hahnscratch

one man's perspective on the inside

[hahnscratch-blog]

The Incarcerated Imagination

I entered the courtroom through the prisoner’s door. My lawyer entered the courtroom through the door that lead to freedom. A Sheriff escorted me to the jury box, where prisoners sat for routine court appearances. My lawyer walked alone to the desk where the district attorneys sat. From across the room, I watched them quietly discuss something.

My lawyer looked at me and nodded. I nodded back. He turned around and walked out the door he had come in.

One of the prosecutors approached the podium and addressed the court, “Your Honor, we have decided to drop all charges against Mr. Hahn.”

The judge looked at me and said, “You can go home, now”.

My knees weakened and I fell to the floor. I wailed loudly as I tried to crawl into the seat behind me. And then I woke up. I stared at the dull white ceiling of my cell.

I used to dream about being free. Early on, while I was still facing a life sentence and had yet to be sent to prison, I dreamt of the miraculous. The impossible.

But the miraculous never happened and I was sentenced to prison. Not for life, but for long enough that there was no sense thinking about home. Prison was home.

As the years went by, I continued to dream about freedom. I would be somewhere that wasn’t the penitentiary. A park. My grandparents’ house. A randomly constructed locale that existed only in my imagination.

Sometimes I would be with family. Sometimes with friends. And in every dream I would have a semi-lucid moment in which I would say to myself, “Wait. How did I get here? Why am I free? I am not supposed to be here”.

This dream scenario would play itself out over and over again, and would eventually get to the point at which I would start manufacturing my reasons for being free.

I’d calculate how many years I still had until my parole date and say to myself, “Oh yeah, they must’ve let me out early”.

Sometimes, I’d think that I must’ve escaped prison and the dream would take on the desperate, paranoid, and terrifying trajectory of figuring out how to avoid capture once again.

And in one dream, I remember a friend asking me how it was that I was able to come home so early. “I’m not home,” I responded. “I’m only out temporarily. Like a field trip. I have to go back to prison soon”.

Eventually, maybe five or so years into my sentence, I stopped dreaming about being free. I only dreamed about prison. Everything that happened in the dreamscape, even if it happened to take place in a location that appeared to be outside of penitentiary walls, nonetheless took place in the context of prison. The people were from prison. The sense of surveillance that characterized every waking moment had pervaded my dream world. In addition to having an incarcerated reality, I had an incarcerated imagination.

It wasn’t until I had less than a year left that I become unable to avoid thinking about the fact that I would be paroling. That I wouldn’t be waking up in a jail or a prison or a cell or a dormitory. This brought me a great deal of anxiety. The free world had become so unfamiliar. So daunting.

Though I was no longer capable of dreaming about freedom, I nonetheless found myself daydreaming about it. It wasn’t freedom, per say, that I thought of; instead, it was the moment I achieved it. The moment of parole.

I imagined walking away from prison for the last time.  I imagined my parents waiting for me. I would kiss the ground, I thought to myself. In my reveries I’d cry softly. What will it be like to leave this place? How will I respond? Will I come apart at the seams?

At midnight on February 9th, 2012, I completed my 2,485th day of continuous incarceration. I was in the fire camp office and I watched the headlights of a car descend the driveway towards me. My parents stepped out and walked through the door.

I stood beside a cabinet which held the photographs of all the men currently incarcerated at the camp. A low, saloon-style gate separated me from my parents. Tears welled up but did not descend. My heart pounded. I was weak and anxious.

“Hi, guys,” I said to my parents. My voice was soft and trembling. I was wearing a San Jose Sharks jersey, fully personalized by the team. “It’s time to go”.

Officer Martinez, who’d been standing beside me the whole time, walked over to the C.O.’s desk, sat down, and picked up the phone to call me out.

“Inmate Hahn. F-as-in-Frank, five, two, nine, nine, five.” He said. “Yes, he is ready.” He paused and looked up at the cabinet beside me. “The new count is eighty six. Yes, eighty six.”

"Matt,” Officer Martinez said and handed me a clipboard with my parole paperwork. My mugshot was stapled to the top. “Sign the top paper, that’s for the receipt of all your money”.

As I signed the paperwork, he stood up, walked to the cabinet, and slid open its glass door. He grabbed my photo, handed it to me, and then erased the number eighty seven and wrote eighty six. “You’re gone, man.”

I looked at my parents and they smiled. I took a step towards the gate, but was stopped by Officer Martinez’s voice.

“Matt”, he said. “Its been a pleasure having you here. Its people like you that make doing this job worthwhile.”

“Thank you, “ I said and looked him in the eyes.

“And I want you to know that I couldn’t say it before but I can say it now. I consider you my friend and I want the best for you”. He opened his arms and we hugged.

I stepped through the saloon-style gate and into my parents arms. I did not cry. I did not kiss the ground. It would take some time before I could do that.

In the early months following parole, I started to have moments in which I realized that I was no longer in prison. I'd be driving down the freeway and a certain song would play on the radio or the sun would strike a chord with the clouds, and I'd suddenly remember where I'd been just a short time before. That I was no longer there.

"Wait", I'd say to myself. "I'm not supposed to be here". Like I was still in a dream from the early years of my incarceration. Like there was some sort of glitch in the matrix. And then I'd realize that I was, in fact, free and I'd cry. Blubbering like a moron down the freeway, grateful to be alive.

These moments don't come as often anymore. Anniversaries usually bring them. April, when I went in. February, when I came home. And if I'm lucky, I have a couple more of them throughout the year.

