never said that, not even joking, and you shouldn’t stake your reputation on the false statements of con men. In fact, Episcopal priest, Father Bob Anderson, retired, of DeLand, can vouch that for many years, I’ve asked him to pray for my prosecutor and those who hate me.

My suggestion to Mark Ober is that he get right with God, clear his conscience, make amends to those he’s harmed, and give up the alcohol that is obviously killing him. He faces a much greater threat from his own hand than he ever did or will from me. One can’t simultaneously live in irrational fear and live a productive life.

Charles P. Norman
#881834
Wakulla Correctional Institution Annex
110 Melaleuca Drive
Crawfordville, FL 32327

THANKFUL AND GRATEFUL TO ALL WHO HAVE HELPED

2011-10-24T23:18:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 26, 2011, the Florida Parole Commission will decide whether I will be released on parole or remain longer in prison, after 33 ½ years of incarceration.

I don’t know exactly who will be making the long trip and standing up on my behalf. Attorney William J. Sheppard of Jacksonville will lead our presentation. He is a fine lawyer, believes in my case, and is well-prepared to briefly argue for my release. Our side only gets 10 minutes, and most of our evidence has been sent to the parole commission in advance. My dear friend, Libby, who has tirelessly worked for months to prepare the parole plan, photo exhibit, letters and other documents, at considerable personal expense, will be there with Bill, to provide answers to any questions that might be thrown at us. I ask that anyone who goes to the hearing let Libby and Bill know you are there. Bill will ask for everyone who is there on my behalf to please stand when it is our turn.

Since the “opposition” has gotten away with making false, malicious, and highly-prejudicial and improper statements at previous hearings, we will have a court reporter present to make an official transcript, if we need it.

Jack Murphy will be batting “clean up,” and will speak after Bill Sheppard presents the legal points. I met Murf at Raiford over 30 years ago, when I first came to prison, and I was there when Frank Costantino took him out of Zephryhills C. I. in November, 1984. He is standing up for me now. Gary Smigiel has been there for me all along, and I am sure better days are ahead for us.

A lot of people will be praying for my release Wednesday. Even were they to grant me a much-deserved parole, it would take a couple of months to actually get out. I have been accepted at the “Prisoners of Christ” residential program in Jacksonville , and hope to get out and get a job and make the most of every minute I live, in freedom, just as I have done these past 33 years in captivity.

If they decide against my release, we will deal with that with dignity. We are already preparing a court suit, “just in case.”

I ask that you keep my situation in your thoughts and prayers on Wednesday, and pray that those who are making that trip will return home safe and sound. I am thankful and grateful to all who have helped me, and promise not to disappoint you.

Charlie

AN INVITATION TO A PAROLE HEARING

2011-10-02T21:52:00.000-04:00

Dateline: October 2, 2011

Wednesday, Sept. 21, I had a phone call with attorney William Sheppard in Jacksonville about my October 26, 2011, parole hearing in Tallahassee.

Bill hopes that some of my family and friends will attend the hearing, as a show of support, even though there’s not much opportunity to speak, with the ten minute time limit for our side. At my January, 2002, parole hearing, Gary Smigiel asked everyone to stand who was there on my behalf, and over twenty people stood. Since that time, people have grown older, become disheartened, or passed on, and the numbers have diminished. I’m not asking anyone to attend who doesn’t really want to, but we are praying that enough people will be moved to go there that it will have a positive effect on the commissioners. If few people care enough about my release to make the trek to Tallahassee, why would the parole commission care?

For those who do plan to go, I express my heartfelt gratitude. Your support and faith in me is not misplaced. The address of the hearing site is 4070 Esplanade Way, Tallahassee, FL 32399. Visitors need to sign in by 8:30 AM the day of the hearing, and you can leave after my portion of the hearing is over, most likely well before Noon. I’d appreciate it if you let Libby know of your intentions. Sorry, but I won’t be able to attend. Unlike some other states, Florida doesn’t allow us to attend the hearings.

For those who do not support my release, I’d like to remind you of some of Florida’s famous attractions where you can spend the day and have some fun. Busch Gardens in Tampa is always a good choice, and Weeki Wachee Springs has live mermaids, or at least they did when I was last out there. By now, those mermaids are probably in their seventies or eighties, and long gone, but perhaps they’ve been replaced by the younger generation.

If you’re in the North Florida region, I hear St. George Island is nice, and so is Wakulla Springs State Park. For that matter, New Orleans isn’t that far away. Whatever you do, in the interest of justice, please leave Leon County off your itinerary on that date.

Thanks,

Charlie

THE CASE OF THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PRISON TOILET PAPER

2011-09-19T21:09:00.000-04:00

Dateline: August 1, 2011

Someone stole my roll of toilet paper. Don’t laugh─it’s not funny.

I am sitting on a lidless, stainless steel toilet inside the bathroom of a maximum security prison in Florida. Take my word for it─seatless stainless steel toilets are cold! Raise the seat on your toilet at home and sit on the bowl rim, or, better yet, drive to the sleaziest, most rundown gas station in town, get the bathroom key, tread carefully to the toilet, raise the seat and sit down. That will possibly approximate the gross-out factor that I deal with every day when I must use the communal toilets that several men before me with bad aim used as urinals.

Before you sit, there are some preliminaries: flush first!─this is mandatory; ‘tis better to discover that your toilet of choice will flush when you need it to, or if it is clogged and won’t flush, or, horror of horrors, will overflow and flood when you flush it, than find out while you are perched there.

After trial flushing, make sure you have toilet paper. It may be difficult to call for help when you are stuck there indisposed, a situation that reminds me of the old joke about the intellectually-disadvantaged traveler who realized there was no toilet paper in the bus station stall just as the public address speaker announced last boarding call for his departing Greyhound.

Wondering what to do, the man heard someone enter the bathroom and use the urinal. “Hey, buddy, would you see if there is some toilet paper in that other stall, please?”

“Sorry, not a bit.”

“Well, how about some paper towels?”

“Nope, all they have is a hot air hand dryer.”

"Uh, how about the trash can? Are there any scraps in there?”

“It’s empty.”

“What am I going to do? My bus is leaving, and I can’t wipe my butt.”

“Do you have a dollar?”

“A dollar? Yeah.”

“There you go. You don’t want to miss your bus. Use a dollar to wipe with, and just throw it away.”

“Good idea. Thanks.”

A couple of minutes went by. The gentleman was washing his hands when the traveler emerged from the toilet stall, his hands smeared with stinky mess.

“My goodness!” the man said. “What happened? I told you to use a dollar.”

“I did,” the traveler said. “Have you ever tried to wipe your butt with three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel?”

I didn’t have a dollar, or any change, for that matter. We use canteen debit cards in prison, but I wasn’t going to use that, either.

The problem is that with the state budget deficit and funding crisis, there is a toilet paper shortage in prison. Up until recently, the guards issued each prisoner one roll of toilet paper a week, along with a tiny bar of motel soap and a disposable “Bic” razor for the mandatory daily shave. In June, a memo came out with a schedule decreeing that henceforth all male prisoners would receive a roll of toilet paper every ten days. Women prisoners would remain on the seven-day plan.

Why do women prisoners still get toilet paper every seven days, while the men do not? No one knows for sure, but speculation is that the women are more “stand up” than the men, more adamant about the erosion of their limited prison rights, and they won’t abide arbitrary edicts like limiting their ability to maintain their basic human hygienic needs. This theory is born out by the package permit experience of the late 1990’s.

When I came to prison a hundred years ago (it seems), at Raiford, we could send out a package permit to our families once a month (later, it became once every three months). Our families could send us six items: a pair of shoes, a package of three T-shirts or underwear, socks (four), a bottle of shampoo, deodorant, watch, radios, towels, things like that. It saved the state money by not having to furnish a lot of shoes, toiletry items, or other personal property, and it enabled us to have the satisfaction of having our own things sent to us from home. At Christmas we could receive a 15-pound box of food from home: fruit cake, cookies, candy, and nuts. That meant a lot, and provided a strong emotional connection.

Times changed. The “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality of the ‘nineties came to the forefront. Mandatory drug laws and harsh sentencing filled up new prisons as fast as they could build them. The prison budget expanded exponentially. Build them, and they will fill them. The package permits that so many had come to expect became threatened by new prison administrators who found one more thing they could deprive us of, to separate us from family and loved ones and the support that gives us. In 1997 a memo came out stating that the Christmas packages that year would be the last ones. At least they were for the male prison population. For the women, it was a different story. Didn’t I tell you that the women were more “stand up” than the men?

Whereas the men just rolled over and accepted fate, the women said, hell no, you’re not taking our packages. They raised holy hell.

Today, if you go to the Laws of Florida, Florida Administrative Code, Chapter 33, the Department of Corrections rules, and look up the listing for official D.O.C. forms, under “property,” you will find “Package Permit, Female Institutions.” Don’t look for “Package Permit, Male Institutions.” You won’t find it. Fourteen years later, the ladies are still getting their packages from home.

I said all that to explain why the men can get one roll of toilet tissue every ten days, while the women wait seven days. They simply won’t accept the extreme toilet paper rationing.

In years past, toilet paper was dispensed on an “as needed” basis. Bring the empty cardboard roll and trade it in for a new one from the guard as needed. That made sense. What if you had a bad cold, sinuses, or the flu, and had to blow your nose all day, for several days? Or perhaps you caught some salmonella or e. coli from the leftover, re-heated “sloppy Joe” meat that went into the spaghetti, got food poisoning, and suffered through a couple of days of dysentery-like diarrhea. That scrawny roll wouldn’t last long. You could become as desperate as the bus traveler, or as I was, sitting on the cold stainless steel toilet bowl rim wondering who stole my toilet paper.

Supposedly, according to the memo, anyone who found themselves without toilet paper before the ten-day date could do the same as before─present the empty roll and get a new one from the officers’ station. In practice, the answer is usually, “We don’t have any.” Such responses have led to a cottage industry of some prisoners selling spare rolls for food, coffee, or cigarettes, or, like in my case, snatching a roll off the concrete divider between toilets. These unsportsmanlike acts contribute to hard feelings and retribution. Someone stole mine, so I’m stealing yours.

This isn’t the first time we’ve had such shortages in prison. In the mid-1980’s, at Zephyrhills C.I., the shortage got so bad after a couple of weeks that men were ripping out pages from magazines and Bibles to wipe with, causing clogged pipes that kept the plumbers busy. I got so desperate that I wrote a request to the warden:

“Sir─would you please send me a roll of toilet paper? The dorms have been out for two weeks, and if anyone has toilet paper, I know you have an extra roll in the executive bathroom out there in the Admin. Bldg. Thanks.”

The next day the Major and a sergeant appeared at my cell door. The Major had a request form in his hand. The other hand was behind his back. “Step out into the hallway, Norman.”

I did. He nodded at the sergeant, who proceeded to search my cell. He finished, nodded “no” to the Major.

The Major held up the request. “You wrote Mr. Henderson a request for toilet paper.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You asked him to send you a roll from the executive bathroom.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He told me to search your room, and if you had any toilet paper, to lock you up for lying to staff. Otherwise, here.”

He produced a roll of toilet paper he’d been holding behind his back and handed it to me. Charmin! Hmm. Life was good in the executive bathroom. Smiling, I took it. They left. I retrieved the partial roll of scratchy state toilet paper I’d hidden, that the sergeant had missed, and gave it to a grateful neighbor.

Perhaps my plea to the warden had embarrassed him. That night a couple cases of toilet paper were delivered and passed out. The drought was over. I squirreled away a spare roll, just in case. You never know.

A few years ago, at Tomoka, where the pistol target range is only blocks from the prison, during another tissue drought, several of us marveled at the firepower as thousands of rounds of ammunition blasted away for hours on end. It sounded like the Taliban and al Qaeda were trying to attack Daytona Beach, and dozens of trigger-happy prison guards were mounting a valiant defense.

An old-timer groused, “Didja ever notice that they can’t keep toilet paper in this place, but they never run out of bullets?” The truth, as they say.

The present supply problem is exacerbated by the incredible shrinking roll of prison toilet paper. Not only have they decreased the frequency of issuance, but they have also shrunk the rolls! When they passed out the new rolls, they were noticeably smaller in dimensions than the old rolls. How low can you go? The old paper was nothing to brag about─tear off a sheet and place it over your newspaper, and you can read the printed text easily, without difficulty. It is that thin. You can’t do that with Charmin. Where does this stuff come from─North Korea? I’m getting worried now. I saw the prison canteen operator change the tape in his adding machine printer (yes, Virginia, they still have those old things in prison), a paper roll about three inches wide and three inches in diameter, and for a moment there, I had a flash of the future─that’s what they’d be handing out to us if we weren’t careful.

Back to the present. There I sat, seething. They’d be calling “count” soon, and I’d be required to go to my bunk. Eight men stood at the metal sinks, four or five feet in front of me and the line of other toilets, brushing their teeth and washing their faces. Gross! Did I tell you that there is little or no privacy in prison? It’s like that old joke, “How do you tell when the honeymoon is over? She brushes her teeth while he does his business on the toilet.”

I didn’t want to ask the guy in the next stall to borrow his roll. People are funny about such things in here. Fortunately for me, a young prisoner approached me, smiling, and handed the missing roll back to me. It had been his idea of a friendly joke. I had two ways to respond: I could become angry, scowl, and castigate him for taking the toilet tissue, which is probably how his father treated him before slapping him around every week of his formative years, or I could do what I did, smile, reach out, take the roll and say, “Thanks.”

Sometimes the best solution is the easiest solution.

Charlie

SPECIAL VISIT FROM OLD FRIENDS FROM FAR AWAY

2011-08-10T22:05:00.000-04:00

Dateline: August 10, 2011

A four-decade-plus friendship was renewed Sunday, July 31, 2011, when my dear friends, Sombat, Keila, and their son, Andy, made a trek from the other side of the world to visit with Libby and me at Wakulla Annex C.I. Homeland Security has nothing on the Florida D.O.C. when it comes to bureaucratic red-tape and paperwork. It was easier to travel 12,000 miles from Bangkok, Thailand, to Tampa, than it was to get to and into this place, but they persevered.
I met Sombat at the University of South Florida in 1968, through a mutual friend from the Yucatan, Mexico, who enrolled in King High School, not speaking any English. Since I spoke Spanish, I helped Tony Puerta learn to speak English well enough that he graduated from King, enrolled at USF, and eventually became a rocket scientist at Sperry-Rand. He repaid the kindness by introducing me to Sombat, who was studying engineering, thus beginning a life-long friendship.

Sombat and his beautiful wife, Keila, were there for me during some of the worst times of my life, offering non-judgmental friendship when I had nowhere else to turn. I hope I was able to do the same for them.
During college, Sombat played on the USF soccer team, and I was in the martial arts business, tae kwon do and Karate schools in Tampa and Lakeland, and tournament promotions. We played golf at the USF golf course, but I didn't know Sombat had been a champion kick boxer in Thailand until he offered to be a sparring partner for Florida black belt karate champion Ron Slinker, one of my partners in Martial Arts Institute, Inc., who was training for a professional kick boxing (PKA) match with the American kick boxing champion. After Sombat put on a "Muay Thai" kick boxing exhibition against the hapless Slinker, sending him to the hospital, Ron decided kick boxing was not for him. Slinker went on to become a professional wrestler with Vince McMahon's WWF. His biggest claim to fame was teaching "The Rock," Dwayne Johnson, to be a professional wrestler. "The Rock" is now known as a highly-paid movie star. In his biography, "The Rock" talked about Slinker, calling him the baddest fighter he's ever met. Obviously, "The Rock" never went three rounds with Sombat.

I was there when Andy, Sombat's and Keila's first child, was born. Until 1989, when they moved back to Thailand, Andy and his sister, Adrie, grew up visiting me in a sucession of prisons, dragging their parents along.

It was a very emotional time for all of us when my old friends and their now-grown son, who towers over all of us, entered the visiting park to hugs and tears. The years in between truly fell away. Afterwards, Libby, who had met them for the first time at the visit, said she felt like she'd known them all her life and was humbled in the presence of such special, loving people, whose feelings and words were so obviously genuine.

In the midst of such repression and negativity omnipresent in here, it was an incredible boost to my sinking morale to be in their presence for a few precious hours. Truly I am blessed and thankful for such purely good people in my life, who validate my own worth as an individual.

Charlie

CANADA GEESE MAKE A HOME IN PRISON

2011-08-02T23:07:00.000-04:00

Dateline July 18, 2011

Early one subfreezing January morning in North Florida, eighty state prisoners lined up outside to march to the chow hall for a breakfast of two pancakes and a cup of hot oatmeal.

I was one of those prisoners. In the predawn darkness, glaring orange security lights mounted on tall concrete towers illuminated two Canada geese nibbling on the brown grass blades of the exercise yard. The anomaly of the wild goose pair juxtaposed with the razorwire fence beside them struck me. I couldn’t take my eyes off them as we headed for the chow hall, craning my neck to catch a last sight of them. I hadn’t seen a Canada goose in decades, since my imprisonment, and I didn’t know when I’d see one again, let alone two. It wasn’t that long a wait─just until the next day.

On the way to the law library to do legal research the next morning, there they were again, nibbling at the dry, dead grass in a different exercise yard adjacent to the prison school, oblivious to the activity around them.

Twice in two days! My lingering memory of Canada geese went back to my childhood in Central Florida and a group of children gazing skyward at a large V-shaped formation of honking wild geese migrating southward, far overhead. The image epitomized freedom, unrestrained by time, place, or national boundaries.

The following day the geese treated me to the sight of them taking to the air, their six-foot wingspan lifting them easily over the high steel fences that encaged the humans below. The continuing daily proximity to the wild creatures prompted me to find out more about them to satisfy my curiosity as to why, with all the Western Hemisphere to choose from, they’d selected a maximum security prison for their winter vacation.

The National Geographic Field Guide to Birds informed me that although Canada geese prefer wetlands, grasslands, and cultivated fields within commuting distance of water, they have adapted successfully to man-made habitats, such as golf courses and farms to the extent that they will chase off other nesting waterbirds. National Geographic can add prisons to that list now.

I also discovered that the Canada goose winters in the Northern Panhandle of Florida, from the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf Coast. That explained it. I also found that they were closely related to the endangered Hawaiian goose, or néné, best known as a crossword clue, and had become so prolific in the last few decades that they are considered pests in some areas. Not in my area, they aren’t.

My paternal feelings of regard for the pair (mated for life─no divorce for geese) became conflicted, however, after I read an article with a recipe for roast Canada goose, said to be the tastiest of all geese. After a deprived bland prison diet of daily beans and soybean patty substitutes, my visions of the majestic birds with their black heads and white chin straps interspersed with the enticing image of a roast goose and all the fixins’ as the centerpiece of Christmas dinner at home with my family. I shook it off.

After several weeks of almost daily sightings, I realized that I hadn’t seen the geese in awhile. I speculated that they had relocated to (literally) greener pastures. Then one day a friend informed me that the geese were nesting in the prison farm field west of the law library. I surveyed the area from a window in the library, and lo and behold! There they were, the female sitting on a ground-level nest, the male a few feet away on guard duty, black neck stretched high to observe any possible threats.

Over the next few weeks I learned from prisoners who worked the farm plot of cabbages, squash, and collards, that the female sat on a clutch of four eggs. The prisoners kept a small drainage pond in the field filled with water, which the geese took turns visiting, the nest never left unprotected.

One morning I put down my legal documents on a table in the law library and hurried to th window to see “my” geese. They weren’t there! The nest was abandoned. What could have happened? Across the field in the distance, I spied a long black neck extended above a height of unmowed grasses by the drainage pond. A few minutes later, another Canada goose appeared, then I noticed a movement of something brown and small following the mother. A baby!

The geese headed across the farm field, the mother followed by the tiny gosling, the father maintaining a vigilant watch at the flank. But where were the other three? All I saw was one baby goose.

The farmworkers informed me that only one egg had hatched. After a couple of days the mother abandoned the cold eggs, focusing her attention on the survivor.

In the days and weeks ahead, the baby bird grew quickly. It went from timidly following the parents around to racing ahead for some tidbit. When a curious crow flew over the field the father launched himself into the air for a direct intercept of the surprised predator. No F-16 Air Force jet took off so fast with such singleminded purpose as that protective male.

Before long the gosling had lost its immature brown camouflage coloration and looked more like a slightly smaller version of its parents. The trio is inseparable as I watch from my window today, none of them ever more than a few feet apart. I thought that humans could learn some parenting lessons from geese, whose attentiveness to their young’s needs and protection never wavers. Scientists say they operate on instinct. Perhaps we’ve lost some of our important instincts along the way. The only geese I’ve ever seen in prison were there by choice, and could leave whenever they decided to take wing.

I haven’t seen the young goose fly yet. It is approaching full size, so it won’t be long. I do know that mom and dad aren’t going anywhere until their offspring can go with them. Perhaps ne day a V-shaped formation will appear overhead, and the wild geese will answer the honking calls of their kind, flying away home. Would that I had wings, and could join them, free at last.

Charlie

Postscript: They flew!

TAKING A HIT FROM THE FLORIDA PAROLE COMMISSION

2011-06-22T22:11:00.002-04:00

DATELINE: 06/12/11
The Ku Klux Klan prison guards are still getting their punches in, for over ten years now, since I had my first run-in with them. They don’t all fit into the popular stereotype of the ignorant, tobacco juice-spitting rednecks with pick-up trucks. The most dangerous and treacherous of their breed got “eddicated,” majored in “criminal justice,” got good jobs at the prison, clawed their way up through the ranks, and now wear white shirts and ties in their higher ranks. When a guy like me comes along though, their masks slip and their slips show, and every now and then they will reveal themselves. Their power and influence extend far in the South.

Thursday morning, June 9th, at 11 AM, I got called up front to the classification office, ostensibly to have an interview with a secretary. I was sitting outside the offices on a stainless steel bench, when two people came through the gate from the outside: a thirties-something white male wearing a dress shirt and tie, and a much younger woman who might have just stepped out of “Cosmopolitan” magazine. Russ Gallogly and Alexandra Campbell from the Florida Parole Commission, here to conduct my “parole interview.” Thanks for giving me notice that you were coming, I said. I could have brought some paperwork I wanted them to consider. Didn’t matter. The verdict and decision had been predetermined before I showed up. Like jaded old married couples contemplating divorce, we were just going through the motions.

The man asked the secretary for my prison file. The secretary brought him a photocopy paper box filled with my files going back over thirty years, and added an inch-thick packet of documents consisting of my most recent paperwork, a summary of “new information” to be considered by the parole commission, my parole release plan, list of accomplishments, literary body of work, my PEN World Voices keynote speech from April, etc. When we sat down in the tiny “interview room,” the guy absently flipped through the pages (not even Elaine Powers could read that fast) while I talked, then opened one of the thick “inmate files,” left it lying there on the table. According to law and rules, the parole people are required to review and consider all information, new and old, before making an informal decision concerning what is best for the prisoner and society. R-I-G-H-T. As my New York friends say, Fuhgeddaboutit.

The law says that there are two things the parole people are supposed to consider in deciding when to release someone─can this person live a law-abiding life and can he support himself and not be a burden on society? If you compare my case with dozens of others who have been paroled, been out on the street for years, served much less time than I have (over 33 years now), and accomplished far less, the question is why? The opposition of the corrupt state attorney, in a few words.

This time, I had to deal with the specter of the KKK prison guards haunting me.

You know the story. I’ve told it all before. The Anne Frank Center USA Prison Diary Project in 2008. Associated Press interview by Jessica Gretsky and Suzette Laboy. 3,000 media outlets. Thousands of web sites republished excerpts. A 2400 word excerpt from a couple hundred handwritten pages title, “To Protect The Guilty,” recounted my experiences with retaliation by KKK prison guards at an unnamed North Florida prison years before. That was in 2008. That memoir, a short story, and a poem I wrote were published in a book. In January, 2010, a copy of the book was sent to me and confiscated by a vengeful prison mailroom clerk who held a great deal of personal animosity toward me. She declared it a “threat to security.” Three months later, the Literature Review Committee in Tallahassee, consisting of educated, intelligent library types, reviewed the book and said it was not a threat to security, and ordered them to give the book to me.

The mailroom clerk failed to follow the rules, failed to give me a confiscation form, just took the book. She’d sent it to the assistant warden, Hodgson, who wanted nothing to do with it. He didn’t file the confiscation paperwork, either. Finally, she and her boss lady took the book to the warden. “Look what that Norman’s sayin’ about yo’ kinfolks, warden. Let’s git that sumbitch.” And they did!

After I filed grievances seeking the delivery of my book, the book I’d never seen, the warden directed the other assistant warden to write a disciplinary violation for “mail regulations violations.” Since she must have come straight from her college basketball team to a good job in prison administration (it’s hard to find a white woman as tall as Shaq, especially in the piney woods), she didn’t have a lot of practice writing “D.R.’s” as they are called, and made enough mistakes to fill up several pages of grievance appeals. Didn’t matter. A sergeant told me, “The warden wants your ass in jail.”

When I went to the kangaroo court hearing, it was a “fait accompli.” Thirty days in solitary, thirty days loss of gaintime. All appeals summarily denied. Since last August, I’ve been fighting head-to-head against state lawyers and all their resources with a lawsuit I filed in court in Tallahassee.

It was all retaliation for pursuing my First Amendment rights, even though a guard once told me, “The Constitution ain’t in effect in Columbia County.”

Back to the “parole interview” on Thursday, the 9th. I covered all the bases, my parole plan, going to the “Prisoners of Christ” program in Jacksonville. Outstanding record of accomplishments. I told them the whole tawdry tale of the KKK prison guards and me that resulted in the retaliatory D.R., solitary, the punitive transfer from Tomoka.

I asked him to hold the D.R. penalty in abeyance, since it was in court, being appealed, unwarranted, and to penalize me for it by jacking up my date would be unfair, not allowing me to pursue my due process. Besides, I’d already been wrongly penalized with an incorrect and improper “death penalty aggravator” that tacked ten extra years to my parole date, anyway. Taking off that wrongful ten-year aggravation would have made my release date 2004, not 2014.

Didn’t matter. Gallogly smashed me with an extra “36 months” because of the KKK D.R. giving me a “July, 2017” release date, next hearing, April, 2017. Wrong, wrong, wrong. All I can do now is prepare the best I can for the actual parole commission hearing in Tallahassee in 90 days─sometime around September, for what it is worth.

I still need letters of support, and to find out who wants to attend the hearing, to make the arrangements for September. We are still working on putting documents together, like the updated photo exhibit. Expenses are mounting. Miracles do occasionally happen, though.

If the commissioners rubber-stamp the parole examiner’s adverse release date, I am preparing for a court appeal, on that issue. Meanwhile, I just hope all the KKK members take their sheets and crosses deep in the woods somewhere far away and leave me alone.

Charlie

CHARLIE’S NEW YORK PEN SPEECH RECEIVES “THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE”

2011-05-08T18:22:00.001-04:00

Dateline: May 6, 2011

I couldn’t be there, but I heard about it from Libby, Stephanie, my literary mentor/editor, and others.

On Thursday, April 28, 2011, John Lonergan, read my keynote speech, “The State of Prisons and Prisoners in America,” at the PEN World Voices International Literary Festival at the Desmond Tutu Center Refectory in New York City.

Mr, Lonergan was an interesting choice to read my work, as he retired in June, 2010, as governor of Ireland’s Mountjoy Prison after 42 years working in service to the prison system. He has written a book, The Governor, about his experiences in a very hard place. He had some comments of his own that had the ring of truth in them. Here is a link to his web site http://www.johnlonergan.ie/

Salman Rushdie, award-winning author, had some introductory comments before the presentation of my speech:

“Charles Norman is unable to be with us as he is in jail. He says in a message, ‘I survived over thirty years in Florida prisons for the wrongful conviction of a murder I did not commit. He says he has poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs, and plays that have won numerous national writing awards… He says, ‘I love the elasticity of English, how words can be pulled, shaped, and re-formed to express the thoughts and feelings in my mind. I view the good folks at PEN as benevolent hacksaw-wielding elves who’ve been steadily slicing through the cage bars that confine me, setting me free.’ ”

I’m taking the liberty of sharing excerpts of my friend, Stephanie’s, comments:

“… an update on Charlie's speech. Well....it was spectacular. His words took on so much meaning when I heard them live. Though I know it wasn't Charlie himself, I felt nevertheless like he was speaking to me. …

He received a thunderous round of applause...It was so special.”

We also heard from Shaun Randol, editor in chief of The Mantle web publication at www.mantlethought.org

This is an excerpt of what he had to say: “…Among other things, we covered the PEN World Voices Festival.We heard your statement, as delivered by John Lonergan, and we would like to publish your text on The Mantle. Will you be willing to share your story with The Mantle and our global leaders? It would be our honor to publish you.”
I gave my permission for the publication and the story is at http://mantlethought.org/content/pen-2011-working-day-panel-discussion
It has been a great honor to have been included with such lofty literary figures in the World Voices Festival. Perhaps something positive will come of it. In approximately a month or so─sometime in June─a parole examiner will come here to the prison to interview me prior to my parole in Tallahassee. He will wnt to know what accomplishments I’ve had in the last five years, since my last hearing, and what I have to say for myself. I continue to cast bread upon the waters.

If you’d like to hear my speech delivered by Mr. John Lonergan in his fine Irish brogue, there is a recording for an mp3 file at   http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5694/prmID/2126

Click on “John Lonergan” next to the heading, “Clips.” To listen to all the keynote speakers, click on “Listen.”

The text of my speech is below if you’d just like to read it.

I welcome and appreciate any and all comments. Thanks.

Charlie

THE STATE OF PRISONS AND PRISONERS IN AMERICA

My name is Charles Patrick Norman. I am a prisoner of war, a political prisoner of America’s war on crime. I live in a world far different from the one you live in, but you may find that our worlds are becoming more and more alike. My words come to you from inside a maximum security prison. The warden refused my request to travel to New York to give my speech in person, even though I promised to return.

Let me take an informal survey, by a show of hands.

If you are thirty-two years old or younger, please raise your hand. Now look around you at how many of the upraised hands you see. Thank you.

I ask that question for a reason. For those who raised their hands, I have been serving this life sentence for a murder I did not commit since before you were born. I have served your entire life, and over half of mine, in prison—one-third of a century.

If you did not raise your hand, take a moment and think how old you were and what you were doing 33 years ago, when I came to prison. Jimmy Carter was the American president. Jim Jones had not yet poisoned his followers in the Jonestown Massacre. Some of you were little children. Some of you were teenagers. Some were adults and had families—husbands, wives, sons, daughters.

Think about how your life has changed in the past 33 years, how different you are now from who you were then, and think about me as a man, a fellow human being with hopes and dreams, a 28-year old who woke up that Wednesday morning of April 5, 1978, never suspecting that was the last time he would awake in freedom, in his own bed, lying next to a woman who loved him.

I am 61 years old now, and have been in some of Florida’s worst prisons over the last 33 years. I have endured and survived horrors you do not want to imagine. The corrupt prosecutor was thwarted in his efforts to electrocute me, but was overheard saying, “Norman will never survive a life sentence.” I am determined to prove him wrong.

I am not the same person I was in 1978. I have changed. I have seen good men and bad men die, some easily, giving up the ghost, relieved to be free of this life at last. Others died hard, fighting to live and breathe, to stay a little longer in this world, but nevertheless, die they did, as each of us is destined to do one day.

