MY OWN JOURNAL FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 30 TO MAY 5, 2020

When the corona virus first started becoming a “thing” in this country, I never foresaw the madness that lay ahead. In prison you live in a tiny bubble and do not always feel the effects of the outside world. Being an inmate and watching the news is often like watching something in a foreign land, its simply surreal.

So many turns of events, surprises and horrors, came from Covid 19. I certainly never expected something like a virus to lead to a pandemic that would lead to early releases of prisoners, or that we would be locked in our unit and everyone would be running around in masks. I am so glad I started journaling this from the beginning when the Bureau of Prisons locked down. It is amazing how quickly humans forget, and I am shocked at how quick the details escape my brain. Every Saturday I go to type the adventures of the previous week and I find myself stopping to look at dates and second guessing MY OWN JOURNAL on when and how things went down. I could never have kept this all straight in my head. Life in prison can become rather mundane, but not with the covid. Here are the adventures of week 5 of the corona virus lockdown at the federal prison camp where I reside.

April 30, 2020 Thursday Day 30

23 people are getting ready to leave tomorrow for the mass exodus that is planned to happen tomorrow and lots of emotions are on high. Some of these ladies are getting huge blessings and getting years off their sentences, some are on time, and some are over due to leave. Right now, people that are a minimum (which generally means you are a first offender and/or you are a bit older) and have done 50% of their time are going home to home confinement. That is a real big deal. Until this virus, if you are a federal inmate, you do 85% of your time and the feds do not have a parole board for a possible early release. The first step act was supposed to change that a bit for some people, but 2 years later and it has yet to be implemented and has really been a big failure. It is just a first step, but we need to get to stepping to make some more change that might happen… and I will climb off my soap box now.

People that are lows (people with some criminal history or younger people with not much of their time done) that have been down for a while, could have got out of their beds and taken classes, worked, and not got in trouble and had a chance of being a minimum by the time the corona came around and they started passing out the golden tickets, but they didn’t. Many of these people are letting their envy get to them and they cannot seem to act right or carry themselves in a decent manner. I realize they are kicking themselves, but they have begun taking it out on others and making ridiculous snide remarks.

I am spending every second with my favorite little friend that has become an extra mom to me. She is going home to her family and I am going to miss her tremendously. She was supposed to be out in August but her home confinement was May and for some reason her case worker was insistent upon sending her to a halfway house although she has a home and a loving family that wanted her there. She was having to use her administrative remedies to try and battle the situation like so many inmates do when facing the same situation. The day she was called in to get her date to leave and go to direct home confinement due to the corona virus.

Most of the people leaving were from the original list that came down from central office on April 3, while other people that had been included on that list are still waiting around and not getting any answers and no dates. One of my best friends has begun to sleep her life away as depression is setting in. She was so happy to be on that list at the beginning of April and now she dangles lifelessly in limbo. She already turned in her uniforms and prepared to go with the rest of the herd, but she has been left behind, and it is hard to watch. She has a loving home and plenty of open arms eagerly awaiting her return home after being gone a long time, and they wait, and wait.

She has been the most realistic person I have met yet in prison. She has been a rock, my rock, and I am so grateful for her putting me back in my place, bringing me back to earth, and putting things into perspective. We

have worked together for a year and a half, she is my neighbor, and one of my best friends. She came to prison as a peaceful drug offender that had never been in trouble but had managed to catch herself a federal case after her addiction overpowered her. After serving seven years, she was scheduled to leave next year and had already signed her paperwork to start the process. This gal had completely accepted her sentence and she did every bit of her time with a smile on her face and works hard every single day putting her heart and soul into everything she does. I love taking classes with her as both of us are big into self-help. Her honesty and humor are unlike any other. She did not deserve this sentence or this game they seem to be playing with her. I could write until the end of time about unfair stories and unjust sentences for nonviolent first offenders serving lengthy sentences that just do not make sense. She deserves to get home to her family.

This is prison, but I am forever grateful for the experience of this strong community of amazing women I have encountered along the way…

May 1, 2020 Friday Day 31

Today is the day of the mass exodus. I am excited for the movement. I love to see people go home and every person that walks out that door is hope for me, and all of us that we too will leave and return to our families one day soon. It is even more exciting to see people get to go home years before their out dates. It represents hope that miracles do happen, and things can change. All this excitement and happiness and I must remember that it came because of a horrible disease and untimely deaths. Sometimes it is hard to know which emotion to feel, there is a lot going on.