Six years later, I still dream of prison. It is always terrifying and I always say to myself, "Wait. How did I get here?" I then go through a long list of all the crimes I hadn't commit and all the people who might be out to get me. I have yet to offer myself the consolation that I am there on a field trip.

Maybe that's just how it is now. Wherever I happen to be, I somewhere, subconsciously, wonder if I may be dreaming. When I am supposed to be serving a life sentence and I am not, it's easy to feel like I am perched somewhere between a dream and reality. I will always, in some capacity, feel like I am on borrowed time. Borrowed free time.

[hahnscratch-blog]

Into The Snake Pit

The video promoting racial integration started playing on Folsom’s internal television network sometime in early 2008. It depicted interviews with prisoners of different races who, presumably, had been at a prison where racial integration had already been implemented. They seemed to be happy with the new policy and expressed satisfaction with the newfound, relaxed relationship that the different races enjoyed on the yard.

I recognized one of the interviewees, he was somebody I knew from the county jail, and I’d always thought he was an all-around good guy. Nonetheless, the nature of the video made me suspect that he might be “reporting” from a protective custody yard, which seemed like it would’ve been the right place to start if the Department of Corrections was trying to implement a policy of racially integrated housing.

The fellas on the yard concurred. “All those dudes in that video are pieces of shit, ” they said (Pieces of shit, by the way, is prison parlance for anybody who lives on a protective custody yard, such as sex offenders, gang dropouts, and snitches). “There’s no way in hell that happened in general population, otherwise we would’ve heard about it by now,” another chimed in. This was true, word travels faster than one might think between the various prison populations in California.

As expected, the homeboys made sure everybody knew what the attitude towards such a policy would be if and when it happened. “No fucking way. We won’t do it. You won’t do it. None of us will ever, ever, take a cell with a Black dude. We’ll riot if we have to”. That was settled. Since there was no real way, yet, of knowing how the CDCR was going to try to implement this interracial housing policy, which came as the result of a recent Supreme Court decision, there was no real way to devise a strategy for dealing with it.

The interview ducats started arriving shortly after the video began airing. We were all expected to individually report to our housing unit’s Lieutenant for an interview about racial integration. Clerks from within the administrative offices started leaking to the rest of the population what the interviews would entail so we had time to game plan. Mandatory meetings with our keyholders or their representative were called in order to prepare us for the questions (see: “Penitentiary Politics: An Overview“).

In sum, we learned that the Lieutenant would ask a very short list of questions regarding our racial status, our participation in racially organized groups, and what we would do if directed to house with a member of a different race. Our instructions on the yard were simple, we’d tell the Lieutenant exactly what he wanted to hear. We were White, we were not a part of any racially organized groups, and we had no problems with members of different races or housing with them. I had no idea whatsoever what instructions members of other races received, if any, though I imagine the Surenos were advised similarly.

My interview came and went without any hiccups. I both lied and told the truth when I was asked about how I would respond to integrated housing. I didn’t have a problem with members of another race and housing with them, which was true, and I would do as asked when directed to share a cell with one, which was, of course, a lie. I got the impression during the interview that it was routine and relatively unimportant to the Lieutenant how I actually answered the questions. He was basically creating a legal document to be used against me if and when I refused housing with a member of another race. I imagined my future disciplinary hearing during which the Lieutenant would wave my interview’s record sheet while saying, “But Inmate Hahn, you said you would house peacefully with members of others races. Were you lying to me?”.

The video stopped airing. The interviews were completed. And all talk of racial integration faded from discussion on the yard. That was the spring of 2008.

During the fall of that same year, as I was preparing to go to classification and, hopefully, get transferred to a prison in Jamestown where I would be able to do firefighter training, rumors of experiments with integrated housing started to filter in. There had been some riots. There had been a work strike. Hundreds of people had gone to the hole. And it had all happened at the Level 2 yard at Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown, where I was hoping to go.

I had my annual classification hearing in December of 2008 and was on the bus from Folsom to Jamestown a couple of weeks later. Though I was excited to be leaving the three yard, a serious knot formed in my stomach as I pondered the situation at the prison I was headed to. I hadn’t been in Jamestown for long when I was given the run-down.

While still in the holding tanks in Receiving and Release, waiting to be housed, the White clerk approached the Woods in the cage. “So, they’re doing integrated housing,” he said and then paused. “All housing is random.  You might get lucky, you probably won’t. All the White boys are refusing.”

“And what’s happening?” I asked.

“It’s a 115.  90 days.  Some guys are getting program failure and having their eligibility for camp rescinded for 120 days.”

This was bad news for a number of reasons.  First of all, I had 29 points, which was right on the cusp of Level 2 (See: “Classifying A Prisoner“). I couldn’t afford a write-up.  If I got any points, I might be sent right back to the Level 3 yard I came from. I started to formulate the potential consequences of this integrated housing project and my mandatory refusal. My plan was falling apart.

This plan of mine was to get to fire camp, where inmates serve as wild land firefighters for Cal-Fire. It was a good gig.  Camps had good food, more humane surroundings, higher paying wages, opportunities to work in hobby shops (where we could do woodworking, painting, metalworking, etc), and was a far cry from the misery of life behind the walls. Most importantly, for me at least, was that my release date would come more than a year and half earlier once I got there. I had to get to fire camp. I had negotiated my original plea bargain of 14 years with the assumption that I would eventually get there.

Jamestown was one of two prisons in the state of California to have the wild land firefighter training program and I was preparing to refuse a bunk that might prevent me from taking part. Even if I didn’t get sent away from Jamestown, even if I just got a write-up and had my transfer to camp delayed 6 or so months, every single day I spent not in fire camp meant I would parole just a bit later (I was serving 50% of my sentence behind the walls, and would serve 33% in fire camp).  This was a nightmare and it was one in which I had virtually no options.  If I accepted a bunk with someone of a different race, I would receive a severe beat-down and would most certainly never get to fire camp. My only chance at camp was to refuse, even if I had to get there later.