You might ask, “what kind of person are you, Charlie?” As hard as it may be to believe, I am a better man now than I was then, better in virtually every way. Rather than allow the monolith of prison to crush and destroy me, I entered the flaming furnace and emerged, refined, purified, the base metals burned away, against all odds. I am stronger in mind and spirit, if not body. I refused to let them break me down, as they do to so many.

I am not the only one. Others, extraordinary women and men, have survived long imprisonments and emerged with their humanity intact. Even before his release from 27 years confinement, Nelson Mandela was one of my personal heroes. If he could do it, I could do it.

A dead man named Tex McClain told me once that we (prisoners) were defective, like automobiles that came out flawed from the factory, and each of us had been recalled to prison to be repaired. Imagine a long line of broken people on a conveyor belt entering a huge building, and another line of people being cast out on the other side.

The problem, said Tex, a chain gang philosopher who had served what seemed like an unimaginable twenty years at the time, was that when we got inside the factory—the prison—we weren’t being repaired, but damaged worse. If we’d been thousands of cars with faulty transmissions or fuel lines returning to the factory, when we emerged we were missing wheels, with sputtering engines and clouds of smoke coming out of the exhausts. If prisoners were cars, when they were released from the factory, many would run off the road and end up in the ditch, while others sped up and crashed into trees or veered across the double yellow line and hit some innocent drivers head on. Perhaps half could keep it in the lane, make it through all the stop signs, red lights, and obstacles in their paths, and make their way home. That’s not a good statistic.

I once went on a tour of a General Motors factory in Detroit. The number of autoworkers on the assembly line amazed me, bolting on bumpers, attaching doors, doing their jobs quickly before the vehicles moved to the next stations. Now I see the modern auto factory assembly line on TV, but I see no humans. All I see are machines, robots, welding, bolting, assembling, like a futuristic scene from “Terminator.”

Prison has changed in much the same way as our factories. When I came to Raiford, “The Rock,” a notorious penitentiary in North Florida immortalized in “Cool Hand Luke,” and other stories, the Florida prison population was only one-fifth what it is today. As bad as it was, Raiford was better then than prison is today.

If life in prison can be called good, amidst the ever-present threats of being stabbed, raped, murdered, or shot, life in prison then was good for those who knew how to serve their time, to be strong, to mind their own business, to not get involved with drugs, alcohol, gambling, or loansharking, or other deathtraps guaranteed to bring men down. One could go to school, earn a high school equivalency diploma, study college correspondence classes, take vocational classes and learn a trade, take self-improvement programs to learn to be a better person, go to religious services, attend AA, learn how to create works of art to earn spending money through classes in arts and crafts, share relaxed visits on weekends with loved ones, behave themselves, and earn their release on parole. They could go home. The reality today is far different.

The war on drugs began our destruction. The cartels flooded our shores with cocaine, and found a willing market among our nation’s youth. How do you convince a sixteen-year old inner city youth he should stay in school and get his high school diploma, hope to get a full-time job that pays above minimum wage and has healthcare benefits, when he can stand on a corner in the ‘hood for a few hours and make a thousand dollars selling crack rocks? When he winds up in an adult prison in a year or two with a mandatory sentence, selling the same drugs he sold on the street that were provided by a corrupt guard, what message is he receiving? Crime pays. Over two million prisoners nationwide are receiving the same message.

Prisons began administering psychotropic drugs strong enough to stun a mule, chemical Tasers, resulting in prisoners looking like walking cadavers.

As the politicians cranked out harsher penalties for every type of crime, they had to fund a prison building boom to hold the backlog of convicts in jails. Build them, and they will fill them. Find people to work there.

The prison population doubled, tripled, quadrupled, quintupled. Society was no better for it. The poverty, economic conditions, joblessness and drugs that fueled the crime wave only got worse. No one thought to intervene with the children, the collateral damage, to divert them early on from the path to crime, addiction, and prison. It did not occur to the politicians that the money eventually spent to incarcerate the children after they became adult criminals could have paid for college educations. Instead, after getting shuffled through a failing foster care and juvenile justice system that inflicts even more damage, the courts ship the disadvantaged, drug-addicted youths off to prison for a decade or two.

Then came September 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda entered our vocabulary. The Twin Towers fell. We went to war. The world will never be the same, and neither will the prison system.

We learned new words: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo. Waterboarding. Rendition. I.E.D., TBI. It was only natural that the same labor pool that drew prison guards would be tapped to fill the increasing ranks of soldiers, sailors, and Marines. Guards joined the services, and the Reserves were called up. When they came back to the States, they were different, changed. The experience damaged them.

Is it any surprise that those involved in the Abu Ghraib prison brutality scandal were members of a West Virginia National Guard unit composed mostly of state prison guards? Apparently, they applied the lessons learned in their prisons to the Iraqi detainees. Then we get the benefit of their experiences over there when they return to civilian life.

The prisons are filled to bursting. Like the auto factories in our economic heyday, production is up. And like the auto factories, it’s hard to find any humans working there. The robots have taken over. At least, they act like robots. They have been trained to show little human emotion. As the conveyor belt whisks us along the line, the robots don’t see humans. They see inventory, serial numbers, not names. My serial number is 881834. My human name is superfluous. Ask any ex-con you meet who has been free for twenty years what his prison number is, and he will rattle it off without hesitation.

How do we change the dysfunctional prison system? First we must change the “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality that dominates society’s fears of crime and violence. We must close prisons, not fill them. We must stop using prisons as warehouses to store the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted. We must stop dehumanizing the disadvantaged.

In today’s prisons, the dehumanization process is complete. Strip someone of their humanity and you no longer have to treat them humanely. Dehumanize a group or race of people and you can commit genocide with a clear conscience. It’s okay, they’re not human.

Once someone has been dehumanized, how do you get them back, restore them to their human condition? That is a more difficult problem. All I can do is speak for myself, from my own experience, and perhaps provide some insight.

A good friend asked me recently, considering all that I’ve endured and suffered through over the past 33 years, how have I resisted the damage, maintained my character, integrity, and sanity in the face of this barbaric treatment? A lot of people, she says, marvel that I haven’t thrown in the towel at this point. How have I been able to survive, seemingly unscathed, continuing to be creative and productive, writing, reading, educating myself, helping others? Able to share my thoughts with groups of people who have little conception of harsh prison realities beyond “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” without embarrassing myself or them? I did not do it alone.

It will take a book to fully explain how I became the man I am, but I can give you the short answer in one word—love. The act of loving and being loved—feeling and experiencing love in a world of hate has kept me alive, has helped me prosper, has kept me human, given me the strength and resolve to resist the corrosive effects of dehumanization that have eaten away at so many of my fellow prisoners, as well as the guards.

To love and be loved—that is to be human. I have been blessed to have felt the love of fellow humans. Love has protected me, guided me, inspired me to write, to reach out, to communicate with the outside world despite attempts by officials, who put me in solitary confinement for my writings, to silence me, to share my thoughts and feelings, to become a better man.

Over the past twenty-five years a succession of people from PEN have helped me, encouraged me, taught me things that have changed my life for the better, as they have done for countless other prison writers aspiring to have their voices heard above the din.

Beginning with the late Fielding Dawson, who became a true friend, Jackson Taylor, Susan Yankowitz, Bell Chevigny, Hettie Jones, William “Chip” Brantley, and the amazing Stephanie Riggio, have reached through the razorwire, extending their gifts of knowledge and love to me. They are people I have never met, yet I feel closer to some of them than I do to members of my own family. They have read my thoughts, my words on paper, and still they accepted me. That is love.

On a closer front, for the past eleven years, I have been loved by a remarkable woman who taught by her selfless example, committing herself to seeing me free. Without her love I would have been silenced, my voice unheard, and I would not be sharing my thoughts with you today. Libby Dobbin. Please applaud her for me.

For all that and much more, for the opportunity to remain human in the face of great opposition and adversity, to be one of you, I thank you and salute you. I ask only that you continue the fight, to help and love others—many who may seem unlovable—to save their lives, to reach out to those less fortunate than yourselves.

I include myself in that category. Although I remain strong, resolute in mind and spirit, if not body, it has been a long battle against the odds. I have incurred damages, and I am tired. Prison is a young man’s game, and this old man is ready to go home.

* * *

Charles Patrick Norman                                    PEN World Voices Festival

#881834                                                           Thursday, April 28, 2011

Wakulla Correctional Institution Annex

110 Melaleuca Drive

Crawfordville, FL 32327

PRISONER INVITED TO DELIVER SPEECH IN NEW YORK

2011-04-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

Dateline: 04/11/2011

PRISONER INVITED TO DELIVER SPEECH IN NEW YORK

No, the Department of Corrections isn’t likely to let me attend in person, even though I promised to return.

The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will be held in New York City April 25 – May 1, 2011, featuring more than 100 writers from 40 countries meeting to celebrate the power of the writer’s voice as a bold and vital element of public discourse. If you’d like to read more about the festival events, visit www.pen.org/festival.

I accepted an invitation to deliver a keynote speech on Thursday, April 28, 2011, at 9:30 AM at the Desmond Tutu Center Refectory. I am the third speaker, right after the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison.

Acknowledging my prisoner status, the PEN Festival organizers are seeking approval from the Department of Corrections to set up an internet webcast so that I can deliver my speech live. Considering how paranoid the DOC is, I’m not holding my breath on that issue. My speech is written, and “Plan B” involves one of the international writers reading it on my behalf.

Whatever happens, it is a great honor, and I am humbled to be included in such an accomplished group. What is it about, you ask?

“In 1986, Norman Mailer PEN American Center’s then-president organized a legendary conference titled,
The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State. In it he asserted that not only did writers use their imaginations naturally and gracefully to speak to one another across national boundaries, but that governments, too, were capable of using their visions to improve the world’s troubles. To mark the 25th anniversary of this event, the PEN World Voices Festival will hold a Working Day to revisit similar questions while addressing urgent issues facing writer-intellectuals in 2011. This workshop will begin with panel discussion, including keynote addresses. It will be followed by five breakout sessions, each addressing topics related to how writers can respond to current predicaments and help find peaceful solutions. At the day’s end, the participants will release a joint manifesto, drafted by one and signed by all – the first of its kind in the festival history.” (From the PEN.org web site)

My area of expertise is prison, of course. Tuesday, April 5, 2011, marked my 33rd year of continuous imprisonment – 12,055 days. I am speaking on how prison has changed in the past 25 – 30 years. If you’d like to read my speech, I will post it after the festival.

Meanwhile, Libby and I are working hard on my updated parole release plan and “LIFE IN PRISON – A Photo Exhibit.” A parole examiner is scheduled to interview me here in June, and a full parole commission hearing will follow in Tallahassee 60 – 90 days later. Hopefully, my PEN literary festival participation will be looked at favorably.

Charlie

PRISON CHANGES REFLECT CHANGES IN OUR SOCIETY

2011-03-15T23:54:00.000-04:00

Dateline: 03/10/2011

Someone once said that prison is a microcosm of society. In thirty-three years of life in prison, I’ve found that axiom to prove true.

Generations overlap in prison. When my incarceration began in the late 1970’s, I met men who’d been locked up since the 1940’s and ‘50’s. As “newcocks,” we younger prisoners listened raptly to the old timers’ stories of what prison life had once been and how it had changed since they came in decades before. Little did I know that over thirty years later I would be where they’d once been, telling newcocks how “real prison” had been “B.C.,” before crack cocaine.

One of the greatest differences between then and now is the educational and intelligence level of prisoners. I tell men who ask, “the quality of the prison inmate has gone downhill.” Don’t get me wrong! There were plenty of candidates for ‘America’s Dumbest Prisoners” in those days, but there was also a layer of intelligent, educated prisoners then that is absent now.

When I arrived at the Lake Butler Reception and Medical Center in North Florida after spending almost two years in Tampa’s Hillsborough County Jail dungeon, one of my first stops was the prison law library. I needed legal advice and didn’t trust the lawyer I believed betrayed me in court.

Everyone told me to go see Judge Joe Peel. I did. Judge Joe Peel ran the law library. His was a famous case from the 1950’s, the Chillingsworth Murders, in which Judge Peel supposedly paid Floyd Holzapel to murder Judge Chillingsworth and his wife. Floyd took them out into the Atlantic Ocean, wrapped them in chains, and threw them overboard. The case was famous not only because a judge contracted a murder on another judge, but also because it was the first time someone was convicted of murder without a corpus delicti, a dead body.

Besides the judge, a former prosecutor worked in the law library writing appeals for prisoners, along with another disbarred attorney and a couple of self-taught “jailhouse lawyers,” long-term prisoners who were just as legally talented as the law school graduates.

Judge Peel didn’t get me out, obviously, but in thirty minutes, he gave me more valuable advice than I’d received from my lawyer. Those men helped many prisoners with appeals, had convictions overturned, resulting in numerous people freed from prison.

That doesn’t happen any more. Lawyers and judges are still going to prison—one of my judges went to prison for bribery and corruption—but I haven’t seen any in years. One of the “status” jobs in prison is law clerk, and the Department of Corrections has a training program in which prisoners who meet the minimum educational requirements watch hours of video tapes, take a test, and become certified law clerks. Sadly, most of those prisoner law clerks are incompetent, and have trouble helping write a request form or a grievance. If you find one who actually has some legal ability, he is so bedeviled with pleas for help from mostly lost causes that he becomes burned out and gets a job change. Others who are too successful in pursuing court appeals and lawsuits often find themselves in lockup, transferred, facing trumped-up charges to dissuade them from being too helpful.

When I came to prison, Tom Brokaw’s remnants of “The Greatest Generation” and beyond still dominated the prisoner mentality. I met men who had fought the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II, the Chinese Communists and North Koreans in the Korean War, and the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War.

Those men were a different breed. They were serious. They were “stand-up,” and lived by the convict code. Mind your own business. Be a man. Don’t snitch. Don’t cross them! They might kill you. Many of these men were victims of the wars they fought in, plagued by alcoholism and PTSD, and had not adjusted well to life in a peaceful society, but they ran the prisons, maintained a semblance of order that the guards couldn’t.

Something I miss from those days are the intelligent conversations. There were some very smart, educated prisoners serving time then, and they tended to congregate together. Besides former college professors, I knew an actual NASA rocket scientist, an astronomer, a nuclear physicist, and a U.S. Marine Corps general. If you had a difficult question, someone could answer it. We had jet pilots, doctors and dentists. We had three chiropractors at Raiford who were constantly being called upon to crack backs and adjust necks. There were men with life experiences, successful businessmen, old-time bank robbers and safecrackers, jewel thieves, professional athletes, football and baseball players, a man who’d won two Super Bowl rings, who fell to the siren song of cocaine.

You don’t see those men in prison anymore. Perhaps they are in federal prison. Today 70% of Florida prisoners are functionally illiterate, a number I can attest. The Department of Corrections bragged recently that 2,500 prisoners were awarded G.E.D.’s in 2010, which sounds good, but when you realize there are over 103,000 people in Florida prisons, that comes out to less than 2.5%.

Prisoners have gotten younger and dumber. They are getting hooked on drugs at a younger age, become more desperate and violent, the juvenile system can’t hold them, and they graduate to “the Big House.” Mail call is very sparse nowadays. Only some of us get correspondence. Another prison axiom is you have to write letters to get letters, and if you can’t read and write, you won’t send or receive much mail. And those who do write can’t spell. Just yesterday a young man laboring over a letter home asked me, “How do you spell ‘o”?” “O?” I asked, confused, “What do you mean, ‘O’?” He explained that he was trying to tell his mother he was in debt, and needed her to send him money. “Oh!” I said, “You mean ‘owe!’ ” “That’s what I said.” “O – W- E.” “Thanks. How do you spell, ‘coffee?’ ”

Prison as a reflection and microcosm of society is also seen through our economy. In the Clinton nineties when the deficit was reined in and taxes filled state coffers, prisons went through a boom time of full funding. Real school teachers and vocational instructors taught full classes. College courses were available. Chapels had full staffs and outside religious groups coming in for services days and nights. Recreation departments offered organized sports leagues, hobbycraft and art programs that kept many prisoners occupied and out of mischief. Libraries were well-stocked and always open. The prison food was good, and they served adult portions. No one went hungry. I haven’t seen a pork chop, a fish with bones in it, or beef stew in fifteen years. Programs are virtually nonexistent now.

Then came September 11, 2001. Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda entered our vocabulary. The Twin Towers fell. We went to war. We are still at war. America will never be the same, and neither will the prison system.

We learned new words: Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Waterboarding. Rendition. I.E.D. It was only natural that the same labor pool that drew prison guards would be tapped to fill the increasing ranks of soldiers, sailors, and Marines. Guards joined the services and the Reserves were called up. Thousands took tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, and developed an “us and them” mentality. If you weren’t one of us, you were one of them, the enemy. When they came back to the States, they brought back new, harsher, angrier attitudes. They were no longer eating sand and worried about getting blown up walking through a village, but now they were entering cell blocks and looking at us as though we were their enemies, terrorists, and not fellow Americans, who, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Now when the guards come in their squads for “routine shakedowns,” one would think they are looking for AK-47’s or roadside bombs. Ransack. Trash. Pull out the pepper spray, and use it. Lock up eighteen men because one made a wisecrack. Pepper spray them, ship them. Disrupt their lives and that of their families. That didn’t happen twenty years ago. Now it happens all the time. One old man who has served time off and on since 1964 addressed the issue of the new, harder, meaner prison guard. “The only difference between these guards today and the Nazi SS is these haven’t been ordered to gas us yet.” “Do you think they would do that?” I asked. “In a minute,” he said. I shudder to think that could be true.

The housing mortgage collapse—AIG—bank failures—mass bankruptcies—the recession (don’t say Depression) —Bernie Madoff. Don’t tell anyone, but if Bin Laden’s goal was to bring down America, he’s come close to succeeding. The burgeoning prison population is proof of that.

The economic stimulus has not trickled down to the prisoners. Most prisoners’ families—those that have families still supporting them—are in the hardest-hit economic class, and struggle to maintain a roof over their heads and food on the table. The prisoners are left to fend for themselves, their families unable to spare but a pittance, if that, for bare necessities only available for sale in the canteens. This results in more robberies and thefts as the “have-nots” prey on the “haves,” which leads to more violence, an escalating breakdown of prison society, reflecting our greater society. Where will it end?

Charlie

IT’S TIME FOR A NEW “RESPONSIBLE INMATE-TAUGHT EDUCATION (R.I.T.E.) PROGRAM” IN PRISON

2011-02-06T00:05:00.000-05:00

DATELINE: January 31, 2011

Above photo: Libby stands behind Sister Ann Raymond Wood, Sisters of St. Joseph, and others at the St. Augustine Mother House on October 16, 2010, at the Jubilee Celebration recognizing Sister Ann’s fifty years of service. Sister Ann has been Charlie’s loyal supporter and friend for over fifteen years, since she taught the “R.I.T.E. Program” at Sumter C.I. in 1995

In 1989, while we were assigned as vocational air conditioning aides to instructor Art Rabon at Polk C.I., David Tal-Mason and I spoke frequently about the state of prison educational and vocational programs. At the time the FDOC emphasized such programs, which were fully-funded and staffed by professional, certified teachers and instructors who taught a variety of courses; however, we both saw the writing on the wall, and knew that times were changing.

The Polk C.I. school provided a full range of classes during the day, including G.E.D. College business and computer classes at night were funded by individual Pell grants. Vocational Plumbing, Air Conditioning/Heating, Welding, and Upholstery classes certified prisoner graduates, who were able to get decent jobs upon their releases.

Besides working for the vocational air conditioning instructor, a retired U.S.A.F. aircraft crew chief, I tutored other prisoners in reading literacy in the school and in the college computer classes at night. Those days are long gone.

Fast forward to 1994: now at Avon Park C.I., I worked as an aide to instructor Larry Hagan in the vocational graphic arts program, tutoring computer typesetting and desktop publishing classes to the students. Ten years before, at Zephyrhills C.I., I’d worked as an aide in the Graphics Arts Program associated with the PRIDE print shop, doing the same tasks.

One day Mr. Hagan came out of his office, beckoned to me, and told me I had a phone call. A phone call? Prisoners don’t get phone calls on state telephones. He assured me it was all right. Olive Atkins, a teacher at Sumter C.I., introduced herself to me.

She explained that I had been recommended to join the “Responsible Inmate-Taught Education (R.I.T.E.) Program” at Sumter C.I., starting soon. The DOC was recruiting college-educated prisoners statewide to enroll in the upcoming R.I.T.E. Program, anticipating budget cutbacks that would reduce the paid teacher staff. Trained inmate tutors would take the place of professional teachers, keeping the educational programs going.

I asked Ms. Adkins who had recommended me for the program out of the many thousands of prisoners statewide. My old friend, David Tal-Mason, she said, had written and applied for the federal grant that paid for the one-year pilot program. She put David on the line. He encouraged me to agree to the transfer, promising that it was a worthy program I’d approve of.

I was surprised that David had been able to put together a grant proposal that actually resulted in a fully-funded program that wasn’t looted by the FDOC bureaucrats in Tallahassee. In 1980, at Raiford, my friend and fellow prisoner, Steve Opella, worked in the substance abuse program, down the street from my job in the GOLAB Program, the acclaimed prisoner self-help program that was the model for many later programs. Steve put together a $40,000 federal grant to fund the expansion of the substance abuse program, and was thrilled when he was informed that the grant had been approved. His elation turned to anger when he received a letter from Tallahassee with an accounting of how the $40,000 had been spent before it got to him.

The FDOC grant office sent a list of expenditures. $10,000 for office expenses, $8,000 for convention expenses (must have been some party). $2,500 for telephone expenses. Thousands for printing costs. When the shooting stopped, the bottom line was that the entire $40,000 of the federal grant had been consumed by the central office, and not a dime trickled down to the actual drug program at the prison level.

Steve had an influential friend who called Tallahassee and threatened to go to the feds and the news media if the officials kept all the grant money. After much dickering, the bureaucrats agreed to return ten percent, $4,000, which Steve used to buy a Sony color TV, VCR, and video camera setup for the program. Years later, I’d told my friend, David, about that, and when he submitted his grant for the R.I.T.E. Program, he inserted safeguards that prevented the DOC from hijacking the funds. Apparently, that strategy had worked.

When I arrived at Sumter C.I. on the Bluebird, the rattletrap prison transport bus, with twenty or so fellow prisoners, we were greeted by a diminutive woman with a big smile who introduced herself as Sister Ann Raymond Wood, a Catholic nun in the order Sisters of St. Joseph. She would be the R.I.T.E. Program instructor. Catholic nun? In prison? What had I gotten myself into?

The next day I was called into Roger Smith’s office. Mr. Smith was the education program manager, in effect, the prison school principal. I’d known Roger Smith for several years, having met him at other institutions when he was in charge of installing education computer systems, and he knew my background. He’d approved my entry into the program.

Roger Smith advised me that he was assigning me multiple tasks. I would participate in the R.I.T.E. training program for certification, but I was also to be Sister Ann’s aide. What she was not to be told, to be kept between us, that I was to be responsible for her personal safety. There would be no incidents. Tallahassee had informed the warden nothing would happen, that if anything happened to the Catholic nun inside the prison, everyone’s heads would roll. Mr. Smith told me that when Sister Ann arrived at 7:30 AM each morning, I was to be at the front gate waiting to escort her to the school, and unless she was in the restroom, she was always to be in my sight. At 4:30 PM, I would escort her back to the front gate and wave goodbye. They did not have the manpower to give her a security escort all day, so the job was mine. Failure would not be tolerated. Thankfully, for the year she spent teaching the all-day classes, her safety was never threatened.

Sister Ann was an English teacher by training and years of experience in Catholic schools had well-equipped her to handle a classroom of prisoners. These weren’t your ordinary prisoners—they’d been screened, had far more education than the average illiterate prisoner, and ranged from a retired Marine gunnery sergeant, to an astronomer, a contractor, real estate man, a couple of former teachers, and, among others, a college student who’d gotten hooked on drugs and committed murder. That was just in the first class. Subsequent classes were equally diverse, marked by a common desire to help their fellow prisoners. Sister Ann ably dealt with them all.

Most of the men recruited for the R.I.T.E. Program had already been working in education programs in prisons across the state, and had been recommended by their supervisors to participate. Besides Sister Ann, other teachers and occasional outside experts taught all the subjects required in prison education, including classes on how to be prepared to teach every class, which meant they had to brush up on multiplying and dividing fractions, as well as science, social studies, English grammar, reading, and writing skills.

Not every session involved hard work. Sister Ann had initially come to Sumter C.I. in past years to conduct “Shakespeare Seminars,” an experiment to discover whether prisoners would respond to and appreciate Shakespeare’s plays. Her seminars were enthusiastically received and the sign-up was always quickly filled. Prisoners appreciated the lessons and story lines of “Hamlet,” “MacBeth,” and even “Romeo and Juliet,” just as millions of others had for hundreds of years.

In the R.I.T.E. Program class, a reading of Hamlet and a commentary by Sister Ann, explaining what those archaic words meant in Modern English developed into a class play that combined Shakespeare and “Star Trek,” that entertained and educated the participants and audience.

The program was a success. The graduates went back to their respective institutions and helped their fellow prisoners learn to read, write, and hopefully earn G.E.D. certificates, a basis for further accomplishments.

After the program ran its course, Sinter Ann went on with her service to the Church and society. For many years she served as a counselor to the young men at Jesuit High School in Tampa, Florida, and became a breast cancer survivor. She continued our friendship that had commenced in such unlikely circumstances and maintained a correspondence that continues to this day, always encouraging me, praying for me, and serving as not only a positive influence, but also as an inspiration in my life by her example of selflessness and service to God and others.

In October, 2010, Sister Ann sent me an invitation to a Jubilee Celebration recognizing her fiftieth anniversary as a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, along with several other long-serving nuns. Of course, the officials at the prison would never have let me attend, even if I had promised to return afterward. I asked my dear friend, Libby, if she would attend in my place, which she happily agreed to do. The accompanying photo, among others, helped to document the event.

As for myself, the R.I.T.E. Program lives on and continues to pay dividends fifteen years later on the original investment. I continued to work in education at Sumter C.I. for three more years as an aide to Dr. Smith, tutoring the youthful prisoners in the Bootcamp Program in the G.E.D. essay test. In the years that I worked with those young men, their G.E.D. graduation rates were consistently the highest in Florida, both in prison and out.

Teaching “English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)” classes at Columbia C.I. followed, along with literacy tutoring for prisoners who could not read. Today I teach two classes of ESOL at Wakulla Annex C.I., consisting of mostly Hispanic students learning to speak, read, and write English.

With the economic crisis affecting every aspect of our society but the very rich, it seems, with the “prison crisis” being discussed endlessly as ways to cut the budget become more drastic, as education becomes a convenient target to hack away at, it is clear that the lessons learned in the “R.I.T.E. Program” fifteen years ago are applicable today.

No one disputes the fact that educational and vocational programs are important keys to prisoners getting out and staying out of prison, becoming law-abiding citizens, working at meaningful jobs, supporting themselves and their families, rather than continuing to be burdens on society.

It is also clear that out of the over 100,000 people in Florida prisons, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of educated, intelligent men and women willing to help educate their fellow prisoners if they had the proper training. This is a valuable resource that has been ignored for too long. A new “Responsible Inmate-Taught Education Program” is a cost effective way to reverse the downward spiral in prison education. Why don’t we give it a chance?

Charlie

AN INSIDER’S VIEW—CUT PRISON COSTS BY MILLIONS

2011-01-16T23:59:00.002-05:00

DATELINE: JANUARY 6, 2011

Thirty years ago, when Florida’s prison population reached an estimated 20,000 inmates, no one could have foreseen the present situation: 103,000 prisoners in 146 facilities, 30,500 employees, and an annual budget of $2.5 billion. With the world economic crash, the bleak housing market with foreclosures forcing thousands of families into homelessness, widespread unemployment and reduced tax revenues, one doesn’t have to be an economist to realize that we can’t maintain the present system.

Governor Rick Scott has sent shockwaves through the Florida corrections industry by vowing to cut one billion dollars from the bloated prison bureaucracy and budget. Employees fear the loss of their jobs and pensions, with good cause. Hard times call for drastic measures. Can it be done? Can a major part of the prison budget be cut without endangering the public safety while releasing thousands of prisoners? For that is the reality. In order to reach the governor’s goal, the entire prison system must be reduced and trimmed back. The only way to do that is to release prisoners and close prisons.

The past few years the prison system has dealt with budget shortfalls by gutting educational and vocational programs, the very things that reduce the recidivism rate and give released prisoners a fighting chance to become employable, law-abiding citizens and not return to incarceration. More recently, robbing Peter to pay Paul, the Florida DOC has cut the prison food budget, virtually removing meat from the menu, substituting the controversial textured vegetable protein (TVP) into a starchy diet increasingly filled with potatoes, rice, cornbread, dried beans, macaroni, and grits.

The meager food budget, which is a minor percentage of prison costs, can only be squeezed so far. On the other hand, the largest proportion of expense goes to salaries, payrolls, and the lucrative state pension fund, sacred cows that have been off limits to reduction.

Following are four proposals that go a long way toward addressing this controversial subject, proposals that could initially save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. A large percentage of savings would be realized in the first year.

This is only a beginning. Additional proposals will follow. As a man who has served over thirty-two years in Florida prisons, who has witnessed the wholesale squandering and waste of valuable resources over the years with little accountability, I present a viewpoint that has been previously unconsidered. It is time for everyone to step forward and present fresh ideas to solve our mutual societal problems before the entire system grinds to a halt and implodes. We haven’t reached the breaking point yet, but it is getting dangerously close.

Revamp the mandatory sentencing laws. The prisons are chock full of minor drug criminals who are better dealt with in drug treatment and rehab programs than overcrowding the prisons with the harsh minimum mandatory sentences imposed on them. Many of these draconian drug laws were passed in the 1980’s and ‘90’s as kneejerk responses to the crack cocaine epidemic that threatened to overwhelm our country. Rather than focus on the interdiction of ships and airplanes loaded with tons of drugs sent from the source in South America by the billion-dollar cartels, our government decided it would be easier to lock up all the customers, the users and addicts, the vulnerable bottom of the food chain, rather than tackle the bigger societal issues that plague our population.

This myopic view resulted in thousands of young drug users packed into the state prisons at a cost the taxpayers can no longer afford. A new sentencing commission composed of objective experts and professionals, rather than politicians who seek a tough on drug crime label, should be charged with revamping this out-of-touch statutory mess. Only by focusing on a holistic approach to drug addiction, intervening at an early age, tackling the social problems that fuel addiction, rather than the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key mentality that has filled prisons to bursting, can we hope to funnel our children away from incarceration and toward productive lives.

Stop selling cigarettes and tobacco products in prison. The Clean Indoor Air Act is violated thousands of times a day in every Florida prison. Prison officials respond to complaints of dangerous air pollution by stating that cigarette smoking is banned inside all state facilities prisoner housing areas, and anyone caught smoking is subject to disciplinary measures. This is not true. Even in lockdown solitary confinement cells, prisoners are able to obtain cigarettes and smoke, despite regular searches and shakedowns. As long as cigarettes and tobacco products are sold in the prison canteens, the illegal smoking endangering everyone’s health will continue unabated.

A high percentage of prisoners are addicted to nicotine. They can’t stop. Locked in cell blocks, dorms, and sealed secure housing, the unchecked smoking results in choking clouds of secondary smoke and spiraling health care costs in the millions of tax dollars. The unsafe environment threatens the health of thousands of prison employees, as well as the prisoners. The state of Florida is stuck with paying the tab for lung cancer, emphysema, and other smoking-related illnesses.