There were 23 ladies scheduled to leave today. As their families gathered in the parking lot to pick them up, waiting obediently in their cars, all 23 ladies went as a group to admin to process out. One by one they checked out, all but one lady. She went up to check out only to find she was going nowhere. Her husband had driven 6 hours to pick her up and was waiting out among the rest of the families. He had visited her every other weekend for as long as she had been here and was so excited. He had a neck surgery planned for the next week and it was all working out great because she would be on home confinement and could help him. This is such a sweet committed couple that I always enjoyed watching in the visiting room and I hate to think of the disappointment they went through that morning. After signing her paperwork and being in quarantine with this group of 23 she had no indication that she would not walk out the door with the rest of them. They told her she would have to wait and would be leaving on May 11th now, the day her husband is to have surgery…

May 2, 2020 Saturday Day 32

I heard from a friend that left in the mass exodus yesterday. Apparently, they took all 22 ladies that were leaving, and strip searched them out before they left. I have never heard this place making people take their clothes off to look at their bodies before they head home. I just wonder what one of these ladies would possibly smuggle out of here on their bodies. It is not like you are not going out into the world where EVERYTHING is. This felt more like a weird power trip to some of these ladies. I also must wonder if it was a training exercise for new officers.

Let me just remind you we are at a camp. Many of these ladies will go through their entire prison stay without ever being in hand cuffs or being strip searched. So why they decided to have a mass exodus and mass strip search I do not think I will ever understand. Since they were leaving, I doubt any of them truly minded.

May 3, 2020 Sunday Day 33

Its nice outside and its nice in here. The doors are open and fresh air is blowing through. I really miss being able to go outside so I spent most of the day pouting and checking out the back of my eye lids. Although since we are now being counted every 2 to 3 hours, we all must get up and do our time.

Our normal counts on the weekends are at 1Oam, 4pm, and 9:30 pm, and during the week they only count at 4 pm and 9:30 pm. Since people are freaking out and wandering off from camps because there is no fence, we have additional counts. The additional ones are more like approximate times. I think they try to catch us slipping because the 7 pm count falls between 6 and 8 pm. This makes taking a shower and video visits real interesting.

During regularly scheduled counts we do not have the option to schedule a visit, as those times are blocked out and set in stone. Some of us must work all day so we must schedule our visits during these wild card hours

and it can be a real crap shoot depending on the guard on duty. There are only two computers you can visit on and some guards just count us while we visit. Other guards make a huge production and make people go back to their cubicles and wait for them to count the whole building while the minutes tick by and they lose more moments with their families. It seems to be a new strange power trip and I find it fascinating and irritating all at the same time.

When guards start getting off on weird control trips I must wonder if they have any knowledge of the Stanford Prison experiments or even Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to authority. I feel like they should have at least a little knowledge of these interesting experiments and how easily fallible humans can go wrong. If they studied things like this, maybe some red flags would go up when they start doing weird things.

Guards that have always been respectful and kind are starting to act out. Treating people badly when they are already immersed in a miserable situation is uncalled for. I hope they do not go home and kick their dog…

There are a few people leaving this week. They are not really quarantining anyone anymore, but these ladies are being kept in the quarantine ally. Only 3 people now remain in an otherwise empty ally that could hold up to 46 people. We all had assumed that after the mass exodus they would move people back into this area to space us out a bit. Instead they have kept it off limits to everyone but these 3. What does not make sense is they can come in and out all they want, but no one else can go in. As of tomorrow, other people will be able to use the bathroom and the TV room which should help a bit.

May 5, 2020 Tuesday Day 35

9 people departed today. 5 from our housing unit and 4 from the other. Most of them were due to leave, but some had some time to do but got to leave due to long standing battles with auto immune diseases that put them at great risk for the corona virus.

I cannot say I notice a thinning of this place just yet. We have a long way to go to get there but the movement continues, so maybe one day we will have the ability to adhere to social distancing guidelines that have been suggested. We are all still well and we are grateful for that. It is hard to wrap our brains around what other institutions are going though since we have yet to have a single case of the covid.

Once again, it seems the heat has died and walking into the unit after work was like walking into a freezer. I cannot believe how cold it is in here. Everyone is walking around with gloves and hats like it is the dead of winter.