I, along with the other inmates from the cage, was eventually given my property and filed out to the yard’s office, where we received our housing assignments.  A handful of guards escorted us to the dormitories we’d been assigned to.  When we approached Dorm 23, where I was supposed to be living, the guards made us stay outside while one of them opened the door and directed everyone inside to get onto their bunks.

The officer returned outside and directed me to come in.  Three or four guards stood beside the door as I entered.  I stood in the middle of the dorm.  All the men were sitting on their bunks, wearing their boots.  All eyes were on me.  My heart was racing. “What’s your name, inmate?” the guard asked.

“Hahn.”

“Alright Hahn, this is your assigned bunk.”  He pointed to the double rack with an empty top bunk immediately beside us. “Will you accept this housing?”

I looked at the lower bunk and saw a Mexican guy, probably a Sureno, sitting on it. “No,” I said.  “I won’t take that bunk.”

“Are you refusing this housing assignment?”

“Yes, I am”.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes”.

“I’ll give you a moment to decide,” the guard responded while walking to the door of the dormitory. I followed him out. Once outside, I was directed by the guards to return to the yard office in order to receive my new housing assignment.

I joined a small crowd of men who had also refused their housing. We stood on the yard with our garbage bags full of personal property and watched as the guards repeated the ritual with other prisoners at different dormitories. One guard would go in and then come back out. Then he would go back in with the new prisoner in tow. I noticed that the guards outside would leave the dormitory unlocked and place their hands on their billy clubs, readying for action. I was starting to get a better idea of what was happening.

When a White or Sureno prisoner was getting housed with someone of a different race, the course of events was predictable. Guard in, inmate in, and then, just thirty seconds or so later, guard out and inmate out.

With Black or Other prisoners, it wasn’t quite the same. The guard would go in and the inmate would follow, but when the guard came back out, it usually took a minute or two for the inmate to emerge through the doorway of the dormitory. During this time, the guards waited outside the door in high alert, presumably listening for the sounds of fighting. There was no noticeable difference in the way the guards performed their housing ritual, but there was a definite difference in the way that prisoners of different races behaved. There was only one possible reason for this: Blacks and Others had different instructions for integrated housing than the Whites and Surenos. This was a firecracker waiting to go off.

Each inmate that went into the dorm walked into a snake pit, and the guards knew it. They knew it enough to wait outside the dormitory with their billy clubs and pepper spray on ready. They knew they were asking the inmates to do something that was putting their personal safety at risk, yet the only people who would pay the price would be the inmates themselves. A riot and write-ups, if they took the bunk, or a write-up, if they didn’t.

Out of the dozen or so people I was housed with that day, only one had a winning lottery ticket. The rest of us refused our housing, marched back to the yard office, were informed that we’d be receiving as CDC-115, and were given new housing with a member of our own race.

What was my mother going to say when I had to tell her why I was going to be coming home later, I thought. I felt an intense amount of shame.

Ironically, I was sent back to Dorm 23 for housing. No guards escorted me. I waited outside for a guard to walk by and was let in. I had a double bunk with a White bunky, just beside the original bunk I had refused. Why couldn’t they have just assigned me to this bunk in the first place?  I lamented.

Upon arrival, I learned much more about the goings-on at Sierra Conservation Center. The Blacks and Others did, in fact, have different instructions which is why they took longer to come out of the dorm. They were not required to refuse and they were informed of this when they came into the dorm. They were told by their shotcallers that it was their choice to take a bunk with a man of a different race and that they’d have their back when the fighting started. Ninety-five percent of the time, the Blacks or Others refused the bunk, but every once in awhile they didn’t. Fortunately, it never happened in a dorm that I lived in.

When Jamestown had first started the integrated housing, there was an enormous work strike on the part of the inmates. Operations slowed to a crawl and hundred of inmates received CDC-115’s for work refusal.  Many hundreds more received CDC-115’s for refusal of a housing assignment. Countless people were escorted to the hole for dorm fights, receiving CDC-115’s for participation in a riot.

By the time I’d arrived at Jamestown, integrated housing had been a reality for just over a month. The disciplinary paperwork was so backed-up that the Lieutenants and their clerks couldn’t keep up. This ended up being beneficial for me. My write-up wasn’t processed in time, or at all, and I ended up never getting served a CDC-115. I’ve conjectured that I may have been housed at the same time as shift change, which may have helped me out as well. Most of the men around me weren’t so lucky.

If I had to make an estimate, I’d guess that there had been over one thousand write-ups associated with integrated housing, ranging in penalties of 30 to 90 days loss of good time. Couple that with people being held back from camp for the duration of their disciplinary periods, and my guess would be that more than 100 years of additional time had been added to the prisoners’ collective release dates by time I left Jamestown in March of 2009.

Integrated housing was a failed experiment and it ended less than six months after it began. The Supreme Court would have to wait. I think it still does.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017

[hahnscratch-blog]

Penitentiary Politics

This represents the second in a series of periodic posts in which I explain some facet of the prison system which may be helpful in understanding my stories and, as a result, the penal system as a whole. Feel free to post questions in the comments section.

I sneaked out of my cell after the 430 count and made my way to the San Quentin chow hall, acting like I knew what I was doing and that I was supposed to be doing it. It was my first day in prison and a White boy from San Jose had told me to do it.  So, I did.