A few years ago, a study of cancer in Florida found that the highest per capita rate of lung cancer occurred in Union County, which also had the highest percentage of state prisoners, a damning statistic. Nicotine is more highly addictive than many banned narcotic drugs. When the state of Florida becomes the purveyor of these products, the tax revenues from prison tobacco sales are offset by the escalating health care costs the state incurs.

Tobacco products are banned in many county and state corrections facilities nationwide, eliminating the problem and saving millions of dollars in health costs, despite the doom and gloom predictions of tobacco advocates that depriving prisoners of their nicotine fix would result in widespread violence and protests. Such arguments proved to be unfounded. In fact, many prison smokers, unable to quit the deadly habit on their own, were grateful for the tobacco ban. It is time for Florida to wake up and rid the prisons of cigarettes and tobacco products.

Release five thousand prisoners with the shortest times left on their sentences. They will be getting out in the next few months anyway, so let them go now and save at least $120 million. How? Simple. The Department of Corrections budget is about $2.5 billion a year. Divide that $2.5 billion by the 103,000 Florida prisoners for an average annual cost of incarceration of a little over $24,000 per person. Five thousand early releases translates into a $120 million saving.

The logistics are tried and true--extra gain time awards. Do it in phases: grant 180 days gain time across the board to all prisoners, bringing down their release dates six months. Those who fall into the release category with the gain time awards go home, with the exception of course, of those prisoners who, by the nature of their charges, are ineligible for release. This would include sex offenders who fall under the Jimmy Ryce Act, those who have detainers or pending charges in other jurisdictions, or anyone else who otherwise pose a public risk, as a case-by-case review would determine.

Once the first batch of short-timers are released, an additional 180 days gain time would be awarded the same way, resulting in a further prison population decrease. When the 5,000 figure is reached, the extra gain time awards would end for the year.

Release the five thousand oldest prisoners at a cost savings of well over $120 million. Elderly, sick prisoners account for a disproportionate share of the burgeoning health care costs, and the older and sicker they get, the more each one costs the taxpayers. It was reported recently that prison dialysis patients cost $190,000 a year solely for that procedure, not counting the rest of their care. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, HIV, mental illness, and a host of other illnesses are epidemic among the thousands of elderly prisoners, many who led dissolute lives of drug abuse, alcoholism and smoking that damaged their health at an early age. To many of these, the prison system has become a harsh nursing home and hospice that tends them until they die. It would be far cheaper for society to deal with these people outside the corrections framework, rather than inside.

The June, 2010, issue of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, published by the U.S. Department of Justice, “Prison Inmates at Midyear 2009-Statistical Tables,” reveals that 2,096,300 inmates were held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails as of June 30, 2009. Table 17 breaks down this figure by sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age. The data is revealing. An estimated 1,908,400 inmates held in custody, over 91% are between the ages of 20-54 years old. Barely 5%, 104,200 inmates, are in the age range of 55-59 (58,000), 60-64 (25,200), and 65 or older (21,000). 68,200 are 18 or 19 years old.

That is for the entire United States, over two million prisoners. Applying that 5% figure to Florida, we are incarcerating a little more than 5,000 prisoners aged 55 or older. Releasing those elderly prisoners, with the obvious exceptions of dangerous sex offenders, mentally disturbed prisoners, and those deemed incorrigibly violent, would free the taxpayers from an increasingly onerous burden.

Crime and punishment is a young man’s game, heavily weighted toward youth. By the time a prisoner has served twenty, thirty, forty, or even more years in prison, he or she is usually a broken man or woman, in body, mind, and spirit. Continued incarceration serves little purpose beyond vengeance. Let them go.

Conclusion. These measures alone would reduce the prison population by a minimum figure of 10,000 inmates the first year, resulting in closing eight major institutions at a cost-savings of hundreds of millions of dollars the first year. Job training and placement of the unneeded prison staff would have to be addressed, as well as educational, vocational, and job placement opportunities for those released who were capable of working. While not a complete solution to the problem, it is a beginning in the right direction.
Charlie

MICKEY MOUSE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION: LET DISNEY PRIVATIZE THE FLORIDA PRISONS

2010-12-26T20:31:00.000-05:00

DATELINE 12/16/10

MICKEY MOUSE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION: LET DISNEY PRIVATIZE THE FLORIDA PRISONS

Florida is broke, and treasure chests full of cash have been squandered on the $2.5 billion state prison budget every year, with no relief in sight. Governor-elect Rick Scott has proposed cutting the costs by privatizing Florida prisons, reducing the funding by one billion dollars. What most people don’t realize is that the lion’s share of those billions of tax dollars are spent on--payroll! Excellent benefits, medical insurance, and pensions are guaranteed to anyone who lucks into a secure job at the state prison. Cutting labor costs, replacing those "certified law enforcement officers” and highly-paid administrators, cutting the morbidly obese labor costs are crucial to financial liquidation.
Can it be done? Yes! Hard times breed drastic measures, and we must seek solutions outside the tired thinking of the past-- new ideas that will not only cut the prison budget, but turn a profit. How can we do that? Walt Disney saved Florida once already back in the 1970’s, when he bought thousands of acres of empty land and built Disneyworld. Let Disney do it again, and turn the prisons over to Mickey Mouse and Company.

Think about it. Mickey Mouse Correctional Institution will be the world’s first prison theme park. Tours of the facility will highlight sights you’d never see in free society.

“On your left is a cage full of bank robbers. Notice the shifty eyes. On your right are rapists; don’t worry, the unbreakable glass protects us. Next, we have some serial killers--they are caged alone for obvious reasons. The mild-mannered man in the next cage is a white-collar criminal, an embezzler, and beside him, playing with matches is an arsonist. And we’re walking…”

A ride similar to the Haunted House would take the tourists past displays of imprisonment and executions throughout history, with robots acting out scenes such as Daniel in the lions’ den, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the burning of Joan of Arc, the Tower of London, scenes from an 18th Century English prison, hangings, beheadings, firing squads, Alcatraz, a prison shower scene, a riot, stabbings, escapes, electrocutions, and lethal injections. The fascinating life -- and death -- scenarios are endless.

Customers would pay high prices for authentic prison swill, and adults could sample prison wine mixed in genuine mop buckets and fermented in plastic jugs. Souvenir stores would sell striped prison uniforms, bull whips, canisters of pepper spray (useful to make rowdy teenagers do their homework), miniature electric chairs (batteries not included), and other interesting knick knacks unavailable elsewhere.

Mickey Mouse C.I. would also be a fully-functioning prison, with the staff dressed as Disney characters. The prison warden would be Mickey Mouse, of course, constantly smiling. The head guard, the colonel, would be Goofy. Donald Duck would be the prison doctor (quack!), and the Three Little Pigs would be the goon squad, armed with clubs to hurriedly put down any disturbances. The Seven Dwarfs would be in charge of the prison work squad, and every morning would lead several hundred prisoners to the fields to harvest crops with everyone singing, “Hi ho, hi ho! It’s off to work we go!” all the way. The Big Bad Wolf would be in charge of solitary confinement, and threaten to eat anyone who misbehaved. Cinderella’s evil stepmother would run the religious programs, and her daughters would pass out cookies and coffee to the visitors ($10.00 each).

The guards would be dressed as the other Disney characters and would be required to speak in their characters’ voices. The possibilities are mind-boggling, as are the potential profits.

With the paying customers taking daily tours in the thousands, it would not be long before Mickey Mouse C.I. began turning a healthy profit. The program could be expanded to more prisons and more theme parks each year. Imagine Sea World in charge of Death Row -- instead of lethal injections, the condemned prisoners could be fed to Shamu the killer whale. A special 50,000-seat circular arena like an oversized Roman Coliseum would surround a huge tank for Shamu. A crane would lower the chosen prisoner--feet first or head first, flip a coin--Shamu would leap higher and higher, until he could take a bite, piece by piece, complete the ritual; pay-per-view would broadcast worldwide to enraptured audiences. How much would the tourists pay to see that?

In no time at all, the State of Florida, Inc., would be a model for fiscal responsibility, the crime rate would drop, and a new era in correctional sciences would dawn. Let’s get to work!

Charlie

Merry Christmas from Charlie and Libby!

2010-12-20T19:55:00.000-05:00

Santa came to see me in the form of my dear friend, Libby. I borrowed her elf hat for this photo in front of the Christmas tree. At least that hasn't been taken from us.

2010 has been a difficult year for us, but we pray that 2011 will bring better outcomes.

On behalf of both of us, I want to wish you a blessed, safe, and joyous holiday season.

With our love,

Charlie and Libby

ANATOMY OF A PUNITIVE PRISON TRANSFER

2010-12-05T16:45:00.000-05:00

Dateline November 30, 2010

ANATOMY OF A PUNITIVE PRISON TRANSFER

You heard the news. On Thursday, November 18, 2010, at 2:30 AM, I was awakened by the little, bald-headed, myopic prisoner in the next bunk telling me he was being transferred.

“You? Are you sure?” I asked. “Did you put in for a transfer?”

“No. I only have two months left before I go home.”

That didn’t sound right. I was still groggy, having been awakened from a dream about – I couldn’t remember. You know how dreams are. But I told him he should double-check with the guard, to make sure. I had a sneaking suspicion they’d mistakenly awakened my neighbor in bunk 116, when they meant to wake me up. I’d been fighting the prison warden and his minions at Tomoka C.I. (Daytona Beach, Florida) since the previous February, when the self-righteous mailroom clerk informed me she had confiscated a book , Wordsmith 2010, an anthology of award-winning short stories, essays, and poems, published annually by the Tampa Writers Alliance, mailed to me.

Why was the book confiscated? She said she’d read the article I’d written, and felt it was “a threat to security.” A threat to security? How could that be? The article in question, “To Protect the Guilty,” was a 2400 word excerpt from the “Prison Diary Project” sponsored by the Anne Frank Center USA in New York City, in 2008, in conjunction with the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Program. That particular essay—a memoir—recounted my negative experiences with Ku Klux Klan (KKK) prison guards at a North Florida prison several years before. I couldn’t imagine how that could be construed as a threat to security. The recollection was from years before, at a distant, unnamed prison, and involved unnamed guards who had retaliated against me in retribution for my perceived insults to the character and intelligence of KKK members, prison guards or otherwise. Hmmm…perhaps she was in the women’s auxiliary of the Klan, the little women who sewed up the sheets and pillowcases into those white robes and pointed hats worn by the menfolk as they danced around a burning cross in a cow pasture, reminiscing about the good old days, when they were the masters and the slaves answered “yassuh” and “nahsuh” to the overseers as they hoed those endless rows of cotton.

Word came down a few days later that “The warden wants your ass in jail!” The mailroom clerk had gotten the formal complaint I’d filed about the improper confiscation, had taken the book to the warden, who read the KKK memoir and was offended by it, too. Hmmm…why was he offended? Had I touched a sensitive nerve? How deep did the KKK roots go in the Florida prison system? With the head of the 30,000-plus employee DOC being a black former police chief in Tallahassee, the state capital, one would think that any prison employees who professed white supremacist, racist organization links would keep their heads down, maintain a low profile, not draw attention to themselves. But no, they couldn’t resist the impulse to retaliate against the messenger, the prisoner who talked about them, the urge to strike back was too strong. And they did.

The offended warden ordered his subordinate to write a bogus disciplinary report against me for multiple unwarranted “mail regulations violations,” for violating the strictures against advertising for a pen pal (never did, don’t have any pen pals), running a business while incarcerated (absolutely false), entering contests and sweepstakes (nope-not even a Saturday night Powerball ticket), and commercially advertising for money, goods, and services (they should have checked my account—the court found me indigent, a fancy word for “poor”). Never happened. Didn’t matter.

They call prison disciplinary hearings “Kangaroo Courts” for a reason. I don’t know why Kangaroos have such animosity toward us, but the two kangaroos who presided ever the two hearings I had refused to listen to a word I said, as I was standing against the far wall with my hands cuffed behind my back. I presented evidence refuting the false charges, and requested staff witnesses who could verify my statements. Denied without any reason. Guilty. Thirty days in solitary confinement, thirty days loss of gain time. Do not pass “GO.”

It snowballed from there. I went to lockup, served every day of the thirty, no “good behavior,” unlike those caught smoking pot, possessing drugs or other contraband, who got out early. The colonel told me, when I asked why, “There’s a reason for that.” Yes, it’s called retaliation.

One characteristic of Normans is that we fight. We’ve been fighting for over a thousand years of recorded history. It doesn’t matter if we’re outnumbered. A hundred Norman knights on horseback attacked and scattered ten thousand Saracen (Muslims) foot soldiers besieging a city in Sicily on the way back from the Crusades, a long time ago. I once fought eight attackers to a draw at Raiford in my much-younger days. But all I had to fight these false charges was my pen, and they took that!

I fought and fought, on paper, lost every battle (of course), and finally filed a lawsuit in the circuit court in Leon County, the state capital. Once you get out of the prison decision chain (denied, denied, denied) and into judicial review, one’s chances of receiving a fair hearing are increased.

What else could the prison officials do to me, to fire another arrow, now that my appeal war is in the hands of the court? Punitive transfer!

My neighbor double-checked with the guard. He came back. “It’s you,” he said.

Just what I suspected. The guard had made a mistake, woke up the wrong guy. I packed.

We’d been hearing about it for weeks, even months. One dorm was falling apart, collapsing, had been condemned, and 150 prisoners had to be sent elsewhere before Thanksgiving. Like the tomato fields on the side of the road, it was “U-PICK-EM.” The very people who’d retaliated against me were the ones who picked the 150 chosen to go. The word was that they were taking the opportunity to get rid of all the “troublemakers.” I knew my time there was short.

A “punitive transfer” can usually be identified by certain characteristics. Traditionally, it is accomplished by putting a prisoner on a bus and shipping him to a distant, less-desirable prison much farther from his family and loved ones. Not only does that get the troublemaker out of their hair, but it also punishes him by imposing physical and financial hardships on those who would visit him. In this economy of foreclosures, unemployment and prohibitive travel expenses, the possibility of aging and infirm loved ones making difficult treks to distant prisons are greatly reduced, effectively punishing the prisoner’s family members, too, who are only guilty of caring about their loved one in prison and wanting to support and reassure him to keep him connected to the “outside” world.

A second characteristic of a punitive transfer is that it was unrequested. There is a procedure in the prison rules for requesting a “good adjustment transfer” to the prison of one’s choice. Maintain a clean record, behave yourself, don’t get in trouble, work hard, earn “gain time” each month, participate in programs, and the prison authorities will approve you to go to a better prison, usually closer to one’s family or visitors.

That is a great incentive for good behavior and positive accomplishments. “Give me a year of hard work and I’ll transfer you wherever you want.” We’ve all been told that. Some favorable prisons with good vocational programs, education, or paying jobs (PRIDE Prison Industries), have long waiting lists of a couple of years to get there.

Not so for “punitive transfer,” however. Few if any want to go to some distant prison out in the boondocks, far from the major population centers, unless they live down the road. I had been previously approved to go to Sumter C.I., near Bushnell, forty miles from my family. No more. The defendants in my court case made the decision for me. They didn’t like seeing me in the visiting park each week with my loved ones. “Let’s ship him to Alabama,” they most likely said, gleefully. “That’ll teach him.”

The third and most crucial characteristic in this anatomy of a punitive transfer is that it is retaliatory in nature. It punishes a prisoner for some act on his part. In my case, it is perfectly clear. They were offended by the KKK prison guard article. They retaliated by concocting false disciplinary charges and throwing me in solitary confinement. I responded by filing formal complaints and appeals to higher authorities, as the law says I am entitled to do. The Bill of Rights, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guarantees several rights to all citizens, freedom of speech, and the right to redress grievances to the government –to officially complain of government actions— among them.

Even prisoners are guaranteed these rights, the freedom to pursue legal remedies without fear of reprisals by government officials. Think again.

Reprisals and retaliation have a “chilling effect” on prisoners, who already suffer hardships and denials of “due process” by the very nature of their incarceration. The message is clear to all—complain at your own risk, see what happened to him?—it will happen to you.

Former D.O.C. Inspector General Dave Brierton once said, “Prisoners are put in prison as punishment, not for punishment.” That statement was in response to an investigation into abuses and brutality by guards at Florida State Prison. Brierton understood that being in prison was the punishment, and the guards’ jobs weren’t to inflict their own brands of additional punishment as they saw it.

Chained in leg irons, carrying heavy bags of my court documents, I stumbled onto the crowded, rickety prison transport bus with 45 of my fellow prisoners. Who were they? The vast majority were Jamaican, Latino, and Miami ghetto prison gang members, drug dealers, and strong-arm robbers who preyed on weaker prisoners. One older white prisoner was infamous for having castrated himself with a razor blade years before. The monthly testosterone shots he got at medical resulted in occasional rages and assaults, keeping him in and out of lockup, an obviously mentally-ill person. Get rid of him. Another transferee was a mentally-deficient younger man whose sole possession was a pair of flip-flops he carried in his back pocket. Not a toothbrush, nor a pair of socks. He helped carry one of my heavier bags, since his hands were free. And then there was me, the troublemaker.

The first question the prison gang members asked me was, “What are you doing on the bus with us?” They knew why they were being transferred. “Norman, you never get in trouble. Why did they get you?”

I explained that I had filed a lawsuit against the administration. “Oh—okay.” That explained it. They knew the drill.

That was Thursday. The occupants of the Friday and Monday transport buses were mostly those who had been filing institutional grievances, one of them a man with hepatitis C, Crohn’s disease, and other highly infectious terminal illnesses who complained about being assigned to the kitchen. I didn’t want him in there, either. Ship him. One thing about their strategy—ship out everyone who filed complaints and the assistant wardens’ workload drastically diminish, not that they have a lot to do anyway. For the past several months, a dozen or so “officials” from the warden down to the assistant wardens, colonel, majors, classification officers, and others spent one day a week going into each housing area “shaking down,” (searching bunks and lockers), and supposedly “inspecting” each dorm, ranking them in an arbitrary order of feeding. What a waste of taxpayers’ money! Close to a million dollars in annual payroll, and they are going around doing the dorm officers’ jobs for them.

Who was running the prison while the entire administration was confiscating extra rolls of toilet paper from lockers? The secretaries! Fire the administrators, Governor Rick Scott, and let the secretaries run the prison! They’re doing it already.

That’s what I was up against at Tomoka. The truth can be told at last. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the reprisals and retaliations are over. They have telephones, and can easily call their friends at other prisons and ask them to continue the process for them. Hopefully, by illuminating the tactics, that will lesson the chances of more adverse actions. Or maybe not.

The law says that once a plaintiff makes allegations of reprisal, backed up by specific details and facts, the burden shifts to the defendants to prove that they would have taken the same disciplinary actions in the absence of the constitutionally--protected activity. That’s a legalistic way of asking would they still have locked me up if I hadn’t written the KKK article two years before, or punitively transferred me later? The answer seems clear—no. Everything proceeded from the constitutionally-protected activity. If I were a functionally-illiterate prisoner, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

That’s the way it is in prison in Florida. Stay tuned for further developments.

Charlie

WINTER FASHION IN PRISON

2010-11-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

Dateline November 6, 2010

WINTER FASHION IN PRISON

It is 43 degrees in Daytona Beach, and I wanted to show you the latest in winter prison fashion. This is the winter jacket they issued me a couple weeks ago. No, Ralph Lauren didn’t design it, nor did Armani or Brooks Brothers. This is a prison industry product. The Chevy logo in Magic Marker was applied in some previous year by a prior owner. Notice the unique distressed lining around the collar. Pretty ragged. Perhaps a previous wearer got caught in the razor wire.

Also note the fashion unbuttoned bottom button look. Of course, there is no bottom button, and the top two are barely holding in the frayed button holes.

The material is the same thin cotton cloth they make the prison blue pants from, affording little protection from the blasts of cold North winds that accompany the cold spells. 37 degrees in Ocala in the morning, Sunday, Nov. 7th.

I don’t know how old this jacket is, or how many times it has been recycled. Each year they take them in spring and box them up for warehousing until fall. This one has been around. The lining has been slit so food from the chow hall can be smuggled out, and the pocket was filled with old loose tobacco and crud. The smell was pretty bad, as you can imagine.

You should see the jackets the taxpayers buy the guards. Really nice winter-weight material, insulated, with fake fur collars that can be turned up to cover the ears. You can also wear them to go hunting, and people might think you’re a game warden, with the colorful state patches . Big difference. “You wanna nice jacket?” one asked me when I commented on his arctic warmer. “Git outta prison and go buy you one,” he said.

Or get a job in prison, and let the state buy me one like his. For now I’ll shiver and shake in my thin prison issue, and hope they get the heaters fixed in the dorm before summer.

Charlie

RESCUED CHILEAN MINERS PROVIDE LESSONS FOR PRISONERS

2010-10-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

DATELINE OCTOBER 14, 2010

RESCUED CHILEAN MINERS PROVIDE LESSONS FOR PRISONERS

I am writing this on Thursday, October 14, 2010, from prison. Along with most everyone else on the planet with access to a TV, this morning I watched the last of the thirty-three Chilean miners trapped deep in the earth be rescued after sixty-nine days underground. I couldn’t help but be moved to tears by the genuine emotions of love and relief expressed by the miners, their joyful rescuers, and everyone looking on. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Belgium, said she couldn’t take her eyes from the screen.

Rescuers from around the world rallied to the Chilean desert to drill the hole that freed the men. Hundreds of newscasters provided round-the-clock coverage. The Chilean president put all his country’s resources to work to save the miners. Even NASA got involved, offering advice on the adverse effects of being isolated under such rigorous conditions. Poorly-paid, anonymous laborers have become “cause celebres,” international figures, their lives and the lives of their families irrevocably changed simply because they were determined to survive.

My fellow prisoners and I were deeply affected by the drama and the videos sent up from deep down inside that unsafe mine. We rooted for the men while doubtful that it could end any way but tragically. To see the last man come up—the foreman, the man who kept them all alive for the first seventeen days by doling out scant spoonfuls of food and water—we shared in the euphoria, cheering along with the rest of the world.

For myself, I can’t help but compare the trapped Chilean miners to my own life and situation, for I am trapped deep inside the pit of imprisonment, with no rescue in sight, no news reporters, no one drilling, no politicians lining up to greet and embrace me when the rescue pod finally opens outside the razorwire—topped fences.

The miners survived sixty-nine days. Today marks my 11,610th day of captivity! When the American Embassy hostages were captured in Tehran in 1979, I watched the drama unfold from a cell. They spent over 400 days as captives of the Ayatollah, which seemed like an incredible length of time at the time. Those folks—the ones who haven’t died—have been free for close to 11,000 days now. I am still trapped in the pit of wrongful imprisonment, but I survive.

One of the rescued miners said that both God and the Devil were with them in the mine, but God won. It’s no different in prison, except that the battle isn’t over, but is fought every day.

I am a Christian, and my faith in God, the promise that God has a plan for my life, has been a major reason I have survived these 11,610 days in the hell pit of prison. I’ve spent years reading The Bible, and the lessons I learned from my study have given me strength and understanding.

Joseph was the first person imprisoned in The Bible. First, his brothers put him in a pit. I can relate to Joseph’s story of imprisonment and redemption because he was also wrongly accused and imprisoned. There is a lesson there. He was eventually freed and went on to greater things.

One of my favorite jailbirds in The Bible was Jeremiah, the prophet, who was cast into a dung pit for speaking the truth. The vision of that good man deep in a hole full of excrement, depending on passers-by to provide him with bread and water, provides great meaning to many prisoners, especially me. Those in authority didn’t like what Jeremiah said, so they tried to silence him by throwing him in the hole. I can relate to that. Been there, done that, as they say. No First Amendment protections in Biblical days, or even the present day, in some places, as we have found out.

What was the last mention of imprisonment in The Bible? Wouldn’t you know it? It is in Revelation, and the lucky person is the Devil. May he stay there. Just let me out. I don’t expect to see the camera crews, the President, or cheering crowds when the prison gate opens for me. Just one or two people who love me and care about me will be enough. I do need some help, though. NASA’s not interested, and neither is Hillary or Diane Sawyer, but if you can tear yourself away from the TV set for a little while, and are willing to help, it will be appreciated. You don’t even need a drill

Charlie

PRISON GUNSLINGERS

2010-10-07T21:31:00.000-04:00

DATELINE: 08/25/2010

PRISON GUNSLINGERS RISK FIVE-YEAR FELONY FOR MASTUBATION

SODOMY AND OTHER HOMOSEXUAL ACTS DRAW SIXTY DAYS IN CONFINEMENT

You always thought that Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, the Earps, and Marshall Matt Dillon were “gunslingers,” a breed of man that died out a hundred years ago, didn’t you? You never imagined that Florida prisons are filled with modern-day gunslingers, not men armed with six-guns, but perverts who will whip out their “equipment” in front of employees at the drop of their pants. A new law designed to cut down on such exhibitionism has created a brewing controversy.

A “gunslinger” in the prison setting is someone who exposes himself to a female employee, usually, but males are not immune to being “gunned down.” This involves a “solo act,” but the ramifications could be far-reaching, since homosexual acts between prison lovers result only in a punishment of a maximum sixty days disciplinary confinement (the box) and ninety days loss of gaintime, a disparity, some say.

The new law is Florida Statute Section 800.09, “Lewd or lascivious exhibition in the presence of an employee.” The new law reads in part:

(2)(a) A person who is detained in a facility may not:

1. intentionally masturbate;
2. intentionally expose the genitals in a lewd or lascivious manner; or
3. intentionally commit any other sexual act, that does not involve actual physical or sexual contact with the victim, including, but not limited to, sadomasochistic abuse, sexual bestiality, or the simulation of any act involving sexual activity, in the presence of a person he or she knows or reasonably should know is an employee.
(b) A person who violates paragraph (a) commits lewd or lascivious exhibition in the presence of an employee, a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s.775.083, or s.775.084.

Whoa! I understand what the legislators are saying in numbers 1 and 2, but number 3 worries me. Read that one again. What is with the sadomasochistic abuse and the sexual bestiality? Perhaps I led a sheltered life. Will someone please tell me what “sadomasochistic abuse” is, so I don’t unintentionally commit it when some employee observes me soaping myself in the shower? And I could have sworn that “sexual bestiality” was having sex with animals, as grotesque as that might be.

I don’t get it. I don’t know where he would find one in prison, but let’s say some weirdo was having sex with a chicken in front of an employee. The freak could get arrested, go to court, and possibly sentenced to five more years in prison if found guilty, but what about the chicken? Would it be “put down,” euthanized by a veterinarian, or what? No one is really talking about that. Where is PETA when you need them?

What they are talking about is “sodomy” and other homosexual acts. This is prison, after all, and most folks have heard scary rumors about what happens to innocent young boys in those showers when they drop the soap and get cornered by tattooed, muscle-bound bikers.

Not that such violent acts don’t happen, but consensual homosexual acts are much more prevalent. I can’t count the number “men” with shaved legs, plucked eyebrows, skintight hot-pants, and lisps, who’ve swished across prison yards over the years, or the number of “war daddies,” “boys,” “sissies,” and “punks,” who carry on their chain gang homosexual affairs in front of God, the guards, and fellow prisoners without shame. Many have “chain gang weddings” and carry on like husbands and wives, with young boys coming under their protection as members of the “family.”

But what happens when “mom and dad” are in the shower, doing the “wild thing,” when an employee strolls by making the rounds, pulls back the curtain and spies the couple “in flagrante delicto,” caught in the act? The Ick Factor is in effect, and forbids me from going into more graphic detail. To hear more about that, you’ll have to read, “Chain Gang Mating Rituals,’ copyright 2009.

In most cases nothing happens. The employee keeps walking, pretending nothing happened, and the prison lovers consummate their passion.

Trust me on this—it is “anything goes” in those showers. Not that I have ever partaken of such forbidden acts—I’m old fashioned, a diehard heterosexual—but many of these people are not very discreet. I’ve seen things and turned my head from sights I wish I’d never seen. But on the rare occasions when an employee witnesses such an act and decides to write up “disciplinary reports” against the offending parties, the worst punishment they could get would be sixty days in lockup and ninety days loss of gaintime. Compared to the love sicko who pulls out his “tool” and gets five more years in prison, it doesn’t seem fair.

Some say that the prison authorities favor and condone homosexuality. The truth is that guards and officials have always made use of and taken advantage of homosexuals, exploiting their vulnerabilities.

When I first went to Union C.I., Raiford, and wanted to get a cell change to another building, I was told right off the bat not to approach the sergeant in charge of housing. He would turn me down. Instead, I was told to buy a carton of “Kool’s” ($6.50 in those pre-tax days) and take them to the prison “runner,” who ran errands for the sergeant and acted as his “do-boy.”

The runner was a freakish-looking prison drag queen who accepted the offering of cigarettes and told me to go ahead and pack up property, the move was approved. Just like that.

That prisoner was under the protection of the sergeant, who allowed him to live his life as he chose in exchange for being his snitch and personal servant. He also earned a good living making moves, and if a couple wanted to hook up and become lovers, it was no easier said than done.

It was that way all over Raiford. The prison gays controlled various little fiefdoms, doing “the man’s” bidding in exchange for living their lives unmolested.

I’m not saying that what “gunslingers” do in the modern prisons isn’t detestable. It is. As more and more women go to work as guards, the worse it gets, it seems. Perverts are everywhere, and give the “normal” prisoners a bad reputation because of what they do. We are all tarred with the same brush.

The five-year felony charges for solo exhibitions arose after a number of female employees sued the state, fed up with being exposed to such acts of gunslingers, and little being done about it. Some male prison employees even thought it was funny. Those were usually men who didn’t agree with women working alongside them and earning the same pay, perhaps feeling that they didn’t earn it. I’m not going to get into all that.

I will say that it seems weird and unfair that the same prison employee who turned his head when he saw an act of sodomy would threaten to terminate someone’s visit because he was kissing his wife in the visiting park. That has happened. Bottom line—heterosexuals want equal rights, too!

Charlie

STARS IN HIS EYES

2010-09-22T21:44:00.000-04:00

Dateline: 09/02/10

Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, And Lindsay Lohan Suggested For The Three Stooges Remake And Cher Confesses That Lady Gaga Is Her Long-Lost “Love Child”

My web advisor offered a way to ramp up the daily hits and log-ins on the “FreeCharlie Norman Now” blog, to build a larger base faster. She said we need more links and references to celebrities like Paris, Britney and Lindsay, so when their fans Google them, they will come here.

Since certain stars are having trouble with the law, getting involved in drugs and risking prison, perhaps it would be a good idea for them to google themselves and find out the real story about prison life from someone who knows about it. Me.

And since it is Hollywood we are dealing with, perhaps we will pitch some projects to the producers, give these screw-ups a chance to redeem themselves. I am offering a few suggestions of my own, of new movies and castings. If you have some, add them to the list.

Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan are perfect candidates for a The Three Stooges remake with a female twist. Since Britney shaved her head once, she’d be good as “Curly.” Paris bossed around Nicloe Ritchie in The Simple Life, so she could play Moe. Lindsay could frizz her hair and be a great Larry.

Can’t you see Britney going, “Woo, woo, woo, woo,” slapping herself, then falling on the floor and spinning around in circles like Curly used to do? Wait—she already did that! I think it was on YouTube, at a nightclub.