Near the scullery beside the kitchen, I saw the other White boys (also called “Woods”) and headed in their direction. I met Rick, the shotcaller for the Woods from Santa Clara County. He asked if I knew the rules.  I didn’t know the rules. I was twenty years old and I was a fish out of water.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I know the rules. But why don’t you refresh me anyhow.”

“Its like this,” he said and paused. “Three rules.  Follow these, and you’re straight. Number one, don’t fuck with no niggers. That means you don’t drink with them, smoke with them, eat after them, play games with them, hang out in their area on the yard, nothing.”

I swallowed.

“Rule number two, don’t fuck with no faggots. No Woods from Santa Clara County are gonna get their dicks sucked by no punks.”

“Okay.”

“And rule three, don’t gamble more than you’ve got. Simple. You got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.” And then I was initiated. The guys sort of circled around me and made like they were gonna beat me up, but they didn’t. They threw some punches that didn’t hurt and embraced me in one way or the other. I then went around the circle and introduced myself to the guys who would have my back in that very scary place that had, suddenly, become my home.

I don’t imagine my story is particularly unique so far as prison initiations go. Sure, different races had different rules and I’m sure they were explained in a different manner and setting for everyone, but, at some point, every new convict had to get the run down. And it had to happen quick.

Every racial group within the California prison system has their own internal structure. I can only speak, personally, about the ways that the Woods organize themselves, though other racial groups must have similar, overlapping structures for the system to work. As a general rule of thumb, there were six major groups to speak of within the prison system: the Woods, the Nortenos, the Surenos, the Paisas, the Blacks, and the Others. Within each of these groups, there were subcategories which we can ignore for now because they tend to complicate things a bit.

As mentioned above, the Woods, short for peckerwoods, are the White boys. All Whites who come to prison are, in a general way, part of the Woods.  Skinheads and other White gang members may consider themselves separate and have their own political structure, but they still, for the most part, operate within the greater vehicle of the Woods. They have the same basic rules that they follow.

The Surenos are the gang-affiliated Hispanic population that tends to hail from Southern California.  The Nortenos represent the opposite side of the coin and tend to come from Central and Northern California. The Surenos and Nortenos are mortal enemies, and it is rare that one finds them sharing the same prison yard. They often have an “on sight policy”, meaning that their members are expected to beat up or take out any member of the rival gang the moment they ever find themselves in the other’s presence.

The Paisas are the non-gang-affiliated Hispanic population and they tend to be first and second generation, Spanish-speaking Mexicans.

The Blacks are about as self-explanatory as are the Woods. Rival gangs, such as Bloods and Crips, tend to have a peace agreement while in prison, though internal problems occasionally arise.

The Others racial group includes almost everyone else.  Asians, Pacific Islanders, Indians (from India), and other minority groups tend to band together, even while maintaining their individual group’s political structure (if they have the numbers for it).

What is important to know is the way that these racial groups ally themselves. Woods and Surenos are allies; Blacks, Nortenos, and Others are allies. On the prison yards where I lived, the Paisas tended to be allied with the Surenos.  When I was in the county jail, there was a severely strained relationship between Nortenos and Paisas because the Nortenos always seemed to suspect that there were Surenos “hiding out” within the Paisa population.

When groups are allies, they will not house together or share the same space on the yard, but they will play games, share food, and call on each other for backup if there are more serious issues.  Thus, as a Wood, I could be friendly and eat food with Surenos, but not with Nortenos, Blacks, or Others.  The consequences for transgressions of the rules are fairly severe, especially on the higher security level yards. A severe assault or death are the potential consequences of not following the rules.

The primary unit I was a part of was my “car”. A car contains all the Woods from my particular area of residence, so, in my case, Santa Clara County. Sometimes, cars get combined because a neighboring county may have a very small inmate population; at many of the prisons I went to, men from Santa Cruz County ran with the Santa Clara County car.  Everyone within my car was considered a “homeboy” (I’m sure many of you out there have wondered about the origin of this word).

The leader of any particular car is called a shotcaller, but is usually referred to as “holding the keys (to the car)”. So, when I was in San Quentin, Rick held the keys for the Santa Clara County car.  Obviously, when a convict goes to a new prison or a current shotcaller is transferred away, the keyholder changes.

The responsibility of the keyholder lies primarily in ensuring that the members of the car stay in line. The first line of business for the shotcaller is to ensure that his car’s membership contains no snitches or sex offenders (which is verified by checking a new fish’s court paperwork). If a member of a car violates one rule or another, it is the shotcaller’s responsibility to put that member in check, which sometimes involves using the full force of the other members of the car. Yes, this means that people will often get beat up by their homeboys.

Because a keyholder is responsible for his members, it is also his responsibility to confer with the shotcallers from other cars when an issue arises between two members of different cars. This hierarchy aims to prevent people from taking matters into their own hands, thus trying to avoid serious problems on the yard.

There is also a shotcaller or keyholder for all the Woods on the yard. He would be the one to make larger decisions involving the Whites as a whole and would also be responsible for negotiating with the leaders of different racial groups when tension arises.

The yard, itself, is divided into areas that are restricted to the members of a specific racial group. There are White, Sureno, and Black pull-up bars, handball courts, basketball courts, and card tables. In dormitory living, there are White, Sureno, and Black televisions (if there are multiple t.v.’s) or a  rotating schedule of White days, Blacks days, or Sureno days (when there is only one t.v.).  You may have noticed that I failed to mention Nortenos, Others, or Paisas. The Paisas usually share space and televisions with the Surenos and the Others share space and televisions with the Blacks. I never lived on a Norteno yard in prison, but I imagine the set-up would be similar.

Folsom State Prison has one of the smallest yards in the prison system and, as such, there was a lot of sharing going on.  For example, there was only one basketball court, so the Blacks and Others had half the court and the Whites and Surenos had the other. There was a bit of comedy in this. Whenever a ball would bounce onto the other side of the court, it couldn’t be followed; instead, one had to wait for someone from the other side to grab the ball and toss it back. Walking through the territory of another race is a not allowed. It is the equivalent of invading a foreign nation. Even Woods can’t enter the Sureno area without permission, and vice versa; a Wood would never, ever enter a Black or Other area.

This all sounds very orderly, I know.  The rules are fairly clear. Even the different territories on the yard are pretty easy to recognize. In some cases, white lines are painted on the ground between racial areas to designate the boundaries. But that doesn’t stop problems from arising.  There are always grey areas. There are always people who toe the line. And there are always people who cross the line.  What happens then?

There was a riot between the Blacks and Whites in Folsom during the fall of 2008. It started because a Skinhead took exception to the presence on the yard of a White Crip; in other words, he saw this guy as a race traitor.  The Skinhead confronted the Crip near the basketball court, challenging him to a one-on-one, and then every Wood and every Black on the yard ended up involved in the skirmish.  Let’s unpack this a bit.

At Folsom, there was a tenuous agreement between the Blacks and Woods regarding White Crips. If a White boy showed up at the prison who was running with the Blacks, the Woods had one week to take the guy out without causing a racial riot.  Of course, there were no guarantees, this was prison after all, but that was the gist of it.  The sooner someone is removed from the yard the less chance he has of making friends. Somehow, this White Crip survived that first week and had been living at Folsom for well over a month. The Skinhead who confronted him didn’t care. He had decided he was going to do something about it and challenged the White Crip to a one-on-one fist fight.

There are a lot of things wrong with this, but we will just focus on the practical aspects of it. There is no such thing as a one-on-one with a member of another race. It just can’t happen.  In some cases, it is strictly prohibited from occurring, but in almost all cases there is just no feasible way for a one-on-one to remain a one-on-one.  This has to do with the rules of war.

As a Wood, I was expected to protect any other Wood who was being assaulted or harassed by a member of a different race. If a fight started and it happened to involve a Wood and another race (even an ally), I had no option but to jump (See: “Shots On The Yard”). I absolutely had to get involved or I would face the wrath of my homeboys later. Every racial group in prison has a similar rule of engagement. Jump first, think later.

So, when the Skinhead challenged the White Crip to a fight on the yard, maybe he was hoping that other Woods and Blacks on the yard would think it was just White on White and nobody would jump. But that’s not what happened. The Crip had been on the yard long enough and his homeboys recognized him immediately once the tussle began. Blacks ran to the fight and started hitting Woods.  Woods saw Woods fighting Blacks and more Woods came swarming in. In very short order, the entire area surrounding the basketball court was involved in a full line brawl.

The riot came to an end within a few minutes once guards started firing block guns and smoke grenades, using pepper spray and billy clubs.  Many dozens more guards showed up, having been called over from the other prison across the street, and hundreds of men were led off the yard to the hole. The lockdown lasted more than a month, during which time Blacks and Whites were restricted to their cells and prevented from having contact with each other.

During a lockdown, there is always the fear that the fighting will resume once the lockdown is over. Resentments run deep in the penitentiary. The Department of Corrections has a way of trying to ease people back into the swing of normal, racially-integrated programming. First, they will allow members of one of the offending racial groups (often a shot-caller, or someone who represents him) to leave their cell and approach the cells of the rival shot-callers. Discussions and negotiations happen. Perhaps some promises are made.

You may be asking yourself: wait, does the Department of Corrections actually sanction the racial political structure and use known shot-callers to manage racial tension on the yard?  Yes and no. Its complicated. There is something called the Mens’ Advisory Council (MAC), which is the penitentiary’s equivalent of an elementary school student council. Each racial group elects their own MAC representatives who serve as the liaison between the California Department of Corrections administrators and the inmate population. In their official capacity, MAC reps voice grievances and propose changes to certain aspects of the prison’s functioning (such as what flavors of Top Ramen are available at the canteen). MAC reps are also the ones that the CDC often calls upon during lockdowns to negotiate with the other MAC reps.  The thing is, racial groups usually elect a keyholder, or somebody who has the capacity to represent a keyholder, as their MAC rep.  Thus, the CDC unofficially uses shot-callers to mitigate racial issues by officially utilizing the MAC reps.

So, after the shot callers qua MAC reps have made their rounds of negotiations, all the Whites and only the Whites are allowed to go the yard. This facilitates the dissemination of information from the top of the political hierarchy to all the Woods, letting them know whether the beef has been squashed. Even if there has been an agreement to end hostilities, everyone is advised to remain on guard and that there will be mandatory yard for all Woods on the first day of normal program, because anything can happen.

The next day of lockdown, all the Blacks are allowed on the yard by themselves, repeating the process. These alternating all-White and all-Black days on the yard usually signal the coming end of a lockdown.

When the lockdown ended at Folsom in October of 2008, nothing ended up happening. The fighting did not recommence, though the tension was palpable for most of that first week. Eventually, normal race relations resumed and everyone went about their segregated business until the next racial incident. And there’s always a next racial incident.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017

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Shots On The Yard

I was about halfway through my evening jog when I saw Skinheads congregating in the corner of the yard. About ten in number, they huddled in right field’s foul territory along the fence that bordered the Pagan religious grounds.  They were up to something.

On my next lap, I took of note of their shifty eyes and their apparent lack of conversation. The one with the horns tattooed on his skull looked off in the distance toward the entrance to building five.  Another one peered behind me, presumably toward the gun tower above the entrance to building one.  I kept jogging.