Lindsay smacks Paris in the face with a cream pie, and Britney smacks her Chihuahua, “Tinkerbell,” with a Twinkie. The potential is endless.

Another great casting for these three would be a female version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Can you see it? Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are in a women’s prison. They get caught by the mean guards in a menage á trios, and transferred to the nuthouse for evaluation and rehab.

Mel Gibson and David Hasselhoff would be cast as the mean guards. Glenn Close would be the strict warden. Angelina Jolie would fill the “Nurse Ratchitt” role, wear a short leather nurse’s uniform, and carry a quirt to enforce discipline. Oprah Winfrey would be the mother figure who tried and failed to keep the girls out of the meds. Kathy Bates would play McMurphy, Jack Nicholson’s old role, but this time Paris, Britney, and Lindsay unite to smother her. Kiefer Sutherland would be the medical orderly who takes them all on a day trip to the mall, instead of fishing. Wynona Ryder would get caught shoplifting thongs in “Victoria’s Secret,” and when they got back to the nuthouse, Angelina Jolie would give her electroshock treatments. Sounds like an Academy Award for someone.

Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, and Leonard DiCaprio would play the three girls’ outside romantic interests, the men they left behind, who come to visit them, and hatch an escape plot to rescue them. You can take it from there.

Another possibility, they might be great in a female The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Take your pick.

Or join with four more high-profile stars as female gunfighters in The Magnificent Seven. We can add Reba McIntyre, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Garner, and Jennifer Love Hewitt wearing tight jeans, holsters, and six-guns, and Stetson hats.

As an unemployed Texan by way of New Haven, Connecticut, George W. Bush could play the crooked sheriff. Donald Trump would be the bartender, Meryl Streep the card sharp, and the Jonas brothers would provide the saloon music. Sarah Palin would be a great bordello madam upstairs, with male prostitutes offering themselves for eight bits apiece to the Magnificent Seven. I can’t wait to see this movie. It will gross $200 million the first weekend!

If all these dropped names don’t generate some new hits, I don’t know what will. Perhaps Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Sean Combs will log in and decide to contribute a million apiece to the issues of wrongful conviction and imprisonment. And perhaps pigs will fly!

Later…

Charlie

LIFE IN A ROACH MOTEL

2010-09-06T20:06:00.000-04:00

Dateline: 08/20/10

LIFE IN A ROACH MOTEL

Notes and Observations From the Prison Front Lines

WARNING: if you are insectophobic, you might want to skip this part.

Something woke me in the middle of the night, a soft tickle on my face. It had been a restless sleep anyway, with a heat index of 106 degrees in Daytona Beach that day. It didn’t seem much cooler now. At four AM, lying on top of my thin mattress, my pillow sweat-soaked and musty, my dreams of freedom fleeing, if someone was playing games and waking me up, I would be very angry. I looked around the crowded dormitory, a large room jam-packed with narrow bunks and sleeping prisoners. With the exception of two Cubans smoking cigarettes across the room, I was the only person awake. What had been tickling my face?

It never gets dark in prison. Lights are always on. I’ve been told by friends “on the street,” that when one flies cross-country at night, the sickly-orange square beacons beaming into the sky in otherwise dark landscapes delineate the proliferating prisons everywhere. It is no different inside the “housing areas,” the polite word for cell blocks. Glaring fluorescent light banks burn from 5:30 AM till 11 PM daily, running up incredible electric bills. During the so-called “sleeping time,’ a few dozen lights are cut off, replaced by lesser fluorescent “night lights.” It is still bright enough to read by, and to see everything going on. Most men wrap their heads in t-shirts or towels to block out the light, so they can sleep for a few hours.

I looked over at the man sleeping on the neighboring bunk, scarcely two feet away. Close quarters. He lay on his back, mouth open, snoring. A cockroach crawled across his cheek and stopped, its feelers flickering, like it knew it was being observed. It continued creeping across my neighbor’s face, pausing on his lip, peering down into the gaping maw.

I didn’t know what to do. Waking a sleeping prisoner can be an iffy proposition. You never know how they might react. I’ve seen men freak out, wake up rolling and screaming in fright just from someone bumping their bunks. What if I woke him, he closed his mouth, and trapped the roach inside?

The roach did it for me. It tickled the man’s lip, interrupting his snorting snore. A hand rubbed his face. His eyes opened, confused. He looked at me.

“You’ve got a roach on your face.”

“What?”

“He slapped at his face in panic. The roach leaped to the floor and scurried beneath the bunk. Two more cockroaches crawled up the wall by his bed. A barehanded slap smashed one. Ugh! The other got away.

“I hate these effing roaches!” he said. “This place is infested.”

“You don’t hate them as much as I do.”

We moved from Texas to Florida in the 1950’s, when I was a child. I’d never seen a roach in Texas, and didn’t know what they were. I was about to learn.

My father rented a little wooden house on a hill surrounded by orange groves in the country east of Tampa. It had been sitting vacant for some time. Before we unloaded the U-Haul trailer containing all our furniture and belongings, my mother swept and mopped the floors. It didn’t matter. Little did we know that hordes of giant cockroaches, also known as palmetto bugs, lurked in hiding, waiting for darkness.

Hour later, we went to the grocery store to stock up on food. It was November, and night came early. When we returned, the little house was pitch black inside. Grabbing grocery bags, we climbed the steps and entered. My mother hit the light switch and screamed.

The wood floor was covered in a living carpet of roaches, thousands of them. The light interrupted what they were doing, and for a moment the tableau was frozen. My mother’s scream set them off, and they rushed helter-skelter in every direction. In moments they disappeared, as if they had never been there.

Heated discussion ensued between my parents. My mother was rethinking the wisdom of moving to Florida, freaked out by our unwanted house guests. My father drove to the store for a can of roach spray. Little did he know that the huge roaches would be hardly affected by the spray. All he did was stink up the place when he sprayed the baseboards.

Sometime during the night I woke up and stumbled through the dark house toward the bathroom. With every step, something crunched beneath my bare feet. Turning on the light switch, I stifled a scream of my own. The floor, toilet and sink were crawling with the stinking, detestable palmetto bugs. For an instant they froze, then scuttled out of sight. Beneath my feet I saw the crushed corpses of more cockroaches that hadn’t gotten out of the way, when I’d stumbled, half asleep, through the darkness. I left the bathroom light on as I made it back to my bed.

The next day, my father related the events to a neighbor who came to see who we were. He laughed and told my father about a product called “Holiday Fogger.” He said to buy two Holiday Foggers, wait until dark, close all the windows, set off the foggers, and take the family to the drive-in movies. When we got back, the roach problem would be gone.

It worked. The foggers were like poison gas for roaches. Upon our return later that night, my mother nervously entered the house and hit the light switch. Again, the floor was carpeted with roaches, this time, however, they were dead and dying, on their backs, some twitching.

My mother cussed and swept, cussed and swept, sweeping up dead roaches with a dustpan and dumping them in the trash. I would have never believed that little house could hold so many giant cockroaches if I hadn’t seen them myself. That night, when I tiptoed to the bathroom, not a roach was to be seen.

Eventually, the foggers gave way to the Orkin Man, who came out once a month and sprayed for roaches, ants, and fleas, and every other creepy crawly that infests Florida. It is a battle we can’t hope to win. The cockroaches ruled the planet millions of years before we showed up, and they’ll probably still be creeping around after we are gone.

Unfortunately in prison, the humans in charge have given up without a fight. Roaches are everywhere. Not so many of the giant palmetto bugs, although we smash a few every week, but the smaller, peskier German cockroaches, which crawl everywhere, even on our faces when the lights are out.

When a prisoner goes to lockup, they carry his locker to the officer’s station, a glass-enclosed work area, where the guards inventory and pack up his personal belongings to send to him in confinement.

A sergeant told me recently that four prisoners in one dorm on the other end of the compound went to lockup at the same time, resulting in four steel lockers lined up in the officer’s station for inventory. As the various belongings, photos, legal papers, books and Bibles were taken out of each locker, hundreds of the small, half-inch German cockroaches ran everywhere, freaking out the guards. They’d been busily breeding for months and months, unmolested by non-existent spraying for insects, doubling and redoubling their populations, merrily building up their forces, a “roach surge.”

They are everywhere. Don’t get me started on the prison chow hall! They are even worse there.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a pest control person spray for roaches inside the dorms. It has been a couple of years at least. The guy ran through there like he was in “The Amazing Race,” trying to pump out as little of the watered down juice along the hallways as fast as he could, and get out of the Roach Motel before the cockroaches rallied their forces and counterattacked. Forget about spraying the lockers. Those bad boys have used the stuff for mouthwash.

The prisoners, at least, are making a half-hearted grass-roots effort to knock back the roach population. I went to the water cooler and waited until another prisoner, who was on his knees poking around the baseboards, grabbed something and stood up.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Catching roaches for my lizard.”

Grinning, he held up a squirming cockroach trapped between his fingers, then dropped it in a plastic baggie holding several other cockroaches. Ugh!

A number of prisoners are obsessed with “pets,” lizards, spiders, even small snakes, any critters they can catch and keep in small boxes or carry around. Some of the spider-lovers will put two spiders together, betting on which one will eat the other. Some men spend their days trying to catch flies to keep their spiders fed, while others have a cottage industry catching grasshoppers on the recreation field and selling them to the owners of spiders and lizards. It seems that cockroaches have become the “food du jour” for the pet lizards. They are abundant, easily caught in the daytime when they are groggy, and the lizards readily eat them.

As someone who grew up with dogs and cats, more sentient creatures, it actually gives me the creeps to watch another prisoner have conversations with a small, cold-blooded lizard, telling him “to eat that damned roach,” or he’ll be punished.

One prisoner bought a lizard from another, and I watched amazed as he petted and kissed it, talking to it like it was a baby.

“I never had a pet before,” he said.

“No?”

“We lived in an apartment in New York. It wasn’t allowed.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m learning how to take care of her.”

“Her?”

“Yeah. I’m not too good at catching roaches yet, but I’m getting better.”

“Keep up the good work.”

Perhaps we can blame it on those silly Geico commercials with the talking gecko. Impressionable prisoners believe whatever they see on TV. Perhaps they think that the lizards actually understand them, and hope for one to respond with a British accent some day. Or they are so lonely and isolated from society that feeding roaches to a pet lizard provides them with a lost connection, memories of a family, and being the breadwinner. At least they are trying, and their efforts are knocking down the burgeoning roach population a little bit.

The prisoner whose face the roaches used as a playground filed a grievance, complaining that federal prison standards required regularly-scheduled pest control. Someone in authority responded, stating that a work order would be submitted, but when the technician, an outside contractor, came in to spray, they said the prisoner would not be allowed to talk to him. That was weird. A subsequent complaint resulted in the statement that the work order was filled two weeks ago.

Funny, but no one saw a bug sprayer, and the cockroaches were out in force last night. One man killed twelve crawling around his bunk. Perhaps the new pest control contractor is Casper the Friendly Ghost or The Invisible Man. Meanwhile, the roaches run this motel. We are just visiting.

Charlie

PRISONER UNEMPLOYMENT PROMOTES IDLENESS AND UNREST

2010-08-30T22:27:00.000-04:00

Dateline: July 29, 2010

PRISONER UNEMPLOYMENT PROMOTES IDLENESS AND UNREST

“Back in the day,” as they say, when the judge sentenced someone to “life in prison at hard labor,” that’s exactly what he meant.

My first job upon my arrival at the reception and medical center at Lake Butler was washing pots in the kitchen. When we came out of there at the end of the day, soaked in sweat, greasy, exhausted, all we wanted to do was take a shower and fall in a bunk for a few hours before starting all over again.

At Raiford I watched the prisoners come in the gate after working since daylight on the three “gun squads,” punishment details of prisoners who marched outside the prison gate every day slinging “bush axes,” clearing ditches, dodging snakes, watched over by a couple of shotgun guards who wouldn’t hesitate to fire a load of buckshot at any prisoner who got “rabbit” in him and tries to runoff. The chain gang expression I heard most often from those exhausted men was, “They got the butter from the duck today,” meaning they had nothing else to give. When they came in the gate, each man had to shout what squad he was on, to get checked off. The gun squad’s actual title was “outside labor squad, number one, two, or three,” but when the prisoners returned, they called out, “outside slavery squad!” Those days are long gone.

When I came to prison, the total population was about 20,000. Today it is over 100,000. Forget individual “treatment plans,” or any semblance of proper utilization of manpower. The old woman in the shoe, as the nursery rhyme went, who had so many children she didn’t know what to do, had nothing on the bursting-at-the-seams Florida prison system, or any of the other overburdened state and federal prison systems. Whereas, years ago, virtually every prisoner had a job, and many worked hard and were proud of their work, today’s prison have become massive holding pens, fenced-in camps crammed to overflowing with bored, idle, unemployed men with little productive activities for their time. Where men once learned skills they could turn into jobs in free society upon their release, now thousands of bored prisoners meander in circles on hot, unshaded cow pastures (euphemism: “rec yard”) for hours, or are cooped up in human warehouses (AKA: dormitories), growing more and more frustrated and short-tempered every wasted day.

Only a small percentage have actual “jobs,” and much of that is busywork, or just on paper. The hardest-working prisoners are still washing pots and trays in the kitchen, stirring 80-gallon kettles of boiling beans or grits, pulling hot pans out of ovens, mopping floors or serving meals to 1200 or so fellow prisoners three times a day, but they are in the minority. Not even one-tenth work in the kitchen, and most of those are scheming of ways to get out, reassigned to less-strenuous tasks or none at ll.

Although on paper, perhaps three hundred prisoners are assigned to “inside grounds,” which used to mean that hordes of men with rakes, brooms or buckets would swarm across the entire prison grounds all day, like locusts descending, raking, sweeping, picking up paper and cigarette butts, in actuality the vast majority of those men never report to work. A small squad of men with lawnmowers, supervised by one guard, keep the vast expanses of lawn neatly trimmed, working hard at a fast pace all day, but they are the exception. It is a privilege for them.

When I went to work in the GOLAB program at Raiford over thirty years ago (one of the very best programs ever to grace the prison system –long-gone), one of the eye-opening revelations was how much brain power was wasted in prison. It never ceased to amaze me how many really smart people were intermingled with all the rest. I met doctors, lawyers, successful businessmen, even a NASA rocket scientist, all serving time. In the GOLAB program, all those varied minds got a rare opportunity to sit down in a classroom together for a week or so and concentrate on positive activities. Thousands of men’s lives were changed for the better during those years, and many got out, applied the principles they’d learned in prison, and became successful, contributing members of society. No more.

At this point in time, with our society in flux, let us address the incredible waste of “manpower” that goes on every single day. Look at the recent “Disaster in the Gulf” as an appropriate comparison. Who can forget the nightly news images of millions of gallons of crude oil bubbling out of the broken pipe a mile beneath the surface, costing billions of dollars in damages and lost wages? The waste of manpower in our prison system is no less destructive, albeit in a different way, than the billions in oil damages.

Let’s look at some simple math. Let’s say that only half of the 100,000-plus Florida prisoners are physically capable of working full-time jobs. There are many sick, debilitated, dying, or elderly prisoners who have too many medical conditions to do “hard labor.” Fifty thousand men times forty hour per week equals two million manhours of labor per week! Two million! Think what could be done with that much labor, spread across the state. As it stands now, only a small percentage of prisoners are actually working at manual labor jobs that benefit the cities, counties, and citizens, rather than busywork.

I look out at the green expanses of prison lawns that nobody sees or ever walk on, that would be the pride of many private country clubs, and I wonder why we don’t have a couple hundred prisoners out there digging, planting vegetables, growing their own food, saving millions of tax dollars, as they used to in Florida, and still do in places like Texas. Instead of the “TVP,” textured vegetable protein they pawn off on us as “food,” prisoners could be growing their own food, eating better, and glad to do it. The Lord loves a working man. The prison system has thousands of acres of land that sits as idle as thousands of prisoners. Too bad we can’t put the two parts together.

Why can’t something be done, these issues addressed? Instead of prisoners sitting idle, being recruited into criminal gangs just for something to do, why can’t we put them to work in positive activities that will benefit society, the prisoners, and their families? In a word, it is “mismanagement.” The old woman in the shoe doesn’t know what to do. The people who run the prisons are so overwhelmed by the job, so underequipped to deal with the sheer mass of over 100,000 prisoners, they are so paranoid that “something” is going to happen, that they will be criticized, that they will lose their jobs, their carefully managed careers ruined, that all they can do is hold on, like a rider on a galloping runaway horse that has gotten away from them.

When I came into the system, wardens and “colonels,” the top “security” chiefs, most all had gray hair. Most had been in the military for a few years and knew how to work with men. They worked their way up through the ranks under more experienced mentors, and learned every aspect of the job, dealing with prisoners and guards, before being slowly promoted to higher positions of authority.

Those times are gone. Those “old pros” retired years ago. In their places, their children and grandchildren applied for jobs, got through their probationary periods, learned the finer points of sycophancy, held on, and got promoted as fast as Jack’s beanstalk grew, right into the sky. The “Peter Principle” kicked in hard. Positions opened up at new prisons that had to be filled. The median ages of high-ranking administrators trended lower and lower. Just because someone was awarded a title didn’t mean they knew what they were doing. The “skills pool” has been diluted and watered down to dangerous levels. On-the-job training doesn’t suffice.

What are we to do? Hopefully, somewhere in state government, a strong, wise leader will emerge and take charge, and solutions will be sought. Perhaps that person will even seek answers to the prison crisis from within. As we learned years ago, a lot of brain power is wasted in prison. Let us hope something is done before it is too late for all of society.

Charlie

Mourning the Passing of a Great Man

2010-08-24T00:14:00.000-04:00

Dateline: 08/17/10

“Mourning the Passing of a Great Man”

The first time I read a newspaper column by James J. “Jack” Kilpatrick, I was locked up in a solitary confinement cell. It was 1992. It was the first time I’d been locked up “on the house,” as a result of my prison writings. It wouldn’t be the last.

Jack Kilpatrick’s column concerned the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, focusing on freedom of speech and the press, inviolate freedoms that separated us from our colonial oppressor, England, and made us strong. Since I felt I was being wrongly punished for exercising my First Amendment rights, as a result of publishing an award-winning essay in “The Insider,” a prison literary journal I edited, paid for and sponsored by the Department of Corrections, I was compelled to write Mr. Kilpatrick and tell him what had happened to me. I did not expect a reply.

A week or so later, after my lawyer, Gary Smigiel, made phone calls to Tallahassee, exposed the lie, and got me sprung from lockup without charges, lo and behold, at mail call I was handed a letter from the famous man.

I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was to the effect that in the annals of the First Amendment, what had happened to me was a new chapter in that book. He went on to say that few editors or writers in America are privileged to go to jail for their writings, that I was in a select group now, singled out by the government for oppression, that it takes a special person to provoke such actions. He had referred my letter to the “Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Freedom of Expression” in Charlottesville, Virginia. I beamed with pride. So began an unlikely friendship that continued for the next eighteen years, through thick and thin, an exchange of letters and correspondence that ended this week with my dear friend Jack Kilpatrick’s death at eighty-nine. It is a week of sadness and mourning for me as I reflect on my relationship with this kind, generous man.

I remember Jack (“don’t call me James”) Kilpatrick from “60 Minutes,” 1975 or so, face-to-face with Shana Alexander, debating, later supplanted by Andy Rooney. They called him a “conservative columnist and wordsmith,” but he called himself the last of the Whigs, a throwback to an earlier time in our nation.

He wrote a weekly column about the English language, and another one covering the U.S. Supreme Court, to whom he coined the term, “The Supremes.” Every letter I sent him, he answered, and he became a mentor, coach, and encourager to me. He said he wouldn’t edit anything anymore, except for his family, but for years he patiently read and edited everything I sent him, adopting me under his strong wing.

I learned a lot from Jack Kilpatrick. He wrote me a letter once, stating, “I want to introduce you to something that is very useful.” He proceeded to type three lines of periods…………….., and so on, telling me that particular literary effort, comprising long paragraphs and long sentences, should be broken down into shorter sentences. He was right. He rewrote part of the offending paragraph with much shorter sentences with more punch, illustrating his point. I took his advice to heart, rewrote the piece, sent it back for his approval. The piece wound up winning a national writing award. I owed it to him, and told him so. His praise gave me the confidence I needed to progress.

Jack Kilpatrick had a fine legal mind, became interested in my case, and investigated it on his own. He felt so strongly about my innocence that he wrote a newspaper column specifically directed to then-Governor Lawton Chiles in 1998, urging him to grant me clemency before he left office. The column was placed on Governor Chiles’ desk, and he read it. He was convinced. Sadly for all of us, before the Governor took action, he dropped dead of a heart attack in the exercise room of the Governor’s Mansion, ending that opportunity for release. (Click here http://www.freecharlienow.com/files/entire_Kilpatrick_article.doc to go to the article.)

Undeterred, Jack wrote new Governor Jeb Bush, recounted his friendship with Jeb’s mom and dad, how he’d flown in “Air Force One” with the Bush family, and told him about my case. Didn’t do any good. Jeb Bush “was not inclined to grant clemencies,” as one of his aides said.

Even though his congestive heart failure worsened, and he struggled to care for his incapacitated wife, Jack never stopped trying to help me. We kept up our correspondence almost to the end, even as his vision failed and he could hardly see to type. Expecting the end did not make it any easier.

One of the worst things about serving—and surviving—decades of imprisonment is the aging and death of loved ones. The attrition rate rises as the long years mount up. With only a few exceptions, those family, loved ones, and friends who were with me when this nightmare began have fallen by the wayside, gone to their just rewards, given up the ghost. The prisons are filled with thousands of lonely old men who have lost virtually everyone who cared about them, and they are just waiting to die.

I have suffered the same losses, but have been fortunately blessed to have encountered and been befriended by new people over the years, kind, decent, souls who saw something in me that caused them to walk alongside me on this long journey, sometimes for short times, others for long years. Like Jack.

Jack Kilpatrick was a good man who loved his wife, children, and grandchildren, retaining enough goodness in his soul to share some of that love with me. He became an old friend to me. I’m sorry, Jack, that I haven’t been able to get out yet, despite our best efforts, to come see you, as I promised, to shake your hand and thank you in gratitude for all you did for me. I will pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you close as you go to a better place. I will never forget you.

Charles Patrick Norman

CHRIST IS ALIVE AND WELL IN PRISON

2010-07-22T22:05:00.000-04:00

Dateline: Saturday, July 10, 2010

"CHRIST IS ALIVE AND WELL IN PRISON"

Today, I made it to the “Kairos Reunion” program at the prison chapel.

The monthly follow-ups to the Kairos prison weekends were called “Ultreyas” for many years, and that’s what we old-timers still call them, but like everything else, it seems, new times redescribe and reinvent old events.

A dozen or so Christian volunteers from communities surrounding Daytona Beach and Tomoka C.I. come in once a month to participate in a two-hour program of testimony, prayers, songs, and discussions with forty or fifty prisoners who have attended the Kairos Weekend at various prisons throughout the state. This follow-up program gives the prisoners a chance to reinforce the faith and spiritual lessons they experienced during the three-day Kairos Weekend, sometimes called a “short course in Christianity.”

I attended Kairos #9 at Union C.I., Raiford, in May, 1982, and have volunteered in many programs during the intervening years. I also need that reinforcement and fellowship that such gatherings offer to the men. In the midst of such worldly evil and degeneracy that dominates prison life, to maintain one’s hope, faith and belief in a Supreme Being that will deliver us from all this is crucial to one’s survival, physically and spiritually.

Several prisoners with guitars and other musical instruments led an introductory hymn, “Victory In Jesus.” As I sang along with the group, rattling the rafters, eyes closed, I could imagine that I was a child in Redwater Baptist Church in East Texas in the 1950’s in the comforting midst and security of family, hearing those same words for the first time.

“I heard an old, old story, how a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary, to save a wretch like me.
I heard about His groaning, of His precious blood’s atoning,
Then I repented of my sins and won the victory…”

I opened my eyes and saw that I wasn’t a child in Texas, surrounded by Memaw and Bebaw, Cherry, my mother, Alice and Patsy, but instead it was 2010, I was in a prison chapel filled with convicted murderers, rapists, child molesters, burglars, robbers, thieves, drug addicts and drug peddlers, drunks and fools, as well as a handful of well-meaning citizens who see beyond these sins and exercise their faith by coming through the razor wire and prison gates to share their faith and encourage men who society has written off and cast aside.

I’d been at Raiford two years before I was finally pestered enough by my friends that I reluctantly signed up to attend the Kairos Weekend. Over and over again, I heard men tell me, “Charlie, you’re a good guy, but you need to go to Kairos.” They were right.

I had arguments against it, though.

“I don’t want to go down to that chapel with all the child molesters, phonies, and hypocrites,” I said.

Jack Murphy told me, “Are you going to let some child molesters stand between you and God?”

Joe Miller gave me a different insight, that the church was more a hospital for hypocrites than a showcase for saints. I finally realized that I needed to get past my own shortcomings, that it would be better if those I considered despicable people were to go to church and have a chance to change their lives, become better men, to give up their evil ways, than to stay the way they were, obsessed, and return to society only to victimize more innocent people. In the process I became a better man, and did my best to keep my judgmental nature in check.

I’d seen all those volunteers coming in at Raiford, and had issues with how happy and friendly they were. More objections.

“Man, I’m not going up there and have all those men hugging me, calling me brother, acting like a bunch of sissies,” I complained.

I got past that, too, when I discovered that those men were actually glad to meet me, considered me a brother, and were only sharing the joy they felt when they hugged me and told me Jesus loved me. It might have sounded hokey, but they were for real. The feelings were contagious.

Twenty-eight years later, there I was, walking into another prison chapel, hugging grown men, Larry Harrington, Hank Pankey, Henry Arnold, Manny Bolanos, and others I’d met at the Kairos here, and wondered where all the other old friends were, realizing that many had died and passed on to their just rewards. I met new friends, and shared my faith, comparing the prison chapel to going down to a river on Saturday morning.

Something was happening down by the river. People came from all over to see. Some stayed on the bank and watched those who waded out into the water. The observers had a choice, to stay dry and uninvolved, or to get out there and get wet. John the Baptist was there, and a man named Jesus. People crowded around, wondering what it was all about. I’d stood on the sidelines too long, parched and dry, so now it was time to plunge into the cool water, find out what it was all about.

A prison chapel is not like any church you went to “on the street,” in free society. There’s a noticeable absence of women. They don’t pass the offering plates. There are other differences, too. At the end we don’t get in our cars and drive home, but the guards line us up on the sidewalk and march us to our cells. Then they count us all, to make sure no one sneaked out.

Before that happened, though, we had a couple of hours when we couldn’t see the fences, the guard towers, and the gun trucks cruising around, but instead could see the best in our fellow man, as we continued to sing:

“O Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever,
He sought me and bought me, with His redeeming blood.
He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him.
He plunged me to victory, beneath the cleansing flood.”

After that, I walked out of the chapel with my friend and fellow prisoner, Karl Stephens, one of the finest men I know, in prison or out, wondering when we’d each return home.

Thank God Christ is alive and well in prison.

Charlie

“Poems Written on the Backs of Envelopes”

2010-07-12T23:10:00.000-04:00

Dateline July 10, 2010

“Poems Written on the Backs of Envelopes”

Ink and paper are always in short supply in prison, especially when you go through writing materials as fast as I do.

I’ve discovered a good way to recycle mail and write poems, too, a technique I call “Poems Written on the Backs of Envelopes.” It is a good discipline strategy—starting and finishing on the blank side of a #10 envelope, having something to say, and saying it. (This blog is written the same way).

I hope you like this first example below. Let me know. Out of paper—have to stop.

Charlie

HOW ODD, HOW SMALL

Giants walked the land
in those days—uncles,
grandpa and dad.
Grasping their knees with
my arms, embracing
the tree trunks of
their legs, peering
skyward at their distant
smiling faces looking down
at me from the clouds

I raise my hands,
beseeching, and they bend,
lifting me up, higher
and higher to the land
of the birds and trees
and distant landscapes.

I feel their scratchy
faces against my soft
cheeks, smell the lingering
acrid smoke of Camels,
Prince Albert and Bull
Durham on their breaths.

They lift me higher, toss
me into the upper air and
laugh with me.

How odd, how small
they became, withering,
weakening and shrinking before
my eyes, ‘fore dying,
the giants.

Copyright 2010 by Charles Patrick Norman

A FOURTH OF JULY PHOTO FROM PRISON

2010-07-06T22:05:00.000-04:00

Dateline: Sunday, July 4, 2010

A FOURTH OF JULY PHOTO FROM PRISON

Against all odds, I have survived my thirty-third Fourth of July in captivity. A long, long time ago, when I narrowly avoided the death penalty for a murder I did not commit, corrupt prosecutor Mark Ober was quoted as saying, "Norman will never survive a life sentence." Sorry to disappoint you, Mark, but you were wrong again.

As you can see from the accompanying photo taken today at Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach, Florida, I am alive and well, and still have much of my hair, in much of its natural color. I pose next to one of the last two oak trees left standing by the chain-saw-happy prison administrators over the past five years, but not too close to the razor wire that confines me.

I did not achieve the ripe old age of sixty (sixty one in September) on my own. I have survived this hell on earth only with the support and intervention of a small army of angels including Gary Smigiel and Henry Wulf, private investigator Dick Rivett, some great literary folks from "PEN" and the Anne Frank Center in New York, retired Reverend Bob Anderson and others whose names they'd probably prefer went unmentioned.

I am a loyal American. Despite being denied some of the unalienable rights guaranteed all citizens by the Founding Fathers, I love my country and all it stands for. Despite enduring varying degrees of censorship by prison authorities over the years, and suffering the consequences, with the help of friends I've been able to exercise my First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and expression to an extent possibly unparalleled by an American prisoner. Google searches of Charles Norman, Charlie Norman, Charles P. Norman, and Charles Patrick Norman, reveal over 200,000 listings of my literary works available. People from twenty-eight countries, many states, most of the Canadian provinces, The Department of Corrections are regular readers of the Free Charlie Norman Now blog. Truly I am blessed to live in this time.

On behalf of Libby and myself, I wish you a Happy Fourth of July at home, surrounded by loved ones, and pray that next year I will be able to do the same.

Charlie

HIS WRITERS’ WORKSHOP? A PRISON CELL

2010-07-01T22:35:00.000-04:00

Dateline: June 27, 2010

HIS WRITERS’ WORKSHOP? A PRISON CELL

I read an interesting article in the June 8, 2010, “New York Times,” by John J. Miller, about a famous writer who served three years in prison. Although his imprisonment had a great effect on his writing, he considered it a mark of shame, carrying his secret to the grave, never even telling his daughter.

Years after his death, when Prisoner #30664’s secret was revealed by a professor, the public became fascinated by his story rather than shunning him as a criminal. All his worries about his posthumous reputation were for naught.

Reading about such a man gives me pause to consider our differences and similarities, one hundred years apart. Rather than hiding my imprisonment of over 32 years, I make no secret of it, and have steadily recorded my experiences, thoughts, and stories, the entire time. In this new world of the Internet, there are few secrets to be kept by anyone anyway.

Wonder what someone is in prison for and when they’re getting out? Check the web site. The molesters and perverts can no longer fool people into believing they are in state prison for tax fraud. It used to happen all the time. I could tell you stories! And I will.

That man who was ashamed of his imprisonment was named William Sidney Porter. Ironically, another point we share is that most likely he was innocent of the charges he served time for.