The next time I passed, the same two Skinheads were maintaining their long-distance scouts, while a handful of others appeared to be focusing on something in the workout area immediately in front of Greystone Chapel.  I removed my headphones and continued onto my next lap.

Next go-round, I saw that almost all of them were directing their attention to the pull-up bars on my right.  Perhaps it was time to end my run, albeit early, and go take a shower. If something was going down, I didn’t need to be near it.  I had a visit the next morning. Mom was coming.

I slowed to a walk and headed toward my laundry bag, hanging on chain link fence between the group of Skinheads and the workout area. I grabbed my bag and casually took a sip from the water fountain, using it as an opportunity to scout them out a bit more.

Skinheads were on the move.  In my direction. I was relatively confident that the they weren’t coming for me, but I could never be too sure. There was always the spectre of Robbie Aitken.  Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I turned around and watched the crowd of Skins pass in front of me, headed left toward their target.  I slowly headed for the outfield near first base, which is when I heard the rumble begin.

Grunting. The slap of skin. The thud of dozens of fists on flesh. A cry for pain. I nonchalantly look over my shoulder. I had to ascertain the race of the victim. I prayed to myself that he was White, which would mean that I wouldn’t have to get involved.

A man was on his knees, erratically waving his arms in a vain attempt to thwart the blows that befell him. Fists struck his face, his head, his neck. Taking a couple of boots to the abdomen, he made an attempt at fleeing and his scrambling brought him in my direction. He was White. He looked like a Skinhead as well. An internal affair, then.

I had to be cool. No alarms were yet sounding on the yard. I had to excise myself from the situation without drawing attention to the melee beside me. Running would be snitching. Ignoring everything my body wanted to do, I walked carefully forward, pretending that the eddying maelstrom wasn’t following close behind.

As my shoes touched the grass in right field, the alarms went off.  I would have to get supine soon. “Everybody get the fuck down!” I heard from a distant corner of the yard.  Anybody left standing would be considered part of the problem.

The fighting continued and swirled near first base. “Down on the yard!” shouted a voice over the loudspeakers. My peripheral vison indicated that almost everyone was sitting or lying down.  Everyone, that is, except myself, the Skinheads beside me, and the men in green converging upon us.  All eyes were on me, or, at the very least, on my section of the yard. My performance was key.

I dropped my laundry bag on the ground and faced the fight. The victim was curled into the fetal position in the dirt as feet and fists continued to pummel him. I made a show of watching the fight, just to let any White boys on the yard know that I was aware of what was happening and willing to jump if needed. But I wasn’t needed, so I took a knee.

I planted both of my hands into the grass in front of me and started to get down. Suddenly, the ground beside my hands exploded in a poof of dust, followed immediately by the crack of a gunshot, which echoed off the granite walls of the yard. The gunner had opened fire and he had almost hit me. The moment crawled, hearing only the alarms and the thud of my heart.

Without thinking, I stood up and scurried to a place about twenty feet deeper into right field. More shots rang out.  Maybe two. The echoing made it difficult to tell.

I laid face down in the grass and inhaled deeply the dusty air of earth. Fear caught up with me. Placing  my right cheek on the ground, I faced the infield.  All of the skinheads were on the ground. Gunshots do that. A faint jingle of keys emerged from the cacophony and the guards were upon us.

The officers dragged some of the skinheads away from the victim, who was bleeding in the dirt. Some Skinheads were handcuffed.  Radio chatter between guards revealed that a gurney was on the way. About a dozen or so guards arrived and started taking away handcuffed Skins, presumably to the hole.

One of the guards standing nearby me yelled at another, “Hey, what about this one?”  He was pointing at me.

“No, not him.  Just these guys”, the other one replied, indicating the remaining skinheads near first base. Phew, I thought. About a year earlier, I had decided to start growing my hair long in order to avoid being confused with Skinheads.  It had been in preparation for a moment just like this one and it appeared to have worked.  There were cameras directly in front of Greystone Chapel which probably would’ve cleared me of any wrongdoing, eventually, but it wouldn’t have happened before my visit the next day.  Or before spending at least a week in the hole.

The gurney arrived and officers lifted the bloody, dirty, moaning man onto it. He was moving his arms and looked to be okay, relatively speaking, but I didn’t envy his predicament. He would, in all likelihood, never walk the mainline again.  To the SNY yard he’d have to go. (see: “Classifying A Prisoner”)

The remaining skinheads were escorted off the yard. Thirty to forty minutes passed uneventfully. Guards in front of building one appeared to be scouring the yard, looking for gun casings (they have to collect the shells that get ejected from the gun when they are fired from the tower).  A couple of nurses arrived on the baseball field and began examining inmates.  When she got to me, she told me to sit up and remove my shirt. I did as she asked.

“Do you have any injuries?” she asked gently.

“No, but I wasn’t involved.”

“Were you struck by anything? Metal fragments? Anything like that?”

“No.”

She took down my name and CDC number, and then proceeded to fill out a document which provided a record of my medical examination. No injuries.  The nurse moved on to the next inmate and I laid back on the ground.

I noticed that a little yellow flag had been inserted into the dirt where that bullet had struck the ground right in front of me. I looked around and saw two other flags, one of them almost all the way out in center field. What had that gunner been shooting at and why had his aim been so erratic?

I would get my answer just a bit later, while eavesdropping on a conversation between a lieutenant and another officer.

“Which tower?”

“Unit one, entry.”

“How many shots?”

“Three.”

“And we have the casings?”

“No, no casings.”

“None of them can be located?”

“No, and that’s because there aren’t any.”

“Why?”

“His fourteen jammed, couldn’t get it to fire.  So, he used his sidearm.”

You had to be fucking kidding me, I thought. Only guards in towers and catwalks carry firearms.  They typically carry two firearms, a Mini-14 rifle and a sidearm. The Mini-14 was meant to be used on the inmates below, and the sidearm was intended for the nearly impossible scenario in which a prisoner finds access to the tower.

The conversation I overheard told a rather remarkable story.  The gunner had been firing at us from above the entrance to building one, which was between 50 and 75 yards away. A fairly long distance for moving targets.  His rifle had jammed up or misfired, so he resorted to using his sidearm. A pistol. To fire into a crowd, near a crowd, however one wants to look at it. The bullet that had struck the ground right in front of me had been meant for one of the characters maybe 15 or so feet away from me. I couldn’t believe that a guard had used a pistol to fire wildly into a crowd from across the yard.

My brush with death wasn’t lost on me. If I had laid down sooner, there’s no telling what would’ve happened to me.  Perhaps the gunner wouldn’t have shot in my direction, or perhaps he would’ve shot in the exact same spot and my life story would be significantly different.

Either way, I was fortunate that the victim had been White. If he’d been any other race, we would’ve been locked down and I would’ve missed my visit the next day.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017

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Classifying A Prisoner

This represents the first in a series of periodic posts in which I explain some facet of the prison system which may be helpful in understanding my stories and, as a result, the penal system as a whole. Feel free to post questions in the comments section.

Perhaps you’ve read a couple of my posts and found yourself wondering how it is that I came to be living with men who were convicted of seriously violent, and at times, heinous crimes. I’m not talking about what I did personally to land in the clinker. We can save that for another post. What I’m talking about is how it is that the California Department of Corrections (and Rehabilitation) decides which prisoners will go where and who they should or shouldn’t live with.

The first thing we need to think about are the four basic security levels that characterize the prisons in California. They are conveniently labeled Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 in ascending order from low security to high security.

Level 3 and 4 are both what can be termed maximum security. In both cases, the prison has a secure perimeter fence or wall, inmates are housed in cell blocks, and there are armed guards in nearly every location of the prison, including the cell blocks, chow halls, and on the yard. The principal classificatory difference between Levels 3 and 4 lies in the locations of the cell blocks. In a Level 3 prison, the cell blocks can be adjacent to a perimeter wall and in a Level 4 they cannot. Obviously, this relates to the security of the prison and the types of prisoners the CDCR wishes to house there. But we’ll get to that in a bit. Old Folsom, where I lived for a couple of years and the subject of many of the stories on this blog, was a Level 3 prison when I was there.

Level 2 prisons are typically called medium security. Prisoners usually live in open space dormitories instead of cell blocks. There is usually an armed, secure perimeter fence and there may or may not be armed guards in the common spaces (but never in the actual housing areas). Sometimes, the back side of the housing units are actually part of the prison walls, as they were at the Level 2 in Jamestown, where I spent a handful months in 2009.

Level 1 prisons are minimum security. Inmates live in dormitories and there may or may not be a perimeter fence. There are no armed guards at a Level 1 facility. Sometimes, Level 1 prisons are called ‘camps’, as they often look more like the summer camp facilities we may have been to as a child rather than prisons. I spent 3 years in a Level 1 fire camp in Southern California, a facility reserved for inmates who are part of the state-wide wild land firefighting program. (Yes, California inmates fight fires.) The camp I lived in had had no walls, no fence, nothing physically preventing the residents from walking away from their prison sentence. Fire camps are a world unto themselves and I will be writing some personal stories about my time in one.

There are other types of prison sub-classifications which aren’t entirely necessary for understanding the inmate classification process, but I’ll briefly mention them. There are protective custody prisons for inmates who would be in danger if they were part of the general population. Also called “SNY’s” (Sensitive Needs Yards), these prisons house everyone from sex offenders to gang drop-outs to snitches to people who got themselves into too much trouble with other inmates in the general population. They have all four prison levels just like the general population, but I don’t know much else about them because I never lived in one.

Many people have also heard of the “SHU” (Secure Housing Unit), most commonly referred to as solitary confinement in the media and elsewhere.  The SHU, pronounced “shoe”, could be thought of as a Level 5 if there were one, and inmates have to earn the ability to live in one. There is a lot of controversy about when, if, and how inmates should be housed in these facilities, but the philosophy of the CDCR is that the SHU is supposed to hold inmates who would present a persistent danger to other inmates if they remained in the general population. Think of it as a prison within the prison. Again, there are a lot of problems with the SHU program but I won’t be getting into that here.

That’s the gist of it. Four levels, minimum to maximum, with the idealized segregation of the really dangerous and really endangered. But what determines which of these types of prisons a person will eventually come to live in? That is where inmate classification comes in to play.

When a person first gets to prison, he (or she) is sent from the county jail to a state prison designated as a reception center. While a prisoner is in reception, he will be locked in his cell 24 hours a day, with the exception of a few hours at the yard per week, while prison staff gathers all of his criminal history into a file in order to determine where to send him. This process can take a little as thirty days, if you’re lucky, and as much nine months, if you’re really unlucky. It usually takes about 3 months. Why it takes this long at all is beyond me, though I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the California prison system still uses paper for everything. Everything. Hence, they have to wait for documents to be retrieved, copied, mailed, delivered, compiled, and refiled before staff can try to make sense of it.