While in prison he began submitting stories to New York magazines, some of them inspired by his fellow prisoners. They were best known for their unexpected conclusions. Mr. Miller compares reading Mr. Porter’s works is like watching episodes of “The Twilight Zone.”

Being ashamed of his prisoner status, Prisoner # 30664 did not want to publish his work under his own name, so he possibly borrowed an alias from a prison guard named Orrin Henry, calling himself, “O. Henry.”

Two of my favorite writers as a youth were Edgar Allan Poe and O, Henry. Who can ever forget “The Gift of the Magi,” or “The Ransom of Red Chief?” Little did I know all those years ago that one day I would have something in common with William Sidney Porter?

It’s a good thing you aren’t around in this modern world, Mr. O. Henry. Times have changed. If you’d been serving time in a Florida prison like Mr. Charles Patrick Norman, you might have been thrown into solitary confinement for your writing, like I was.

Perhaps I should have taken a hint from O. Henry, and used an alias, calling myself A. Gordon or T. Melton or S. Wellhausen. Alas, those names just don’t possess the ring of “O. Henry.”

Charlie

INTRODUCING A NEW PRISON LITERARY TALENT-- GUEST POET VISITS "FREE CHARLIE NOW"

2010-06-29T21:16:00.000-04:00

DATELINE: JUNE 26, 2010

INTRODUCING A NEW PRISON LITERARY TALENT--
GUEST POET VISITS "FREE CHARLIE NOW"

For the past three months I've been so busy fighting the forces of evil, filing legal appeals on the First Amendment attacks by Ku Klux Klan sympathizers, meeting impending deadlines that could otherwise cost me more prison time, that I haven't devoted the time I usually did on updating this blog. For that neglect I apologize and ask your forbearance. Freedom first!

A few weeks ago, sitting in the prison chapel waiting for Father Bob Anderson to come in for the Episcopal Communion Service, I had the unique experience of hearing a previously-unknown prison poet perform a unique work for the Gavel Club meeting. You had to be there to appreciate the performance. Afterwards, I asked my friend, Andre, if I could get a copy of his poem. With his permission, unveiled to the world for all to see, is the following work. I hope you enjoy it. Andre assures me he has more.

PEN-I-TENTIARY PROBLEMS

(DEAR CHAING GANG CHARLIE CRIST))

By André L. Payne, Sr.

I crashlanded into the Abyss—of a Piss-poor
Penitentiary system that has given me
Its gluteus maximus to Kiss.

Dis-functionalism at its Apex
Check the deck of cards they dealing
Peeling the Skin—akin to Swiss Mocha
they gave us the Joker—
Jack-in-da’-Box Wardens with the
Academic Attitude of a Sand-Crane-on Crack—

My Back is against the Wall painted the color of puke,
Scoop up your seeds you just spilled in the Shower
The hour is Now—How—can we reproduce,
When you reduce your Spectrum into the
Rectum of the Devil?

Level the score—
He wins the War
The Door is broken-down
So long as you clowns
Walk the Pound
With your pants hanging down!

Sharpen your perception—
The election has left us with a people,
Whose only direction is a career in corrections.
This is their Made Best—
When a TABE Test
And the ability to say, “Cuff up!”—
is the only criteria for a [C.O. Badge]—
We’ve been had.

Sadly spoken, token hand-picked pricks with the
I.Q. of a pair of handcuff Keys
PLEASE!—
I dare you to ask an officer
What’s the eight parts of speech
(He’ll probably lock-you-up!)

It’s a crying Shame;
A White Shirt can’t even spell your NAME,
Brain dead derelicts that don’t even pay Rent!
They’re living for free
They wear their brass for free,
We mow their grass for free,
You Kiss-his-asinine-behind-to remind him;
His spine is gone
His Mind is blown!

They don’t give a flying flapjack about
a Chapter 33—open your eyes and see!
How can We Win—When they all Kin?

Look around—Brothers and Sisters on the same pound!
Fathers and daughters on the same pound—
Cousins, Uncles, and Aunties walking the same ground,
on the same pound.

The End

“THE CONSTITUTION AIN’T IN EFFECT IN PRISON NO MORE”

2010-06-12T21:17:00.000-04:00

This is another installment from Charlie's Confinement Diary written from "solitary" where he was sent as a result of a retaliatory disciplinary report by officials of D.O.C.

THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010, DAY THREE IN THE HOLE

“THE CONSTITUTION AIN’T IN EFFECT IN PRISON NO MORE”

As Day Three of my odyssey through the First Amendment and solitary confinement progresses, I should tell you first of the events that closed out Day Two.

I had the same conversation virtually verbatim, several times since I’ve been locked in “the Hole,” mostly with the “C.O.’s,” the correctional officers, and their immediate supervisors, the sergeants. Each would be passing by my cell, would glance in to make sure I was alive, not hanging from a sheet or sprawled in a pool of blood, would start to go by, then stop, step back, look again, recognition dawns, confusion wrinkles the brow, and after a few seconds would speak:

“What are you doing back here?” (astonishment)

“A story I wrote was published in a book, so the assistant warden wrote me up.”

“What was it about?”

“My experiences some years back with retaliation by KKK prison guards.”

“Why did they lock you up?”

“I suppose she took personal offense at my depiction of the KKK. I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to her.”

“Haven’t these people ever heard of the First Amendment?”

“Funny you should mention that. I’ve been told by a KKK prison guard that ‘the Constitution ain’t in effect in prison.’ ”

“That’s bullshit. You’re the last person I’d expect to see back here.”

“Me, too. You know how straight a line I walk.”

“Good luck. Keep fighting.”

“I will. Thanks.”

What has amazed me is the virtually universal understanding of the First Amendment trampling the lowest level guards possess, while the highest level “administrators,” college-educated and “trained” at endless taxpayer-funded “conferences on corrections,” have such a cavalier disregard for years and years of Constitutional law, state law, and prison rules that regulate both “them” and “us.” When you gain ultimate control and total power over the defenseless, oftentimes that absolute power corrupts what at other times are described as “good people.” I think the term is “totalitarianism.”

Where is the ACLU, the SCLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the defenders of the oppressed and powerless, when I really need them? Come on, folks! Let’s stop this lynching. The rope is getting tighter. How are they going to explain this to D.O.C. Secretary Walt McNeil?

About eight thirty PM on Day Two, when solitary confinement was just settling down for the evening, when the psych meds were beginning to hit the loud mouths who’d been screaming inanities all day lapsed into their drug-induced comas (they like prisoners in comas; it becomes more a “storage” issue than “care, custody, and control,” their bywords), I lay on my hard bunk reading a dog-eared twenty-year old paperback novel a fellow prisoner had slid down the hall to me.

At the end of the hall, where they can approach the wing from the back way, came a ruckus. Loud talking, laughing, joking—you ever see a pack of teenage boys walking through a mall, kidding around, elbowing each other, playing “grab ass?” That’s what it sounded like. It couldn’t be guards: cameras record everything in the hallways, and the guards are “under the gun” of the higher-ups in charge—any wrong moves on camera and they’re gone—they know they are under surveillance, so they keep themselves low-key.

I didn’t bother getting up. I didn’t care. But a moment later the obviously phony camaraderie reached my cell, and I saw the warden, the male assistant warden (both white), and the black colonel peering through the little grill of my cell door. They are required to make rounds every so often, and I suppose they stopped by after having a few beers, before returning to their trailer park across the street.

They did the same double-take—looked in, moved, stopped, looked in again, stared.

“Who’s that?” (There is a photo page print out by the door, the same one on the D.O.C. web site, with identifying information).

“Norman.”

“Norman?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Norman?” (They crowd around the grill and stare again. I stare back, not moving).

They move on, quiet now, no “Kee-Kee-Keeing,” as prisoners call the immature posturing and grab ass. Then the black colonel came back, stopped, looked in and stared, by himself. If I’d expected him to say something like, “Hey, I’m not with this KKK shit, I’m not defending white racists, but this is over my head, and I can’t say anything, sorry,” I’d have been wrong. I didn’t. He didn’t.

Instead, he asked, “What’s the name of that book?”

I didn’t expect him to want a book review, so I just held up the title where he could see it. Most prisoners in solitary, when “officials” pass by, “get on the door” and beg for an audience, seeking conversation, mercy, whatever. I had nothing to say to them. “You have the right to remain silent” are optimum words, since anything you say will be used to justify pepper spraying and “use of force.” I let my pen do the talking, that is, until it runs out of ink, which could be any time. Then I really will be silenced. Perhaps that’s their plan.

Thirty minutes later the guard came by and told me to pack up my meager laundry bag of limited possessions, I was moving to “E” Dorm, the larger confinement area far on the south end of the compound. Why? Orders. Okay, I get it. The KKK’s roots run deep in prison, like those stunted trees in parched lands.

You may recall they took my shoes, and gave me flip flops. They cuff your hands behind your back, put on short leg irons, so you take shuffling baby steps, and have to carry your bag behind your back. The weight pulls down on your shoulders, and if you are a big man with big shoulders, it’s a form of torture. I refused. I told them I’ve had back injuries, and I couldn’t do that. Sometimes, if you have a choice, you must not submit to torture. I knew if I even tried to carry that bag—my Bible and two large envelopes of legal papers made it heavy—I’d be suffering later. Just the handcuffs behind the back cut into and bruise your wrists and arms.

One of the “decent” guards said fine, use a “waist chain,” hands at the front, which was better, but still an ordeal. Try wearing flip flops with your ankles chained together and walk down a very long sidewalk. It’s not easy. Neither is climbing stairs.

Before I leave “Y Dorm” behind, I want to give you a brief rundown of how that term evolved.

Up until 1999 or so, all the main solitary confinements, “disciplinary,” at most Florida prisons were designated as “X Wing,” as in, “X-ed out,” crossed off, no longer in “X-istence.” Things happened on “X-Wing.” Run your mouth to the guards, they yell, “Pop the door,” and a crowd piles in the cell and beats you down, which is different from “beating someone up.”

Then “Valdez” came along, a notorious prisoner who was involved in a guard’s death. They housed him on “X-Wing” at “FSP,” Florida State Prison, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time. He was a dead man.

One day they came in there and kicked and beat Valdez to death. Most bones in his body were broken. Ribs punctured his heart and lungs. The guards said either it was an accident, he’d fallen off his bunk and died, or he did it on purpose, did a swan dive to take himself out. What about those deep boot impressions on his chest and back? Oh, they were trying to revive him! So emerged the joking (to them) term, “FSP CPR” —he’s not breathing? —step on his chest with your boot and give him FSP-CPR. Perhaps a couple of kicks will jumpstart his heart. Nope, he didn’t make it.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates prisoner deaths, and they called it murder. A crew of guards were charged, went on trial, and were acquitted. What did you expect? Bradford County is composed mostly of prison guards, retired prison guards, and their relatives. North Florida justice.

There were national TV shows about “X-Wing,” the state of Florida, and the prison system took some P.R. hits, so the biggest change came in abolishing all “X-Wings” and making them “Y’s.” Now it is “Y-Dorm,” sounds like a place curious college students might live, but it is the same old X-Wing, whitewashed with new labels. Spray paint silver onto a rotten mullet, it still stinks. Even so, I was glad to get out of “Y Dorm,” even at nine o’clock at night, mysteriously hobbling in the dark, trying not to fall on my face.

Later I’ll tell you more about Day Three and “E” Dorm, my new cell, with a 21-year old “bug” on the top bunk, who’s served less than a year in prison and gets out Saturday, returning to Tampa. I’d been in prison eleven years already when he was born.

The sergeant put me in his cell to watch out for him—“Talk some sense to the kid, please.” The kid—that’s what he is—small, slightly built white boy, looks about sixteen, scared to death they were going to put a “booty bandit” in the cell. He’s relieved. He’s safe for a few days.

Now I must deal with a host of new challenges, including being stuck in a cell dirty as a pig sty. First thing we’re doing is cleaning this place up. I have to babysit. See you later.

Charlie

THIRTY DAYS IN SOLITARY FOR TELLING THE TRUTH

2010-06-08T22:10:00.000-04:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010, DAY TWO IN THE HOLE
THIRTY DAYS IN SOLITARY FOR TELLING THE TRUTH

This is another installment from Charlie's Confinement Diary written from "solitary" where he was sent as a result of a retaliatory disciplinary report by officials of D.O.C.
Tourists picture their time in Florida as palm trees swaying in the balmy ocean breezes, rubbing on Coppertone at Daytona Beach, getting a tan, enjoying the heat. I have bad news. That’s not how it is in solitary confinement. The low temperatures this week have been in the 40’s outside and little difference in “the box,” except the wind isn’t blowing.

Until I run out of ink and paper, while I’m back here in lockdown doing my “30 & 30,” thirty days disciplinary confinement and thirty days loss of gaintime for the heinous act noted on Form DC5-101 as, “Book contains an article written by Inmate Norman that won a contest (page 54-57).” The book is “Wordsmith 2010,” published by the Tampa Writers Alliance, and the “article” is actually a 2400 word excerpted memoir from my “prison diary,” part of the 2008 Anne Frank Center Prison Diary Project in New York, and the offending memoir is “To Protect the Guilty,” an account that I thought was fairly innocuous, tongue-in-cheek, even humorous in a dark, realistic way. I guess the offended prison administrators (all white, from North Florida, with heavily Deep South accents, by the way), didn’t see the literary value.

Just one more false statement to note: “To Protect the Guilty” did not win the contest—it came in third, but the prison system has never been known for its accuracy.
It was a cold evening in my cell as Day One turned to night. Don’t try this at home. After hours of asking, I finally got two threadbare sheets and an extremely thin cotton blanket (more like a heavier sheet). A one-inch hard plastic mattress on a cold steel bunk (no pillow) made for a painful, restless semi-sleep. Having progressive arthritis doesn’t help.

After we ate our meager supper trays around four PM (part of the deprivation is the loss of time sense—24 hour lights, no clocks or watches, no radio, no news) the poor soul in the next cell said, “It’s a long time to two slices of bread.” I found out what he meant about thirteen hours later when they brought a breakfast tray with two pieces of toast (where’s the French?) and a small spoon of oatmeal. Stomach growls started soon after.

It may be around ten AM now, on Day Two—St. Patrick’s Day, if I recall correctly. No parades, no floats. A minute ago a woman from classification was escorted down the hall by a guard, to have someone sign papers, said, “Brrr! It’s freezing back here!” No kidding.

After doing some jumping jacks to try to get warm, the first thing I did was cobble together a calendar for March and April. I knew yesterday was March 16th, but if you’re not careful, back here you can lose all sense of time and date. I used one of my precious few sheets of paper, a worthwhile investment. I calculated that if they make me do the full thirty days, I’ll get out on April 14th. Since this is a completely false charge, a reprisal, and glaring errors ensued (which happens when people compound their lies), which I documented in my appeal to the warden, who has the last say, if all were right in the world and they actually followed “Due Process,” he’d quickly respond to my grievance, toss out the predetermined verdict, and let me go. But, since the investigating officer told me, “the warden wants your ass in jail,” what sort of hope do I have for a fair hearing? Not much.

I found out it’s a little after eleven AM—they brought the pitiful lunch trays—textured vegetable protein (a.k.a. Kibbles & Bits), beans, and cold sliced potatoes. No salt, no seasoning. A two-inch square piece of cake. You have to resist the impulse to eat it fast—chew it slowly, small bites, make it last longer, or you’ll be hungry quicker. The captain told me yesterday that he’d let me have one phone call, but that hasn’t happened yet. At least I did get a five-minute shower last night—showers on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, so something went right.

After I made the calendar this morning, I read my Bible. That’s the only book they allow you to keep. Bibles and prisons have long history together. The Quakers supposedly built the first prison in our country. In line with their beliefs, “penitent” became “penitentiary,” and they’d lock a man alone in a cold stone cell with a Bible and a water cup. Bread and water. Read the Bible and reflect. Learn the error of your ways.

I have a very nice “NIV” Bible that my Aunt Alice gave me in 1986. At Zephyrhills C.I., our visitors could go to the prison chapel every Sunday with us for an hour before visiting. My mother, Alice, and my niece, Tammy, came most Sundays. When the visiting preachers would say, “Turn in your Bibles to _________,” we’d all try to read the verse in the Bible, but the print was so small, it didn’t work. When Alice ordered a large-print Bible for me, it solved the problem. Four of us could read the verse with ease. Little did I know that twenty years later I needed the large print text myself!

One thing I do is read a chapter of Psalms and Proverbs each day, depending on the date. Today I read Psalms 17 and Proverbs 17. If I have time (now) I’ll read five chapters of Psalms and some New Testament. It’s uncanny how there will be a verse on that date that applies to my situation, like in Psalms 17—“Give ear to my prayer—it does not rise from deceitful lips. May my vindication come from you; may your eyes see what is right.” And two verses from Proverbs 17: —“A wicked man listens to evil lips; a liar pays attention to a malicious tongue,” and “Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—the Lord detests them both.”

I realized a long time ago that this is a spiritual battle I am involved in, and the forces of evil—in the form of state attorney Mark Ober (the Great Satan) and his minions have been firing at me forever, it seems, and there’s no doubt in my mind that all the prayers made on my behalf by so many true believers have kept me alive and safe. So be it.

It’s getting a little noisy back here now. The “psych meds” must be wearing off my fellow confines. I will continue this record when I can, or until they take my half-pen. Meanwhile, prayers or any other help you can offer will be appreciated. Thanks.

Charlie

“SIMPLY BECAUSE…” THE FIRST AMENDMENT FIGHT IN PRISON CONTINUES

2010-05-22T22:17:00.000-04:00

Dateline: May 12, 2010

“SIMPLY BECAUSE…”

THE FIRST AMENDMENT FIGHT IN PRISON CONTINUES

Since my release from solitary confinement on April 14th, I’ve been focused on appealing the false disciplinary charges against me, with mixed results. I’ve spent many hours researching legal cases in the law library, and have discovered that the law is on my side, for what it is worth.

“I AM the law!” How many times have I heard that? One of the biggest problems facing a prisoner fighting injustice is the cavalier attitude of the prison “authorities” that the rules and laws don’t apply to them. They are in charge—they have the handcuffs, keys, pepper spray, and the gun towers. The Kangaroo Court is in session. Do you know how hard it is to fight kangaroos, with your hands cuffed behind your back?

One small victory—this incident began in January when mailroom clerk T. Gronik read the anthology, “Wordsmith 2010,” by the Tampa Writers Alliance. She liked it—or disliked it—so much that she kept it, neglecting to send me a “Notice of Impoundment,” as required by Florida law.

You should know that if the postman delivered U.S. mail to someone and you pawed through it, found a book you wanted to read, you couldn’t legally just snatch that book out of the mail and keep it. That is called “theft of mail,” and last time I heard, was a federal crime. Mail to state prisoners is still mail, and if a “prison official” decides to intercept and confiscate a prisoner’s mail, it can be done, but it has to be done right. There are procedures. That’s why the call it, “due process.” In this case, the law says they can take my book, but they must document it and have a valid reason. They have 15 days to send me Form DC5-101, “Notice of Rejection or Impoundment,” which kicks in a time deadline for me to appeal the confiscation to the “Literature Review Committee” in Tallahassee. Mailroom clerk Gronik snatched my book on January 28, 2010, but neglected to file paperwork or tell me about it.

Almost a month later, February 22, while picking up my legal mail (another sensitive issue), I asked the mailroom person if she’d seen the book. She took a deep breath and replied.

“I read the book. I felt the story you wrote was a threat to security [emphasis mine] and sent it to Mr. Hodgson.” Mr. Hodgson is one of the assistant wardens. I asked her about my confiscation notice, where was it? Duh! Sometimes they just don’t want to talk to you.

It’s almost impossible to talk to these people. It must be the “siege mentality.” They have a new thing in prison called “controlled movement,” in which they’ve installed millions of dollars worth of chain link fences, cages, and mazes across the prison yards, they march you through them in groups, like rats looking for the cheese in the psychology labs, while they are two or three layers of fences away from you, in their own little self-protective groups, watching. If you do somehow get closer to them, in their little pod of officials, it won’t do you any good anyway.

An old man once said, “Never approach a pack of wild dogs or prison guards by yourself.” Good advice. You approach a group of guards or officials, the mob mentality kicks in. No matter what you ask them, the answer is no. They must maintain their macho façade in front of their cohorts. If by some chance you encounter one alone, you have a better chance, but after 30 seconds their cell phone will go off, and they scurry away with the thing stuck to their ear.

Our only alternative is to “put it on paper,” to file a grievance, “administrative remedies,” they call it, which is usually about as satisfying as unzipping one’s pants and urinating into a 50 m.p.h. wind. The eternal optimist, I filed, asking for my book back. I’m not going to go into all the back and forth—you can read the court papers later—but the result was the D.R. from assistant warden Gordon for assorted “mail violations.” It took me until March 10th —41 days after confiscation, to get a receipt, and the reason the book was stolen—uh—confiscated.

“Book contains an article written by inmate Norman that won a contest (page 54-57)”

They have to put down the reason and the exact pages where the offending items appear. It just so happens that on pages 54-57 appears my memoir, “To Protect the Guilty,” which was an excerpt from my “Anne Frank Center USA Prison Diary Project” from 2008, approved by DOC officials all the way to Tallahassee and back. KKK prison guards. Hmmmm. And it didn’t win a contest, either. It came in third. What they didn’t mention was that I had two other works published in the same book, a poem, and a short story, but they didn’t mention KKK prison guards, so they let them slide.

Only one problem—the judicial rulings concerning the First Amendment and prisoners’ literary works forbid censorship for the “content of the writings.” In this case, it must have been “the content” that waved the red flag and got their dander up, since they ignored the poem and short story. Naughty, naughty!

While I spent thirty days in solitary from the kangaroo court, my appeal of the book confiscation wended its way to the Literature Review Committee, which is apparently that rare bird in prison officialdom, college-educated people with sense who go by the law.

On April 20th, the committee overruled the confiscation of “Wordsmith 2010,” stating, “Simply because a publication contains an article written by an inmate is not grounds for rejection.” Thank you. Eight days later, exactly three months after Gronik snatched it, I finally got the book. It is a nice one. I recommend it.

Meanwhile, I’m still appealing the false D.R. conviction. If I get turned down again, I have to file in court, Leon County, a “mandamus,” with a $400.00 filing fee. Justice is not cheap. More on that later.

A few comments on our blog readers. Webmaster Dan has been using an interesting web tool called “Sitemeter,” which is like caller ID for the internet. Sitemeter tells us where all the log-ons came from, and other interesting information. For instance, the blog has been accessed by readers in twenty-two countries, all the Canadian provinces, and many states. Most recently, we’ve added readers from Zagreb, Croatia, Ridderkerk Zuid, Holland, Brisbane, Australian, the City of London, Sweden, Singapore, The Russian Federation, Qatar, and many others in Europe, Africa, North America and Asia. Welcome to FreeCharlieNormanNow! Notice that I did NOT ask for donations! We would like to hear your comments.

It turns out, according to Sitemeter, that some of our most avid readers are employed by the Florida Department of Corrections. We’ve had lots of hits from Lake Butler, Florida, a hotbed for certain groups, Tallahassee, Daytona Beach (Tomoka), and others.

Sitemeter tells us our corrections friends do a lot of websurfing during working hours. Hmmm. I wonder if Attorney General McCollum has heard about that? Or what other websites have these public servants—or “surfants” —been visiting on the state dime? Might be grounds for a state audit of employee internet usage during working hours.

Anyone interested in that, to file a complaint, a form is available at myfloridalegal.com/19thstatewidegrandjury or
call the tipline at 1-800-646-0444. Check it out.

Thanks, Charlie

A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

2010-05-18T13:41:00.000-04:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2010, DAY ONE IN THE HOLE

A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

This is the procedure used by the Florida prison system to punish a prisoner for writing about something they would rather not be revealed to the public. First, they approve your participation in the 2008 “Anne Frank Prison Diary Project,” which inspired me to write hundreds more pages of prison memoirs beyond the 96-page blank journal the Anne Frank Center sent me, with the full knowledge and approval of prison officials, all the way from Tomoka C.I. to Tallahassee. Associated Press reporters, Jessica Gresko and Suzette Laboy, were so impressed they drove all the way from Miami and went through several fences and gates to interview me. The article went worldwide, to over 3000 newspapers and media outlets. The prison folks didn’t read my memoir about the KKK prison guards, but others did.

An excerpt from the hundreds of handwritten pages, about 2400 words, title, “To Protect The Guilty,” recounted how repressive guards can come back years later and retaliate against a prisoner for something he said. Talk about prophetic!

The Tampa Writers Alliance, a fine group that I have been a member of for years, liked the memoir and published it in their annual anthology, “Wordsmith 2010.” I was expecting my copy in January, to see what my words looked like in print, but it was not to be. The mailroom woman told me weeks later that she read the book, a story I wrote was a threat to security, and she’d sent it to the assistant warden over security, a man from North Florida, just like the ones in my memoir. Where is my confiscation receipt and notice of impoundment, required to be filed within 15 days of taking it, I asked. Uh…no answer.

I filed grievances to get the book. I studied Constitutional law, particularly the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and knew that I’d violated no rules, that my work was protected speech under the First Amendment. I even copied a passage from an excellent law book, The Rights of Prisoners, (4th Edition, Vol.2, § 6:18 IV), “Prisoner Writings,” (page 62) which stated it perfectly, in part:
“ A quintessential expression of speech is one’s own writings. It is well known that the isolation and frequent solitude of a prison setting have been fertile soil for inmates to write and compose music and art, and prisoners often have interesting and vital tales to tell, music to write, and art to compose…Moreover, the fruit of some prisoner literary efforts have become justly famous examples of world renowned literature.” (See e.g. John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress (1684); Henry Charriere, Papillon (1910); O. Henry, The Ransom of Red Chief in “Whirligigs” (1910); Martin Luther King, Letters From Birmingham Jail, (1963); Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol, (1898) )

That is an impressive short list of esteemed company I share my plight with now that I sit in solitary confinement, “the hole,” “the box,” as a result of exercising my First Amendment rights in prison. Before I go on, let me give you a few more lines from The Rights of Prisoners, continuing from the previous passage:
“These works not only add to the culture, but also have immediate benefits to prisoners as a means of rehabilitation and as a ‘nonviolent means to defuse tensions within a prison.’ ”

“The legal problems that an inmate’s original expression engenders depend on whether the inmate is writing primarily for a prison audience or whether, instead, the author seeks a wider audience for the work. This section will consider whether inmates may be punished for their writings.

“Without a specific factual record showing legitimate dangers that are reasonably related to an inmate writing for the outside world, they cannot be prohibited.”

Unfortunately, the people in charge of this concentration camp never bothered reading the Constitution, or the law, for that matter. When three white folks, all from North Florida and in charge of the prison, are offended by the truthful characterizations of KKK prison guards, what do you do? In Florida, you go to solitary confinement.

It took them three weeks. I kept demanding my legal rights, which 95% of the prisoners have no concept of, and they kept postponing the disciplinary hearing to figure out the best way to crucify me without a lot of noise. After decades of abuse, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the prisons to provide “due process,” and “fair and impartial” hearings. Nevertheless, that doesn’t happen in prison.

Despite all the legal maneuverings, demanding the process be legal (fat chance), letters of complaint and phone calls from lawyers and family, insisting that the deliberate retaliation be stopped, on Tuesday, March 16, 2010, I had my day in Kangaroo court. Old Judge Roy Bean said it best—“Give the man a fair trial, then hang him.”

The offended assistant warden wrote me a totally unwarranted “disciplinary report” (D.R.) for “mail violations,” although there were none. I called ten staff witnesses to verify all the prison diary approvals. Denied.

When you first go to the D.R. hearing (kangaroo court), they cuff your hands behind your back. Very degrading. Somewhere I read that some group used to do that before they put a bullet in the back of your head.

I had an envelope of legal papers, my statement, case citations, witness lists, and evidence, which I couldn’t hold or read with my hands cuffed behind my back. While they had me standing outside, they confiscated all my legal papers, including my appeal (I knew that guilt was predetermined). They postponed the hearing.

After my dearest friend made repeated complaints the next day, the person who took my legal papers was ordered to return them. He was pissed at having to do this! The following is a verbatim account of a conversation between that person and a guard he asked to bring me to his office. He told the guard he needed him to stay and witness a phone call concerning Charles Norman. A fellow prisoner standing nearby repeated the exchange to me.
GUARD: “Charles Norman? He’s a smart ass, a piece of shit.”

STAFF: “Charles Norman is a smart motherfucker, and you don’t want to get fucked up with him—at all.”

I’m not calling that a compliment, but it shows the mentality of these people. If you oppose them, they abuse their authority to break you down.

The second hearing was “pro forma,” going through the motions, verdict predetermined, false statements, no evidence, no witnesses. The previous week, the warden had told my lawyer, “Norman will have a D.R. hearing, he’ll be found guilty, and he can appeal to me.” That’s real justice in action. How much do you want to bet that the appeal to the warden (the same one who ordered the D.R. be written) will be denied, as will the one to Tallahassee? They make you spend hundreds of dollars in filing fees to go to court, for months, to overturn such abusive actions. At least this time I held onto my legal papers. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have this paper, pen, envelope and stamp to write this and mail it.

The first thing they do when you go to solitary confinement is lock you in a shower and strip search you. Tennis shoes, belt and watch—gone. Don’t want anyone to hang themselves! It happens more often than you’d think, but really, what recourse do some have after everything, including contact with “the outside” and any ray of hope, is taken from them.

Now I am in my socks, walking down a cold hallway to a cell. Feet hurt. Get inside the cell, they take off the handcuffs, you’re on your own.

First thing I do is make certain the toilet flushes. That’s mandatory. A tiny stream of water dribbles into a stainless steel sink. An extremely thin, hard plastic-covered mattress—no pillow—barely covers a narrow steel bunk.

Next, I shake down the cell—search it and clean it. Always search your cell—mattress especially—search every crack and crevice. If you don’t, and the guards find a razor blade, or anything contraband, you get another charge. The cell is dirty, but no visible evils.

Perhaps I’ll get some of my personal property later, if it’s not all stolen and disbursed. Someone in my old dorm has my fat mattress and pillow already. The guards are supposed to protect our belongings—sure they will. What I need are my flip-flops, soap, shampoo, washcloth, powder, stamps, something to read, if I’m lucky. They gave me “30-30,” thirty days of “disciplinary confinement” and thirty days loss of gain time. If I don’t get it overturned, it could affect my parole date. We have to fight it all the way.

It’s cold back here right now. At least it’s not July—these guys suffer in the sweltering heat. Lonely prisoners “stay on the doors” yelling down the hallway to their friends, like at the zoo. I’ve already cast my bread upon the water—turned in my appeal, going through the motions. Now I’ll wait, as best I can, and hope that my defenders will spring into action, make phone calls, lobby the warden to grant my appeal. Too bad I don’t have any KKK friends to intervene on my behalf.

Charlie

A CHILLING EFFECT ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

2010-04-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2010, DAY ELEVEN IN THE HOLE

A CHILLING EFFECT ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

It’s not that I’ve been slacking off, returning to my prison diary three days later, but instead I’ve been trying to dig myself out of this hole in solitary confinement. If someone tosses you into a twenty-foot well, then fills it with stones and dirt until you’re buried neck deep, it’s not easy digging your way out. That’s the way it is in here. You need people “up there,” on the surface to throw you ropes (hopefully not looping the ropes around your neck) and rescue you, or you’re liable to be left at the bottom of the pit for the duration. A handful of people whose names I won’t mention have been doing just that, furiously moving the rubble of bureaucratic obstinacy and abuses of authority out of the way, trying to make a path for me to climb out. Hopefully, I’ll be freed soon. In the meantime…

Know your opponent. In a supposedly “free society,” things like this aren’t supposed to happen. One of the ways that our new country of the United States set itself apart from the oppressive “Mother England” was our Constitution and Bill of Rights, particularly the freedoms established such as Freedom of Speech. In England you spoke out at your own risk. They didn’t have freedom of speech. Say something someone in authority didn’t like and you might find yourself in lockup, like I am right now.

In the meantime, our courts have hammered out over the years the parameters of “free speech,” what it is and what it isn’t, so we’d know what is protected and what isn’t. Yelling, “FIRE!” in a crowded theater is not protected speech. There are many other examples that I don’t have the paper or ink to go into now.

Although some people don’t agree, our wise judges have ruled that there is no iron curtain separating the Constitution from the prison walls. Even prisoners, the lowest caste in our society, retain some freedoms, although often on a restricted basis. Freedom of Speech is one of them. There are only three areas of unprotected speech or communications involving prisoners, and those restrictions make sense in this environment.

First, if you write or speak out about planning an escape, as they say in New York, forget about it. You write a letter to Uncle Sid telling him to mail you a hacksaw blade and meet you outside the fence at midnight with a getaway car, they will stick you under the jail. You may not come out for awhile. Prisoners do not have the right to make escape plans, unless you are an American prisoner of war, which maintains that you have the duty to escape, evade capture, and return to your lines. That’s different.

The second area of unprotected speech in prison is the threat of riot, disruption, or insurrection. Think about Attica in 1971. They took over the prison, took hostages, and burned the place down. Why? The prison grievance procedures weren’t working, and after awhile, the prisoners got so fed up with not being able to redress their complaints they started setting fires. When Governor Nelson Rockefeller met their televised demands and appeared in person to hear their complaints, most of which seemed fairly mundane – food, medical care, visiting, and others – he asked them why didn’t they just say something before rather than do all that? They replied that they’d tried for years, but the prison authorities turned deaf ears to their grievances. Now they were listening.

You can’t advocate riots or destruction in prison, or they will mail you. You can’t stand in the recreation yard and urge everyone to engage in a sit-down strike or a hunger strike. You talk about organizing a prison union, they put you on the bus so fast your head will still be spinning when you wake up in a dungeon somewhere. That is not protected speech.

Neither is talk of criminal activities. If the mailroom trolls with their thick glasses down in their basement censorship office read your outgoing mail and you are discussing bringing in drugs, cell phones, weapons, or other illegal items, if you’re talking about bribing the warden to get a parole, or any other criminal act, so long. They got you. No freedom of speech involved in any of those areas. Don’t write Mama and threaten the life of the guard who took your contraband, either, or you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt.

The four-volume set of law books, “The Rights of Prisoners” (4th Edition, Vol. II Prisoner Writings, p. 62-68), exhaustively covers what prisoners can and cannot write about, with landmark case references. You’d think the prison system would get a set of those books and familiarize themselves with the law, rather than letting their personal prejudices and feelings guide their repressive actions. (Excuse me, they did buy a set – they’re in the law library – prisoners know the laws that the guards and officials are unaware of).

The following quotes (at 6:18 – 6:19) from this excellent work have close parallels to my own situation:

“The legal problems that an inmate’s original expression engenders depend on whether the inmate is writing primarily for a prison audience or whether instead, the author seeks a wider audience for the work. This section will consider whether inmates may be punished for their writing.”

“Without a specific factual record showing legitimate dangers that are reasonably related to an inmate writing for the outside world, they cannot be prohibited.”

“The first case involved Murmia Abu-Jamal, a journalist turned inmate, who was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer, who was approached by National Public Radio to broadcast his commentaries to a national radio audience. When police organizations protested these contacts, prison officials began to inspect all of his mail, including his legal mail, and thereafter invoked a prison rule that prevented all inmates from engaging in “business” while incarcerated. In fact, this rule had not previously been enforced against another inmate who had written a novel while in prison. Mr. Abu-Jamal sued, claiming that the rule as enforced against him violated his First Amendment right to speak and write.

The Third Circuit agreed. It found that the rule was imposed on the plaintiff “in retaliation against the content of his writing.” See Abu-Jamal v. Price, 154 F.3d 128 (3rd Cir, 1998)

“Unlike the Rison case, the court noted that here there was no evidence that the plaintiff’s writings and broadcasts ‘had strained prison resources, contributed to unrest among the inmate population, or enhanced Jamal’s status as a prisoner, resulting in danger to himself or others.’ (at 134). The court concluded that while prison officials could validly prohibit a business operation that placed a substantial burden on prison staff, it could not prevent a First Amendment activity that did not threaten corrections officials or incite the inmate population.” (154 F.3rd at 134-135).

When I sent a request form to the mail clerk who’d originally censored, “To Protect The Guilty” as it appeared in “Wordsmith 2010,” I sought the actual date the book had arrived at the mailroom, which would be the initial date when all the time and deadline calculations would begin. I received the following surprising admission: [spelling and punctuation uncorrected]:

“After receiving the book in the mailroom and reading the first few pages of the story I determined it should be looked at to see if it could come in and sent it to Mr. Hodgson. I have no way of knowing the date the book was received a we do not log incoming mail except for legal. The day it arrived does not change the content of the story [emphasis added]”

The content of the story! How similar is that to what the federal court said about Abu Jamal? “…the rule was imposed on the plaintiff ‘in retaliation against the content of his writings.’ ”

I don’t know what Abu-Jamal writings were about, but I know that mine was a humorous account of a dark subject, Ku Klux Klan prison guards and retaliation I suffered for telling the truth about what I thought of them. Sometimes you have to speak out, and that was one of them. Taking it a logical step forward, I must agree with one of my reader’s comments that the only people who might be offended by “To Protect The Guilty,” would be KKK prison guards and their sympathizers. Either way, I should not be writing this from solitary confinement as a result of it. Case closed.

Prison systems copy the tired strategies, legal or otherwise, others have tried to invoke their will on their subjects. One way to suppress the writings and words of an outspoken prisoner is to label his efforts as “running a business,” forbid it, lock him up, and throw away his pens (they took six pens from me). That has what is called “a chilling effect” on Freedom of Speech. The message—express yourself and go to lockup, lose gain time, stay in prison longer. Keep silent and maintain the status quo, stomp on the Bill of Rights.

It’s not supposed to be that way. Would someone speak out, please? I’m outnumbered.

Charlie

BRIGHT LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS

2010-04-08T21:34:00.000-04:00

Dateline: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 DAY SIXTEEN IN SOLITARY

BRIGHT LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS

In the midst of all the adversity I’ve been faced with the past month or so over my prison diary writings, I’d like to report two interesting and positive developments that have resulted from my literary work.

If you’ve been reading my messages since March 16, 2010, and following the censorship and confiscation issues surrounding my memoir, “To Protect The Guilty,” this will seem ironic, especially since one memoir landed my butt in disciplinary confinement.

A few days before I went to solitary, the mailroom received and delivered a copy of the “Journal Of Prisoners on Prisons,” (Volume 19, No.1, 2010 – www.jpp.org) published by the University of Ottowa Press, edited by Bell Chivigny. Included in the Journal was my 2008 PEN award-winning memoir, “Fighting the Ninja,” about AIDS in prison, with the photo I took in 1985 of “Mama Herc,” a legendary chain gang homosexual, along with powerful works by men and women prisoners nationwide.

No issues, no official complaints, no confiscation of a story about prison homosexuals and AIDS, but only a few weeks before, the “authorities” blew their tops over a memoir about Ku Klux Klan prison guards. Content-wise, the “…Ninja” memoir, to me (but what do I know? I just write the stuff that I have lived), was a much stronger, more raw, and potentially more controversial work than the more humorous KKK memoir. What’s the difference? Perhaps they learned a lesson the first time around, though I have my doubts.

Today I received a nice letter from Maureen McNeil and Cynthia L. Cooper about a book they are doing. Here’s what they said:

“March 15, 2010

Dear Participants in Anne Frank Prison Diary Project,

We are writing a book about the Prison Diary Project and would like to have your permission to include your diary. Please see the enclosed form and envelope, which must be signed and returned if your wok is to be included.

As currently planned, the book is about the remarkable journey of Anne Frank’s diary, read and replicated by contemporary inmate-writers participating in the Prison Diary Project of the Anne Frank Center in NYC since 2008. Built upon central themes in Anne Frank’s diary, we anticipate that this book will reflect on Loneliness, Hardship, Love, Loss, Confinement, Nature, Small Pleasures, Writing, New Beginnings, Self-knowledge and other topics. For you, as for Anne, diary writing became a personal travelogue. While locked inside, you dug into your inner self, learning to live in the moment and find richness in spare surroundings.

“I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart,” Anne writes at the onset of her diary excursions. Anne’s words are an enduring testament to the human spirit. This book brings her inspiration to a contemporary audience, offering a guide for all to overcome the barriers and walls they encounter through the search for personal freedom.

Cynthia L. Cooper is an award-winning journalist, playwright and author, whose books include, Mockery of Justice (Penguin), Who Said It Would Be Easy, (Arcade) and the soon-to-be released book of her play, Silence Not, A Love Story (Gihon River Press). Co-author Maureen McNeil, author of Red Stories Hook, is the Director of Education at the Anne Frank Center.

The book is a work in progress, so it may take awhile to complete, but a percentage of the proceeds will go to the Anne Frank Center to help with the upkeep [of] the Prison Writing Project and its archives.

Thank you for your help in making this book possible. We look forward to receiving your signed release form.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Maureen McNeil

Cynthia Cooper”

I hope they choose something other than my recollections of the KKK in prison!

The Anne Frank Prison Diary Project has spurred a ton of literary work from me the past almost two years, and I am grateful to the folks at the Anne Frank Center USA for their encouragement and support. It is a very worthy project to which I hope to continue to contribute. Of course, I would prefer to do that in freedom.

Two memoirs, two publications, two far different results. How can that be explained? I can’t.

Charlie

HOLY WEEK AND EASTER IN THE “MODERN” PRISON

2010-04-03T16:02:00.000-04:00

Dateline: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 DAY FIFTEEN IN SOLITARY

HOLY WEEK AND EASTER IN THE “MODERN” PRISON

Today is Passover. In a few days we’ll celebrate Good Friday followed by Easter Sunday. I take that back—you may be celebrating Holy Week, but there is no celebrating in “disciplinary confinement.” We are the forgotten ones. Today, being Passover, seems fitting, since we have definitely been “passed over” by those charged with our care, custody, and control. Yesterday, the prison chaplain made his obligatory rounds through “the hole,” passing by us so fast that for a moment I flashed back to the Vancouver Olympics, watching the speed skater, Apolo Ohno, zoom past the finish line for the gold.

In a few minutes I’d like to tell you about a memorable Easter experience in prison, in another time and place, but first I must comment on my appeal of this egregiously retaliatory “disciplinary report” that resulted in my letters from solitary the past fifteen days.

When I first learned on February 22, 2010, that mailroom clerk, Ms. T. Gronik, had intercepted, read, and arbitrarily decided on January 28, 2010, that my memoir, “To Protect The Guilty,” published in the anthology, “Wordsmith 2010,” was a “threat to security,” I put aside the crucial legal research I was doing on my criminal case and focused on the law pertaining to mail, censorship, prison writings, the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and other applicable laws. Little did I know that the content of my story about my factual experiences with retaliatory Ku Klux Klan prison guards many years before at an unnamed prison would trigger reprisals by prison higher-ups in 2010.

I soon realized that like jungle predators they had been “lying in wait” (operative word: lying, in verb form) for an opportunity to get even with me, to teach me a lesson for the contents of my other writings, specifically formal written grievances seeking redress of wrongs committed by them in their heavy-handed misapplications of state laws and rules. Kill the messenger. Ms. Gronik’s actions gave them the opportunity to slam me and silence my protected writings on two fronts: to punish me for telling the public about another one of the prison system’s “dirty little secrets,” rampant racism and tension among many prison staff (not an isolated problem), and to hinder, intimidate, and otherwise retaliate against me for bringing up their mishandling and abuses of their absolute discretion over our lives in formal complaints. In their minds, the state laws and rules don’t apply to them, and Heaven help anyone who calls them on it.

Because they screwed up the initial paperwork (it is still screwed up), requiring them to rewrite the D.R., I had more time than usual to research the law on the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. What I found is that there is a huge body of law, much of it decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, that protects prisoners’ rights regarding mail, correspondence, permissible reading materials, and their own creative works. I also found that everything the “authorities” did in this instance was not only dead wrong, but violative of a plethora of state and federal laws, so much so that the first question I had to ask myself was, “where do I start?” Two quotes that apply:

“A prisoner’s allegation of being punished in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech and redress the government states a claim. An inmate who proves that he was retaliated against for filing an administrative grievance establishes a violation of his First Amendment rights.” (See Wildberger v. Bracknell, 869 F.2d 1467, 1467-68 (11th circ.1989)

And

“The gist of a retaliation claim is that a prisoner is penalized for exercising the right of free speech.” (Mitchell v. Farcass, 112 F 3rd 1483, 1490 (11th cir.1997), quoting Thomas v. Evans, 880 F.2d 1235, 1242 (11th cir.1989)

One of the landmark cases, Procunier v. Martinez, (416 U.S. 396, 1974), offers a tremendous lode of wisdom from the U.S. Supreme Court. One brief quote is on direct point for what the authorities at this prison did concerning, “To Protect The Guilty,” and sounds like it was written for them: “These regulations fairly invited prison officials and employees to apply their own personal prejudices and opinions as standards for prison mail censorship.’ (416 U.S. 415)

Over the years, the courts have let the prison systems nationwide get away with many violations of law, justifying their inactions at times by saying that since running a prison is so challenging, the courts must allow administrators “considerable deference” and latitude in how they do their jobs; however, another landmark case sums up so accurately the situation I am dealing with that I want to close this part of my letter with a revealing quotation: “The ‘considerable deference’ to prison officials does not apply to prison officials who are so inexperienced and unaware of constitutional rights and law that they allow their personal prejudices and feelings to override existing regulations, in violation of well-settled law…Prison regulation which impinges on inmates’ constitutional rights cannot be sustained as ‘reasonably related’ to legitimate penological interest, where logical connection between regulation and asserted goal is so remote as to render policy arbitrary or irrational, or where goal is not legitimate and neutral one.” (See Turner v. Safly, 482 U.S. 78,89,107,s.ct.2254, (1987).

What is even more amazing is that the rule I was sent to solitary confinement for allegedly violating does not even exist! If you have your computer or volumes of the Florida Administrative Code handy, which contains “Chapter 33,” the rules governing much of the Department of Corrections, look up Chapter 33-201.101, (9) (12) and (13). Look hard! Can’t find it? I couldn’t either. It is not there. It does not exist. But there it is, plain as day, on assistant warden Angela Gordon’s D.R. statement of facts, “a direct violation…as stated in Chapter 33-201.101, (9) (12) & (13).” The law is clear. The D.R. is defective and void. Yet here I am.

Back to Easter celebrations in times past.

The prison system experienced a veritable renaissance in the theory and practice of how to run a prison fairly and smoothly in the mid-1980’s. This enlightened period came about when mature, responsible prisoners worked together with experienced and knowledgeable wardens to improve the overall prison conditions, giving the prisoners the chance to show they deserved more privileges. The Easter Sunrise Service at Zephyrhills C.I. in 1986 serves as an excellent example of what could be accomplished by everyone working together for a common goal.

At four a.m. a work crew of prisoners began taking all the folding chairs from the building and setting them up in a large paved area by the chapel, at the front of the prison. A wooden stage had been set up, and a large wooden cross built by prisoners was erected behind the stage.

At five a.m. prisoners’ visitors from the outside, families and friends, began entering the visiting park, where coffee urns, orange juice, and milk for the kids were ready and waiting. The chow hall bakers made cinnamon rolls and snacks for the early risers. Jaycee members handed out carnation corsages to the women and girls.

After check-in and processing, over one hundred visitors joined two hundred fifty prisoners outside, within the prison, for the Easter Sunrise Service.

At five-forty-five a.m., an outside church choir joined with the prison choir and band to sing several hymns. An outside minister opened with a prayer. As the sun rose to the east, State Senator john Grant, a devout Christian and attorney from Tampa, gave a moving and enlightening sermon concerning the trial and execution of Jesus from a legal point of view. That got everyone’s attention.

In light of our own laws and procedures for accusing, trying, convicting, and executing a condemned man, Senator Grant went step-by-step through the entire process endured by Jesus, and showed how many legal violations and errors occurred. In spite of all that, Jesus never protested, but let it continue on. An innocent man was tried, convicted, and executed based on false evidence and false witnesses. I could identify with that. It gave us all a lot to think about, in God’s plan.

After a few more songs, we had an Easter egg hunt. It wasn’t easy. I wrote the memos weeks before, made all the arrangements, got all the permissions from the top dogs, but on Good Friday, I got called up front. The warden and his subordinates had the schedule and memos I’d produced spread out on a table, seriously contemplating them. He spoke.

“Norman, you’ve done an excellent job putting all this together, but we have one major concern.”

“Let me guess, sir, the Easter egg hunt.”
“That’s right. It’s never been done before. How many children do you expect?”

“Between twenty and fifty. We have enough baskets and eggs to cover more, if necessary.” (Actually, twenty-nine children participated).

“Do you know how many child molesters we have at Zephyrhills, Norman?”

“Quite a few.”

“That’s right. And we can’t afford to have one of them harm a child. I’d lose my job. How are you going to deal with that? We don’t have enough staff to isolate and watch all the perverts.”

“We’ve got that handled, sir. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“You have? How?”

“We’ve already identified every Chester the Molester, we’ve talked to them, and told them we will have a line set up that they can’t cross. They can’t come within a hundred feet of the area marked off for the Easter egg hunt, or they will suffer serious consequences.”

“How are you going to enforce it?”

“We have our own security crew of volunteers, a dozen large men, convicted murderers and armed robbers, no sex charges, who have pledged to guard those children with their lives. No perverts will be in the vicinity.”

The warden broke out laughing. “Murderers and robbers are gong to guard against the child molesters. That’s brilliant. The lieutenant here will be on duty Sunday, so get with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Norman, I’m going to stand way back out of the way. If you need any assistance, give me a wave.” The warden had one more question. “I’ve been looking over these work assignment lists. You’ve got over eighty inmates working on this project in their off-duty time for weeks, and they’ll be up at four a.m. working their butts off Sunday morning. I have a hard time getting anyone to work around here. We have to threaten them with lockup to get cigarette butts picked up. You have crews picking up trash and cigarette butts all weekend, to make the place look good. How do you get so many men to work voluntarily when I can’t?”

“Don’t you know, sir? That’s why they call it, ‘organized crime.’ ”

We didn’t need any assistance from security. Everything went like clockwork. A blessed time was had by all. We even gave the molesters the leftover cinnamon rolls after the visitors returned to the visiting park.

That will never happen again in prison. Where once our families could attend prison church services with us, thereby strengthening our bonds, in their infinite wisdom, all those programs have been shut down. Meanwhile, I pray you have a nice Easter celebration of your own. I’ll do the best I can.

A Note: One thing about being in lockup is that it gives me time to catch up on my Bible studies. It is easy to get behind. If you have trouble with that, too, let me recommend an excellent free publication by Rev. Charles Stanley, “In Touch” Magazine. Besides inspirational stories, it has a section that will help you read the Bible in a year, with a daily calendar and lists of verses to read each day of the month, an easy task, with explanations of the reading.

Go to www.intouch.org to subscribe. Tell them Charlie sent you.
Charlie

AWARD-WINNING MEMOIR ABOUT KKK PRISON GUARDS LANDS FLORIDA PRISONER IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

2010-03-28T12:52:00.000-04:00

Dateline March 26, 2010

"AWARD-WINNING MEMOIR ABOUT KKK PRISON GUARDS LANDS FLORIDA PRISONER IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT"

Prisoner Charles Norman claims retaliation and First Amendment violations by prison officials offended by his writing the truth.

Florida prisoner, Charlie Norman, has served thirty-two years on a life sentence for a 1975 murder in Tampa. For the past twenty-five years, he has won numerous state and national writing awards for his poetry, short stories, plays, essays, and prison memoirs. Now a published excerpt from his 2008 prison diary about encounters with Ku Klux Klan prison guards at a North Florida prison years ago have landed Norman in solitary confinement. Prison officials claim he committed mail violations. Norman says it is harassment, retaliation, and censorship of protected speech, clear violations of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

According to Norman, this latest round of harassment started in 2008, when the Anne Frank Center in New York asked him to participate in their Prison Diary program, along with around one hundred other award-winning prison writers from across the country. Most of the prisoners invited to share their prison diaries have been participants in the Prison Writing Program sponsored since 1972 by the PEN American Center in New York, an international literary group dedicated to promoting writing and literature at every level and founded on the belief that free expression is an essential component of every healthy society. Past presidents of PEN have been such acclaimed literary figures as Arthur Miller, Larry McMurtry, and Salman Rushdie, who suffered his own literary persecution for his book, The Satanic Verses, which drew the ire of the ayatollahs.

As reported in a December 6, 2008, Associated Press article by Jessica Gresko, the Anne Frank Center sent blank journals to the prison writers for them to fill in. Norman quickly filled up the ninety-six page journal and a couple hundred more pages over the next two months, a period that included the brutal murder of a female correctional officer, Norman’s punitive job assignment to the prison kitchen by a hostile guard who claimed he didn’t know his place and needed to be taught a lesson, and other day-to-day events of prison life. Norman also wrote pages about his lengthy imprisonment from his months in the Hillsborough County Jail in Tampa, during which time he first read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, through his years at Raiford, and his later encounters with racist, white prison guards who bragged to him, a prisoner, about their Ku Klux Klan membership and activities. Excerpts from his continued prison diary writings have been widely published.

Norman believes this latest run-in with assistant warden Angela Gordon at Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach began around January 28, 2010, when prison mailroom clerk, Ms. T. Gronik, read the book, Wordsmith 2010, an anthology of poetry, short stories, and essays published by the Tampa Writers Alliance. Although Florida law requires that any incoming publication confiscated by prison staff must be subjected to rules spelled out under “Admissibility of Publications” in the Florida Administrative Code, including filing a “Notice of Rejection or Impoundment” within 15 days of receipt, Tomoka officials neglected to do that. Further rules require any impounded publication be accepted or rejected by the Department of Corrections Literature Review Committee. This rule was not followed either.

On February 22, 2010, Norman asked mailroom clerk Ms. T. Gronik if she’d seen the book, that it was a month late. According to Norman, Ms. Gronik told him, “I read that book. I felt that a story you wrote was a threat to security, and I sent it to Mr. Hodgson.” Mr. C. Hodgson is the assistant warden of operations at the Daytona Beach prison. Angela Gordon is the assistant warden of programs.

Norman asked where his receipt and notice of impoundment were, that it had been much longer than 15 days, and the rules required him to attach a copy of the notice to his appeal of the confiscation of the book. By not issuing the form required by law, Norman claimed in a grievance, he was denied due process, and couldn’t legally request a full review of the original rejection.

Norman filed the required grievance paperwork challenging the confiscation, stating that it was not a threat to security. Mr. Hodgson told him he’d returned the book to the mailroom “to be returned,” which was not in accordance with state administrative rules. After filing the paperwork, a prison sergeant notified Norman that assistant warden Angela Gordon had written a disciplinary report accusing him of “mail violations” at 9:30 A.M. on February 24, 2010, the day before. Norman denied the charges, claimed Gordon’s actions were in reprisal and retaliation for filing grievances and pursuing his Constitutionally-protected Freedom of Speech rights under the First Amendment.

Norman claims that Gordon was offended by his memoir of his experiences with retaliation by Ku Klux Klan prison guards years ago, “To Protect The Guilty.” Gordon claims that Norman committed “mail violations” on the statement of facts, “It is apparent that inmate Norman has been entering contests and using the Tampa Writers Alliance web site has a means of directing people to his web site to solicit donations. This is a direct violation of (9-14) mail regulations violations as stated in Chapter 33 – 201.101 (9), (12) and (13), which states in part…inmates shall not use correspondence privileges to solicit or otherwise commercially advertise for money, goods or services…no inmates may establish or conduct a business through the mail during periods of incarceration…inmates shall be prohibited from entering contests or sweepstakes through the mail while incarcerated. Inmate Norman has been incarcerated continually since 07/25/1979 and is therefore in violation of (9-14) mail regulations violations by entering contests and soliciting donations. This report was re-written due to discrepancies in time between infraction and time written.”

Norman denies the charges as a baseless ruse and smokescreen to justify the reprisal for writing about prison guards and the Klan. “The word ‘mail’ appears in the disciplinary report four times while ‘website’ is repeated six times. According to Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil, inmates do not have internet access,” Norman said.

Further, Norman explained that he does not have a laptop computer, wi-fi, a Blackberry, or a website. He has never accessed the Internet. The website Gordon claims to be Norman’s, www.freecharlienow.com, is sponsored by The Norman Partnership, Inc., a registered not-for-profit Florida corporation, with the mission of educating the public on the issues of wrongful imprisonment, according to Elizabeth Dobbin, president. Norman has long proclaimed his innocence, another in a series of wrongful prosecutions and convictions in Florida.

Angela Gordon should be facing her own disciplinary charges soon. In a letter to Tomoka warden Steve Wellhausen, Dan Faulkner of Issaquah, Washington, states that he is the webmaster for www.freecharlienow.com, that he is the only person responsible for the website content, that he installed the “Donation” link on the website, and Charles Norman has nothing whatsoever to do with soliciting donations or running any business.

In addition, Faulkner filed a complaint to the Department of Corrections alleging that Gordon violated federal copyright laws by making unauthorized copies of his website and distributing them. On the website’s home page, prominently posted, appears the notice, “Copyright 2007 by The Norman Partnership, Inc. All rights reserved; may not be used without express written permission.”

According to Faulkner, in a telephone conversation with him, Warden Wellhausen admitted that Gordon had made unauthorized copies of the website, but had good intentions, implying that intention negates an infraction of laws.

Other letters sent to the warden by witnesses on Norman’s behalf challenged Gordon’s allegations of any wrongdoing by Norman.
In his official appeal of the Disciplinary Report to the warden, Norman asserts that Gordon’s accounting is riddled with false statements, a violation of state law, and errors that render the charges defective and invalid. “The state (Gordon) has failed to comply with several sections of Chapter 33 rules, including allowing only one violation per charge (she listed three), providing no evidence of any ‘mail violation,’ since everything Gordon alleged involved websites, and even charging the violations under a nonexistent statute, ‘Chapter 33 – 201.101 (9), (12), (13).’ ”

Further, on the Disciplinary Report, Gordon states, “On Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at approximately 0930 hours, while assigned as assistant warden of programs, I was given a book…,” yet, on the belated “Notice of Rejection or Impoundment,” dated March 10, 2010, A. Gordon signed that she received the book on February 25, 2010. In actual fact, the book, Wordsmith 2010, was at the prison mailroom on or about January 28, 2010, weeks before Gordon received it.

In spite of these false statements, Norman was convicted and sentenced to thirty days in solitary confinement and 30 days loss of gain time. Norman claims that the entire disciplinary proceeding was the very definition of a “Kangaroo court,” and was conducted by an openly hostile classification officer who has harbored a grudge against Norman for years. At the first hearing, 03/11/10, this same officer illegally confiscated Norman’s legal documents while Norman’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and only returned the documents when the officer’s supervisor received complaints from citizens.

Norman says, “I was not given a fair and impartial hearing by unbiased members. I made a formal request that the biased hearing members be replaced. They refused to call my witness list at the hearing, as permitted by law, and would not read the evidence. They refused to make a record of the hearing, and considered neither the mitigating evidence contradicting Gordon, nor the ‘statement of witness relevance,’ which clearly showed that everything I’ve done was approved two years ago. ‘The Constitution ain’t in effect in prison no more,’ as they say.”

Meanwhile, Charlie Norman sits in solitary confinement, writing still, until his ink runs out.

His latest poetic offering, entitled, “Solitary” by Charles Patrick Norman, March 21, 2010:

I hear the cry of a hawk

through my window obscured

though I see it not.

Regarding Charles Norman and the latest round of punishment

2010-03-17T20:57:00.000-04:00

Dateline: St. Patrick's Day 2010

Regarding Charles Norman and the latest round of punishment:

The Disciplinary Report hearing that was postponed from Thursday, 03/11/10, was held on Tuesday, 03/16/10, at 6 AM. This kangaroo court found Charles Norman, #881834, guilty and gleefully sent him to confinement for 30 days. In spite of all our written witness statements refuting every phony charge against him, Charlie was still found guilty of unspecified mail violation, running a business from prison, and entering contests, just as the warden predicted before any hearing was held.

We believe the exercise of this entire process is in retaliation against Charles Norman that is predicated on an essay he wrote about the actions of Ku Klux Klan guards at work in Florida prisons, and that it is specifically designed to not only effectively deny him his First Amendment rights, but also to severely hinder his efforts to obtain parole and his access to due process.

What can possibly be gained by this harassment of a man already wrongfully incarcerated for over 32 years? Who profits by silencing a gifted writer and able witness to the human condition?

If this action by Florida D.O.C. overweening despots offends you as much as it does me, please make calls, send faxes, and e-mail to the following expressing your support of Charles Norman and asking for this entire Disciplinary Report and the hearing to be investigated. Charles Norman should be released from confinement, the Disciplinary Report removed from his record, and he should be immediately transferred to Sumter C.I., a move which has been approved since June, 2009. Further, no additional punitive action should be taken against Charles Norman.

Contact information:

1) Warden Steve Wellhausen (Tomoka C.I.)

Phone # 386 -323-1070 fax 386-323-1006

2) D.O.C. Gen. Counsel Kathleen Von Hoene

Phone 850-488-2326 fax # 850-922-4355

3) Dept. of Corrections Secretary Walter A. McNeil ( Tallahassee )

Phone # 850-488-7480 fax 850-488-4534

4) Inspector General D.O.C. Gene Hatcher

phone 850-488-9265 fax # 850-414-0953

5) Regional Director Gerald Abdul-Wasi

Phone # 352-989-9111 fax 352-989-9113

6) Florida Gov. Crist e-mail Charlie.Crist@eog.myflorida.com

Fax # 850-487-0801

7) State Senator Gary Siplin e-mail siplin.gary.web@flsenate.gov

8) State Senator Al Lawson e-mail lawson.alfred.web@flsenate.gov

Thank you.

Libby Dobbin

Friend of Charlie

“CRUEL AND UNUSUAL?” FLORIDA PRISONERS FEAST ON “KIBBLES AND BITS”

2010-02-16T22:01:00.000-05:00

Dateline February 9, 2010

“CRUEL AND UNUSUAL?” FLORIDA PRISONERS FEAST ON “KIBBLES AND BITS”

Surely you’ve seen those “Chik-Fil-A” commercials where the cows steal the hamburgers and hold up signs saying, “Eat Mor Chikin.” Sometimes the cows parachute into a football stadium and knock down the vendor selling hamburgers. The message is clear—don’t eat beef.

Someone in power in the Florida Department of Corrections took that message to heart, eliminating all parts of cows from the state prison menu and replacing it with “Kibbles and Bits,” or something remarkably like it, also know as “Texturized Vegetable Protein,” or “T.V.P.” According to some prisoners, however, the T.V.P. actually stands for “turkey vulture parts,” although turkey vulture might be safer to eat, or so says the Weston A. Price Foundation.

According to a recent notice on the Foundation’s web site, http://www.westonaprice.org/Cruel-and-Unusual-Punishment-Soy-Diet-for-Illinois-Prisoners.html, since the Illinois prison system switched to a soy diet (read, “Kibbles and Bits”) in 2007, lawsuits have been filed claiming alarming adverse effects from prisoners consuming a diet high in unfermented soy protein.

Complaints include chronic and painful constipation alternating with debilitating diarrhea, vomiting after eating, sharp pains in the digestive tract, especially after consuming soy, passing out, heart palpitations, rashes, acne, insomnia, panic attacks, depression, and symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as low body temperature (feeling cold all the time), brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, frequent infections, and enlarged thyroid gland.

Since the soy protein is also a source of plant estrogen, a.k.a. the female sex hormone, other side effects, such as enlarged breasts in young men, have been recorded. Since estrogen consumption is used as an anti-fertility drug in women, experts say many young prisoners may be unable to father children after their release from prison.

I know what some people are going to say. I’ve heard it before. They are in prison, they violated the law, screw ‘em, they don’t deserve decent food, give them bread and water, like the “good ole days,” chain them to the dungeon wall, let them rot. That’s one argument. Heaven help those people if their son or daughter winds up in prison, left to the mercy of abusive guards and rapacious prisoners, sick, no medical care, starved, dirty, hungry. Heaven help those poor Baptist missionaries caged in an inhumane Haitian jail suffering conditions you don’t even want to imagine, worse than anything in our country.

Someone said that prisons are microcosms of society. How our society treats its captives reflects the morality and humanity of us all. This isn’t Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Saudi Arabia, Guantanamo, or Haiti. We believe in basic human rights, and are signatories to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners. Those of us who have been victims of crimes, or whose loved ones have been, are naturally more averse to treating convicted criminals with decency, including feeding them healthful diets. We are not a brutal third world country, however, and subscribe to standards of treatment of prisoners similar to other civilized countries. Medical care and decent food are two of the responsibilities our government takes on when it strips its citizens of their liberty, right or wrong.

Back to the Florida prison menu and the switchover to the risky soy diet, or “Kibbles and Bits.”

When I first entered the Hillsborough County Jail in the 1970’s on this bogus murder charge, I was amazed at how good the food was. My first meal had chunks of actual beef stew on rice, green beans, two hot biscuits, and a cooler full of iced tea that we served ourselves. Breakfast ws eggs and grits one day, large pancakes another, and an extra tray slid into the cell for whoever swept and mopped afterwards.

A Tampa Tribune food editor wrote an article reviewing the jail food, pronouncing it better than some restaurants she’d eaten in. The otherwise ascetic and humorless sheriff, Malcolm Beard, a hardcore law-and-order type if ever there was one, explained that hungry prisoners caused trouble, got in fights, stole weaker men’s trays, assaulted his guards, whereas prisoners whose bellies were full did not. Consequently, it was wiser, safer and more economical in the long run to spend a little but more on food and run a more peaceful jail.

I can attest to the wisdom of that philosophy, having experienced food riots in another county jail when they tried to serve rotten fish and other unpalatable items. It wasn’t funny. Too bad the prison system is unaware of those lessons. Times have changed. The “old timers” who ran the prison system thirty years ago are long-retired, and the new breed of “administrators” seem otherwise clueless to what it takes to run a prison.

They used to serve actual meat in prison. At Raiford, where I spent my first four years, they also served beef stew, hamburgers, and meat loaf, along with pork chops, fish and chicken. The Lake Butler Reception Center chow hall had a prominent sign posted, “Take What You Want, Eat What You Take.” And they meant it. A guard stood by the swill barrel at the chow hall exit where we dumped our trays. There’d better not be anything edible on your tray, or you’d be sent back to eat it. If you didn’t like spinach, don’t put it on your tray.

Nowadays, they have swill contracts with pig farmers and have to provide so many barrels of uneaten food to feed the hogs. When the food is tasteless and inedible the swill truck drivers are happy. The pigs aren’t talking.

One reason the prison system used to serve beef was because they raised their own cattle, along with hogs and chickens. The state owns over 11,000 acres of land in the area around Florida State Prison, and even more in Union County, much of it cow pastures. Right outside the fence beyond my Southwest Unit cell window grazed some of the prettiest Black Angus beef cattle I ever saw.

I know cows. Spending the first nine years of my life in Texas, moving to Florida and spending several teen years working for legendary cattleman, P.D. “Pal” Stokes, I learned firsthand most of what there is to know about cattle and beef. Something that I couldn’t understand, though, was why, with the herd of prime beeves grazing outside my window, steers that would be welcome in Omaha, why was the meat served in the chow hall the toughest, most gristly beef I’d ever eaten? Something was wrong with that picture. Your jaws got a workout chewing the shoe leather beef stew, at odds with the huge, shiny-coated cattle feeding on state land.

I asked my friend, Howard Magid, the prisoner who did all the clerical work in the slaughterhouse office outside the prison, why that was so. Easy. They were stealing.

Modern day prison cattle rustlers don’t round up steers and drive them to Abilene, changing the brands on the way. The prison staff who got rich on the state beef did it in a much subtler way.

Howard told me that industry-wide the percentage of beef to waste in cattle slaughtering was fifty-five percent beef to forty-five percent waste. A thousand pound steer, on average, produced five hundred fifty pounds of beef and four hundred fifty pounds of waste—hide, bones, blood, and guts. In contrast, the prison slaughterhouse, on paper, produced only four hundred fifty pounds of beef per thousand pounds of steer, an automatic hundred pound bonus of prime beef available for sale off the books. It didn’t stop there. No prisoner got so much as a quarter-pounder from the prime beef they tended on state land. Instead, a thousand pounds of prime beef would be sold for top dollar, and a thousand pounds of scrawny, stringy “grade” beef would be purchased at a much lower cost, in substitute. The numbers came out right, if the quality didn’t. A great hustle, or “rustle,” for those on the inside.

Who knows how many years that went on? They’ll have a much harder time selling the soy “burger patty,” “country patty,” “BBQ,” or “dinner stew,” as they label the Kibbles and Bits, “texturized vegetable protein,” that took the place of meat.

A perfect example of the evolution of prison food is found in what used to be known as “S.O.S.” Originally, that breakfast serving was called “chipped beef on toast,” some sort of preserved meat similar to corned beef was sliced very thin, cooked in a large kettle with milk and flour added to make a gravy, salt and pepper to taste, then a large serving ladle poured the mixture over a couple slices of toast. I can still recall the flavor. No one missed that meal. From the U.S. military came the derogatory name of “shit on a shingle,” or “S.O.S.,” even though everyone ate it.

For years it was known by “S.O.S.” The chipped beef was eventually replaced by ground beef and gravy, which was still pretty tasty for a while. Then the age of processed turkey products arrived and everything changed. Turkey hamburger, turkey patty, turkey salami and pastrami, turkey hot dogs. Who knew turkey could be so flexible? The “turkey gravy” replaced the ground beef, only to find itself replaced by “T.V.P.,” texturized vegetable protein, or turkey vulture parts, take your pick—your guess is as good as mine. Now the menu calls it “breakfast gravy,” as generic and anonymous a term as can be found, not a molecule of meat to be found in it.

They used to serve half-pints of milk at breakfast, too, but replaced that with “breakfast drink,” a concoction of some type of non-dairy coffee creamer mixed with water. The few ounces of “fruit juice” has evolved into a toxic-looking red liquid that won’t wash out of your clothes if spilled. Jim Jones would be proud.

And let us not forget the elimination of salt from prison food! Where they used to put salt and pepper shakers on the table to season the unsalted food, now you’re lucky to find one tiny salt packet on the corner of your tray, usually water-soaked, often empty, never enough to season the dried beans and rice that that comprises most meals.

Not that I’m complaining! I love unsalted pinto beans and gummy rice. It beats bread and water any day. It is a shame, though, that the prison system has become “penny-wise and pound foolish,” cutting back on a crucial category—food—that comprises less than five percent of the corrections budget.

What item takes the biggest bite out of the $2.5 billon in taxes Florida’s citizens pay each year for their prisons? Salaries! Payroll! Health costs come in a distant second, but is still a sizeable chunk. Perhaps they could spend a little more on improving the food quality that would result in a reduction in the mounting health care costs. Surely lawsuits complaining about the dangerous soy diet will only put the prison system deeper in the hole.

Charlie

“FOXY KNOXY’S” ITALIAN INJUSTICE REFOCUSES ATTENTION ON AMERICA’S ILLS

2010-02-06T20:08:00.000-05:00

Dateline: December, 17, 2009

“FOXY KNOXY’S” ITALIAN INJUSTICE REFOCUSES ATTENTION ON AMERICA’S ILLS

Does anyone really believe that American college student, Amanda Knox, slit her roommate’s throat because the girl complained about Knox’s being a slob and not picking up her clothes? Come on, people!

The Italian justice system is so screwed up that if they’d tried O.J. Simpson there, they’d probably have ruled that Ron Goldman hacked Nicole Brown Simpson to death and then committed suicide! They had no better evidence that the twenty-two year old girl from Washington State joined her Italian boyfriend and an African-American guy in gang-raping and butchering the English student than they’d have had against poor Ron Goldman.

So how did it happen?

AMANDA: “Hey, fellas, my roommate dissed me. I left my panties on the bathroom floor. Big deal. Let’s teach her a lesson. We’ll hold her down, rape her, then we’ll slice her throat from ear-to-ear, got to your place, and I’ll discover the body tomorrow!”

Sorry, but that’s not how it went down. With millions of Americans watching “CSI,” “CSI New York,” “CSI Miami,” “NCIS,” “Bones,” “Criminal Minds,” and all the other modern crime/murder shows, we’ve grown into a nation of armchair forensic scientists. Prosecutors are complaining that juries are demanding DNA tests, fingerprints, and chemical analyses to convict defendants, not being satisfied with the old-fashioned techniques of coerced confessions, perjurious jailhouse snitches, and misconducive prosecutorial shenanigans that have been mainstays of American injustice for generations.

They must not watch “CSI” in Italy. If they did, the jury would never have convicted Miss Knox when not a scintilla of forensic evidence connected her to the murder. No fingerprints, no DNA, no pubic hairs, no video.

Perhaps one side effect of the Italian injustice concerning “Foxie Knoxy” will be a refocusing of attention on the same kinds of prosecutorial misconduct in America. Does it take the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of a sexy, young college student in Italy to outrage the American public to the point where they say, “What about cases like this in our own country?”

Do not say, “It couldn’t happen here,” because it has been happening all along. Corrupt prosecutors like the now-disbarred Mike Nifong of Duke University lacrosse team infamy and state attorney Mark Ober, formerly best-known as the tireless advocate of notorious rapist and serial killer, Oscar Ray Bolin, who terrorized the Tampa, Florida, area, are just two examples of unscrupulous men who “do whatever it takes” to get a conviction.

In Mark Ober’s case, I know firsthand what it feels like to be accused of and framed for a murder I didn’t commit. I’m sure that Amanda Knox’s prosecutor has already used her case to promote his overweening political ambitions, as Mark Ober did to me.

Just like in “Criminal Minds” each week, all the evidence is right there in front of us in the Amanda Knox case. Unfortunately, Miss Knox doesn’t have the benefit of Hollywood experts to solve the case and clear her in the last five minutes.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the black guy did it!

Charlie

STAND-UP CONVICTS—“THE HIDDEN NOBILITY”

2010-01-31T21:46:00.002-05:00

Dateline: January 31, 2010

STAND-UP CONVICTS—“THE HIDDEN NOBILITY”

Old Convicts Versus “The New Convict Code”

Tex McClain had nothing but his word. Old and sick, having outlived anyone in society who might help him, he had to live by his wits to earn coffee and cigarettes. Old Tex’s word was good. If he told you a certain prisoner was a bad credit risk and wouldn’t pay back a loan, you’d be a fool to give him a dime. If he told you he’d hide your knife in his cell for a week for a carton of cigarettes, and the guards discovered it, he’d go to solitary confinement for months before he’d tell who the shank actually belonged to. If he considered you “good people,” he’d do anything to help you. And if he thought you’d cheated him or snitched him out to “The Man,” he’d kill you and suffer the consequences. That’s why he’d spent most of his life in prison, and why he’d die there, his word and honor intact.

Tex McClain and many old-time convicts like him adhered to “The Convict Code.” The Convict Code wasn’t written down anywhere, you wouldn’t find it in the Department of Corrections rules or the inmate handbook. They didn’t teach it in Life Skills class, or explain it in orientation. If you were “all right,” someone might tell you about it. That’s how I learned The Convict Code.

When you come to prison you are observed and judged by everyone around you: are you weak or strong, poor or rich, gay or straight, a snitch or not, “good people” or “a piece of shit?” How you are judged, how you respond to an initial testing period, how you exhibit your manhood, character, or lack thereof will determine to a considerable extent how difficult or hard your time in prison will be. One’s reputation often becomes a matter of life or death.

There are several terms that have become fraught with confusion and misinterpretation that need defining and discussing.

The words convict, inmate, and prisoner are often used interchangeably, although their meanings and connotations have implicitly greater differences than their explicit definitions.

The dictionary defines convict as somebody serving a prison sentence, such as, “an escaped convict,” from the Latin, convincere, “to prove wrong.’ Up until the 1960’s, or thereabouts, anyone convicted of a crime and imprisoned was a convict. Stand-up refers to somebody who faces danger or obligations boldly or bravely, who confronts adversaries fearlessly. Stand-up convict.

Inmate is defined as somebody who has been confined within a prison or a psychiatric hospital, from the late 16th century, formed from IN + MATE “companion.” This definition coincided with the rise of institutionalizing “insane” people— “an inmate of an asylum.” Prisons for people convicted of crimes did not become prevalent until many years later. There is no such thing as a stand-up inmate.

A prisoner is somebody confined in a prison as a punishment for a crime or while awaiting trial, or somebody who has been captured and is held in confinement in a place. A prisoner of war is somebody who has been captured and held captive by the enemy during war.

The word, prison, arose in the 12th Century via Old French, from, ultimately, the Latin stem, prension, ‘seizing,” from prehendre, “to seize.” “Seize him!” Book him, Danno.

Interestingly enough, that Latin word, “prehensile,”- able to grasp something, like a prehensile tail, is derived, is also the source of the words, apprehend, apprentice, comprehend, comprise, depredation, impregnable, predator, prey, prisoner, reprehensible, reprieve, and surprise. How they link together!

In contrast to prison, an institution is a place where people who are, e.g., mentally or physically challenged are cared for. In our modern times, sadly, no one cares anymore.

Alongside that term, “institutionalized,” has two definitions: 1. established as normal—having become an established custom or an accepted part of the structure of a large organization or society because it has existed for so long, and, 2. dependent on the routine of institution—lacking the will or ability to think and act independently because of having spent a long time in an institution, such as a psychiatric hospital or prison. With the widespread dispensing of psychotropic drugs, longer terms of imprisonment, and a growing percentage of sick, aging prisoners nationwide, institutionalized zombies not only tax the straining prison systems, but also become helpless prey to young prison predators.

To our society’s shame, the “system” is set up not to “fix” or repair or rehabilitate prisoners, preparing them during their imprisonments to rejoin society as people who can be useful contributors, but rather to break them down, make them compliant, in a word, institutionalized.

In the classic movie, “Papillon,” Steve McQueen portrays a prisoner on the French prison exile colony off the coast of South America, “Devil’s Island,” a man who is determined to survive on his own terms, the brutal imprisonment conditions that either destroyed the other men, turned them into animalistic beasts, or broke their spirits entirely. Modern prisons are not nearly as heavy-handed as their turn-of-the-century counterparts inflicting the Napoleonic Code, but the process of long-term institutionalization of prisoners is no less effective as a means of control.

While we are at it, we may as well define a few more terms that are subject to misuse and misinterpretation in this context.

“Corrections” is the system of dealing with criminals by imprisonment, rehabilitation, parole and probation. “Correctional” means of or involved in the system of dealing with criminals by imprisonment, rehabilitation, parole, and probation. A “correctional facility” is a prison or other institution where criminals are held and treated.

“Guard,” as a verb and noun, has at least a dozen lengthy definitions in the Encarta World English Dictionary, (copyright 1999 by Bloomsbury Publishing) the source of all the definitions used here. Definition 2— prevent escape of—to watch over and prevent the escape of somebody held captive, as a verb— “Two MPs were guarding the prisoner,” and as a noun, definition 2—a person or group that protects, watches over, restrains, or controls somebody or something— “The prisoner broke away from his guards.”

On the other hand, “officer,” has several definitions, none of which are associated with “prison guard.” The primary meaning refers to somebody of rank in the armed forces. “Officer” can also refer to an elected or appointed official, a police officer, or somebody who has a specialized or responsible post in authority on a ship.

A euphemism is a word or phrase used in place of a term that might be considered too direct, harsh, unpleasant, or offensive. The prison system uses “correctional officer” as a euphemism for “prison guard,” although it is more than that. The negative connotation of “prison guard” does not infer the so-called inflated status of “correctional officer,” a prouder term that elevates a historically lowly position.

In contrast, use of “inmate” as opposed to “prisoner” or “convict” denigrates the person, to deliberately make somebody appear less important, mentally deficient, disparaged, and belittled. These usages embody strong psychological overtones designed to build up the self-esteem of the guards at the expense of the convicts or prisoners. Name it and claim it—old-time convicts will tell new men that if they call themselves “inmates,” and answer to that sobriquet, that’s what they are. An old-timer is quick to correct a guard who refers to him as an inmate. “I’m a convict, not an inmate.”

When I came to prison, after spending close to two years in the county jail awaiting trial for murder, I was already known to many prisoners who’d met me in the county jail and preceded me in prison, so I was already a step up on many men newly-arrived in prison.

An old man named Bill O’Quinn gave me some of my first lessons in the convict code at Raiford.

“You make a few big decisions that will eliminate a lot of little decisions. Are you a man or a woman? A straight person or a homosexual? If you are a man, and someone approaches you in a sexual manner, your response is automatic. NO. What are you?”

“I’m a man,” I said. “I’m old-fashioned. I like women. I don’t like men.”

“Good,” Bill said. “I don’t, either.”

Are you going to be a good guy or a bad guy? A bad guy talks to the guards, snitches out others, steals, lies, cheats, is of weak character. A good guy is strong, keeps his mouth shut, doesn’t gossip, and minds his own business. A good guy can be trusted. He’s “got your back” if trouble goes down. He stands on his own two feet, doesn’t depend on others, doesn’t borrow money, and doesn’t go into debt. He doesn’t run in gangs. He is a stand-up convict.

A stand-up convict controls himself. He doesn’t fool around with punks, homosexuals. He avoids drugs and alcohol. Ninety per cent of prison murders involve homosexuality, bad debts, drugs, alcohol, or snitching. Eliminate those vices from your life, and your time will go much easier.

Of course, that is the ideal, the goal, and no matter how “stand-up” a convict might be, he is not perfect, and may not always attain the loftiest pinnacles of behavior. An alcoholic, for example, in the despair of prison, may brew prison wine and sell it, his only talent, and most likely will drink his product, with various consequences, and still be a stand-up convict in most ways. But he won’t rat out another man in competition with him. Even lost, broken, abandoned men can retain shreds of dignity by being stand-up convicts, resisting.

“Back in the day,” as they say, if a prisoner talked to the guards he was viewed with suspicion. Don’t get me wrong—prisoners and guards have always talked, had conversations about various things. But stand-up convicts always had one or more convicts with him when he talked, as insurance, so nobody got the wrong idea. He might be complaining about the food, or the mail not being passed out, or the canteen being closed, but he was definitely NOT talking about who was making wine or selling pot. Those types of issues were none of his business. Let the guards do their jobs without help from him.

If a prisoner was known as a snitch, a bad risk, or fooled with homosexuals, he was shunned by stand-up convicts. They didn’t talk to him. They didn’t “see” him. Times have changed.

As the prison system has changed, as prisoners have changed, as the old-timers have died out, a “new convict code” has arisen.

The average age of today’s prisoner is increasingly younger, he is more drug-addicted, more violent, with more “mandatory” sentences, less chances to ever get out, more “L-WOP,” life without parole, less hope, more despair. The rise of crack cocaine in the inner cities has filled the prisons with angry, young black men, robbers, carjackers, murderers, who just don’t care. Crystal meth addiction has had a similar effect among the poor whites. The same goes for Hispanics, especially with the rise of street drug gangs.

These violent addicts have no regard for themselves or others. Prisons have become increasingly dangerous places as these young men form and join gangs, running wild inside. Assaults, robberies, and thefts from each other increase tensions and turmoil. There is no more “honor among thieves.”

Nowadays in prison, you’re just as likely to find a big, strong muscular young man unashamedly and openly partnered in a homosexual relationship, selling drugs, setting up other prisoners for theft, and snitching out some of his drug customers so they will flunk urine tests, go to jail. He will build up points with the guards as a “good inmate.” This same “good inmate” will have a visit on Sunday with a young lady, a girlfriend, or a wife, perhaps a child or two, and she’ll never suspect that her “man” was involved in unprotected sex last night with that HIV-infected man sitting at the next table with his mother. It happens all the time.

Under the “new convict code,” none of the “inmates” involved in such activities feel like they are doing anything wrong. The old moral codes have been tossed out the window. In the new convict code, someone who is capable of doing all those formerly taboo acts is a role model, respected by his peers. If he can tell on a few others and get his homosexual lover moved into the cell with him, he is admired as somebody who has influence and can get things done. If he can juggle male and female lovers, in prison and outside, his status is elevated even higher by those who subscribe to the new way of life.

Why has this happened? There are many reasons. Newspaper columnist Thomas Sowell wrote that we are raising a generation of barbarians in our inner cities. Since he is an African-American, he can make that statement without being accused of racial overtones. Black, white, or other, our society is in decay, the moral fiber has frayed, and our prisons have become the canaries in the coal mines to warn us about this impending disaster. It is already burning here in prison.

The guards searched old Tex McClain’s cell one afternoon and discovered two ounces of marijuana under his mattress. Someone “sent the man,” snitched him out. The guards knew the reefer wasn’t Tex’s. He had nothing, certainly not a stash of valuable drugs. On the front deck of our building, several “goon squad” guards surrounded the frail, sickly Tex and questioned him. Listening to the exchange was a lesson in the convict code. Tex suffered from emphysema, could scarcely breathe, hacked and coughed almost continuously, but wasn’t nearly as sick as he pretended to be to the guards.

GUARD: Now, Tex, we know this pot ain’t yours. You tell us who you’re holding it for, and we’ll let you go.

TEX: (coughing) Y-You know I can’t do that.

GUARD: C’mon, Tex. Give us a name. Who gave you those 2 ozs.?

TEX: (head down, hesitant) I wish I could. You know I do. But if Old Tex told you who that mari-ju-wana belonged to, I’d get in so much trouble.

GUARD: No you won’t, Tex. Work with me. Give me a name. You ain’t afraid, are you?

TEX: Hell, yeah, I’m afraid. I can’t tell you. My life wouldn’t be worth shit if I ratted ‘em out. You wouldn’t (cough, hack) believe me, anyway.

GUARD: Yeah we would, Tex. I promise you we’ll protect you. Give us a name. Just the name.

TEX: (thinking about it) I really wish I could.(cough, wheeze, hack, spit, cough) But you’d just call me a liar, and you’d lock me up anyway. I can’t trust ya’ll. You ain’t gonna let me go. I’ll get in worse trouble if I tell you.

GUARD: No you won’t, Tex. We’ll believe you. Give us a name, and we’ll let you go.

TEX: (cough, wheeze, looking up, cocking his head, eyeing the guard skeptically) You will? You promise?

GUARD: I give you my word, Tex. Whose reefer is it?

TEX: (takes a deep breath) Okay, I’ll tell you. Before he went on vacation, Sergeant Dragline gave me the reefer and told me to sell it for him and give him the money when he got back!

(NOTE: “Dragline” was the prison nickname of the huge guard sergeant over the goon squad. One leg had been damaged in a motorcycle accident some years before, and “Dragline” dragged the stiffened leg behind him, like an injured Frankenstein monster. A notorious brutalizer who hated prisoners, he was also intelligent and cunning and considered himself to be on a holy crusade in which anything he did was justified. He was eventually fired to placate the feds.)

GUARD: You lying son-of-a-bitch! You’re going to jail!

The guards manhandled Tex, pulled his thin arms behind his back roughly, handcuffed him, and with guards grasping each arm, hustled him down the steps.

As he was being led away, he shouted, “I told you. You didn’t believe me. You lied to Old Tex!”

Outnumbered, surrounded, with no hope for escape, Tex maintained his dignity, manipulated the guards, reversed the situation on them, and led them on a merry chase for awhile. I could only admire his hidden nobility, his refusal to violate the convict code, and like the Russian aristocrats who had lost everything, captured by their enemies and facing death, refused to give their executioners the satisfaction of seeing them beg for mercy or humiliate themselves. By all measure of the world that confined him, Tex McClain was a failed person, an elderly, burned-out alcoholic, the ultimate loser who would be buried in a prison graveyard, with no trace of his life except for a small, metal plate stamped in the auto tag plant with his prison number. But to me and those others who watched him perform that day, he was a real man, a stand-up convict, the proud equal of any man, his dignity intact.

A week later, Dragline came back from vacation and walked up to Tex’s cell in confinement, staring at the old man lying on his bunk.

“So I gave you some reefer to sell for me while I was on vacation, huh?”

Tex laughed, coughed, mumbled a few words. Dragline unlocked the cell door and held it open.

“Get up, you crazy old bastard.”

“Where’m I going, Sarge?”

“You’re going back to the compound, dumb ass. Now grab your bag and let’s go, unless you want to stay in lockup.”

For an instant, Tex was surprisingly spry, hopped out of the bunk and headed for the door and daylight.

Charlie

An early Christmas present from the Florida D.O.C.

2010-01-03T22:04:00.000-05:00

Dateline: December 28, 2009

AN EARLY CHRISTMAS PRESENT FROM THE FLORIDA D.O.C.

Christmas came a few days early for me this year at Tomoka C.I., my 32nd Christmas in prison. One of the big deals in prison is one’s custody classification, with minimum, medium, and close custodies being the generic terms. People on Death Row aren’t really classified, except for “maximum.”

With a life sentence, I have been “close” custody my entire imprisonment, with the exception of leaving Zephyrhills C. I. three times in the 1980’s, unescorted, warden’s orders. In practical terms, the D.O.C. classifies us as to “H.O. status,” “H.O. 1” being the lowest, “H.O.5” the highest, which includes those with escape charges in their records. With the life sentence, I’ve been “H.O.4” for years, one step down from 5. That meant I was housed in the two-man cells, more secure, restricted movement, until this week.

On Tuesday, Dec. 22, the “movement officer” called me down and said I had to move out of E-dorm, the 2-man rooms, non-smoking building, where I’d just moved into on Monday. Why? He said my H.O. status had been dropped down 4 to 2, medium custody. So I went to “J-dorm,” an open dorm,” 78 prisoners crowded into a small warehouse full of double bunks—men ready to go home and sick, damaged, and elderly prisoners, no risk.

Upon checking with classification, Libby learned that as soon as my classification officer signs off on the paperwork, I’ll be an H.O.1—minimum custody, which changes many things for me. It appears that Tallahassee is reviewing files, and several men with similar time have also had their custodies reduced.

The most immediate effect is that the D.O.C. is officially stating that I am not a risk, a fact that I hope we can use with the parole commission at a new hearing, trumping corrupt prosecutor, Mark Ober’s, libelous and slanderous argument against my release. With an H.O.1 status, work camp, lower custody, even work release comes into play. I hope we can use this to our advantage.

Libby and I celebrated Christmas at the visiting park. Perhaps next year Christmas will come for me without razorwire.

Charlie

“WE WATCHING OPRAH, OR I’M BEATING YOUR ASS”

2009-12-17T22:01:00.000-05:00

Dateline: December 5, 2009

“WE WATCHING OPRAH, OR I’M BEATING YOUR ASS”

PRISONERS FIGHT OVER THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW

I love Oprah. No apologies, no excuses. Perhaps that seems incongruous, since I am a sixty-year old white guy serving life in prison, but I am not alone. I am in good company. Millions of other people love Oprah, too. It hasn’t always been that way. We’ve had to fight for the right to see Oprah, or should I say, the privilege.

When fifty desperate men must share one television, there is a process called, “channel check.” In theory, it is a democratic process where the men vote on which channel the TV is set, majority rule. If you don’t like it, go to your cell and read a book. There are many disturbed men in prison, however, who never played well with others, would not share their toys, and think that what they want is the only thing counts, to hell with anyone else, cartoons rule.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Maury Povich. I’m sure he’s a fine gentleman. He married Connie Chung, didn’t he? And he has brought DNA testing to the common people. But for God’s sake, how many times can anyone bear hearing his pronouncement, “You are NOT the father?” Bring out the next batch of bar patrons, please, and let’s see how many of them are NOT the fathers.

The same goes for Jerry Springer. So he can dance. I have nothing against him, either, or his former bodyguard, Steve. Jerry Springer has brought serious sociological issues to the forefront of television, mining trailer parks across America to the point where “trailer trash” is no longer a scorned moniker, but a potential media star. But come on, people! How many times must we reveal poverty-stricken Americans deprived of dental care being told that their mother is having sex with her daughter’s husband, who’s having gay sex with his brother-in-law? Enough is enough.

Don’t get me started on the Spanish channel! Is it a requirement that those Spanish talk show queens have massive breast implants, wear skimpy dresses several sizes too small, and jump up and down, squealing, trying to see how close they can come to flopping out the top? Then, they have the old 1960’s and ‘70’s American movies shown over and over again on the same station. I never realized Clint Eastwood was such a fluent Spanish speaker, or Jean-Claude Van Damm, for that matter.

Things were going well there for awhile. Four p.m., afternoon count clear, an hour before evening chow, about twenty of us sit down like gentlemen and watch Oprah. I’ve learned so much from her, our window on the world, a look at what is right and decent, on the one hand, and examination of what is wrong, or evil, or must be fixed on the other. Oprah is equally at ease talking to a child dying of cancer, or a psychotic serial killer sitting on death row. And the entertainment! Isolated as we are from society, I had no idea who WILL.I.AM was, how to spell his name, what a genius he is, or what a remarkable man in so many ways. Thanks, Oprah!

Like most men in prison, my family has fairly-well given up on visiting me after over thirty-one years’ imprisonment, so in many ways we have adopted Oprah and her family and friends as our own. We can count on Oprah. Monday through Friday, Channel 9, Orlando, four p.m., she comes to see us. Her best friend, Gayle King, is our best friend, too. We loved going on that road trip across America, and rejoice at all the gifts she shares with her friends. Seeing her wonderful school for girls in South Africa softened our hearts, and that’s saying a lot. Her endorsement of Barack, then her refusal to give McCain’s veep candidate a forum was cheered. Go girl! Oprah’s probably done more to rehabilitate a core of prisoners in my building than all the phony paper programs the prison system pushes to pretend they actually care about improving society, recidivism, and crime rates.

Let’s get back to the fight. Things were going well. Every day before chow we got to visit with Oprah and friends. I had a spot on the third bench staked out, and my Texas homeboy, Jerome Dickey, a very large, heavily-muscled, young black man who played in the prison tennis league with me, sat nearby on the second bench. In prison, the men like consistency in an inconsistent world, and claiming the same seat every day is an important part of it. Then one day, a wild card was inserted in the deck.

Let’s face another fact. There are a lot of nutty, dangerous people in prison, as they should be. That doesn’t make it any easier on the rest of us. We have to live with them and deal with their bad behavior.

An intellectually- and psychologically- challenged prisoner got transferred in from some psych-crisis ward one day. When we were released from our cells and drifted to the TV room to watch Oprah, that new individual—I will refer to him as “the nut”—snatched the remote control from another prisoner’s hand, proclaiming, “We ain’t watchin that shit.” He began scrolling through the available channels. Maury’s trying to find out who’s the daddy. Jerry has a scag hunching on a pole showing off her new Clairol dye treatment—coyote brown with trailer trash red streaks. Squealing silicone Spanish girls, Japanese cartoons, PBS. No, no, no.

Most prisoners don’t want trouble. That’s the essence of institutionalization, to go along with the program, obey all orders, keep your mouth shut, don’t express any opinions, don’t get involved. For the first few minutes of “the nut’s” channel surfing, no one said anything, sitting passively, waiting to see what someone else would do, what might happen. Some glanced at me, as one of the oldest, others glanced at Dickey, as one of the strongest, to see how we reacted.

Dickey and I looked at each other, no words necessary, the implications clear. Prison is fraught with racial implications, the cauldron simmering, one little incident having the potential to ignite a racial situation. Had “the nut” been a white man, I would have stood up and said something, but since he was not, it became “a black thing.” Anything Dickey did to “the nut” would be acceptable, whereas if a white prisoner attacked him, things could devolve into a riot. It was better this way.

Dickey sighed, remaining seated. “Hey, bro,’ we watch Oprah down here,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d switch it back to Channel Nine.”

Very polite.

“The nut” didn’t give Dickey a glance, just kept mindlessly pushing the “up” arrow, flitting from station to station. “Fuck Oprah. I hate that bitch. We ain’t watchin’ that shit,” he declared.

Uh oh. Now it had gotten personal. “The nut” had dissed Oprah! That could not be allowed to stand. If drastic action weren’t taken immediately, we might never see Oprah again.

Dickey stood. If “the nut” ignored Dickey while he was sitting down, it was much harder to ignore him standing. Dickey stood several inches taller and easily forty pounds heavier, not counting his obviously superior musculature and athletic appearance. In prison terms, “the nut” was “a dumbass masquerading as a badass.”

With one hand, Dickey grasped “the nut’s” neck. Another prisoner took the remote from “the nut” so it wouldn’t fall and possibly break, clicking it to Oprah immediately.
The audience was torn—watch the crucial opening minutes of “Oprah,” or watch Dickey manhandle “the nut” with an attitude adjustment. Dickey won, this time. It only took a minute.

Dickey’s strong right hand stood up for Oprah, squeezing “the nut’s” throat tighter and tighter cutting off his air and the blood flow to the brain (not that he needed much), face swelling, darkening, eyes bulging. As he tried to kick and struggle, Dickey’s grip tightened. “The nut” weakened, realizing resistance was futile.

Dickey put his nose almost touching “the nut’s” nose. “We watching Oprah, or I’m beating your ass. You understand that?”

Almost unconscious, “the nut” couldn’t nod or turn his head.

“Blink your eyes for yes,’ Dickey said.

“The nut” blinked. Dickey loosened his grip slightly, allowing “the nut” to breathe. “Now apologize,” Dickey said.

“The nut” appeared confused. A strangled, gargling sound came from his throat. “I’se sorry,” he whispered, bug eyes looking at Dickey.

“Not me, asshole,” Dickey said. He turned “the nut’s” head toward the TV. “Apologize to Oprah.”

“I’se sorry,’ “the nut” gurgled. “I’se sorry, Oprah.”

“And you’ll never disrespect her again.”

“That’s right,” “the nut” agreed.

Dickey dropped him. “The nut’s” knees buckled upon landing, and he had to catch himself not to crash face first onto the steel bench. He coughed a few times, then sat down quietly on the end of the first bench and watched Oprah with the rest of us.

Things happened. New people came and went. The top prison officials got replaced with new, harsher “experts” who deigned to put their imprint on the institutional rules. A haughty, arrogant head guard took over, one who walked around with his nose in the air, always wearing his Smokey Bear hat high on his head, like he was a state trooper. Inevitably, he was given the prison nickname, “The Cat in the Hat.’ Even the guards and the family visitors referred to him as “The Cat in the Hat.”

“The Cat in the Hat” had all the trees inside the prison chopped down, all the hedges pulled up, the flowers destroyed. That was bad enough. But when he decreed that the TV’s wouldn’t be turned on until five p.m. daily, precluding us from watching Oprah, that was when he earned our everlasting contempt and enmity. What “the nut” couldn’t accomplish, “The Cat in the Hat” did in an instant. If we were lucky, a benevolent guard would cut the power on five or ten minutes early, allowing us to get a small Oprah fix, but it wasn’t enough.

That lasted a year. A female guard got murdered. “The Cat in the Hat” and all his cronies had to fall on their swords, got demoted and transferred to other prisons. New people took over. Nothing changed at first, leaving the last rules in place. Finally, a few months ago, new guards were assigned, and the new sergeant began turning on the power to the TV at four o’clock. “I like Oprah, too,” he said. “She’s cool.”

That she is.

Now the earth has trembled again, the seismographic needles jerking. Oprah is going off the air. One season left. What “the nut” and “The Cat in the Hat” couldn’t do, Oprah did herself.

Many of us have gone into shock. We are already suffering Oprah withdrawals. What are we going to do?
I suppose we’ll just have to settle for Jerry and Maury and discover who’s NOT the father. It will not be the same.

Charlie

U.S. SUPREME COURT TAKES AIM AT CORRUPT PROSECUTORS

2009-11-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

Dateline November 10, 2009

U.S. SUPREME COURT TAKES AIM AT CORRUPT PROSECUTORS

Prosecutors Like Tampa’s Mark Ober Labeled “Overzealous and Dishonest”

Did you know that under Florida law, a state attorney (prosecutor) can use a false witness at trial, can coach that witness to commit perjury, to fabricate false testimony, to withhold evidence favorable to the defense, and be immune from penalties or lawsuits? Anything a corrupt, overzealous, and dishonest prosecutor does at trial is protected by law, except perhaps, punching out the judge. Framing an innocent person for murder is okay.

According to a November 5, 2009, article by Joan Biskupic in “USA Today,” titled, “High Court Weighs Lawsuit Against Prosecutors,” twenty-seven states and the U.S. Justice Department “…are trying to shield prosecutors from claims for damages tracing to any trial testimony.”

The article goes on to say that the Supreme Court justices struggled with whether prosecutors can be held responsible for framing defendants with false testimony and fabricated evidence.

Two men in Iowa were convicted for a 1977 shotgun murder and went to prison. Twenty years later, one of the men’s friends obtained the police report, discovering that the two prosecutors, Joseph Hrvol and David Richter, had coached the key witness and withheld evidence about a leading suspect. The Iowa Supreme Court threw out their conviction, and the freed men brought suit against the crooked prosecutors under federal civil rights law, known as a “1983 suit.”

I think I may be in love with new justice Sonia Sotomayor after what she told a lawyer defending the Iowa prosecutors. Let me quote:

“When Katyal said prosecutors would ‘flinch’ from their duties, Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested a prosecutor should flinch ‘…when he suspects evidence is perjured or fabricated.’ Sotomayor, a former prosecutor who seemed more sympathetic to McGhee and Harrington [the men wrongfully convicted], elicited from Katyal that the Iowa prosecutors were never sanctioned.”

“Justice Anthony Kennedy responded heatedly to arguments by the Iowa prosecutors’ lawyer, Stephen Sanders, that they cannot be liable for any fabrication that ends up being used at trial.”

“So the law is the more deeply you’re involved in the wrong, the more likely you are to be immune?” Kennedy said. “That’s a strange proposition.”

The deputy solicitor general, Katyal, said that the court should focus on the “overriding goals of the justice system,” which, to hear him tell it, should protect prosecutors, no matter how egregious their actions. Funny, I thought that the overriding goal of the justice system was “the truth.” It seems to me that such dishonest actions by “officers of the court” should be prosecuted as “obstruction of justice.”

Concerning “sanctions for failure to disclose,” according to Florida law (Hunter v. State, (Fla.2008), 2008-WL4348485, Fla.Law Wkly 5721), “Remedy of retrial for the state’s suppression of evidence favorable to the defendant is available when the favorable evidence could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.”

Nowhere does it mention the offending prosecutor should receive so much as a slap on the wrist. How about this one?

“If false testimony surfaces during a trial and the government has knowledge of it, the government has a duty to step forward and disclose.” (Ventura v. Attorney General, Florida (C.A.II, Fla.2005) 419 F.3d 1269) (Federal Appeals Court).

“Government has a duty not to present or use false testimony.” (Brown v. Wainwright, 785 F.2d 1457, (CA II Fla. 1986). (This was the Barksdale murder case out of Tampa, Hillsborough State Attorney’s office—sound familiar?)

“Deliberate deception of a court and jurors by presentation of known false evidence is incompatible with the rudimentary demands of justice.” (Criminal Law 110 K 2033).

What we are talking about here is a case of “manifest injustice.”

If a wrongfully prosecuted and convicted person can somehow discover the wrongdoing, and can comply with restrictive appeal rules, he may have a slim chance at a retrial, but the offending prosecutor gets away with his crimes.

I know this from personal experience. False testimony, perjury, coached witnesses, withheld evidence, immunity from prosecution for the guilty, and more are all present in my case. Go to the web site, www.freecharlienow.com, and read the case facts. The fight for justice is exceedingly difficult.

There is one exception to the “absolute immunity” of prosecutors. Although everything they do at trial in their own jurisdictions is protected. Once they step out of their counties and insert themselves into other jurisdictions, other matters, they lose all their immunities and protections. When Mark Ober leaves his Tampa sanctuary and travels to Tallahassee, making false statements before a state agency hearing such as the parole commission, under the law he is just another witness, subject to legal remedies if he oversteps the law. Hopefully, Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be watching.

Charlie

COUNTERING THE “RIP VAN WINKLE EFFECT”

2009-11-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

Dateline November 5, 2009

COUNTERING THE “RIP VAN WINKLE EFFECT”

You know the story. One day a long time ago, Rip Van Winkle walked out of his little village in the Catskills, sat down under a shady tree to take a nap, and woke up twenty years later. He had a long gray beard, his clothes were much the worse for wear after enduring twenty hot summers and twenty winter weathers without benefit of shade or shelter. It’s amazing he lived through the experience. He returned home to find everything changed. No one recognized the elderly old man, not his aged wife nor his grown children, who had gone on with their lives after the husband and father disappeared, nor his neighbors, who looked upon the scruffy stranger newly arrived in their midst with mistrust and disdain.

I know how the poor man must have felt. I am the modern-day Rip Van Winkle. But rather than fall asleep under a tree and disappear from my family for twenty years, only to materialize out of the blue one day, I have been held captive in a cage for over thirty-one years, or 11,544 days, as of this Veterans Day, 2009 (but who’s counting?). I passed Rip’s record over 4,000 days ago, and the clock is still ticking, the calendar page clicking over, fluttering in a blur like in those time travel movies.

Unfortunately, this is not a fairy tale or a movie, the script’s still being written, and there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.

I am not alone. There are many, many more like me. Imagine an eight foot by eight foot by eight foot glass cube with a man or a woman sealed inside. That’s me, trapped in a square goldfish bowl. Now place ten identical glass cubes filled with individual prisoners in a row, flush, side-by-side, eighty feet wide, then line up more cubes to make it ten rows deep, ten times ten, one hundred cubes of humans, eighty feet square, one layer.

We’re not done yet with our construction. Add a second layer of one hundred glass cubes of prisoners, and a third, and a fourth. Stack the layers of one hundred until you reach one thousand stories high, eight thousand feet above ground level, several times taller than the Empire State Building and any other manmade structure in the world. One hundred thousand people. Think about it. What an amazing sight that would be.

That is the Florida Prison System, stacked impossibly high. Can you imagine what a daunting task it would be just to feed those one hundred thousand people stacked up so high? Three times a day? What about giving them water, or figuring out how to let them use the toilet (what toilet?), take a shower, or provide medical treatment to the thousands of sick, elderly, or the mentally ill? It is mindboggling, the logistics. But that is what happens every day, 24/7, 365 days a year, and it never slows down. It only gets worse, the cubes keep getting stacked higher, and as soon as they free someone from his cage, someone else is waiting to fill it.

I used to wonder about old Rip lying there beneath that tree, snoring away the years, and how he survived being bitten, nipped, and chewed on by all the critters and creepy-crawlies that must have happened upon him over all that time. Thinking about that brought to mind my own such experiences in the opening weeks of my “commitment,” as they call it, to the Florida State Prison System.

In those distant days, every male prisoner spent four or five weeks being “processed” at the lake Butler Reception and Medical Center (RMC), before being assigned a permanent institution. The 1970’s brought heavy overcrowding to the prison system (sound familiar?), and at one point large tents were erected next to Florida State Prison (FSP) to house the overflow, aptly named “Tent City.” We had some highly-qualified “chain gang lawyers” in those days who petitioned Federal Judge Charles Scott, who closed down “Tent City.” The D.O.C. still had some tricks up its sleeves, however.

Up until the late 1970’s, the prison system was in the tobacco business. They manufactured “DC cigarettes,” called “RIPs,” (Rolled In Prison), that were distributed free to state prisoners, a couple of packs a week, to satisfy their nicotine addictions. Several large, old tobacco barns, all in a row, occupied a plot of land next to FSP. That’s where they made the “RIPs” for years. Once they stopped making cigarettes, and the federal judge closed down “Tent City,” the next logical step was to fill the old tobacco barns with bunks and prisoners. After I left RMC, and while I was waiting for a bunk to open up at “The Rock,” Raiford, they sent me to “Butler Transit Unit,” (BTU), or as we called it, “Wild Kingdom,” for all the animal life that resided there.

Each tobacco barn had two huge ventilation and exhaust fans in opposite walls, way up near the high ceilings, which sucked in a wide assortment of night-flying critters from small gnats and mosquitoes, to large moths, birds, and occasional bats. It’s a freaky feeling to be newly-arrived in prison, in the dark, with dozens of men crammed into a tobacco barn that seethes with wildlife that considers you an intruder. I admit I yelled when a large palmetto bug ( a species of giant flying cockroach) landed on my face as I drifted off to sleep. I wasn’t the only one. Across the building men slapped and screamed as a variety of creepy, crawly, and flying things practiced touch-and-goes on unsuspecting prisoners.

Mice scurried across the floor in front of me as I made my way to the urinals. One man yelled in triumph every time he chased one down and flattened it with a flip=flop swat. Cockroaches didn’t bother scattering. To say that seeing a red-eyed rat staring back at me as I relieved myself was disconcerting is a vast understatement. I was actually relieved to make it to the relatively vermin-free prison after experiencing “Wild Kingdom.” You want to develop an effective “Scared Straight” program for wayward teens? Stick them in an old tobacco barn in the middle of nowhere to contend with strange beasts for a week or so.

I emerged, shaken, but fairly unscathed, from my BTU experience. It must have been much worse for Rip Van Winkle out there in the mountains, asleep, being chewed on all those years.

It has been hard on me, too, hoping that I am near to returning home after being lost, away for so long, everything changed, so many people grown old, died, left me behind, so many others grown up with families of their own, nephews and nieces born, grown tall, having no idea who I am, or not caring for that matter. I don’t need to mention the changes in our society since I’ve been sealed in my glass cube with the 100,000 other sharing my plight. I watched the first space shuttle blast into space while standing in a prison recreation yard, and now they are about to retire what’s left of that battered, dilapidated fleet. I hope I don’t look that worn out!

I look forward to the challenge. Unlike Rip Van Winkle, who slept away his twenty years, my eyes are wide open, and I’ve been watching carefully, preparing since Day One for the day I am free, doing my best to counter and overcome “The Rip Van Winkle Effect,’ against all odds.

Charlie

“MAN VERSUS WILD” COMES TO PRISON

2009-11-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Dateline: October 26, 2009

“MAN VERSUS WILD” COMES TO PRISON

The other day, the “Powers That Be” who run the prison shut the place down much of the day. Riot? No. Assaults? No. Escapes? No. Everything got shut down because the “Man Versus Wild” program came into the prison.

I’ve never seen “Man Versus Wild.” We don’t get cable or Direct TV, and this program is on one of those stations. As I understand it, the star is England’s answer to the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin crossed with Jeff Probst’s “Survivor,” with a dash of “Fear Factor” tossed in for good measure. “Bear” Gills? – is that his name? A fearless adrenaline junkie who was a British commando, climbed Mt. Everest, broke his back. “Man Versus Wild” takes a camera crew into dangerous places, pits its star against wild beasts and natural hazards and shows how he can survive under the worst, most primitive circumstances. Prison might have been his sternest test.

After surviving over 31 years in Florida’s worst prisons, I became intrigued with the idea that a “survival expert” would come inside the razorwire and film some survival scenarios. How would they know what to film? With my experiences, I thought I would propose a few “real-life, chain gang” scenarios, see how the “expert” might deal with them.

SCENARIO # 1— Our star is trapped in the TV room with forty desperate men screaming at Eli Manning and Kurt Warner tossing the football, scrambling, and getting sacked. Our star can camouflage himself in a prison blue uniform, sit among the madmen, and scream along with them, or he can take his life in his hands, grab the remote, and switch the station to PBS, a documentary on seabirds.

RESPONSE — “Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to get me killed? Take me back to Tanzania, and let me sit next to a den of hyenas, but please, please don’t leave me in a prison TV room filled with felons!”

SCENARIO # 2 — Our star approaches a line of 200 prisoners waiting their turns to get their laundry bags. The first ten men are young crack dealers from Miami, rival street gang members, and “Latin Kings,” trying to get their clean towels so they can beat the crowd to the showers. To test his survival skills, our star cuts the line, goes to the front, and demands his laundry.

RESPONSE — “Where did they get all those knives? Hey, folks, I was only kidding. I’ll go to the back of the line. Whew! That was scarier than when I was in that village of headhunters in Borneo!”

SCENARIO # 3 — Almost the same as #2, except this time our star tries to jump the line of women visitors who’ve been standing outside the prison gate for hours waiting to get in to visit their husbands, lovers, sons, and brothers.

RESPONSE — Similar to # 2 above,; however, the verbal assault is more intimidating than the knives.

SCENARIO # 4 — Our star waits his turn in the prison chow line with a thousand other men for a lunch tray. The “food” will have to be analyzed by “CSI” to find out what it actually is. Our star is joined by a 300-pound behemoth who is starving and eyeing the little guy with the full tray beside him and decides he’s taking the tray. How does our star respond?

RESPONSE — “Almost the same thing happened in Ethiopia when I tried to take an antelope bone from the kill of a pride of lions. At least I knew it was meat! The small taste I got of the entrée before the giant took it from me reminded me of a cobra I once sampled in Bangladesh. The cobra was tastier.”

SCENARIO # 5 — Our star is issued a tiny towel and a sliver of prison soap, then enters a steaming shower to wash off the sweat and grime from a hot day on the dusty, shadeless “yard.” Four grinning, gap-toothed, muscle-bound Sodomites greet him with, “Come on in, the water’s fine,” and, “You got a purty mouth.”

RESPONSE — “I really don’t need a shower. Tell my producer I changed my mind about spending a week with Jane Goodall in Gabon. Hey, wait, fellas, that’s my towel…!”

SCENARIO # 6 — It is “count time.” You will be locked in a tiny cell with a psychopath infected with “HAGS” (herpes, AIDS, gonorrhea, and syphilis) not to mention hepatitis and tuberculosis. He thinks you look like his co-defendant who testified against him, or perhaps his prosecutor.

RESPONSE — “How sharp is that razorwire? Do those gun tower guards have live rounds in their rifles? Hey, you should always cover your mouth when you cough, dude!... Get me out of here!”

It seems that wild beasts, poisonous snakes, swamps, and river rapids are no match for a prison survival course.

That’s not really how it went when “Man Versus Wild” came to Tomoka C.I. with their star and camera crew. About 125 prisoners were allowed to sign up to attend the program held in the prison chapel, and each one had to sign a release for consent to be photographed. The place was packed with guards to maintain order and make sure nothing happened to the “Hollywood” visitors, particularly the women. Nothing did. The men were on their best behaviors.

The whole event was actually a program to promote the “Alpha Program,” a Bible study of sorts for beginning Christians, that began in England and has been apparently spread around the world. This was the first foray into the fertile fields of the prison system. Good luck! Anything that will distract a lot of negative, dangerous men with little hope for the future and give them something positive, to perhaps change their lives, is something I approve.

About that cobra, though—I wonder how it would taste in a chicken-flavored Ramen noodle soup?

Charlie

THE PAROLE MAN IS WALKING THE FENCE

2009-11-14T11:07:00.000-05:00

Dateline: October 15, 2009

THE PAROLE MAN IS WALKING THE FENCE

This morning on the way to “chow,” I stood in a long line of fellow prisoners being head-counted in the fog before we marched single-file to the kitchen. A few men ahead of me, an old man who has served even more time than I have, commented, “The parole man is walking the fence,” which was obscured by the fog rolling in from the nearby swamp.

A couple of spots behind him a “newcock,” a young, inexperienced prisoner who hasn’t served much time and thus has no knowledge of “old school” prison, asked, “What’s the parole man doing walking the fence?” A couple of other old timers, some of the few who are left, chuckled.

“He’s handing out paroles,” the old man said. “All you gotta do is get outside the fence, and he’ll give you one.”

The newcock was baffled. He didn’t understand the joke at all.

In the old days, before electronic security gadgets and endless rolls of razorwire turned modern American prisons into virtually impregnable escape-proof fortresses, at prisons across the country, whenever thick fog rolled in and blanketed the compound so that the guards in the gun towers couldn’t see the fences or the desperate men trying to climb over them, the expression, “the parole man is walking the fence,” or, “the Man is handing out pardons on the other side of the fence,” had very real connotations to many prisoners who otherwise had no other hope for eventual freedom. To them, reducing the odds of getting blasted off the fence by a shotgun guard in a tower was a good bet. Of course, many of those desperadoes who managed to make it to the parole man outside the fence had no further plans—they hadn’t thought it through—and were quickly caught, often by the local populace, and returned to lockup.

Some years ago, at Raiford, a “citizen,” who captured an escaped prisoner could choose either twenty-five dollars or a pig as their reward. I don’t know what the reward is today, but with the menu changes, they’d probably substitute a couple of cases of turkey sausage for the pig.

Jorge Silva, a New York Puerto Rican, who made it over the fence at Raiford many years ago, stumbled around lost in the woods and brambles for three days before making his way to a highway. He had no idea where he was. Dehydrated, hungry, covered in thorn scratches and thousands of mosquito bites, desperate Jorge stuck out his thumb at the first farm truck that puttered his way.

The old farmer stopped beside bedraggled Jorge and asked him where he was heading. Jorge held up a ten dollar bill he’d brought with him and told the driver that he’d give him the ten in exchange for a ride out of there. The farmer asked Jorge if he was an escaped prisoner and Jorge confirmed he was. The prison blue uniform was a dead giveaway.

The old man told Jorge to get in the pickup, but crouch down by the dash so no one would see him. Jorge complied, thrilled to escape the woods and mosquitoes more than he had been to escape from Raiford. He told Jorge he’d drive him to town and took the ten dollar bill. The truck finally slowed and came to a halt. The farmer told Jorge they’d arrived and to get out. Jorge did, and discovered that the farmer had driven him to the Lake Butler Police Station. Resigned, Jorge turned himself in. He never found out whether the good citizen claimed the twenty-five dollar reward or the pig.

Over twenty years or so ago, The Florida Legislature abolished the Parole Commission in favor of sentencing guidelines and other mandatory terms of imprisonment. Supposedly, this would correct a lot of abuses in disparate, discretionary release decisions by ivory tower bureaucrats making arbitrary rulings in the distant state capital. The top heavy Parole Commission members would be gradually phased out as their terms expired, or so the plan stated.

That didn’t happen. Like a beaten and battered boxer who takes every punch, refuses to go down, and keeps swinging to the end, the Parole Commission fought for survival and maintained its power for years beyond all expectations and annual efforts by certain legislators to put them out of business. One argument in their favor was that since there were still thousands of prisoners serving time under parole sentencing, the parole commission had to continue to decide when those people would be released. Out of about 100,000 people in Florida prisons, close to 5,000 survivors still are subject to parole. Until the last of these dinosaurs are released or die, the Parole Commission clings to life. For the other 95,000 prisoners, the parole system is irrelevant. Since they only release twenty-five to thirty people on parole each year, however, as long as these old men (and a few old women) keep breathing, the commissioners will hang on with them.

It seemed fitting this morning walking in the fog, after the old timer’s comments and explanations about the parole man walking the fence, another clueless newcock asked, “What’s a parole man?”

Charlie

YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT BAD? “LIQUID JESUS” AND LIFE IN THE NUT HOUSE

2009-11-10T20:49:00.001-05:00

Dateline: October 10, 2009

YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT BAD?
“LIQUID JESUS” AND LIFE IN THE NUT HOUSE

You think you have it bad, with the neighbor who cuts his grass with a loud mower early Sunday morning, or the one whose Great Dane loves to plop huge, smoking piles of doggy-doo on your St. Augustine lawn, or the little old lady across the street who’s always spying on you, writing down tag numbers of your visitors, calling the cops and complaining about the truck parked in your driveway, or the dog barking?

You think you have it bad? At least you can close your drapes when the reflection off Granny’s binoculars keep glaring through your dining room window at breakfast. At least you have drapes!

You think you have it bad? You should see my neighbors. I live packed in a two-story concrete and steel building, capacity 228 convicted felons in 114 little cells the size of small bathrooms, two hard steel bunks with thin, lumpy mattresses, a toilet, and a sink with pushbutton cold water. My neighbors range from convicted murderers (myself included), armed robbers, kidnappers, child molesters, rapists, carjackers, and burglars, to drunk drivers, probation violators, and “gunslingers,” particularly irritating idiots and sickos who expose themselves to (mostly) female prison guards and publicly masturbate until the guards come and get them or they get done. Thirty days in lock-up, get out, do it again.

In my neighborhood, forget about doors or burglar bars or personal security. Go to breakfast and you’re likely to come back to your little cell to find your locker broken into, your meager possessions stolen, traded for drugs, or to pay gambling debts. Throughout the day you have hammering sounds reverberating as desperate men straighten and bend pieces of steel into crude, but effective stabbing “shanks” for self-protection or revenge to satisfy rampant paranoia.

One of the biggest problems in prison is dealing with the mentally ill. “Back in the day,” criminals went to prison and the insane went to Chattahoochee, Florida’s main nut house, insane asylum, looney bin, whatever you chose to label it. They had satellite nut houses at Arcadia, Macclenny, and many “county hospitals,” as they called them. Then the political winds shifted, they began closing all the facilities for the mentally ill, resulting in thousands of hapless people incapable of shifting for themselves filling the streets, parks, homeless shelters, jails and prisons.

I have learned something about mental illness since I was put in a county jail cell over thirty years ago with a pitiful soul named Willie McGee, a toothless, stunned, over-medicated man who’d spent the previous eight years at Chattahoochee waiting to be judged competent to stand trial. In my untrained psychological opinion, Willie McGee was no more competent to stand trial than was Calija, the wooden Indian, in that Hank Williams song. What do I know?

One thing I’ve learned is that the average high school graduate prison guard is poorly-equipped to deal with or even understand the thousands of seriously-mentally ill people crowding the prisons. For an excellent account of how the federal court got involved in Florida’s pepper spraying and tear-gassing of the insane for rules violated, check out “Prison Legal News” at www.prisonlegalnews.org, September, 2009, edition, page 22, “Using Chemical Agents on Mentally Ill Prisoners Unconstitutional,” by David Reutter. Paul Wright, a former Washington state prisoner, publishes a monthly paper that is despised by prison systems across the nation. Needless to say, thinking prisoners love it. Check it out.

The federal court got involved when guards at Florida State Prison (FSP) continued to spray prisoners with “Liquid Jesus,” our name for pepper spray, with good reason. Take a good shot in the eyes with a chemical about a thousand times stronger than Tabasco sauce, and you will either find Jesus, become a believer, or scream, “Jesus Christ” at the top of your lungs as you writhe on the cell floor, eyes on fire.

This could become a powerful conversion tool, since every guard is now issued a personal spray can of “Liquid Jesus” to use when the industrial-sized fire extinguisher-type sprayers aren’t handy. The only problem is that sometimes particularly belligerent disturbed prisoners take the spray cans of “Liquid Jesus” away from the guards, and use it on them, with negative results.

The federal courts’ position is that some prisoners are so crazy that they don’t have the ability to obey the rules, resulting in repeated cries of “Jesus, Jesus” throughout FSP.

Just how crazy are these people? Let me quote the court’s descriptions of two prisoners, who I now nominate as candidates for “Cellmate of the Month.” Don’t laugh—I’ve had cellmates little different from these characters.

“Thomas’ symptoms include auditory hallucinations, impaired thought process, and paranoid delusions, and his behaviors while incarcerated have included acute agitation, maniacal banging on his cell door (to the point of breaking his own hands), eating his feces, pouring urine on his hands, exhibitionist masturbation, urinating on his mattress, attempting to cut his penis, and repeated suicide attempts.”

“McKinney has marginal intellectual functioning and propensities for anger and anti-social behavior. His ‘pathological’ behavior has resulted in 320 disciplinary reports over 18 years in prison. He has a history of self-injurious behavior and has been diagnosed at various times with having an adjustment disorder with depressed mood, anti-social personality disorders and major depression with recurrent psychotic ideations.”

If you can’t figure out what all that means, ask your friendly, local psychologist or shrink to explain it to you.

Down the hall from me lives a man who gets monthly testosterone injections because he castrated himself some years back. He’s one of the better behaved ones I have to live with.

In their endless drive to classify and pigeonhole prisoners and their conditions, the D.O.C. labels prisoners with “Psych. Grades 1, 2, or 3,” in open population. A “Psych – 3” is one of those prescribed psychotropic medications who have moderate impairment in adaptive functioning due to serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression, or borderline personality disorder. Nearly 80% of FSP’s 1400-plus prisoners are Psych-3’s. And you thought you had problems. Take some cookies to nosey Granny across the street and thank God Thomas or McKinney don’t live there.

I am a “Psych-1,” no mental illnesses, no psychological counseling, or psychotropic medications prescribed or needed. According to the D.O.C. experts, I am as “normal” as a person can be, especially considering that I have been living in nut houses for over thirty-one years and am surrounded on all sides by hundreds of “Psych-3’s” in varying states of mental disrepair. So why am I still here? Good question.

Thirty years ago, Dr. Walter Afield, a psychiatrist, Harvard Medical School, etc., testified at my trial after examining me that he had his doubts that anyone could twenty-five years and emerge to be a functioning member of society, but if anyone could do it, Charles Norman could. Thanks, Dr. Afield, for the endorsement. You were right. I just hope I get the chance to prove it soon.
Charlie