Basically, an inmate’s designation to a prison level comes as the result of a classification score. This classification score is the sum of a number of weighted factors that the CDCR deems to be a threat or security potential. These factors include, but are not limited to, the length of the prison term, the age of the inmate, the number of previous prison terms, gang affiliation, or recent violence against staff or inmates. I’ll use my own initial classification when I was in reception at DVI-Tracy, as an example.

Age at first arrest. 10 points. This is a measure of delinquency. Because I was 18 years old the first time I was arrested, I received the second highest score for this particular measure. Zero points are assessed for a person whose first arrest was after 36, and 12 points are assessed for a person who was arrested for a felony prior to 18. My point total = 10 points.

Age at reception. 6 points. This is the measure of testosterone; the younger the man the greater the threat potential. I was 26 at the time of reception. Eighteen year-olds get 8 points, 36 year-olds get none. My point total = 16 points.

Length of prison term, doubled. 28 points. This is clearly the measure of apathy; the longer the term the more somebody just doesn’t give a fuck. My sentence was 14 years and 4 months, so I had a pretty good bump in points because of this one. My point total = 44 points.

Gang / disruptive group. 0 points. This is fairly self-explanatory.

Mental illness. 0 points. This is an interesting one. A diagnosis with any serious mental illness raises the CDCR’s assessment of threat potential.

Prior jail sentence. 0 points. I actually should’ve gotten a point for this one, but I guess they didn’t read my file well enough.

Prior prison sentence. 1 point. They didn’t miss this one though. I think they are trying to measure whether an inmate has learned the system well-enough to manipulate it. More sentences would equal more manipulative skills. My point total = 45 points.

And that’s where I stood after classification. 45 points. There are other factors that are assessed on a case-by-case basis, such as recent disciplinary behavior, but none of that applied to me. Determining what level prison I would go to was fairly simple after this process had been completed. 0-19 points is Level 1, 20-29 points is Level 2, 30-49 points is Level 3, and 50+ points is Level 4. I was a Level 3 prisoner and was sent to Folsom State Prison in Represa, CA.

Let’s unpack this a little bit. So, I was a nonviolent offender who, because of my prior record and strict recidivism laws in California, received a fairly long sentence. There are plenty of people who might’ve received 5 or 10 years for a violent crime but, because they had no prior prison sentences or were older when they were first arrested, ended up at a Level 2 yard. Similarly, there are plenty of instances in which youngsters getting arrested for relatively minor, nonviolent felonies end up on the Level 3 yard due to the testosterone and delinquency measures. This, alone, means that violent and nonviolent offenders are going to be housed together, but it doesn’t explain why nonviolent offenders would share space with people who received really long sentences, such as murderers.

This happens because of good and bad behavior. Every disciplinary-free year a person spends in prison drops his classification score 4 points (if he is not working) or 8 points (if he is working). Thus, a man convicted of murder may start out with something like 90 points but could find his way onto a Level 3 yard within 10 or 15 years. And, moving in the other direction, bad behavior gets rewarded with additional classification points. Get in a fight, 6 points. Multiple contraband write-ups, 4 points. It only takes a couple of measly tattoo or tobacco write-ups to push a nonviolent offender in a Level 2 prison onto the same yard as that lifer who made his way down to Level 3.

And this is why any given prison is a melting pot of offender types. Of course, Level 4’s will always tend to have the most lifers and the most violent criminals, just like Level 1’s will always tend to have the greatest proportion of nonviolent offenders. It is at the Level 2 and 3’s where you will see the largest variety of offenders and, unfortunately, these are the two levels that most prisoners begin their sentences at. As such, almost every inmate, no matter what they ended up in prison for, must first learn to navigate the social minefield of the higher security level prisons. This is, of course, where people often get ruined.

Note: this classification scheme refers specifically to the way I was classified in 2006 and the way inmates continued to be classified until at least 2012 (when I paroled). It is my understanding that new state laws have impacted the way that inmates are classified, specifically, the number of points that determine which level prison an inmate will be housed at.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017

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Monastic Cellblocks

This was written in October 2009 while living in a minimum security fire camp in Southern California.

My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago and I recently received a copy of his obituary in the mail.  Among those survived by him was, “Matt Hahn of Santa Clarita, CA”.  Of course, Santa Clarita is the city in which the facility I live is located.  It just struck me as strange because it means that my family, who collectively wrote the obituary, thinks of me as actually living here, as in calling this place my home.

Contrast this with three years ago, when my step-sister died: the obituary read that she was survived by “Matt Hahn of Los Gatos, CA,” which was not where the cell I was living in was located.  Rather, Los Gatos was the last city I’d lived in while on the streets. This subtle yet significant change shows me that, after nearly five years of of being locked up, my family has come to see prison as where I call home.  Right or wrong, like it or not, this is my home.

I used to get into debates about this very issue with my buddy, Richard, on the yard.  He was disturbed by the fact that I referred to my cell as my “house” and Folsom as my “home”.  He said it showed a degree of comfort with living in prison that he never wanted to have.  Richard hated Folsom and said that he would never dare call it is home.  We agreed to disagree, my stance being that home is wherever one chooses to make it.  Seeing that I didn’t have much choice in the matter, I thought it worthwhile to make the best of things as they were.

I knew that Richard wouldn’t understand my take on this because he hated Folsom and I didn’t.  For a number of seemingly inexplicable reasons, Folsom was and is dear to me.  Of the dozen or so places I’ve lived in the past decade, I’ve spent the most time at Folsom and I think of it most fondly.

This probably strikes most of you in the unprison world as odd, maybe even pathological.  Perhaps you think that I am institutionalized, that I am like Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption and cannot live without the constant care of the penitentiary.  Perhaps you are right, but let me explain myself and then you can judge.

How can I think fondly of a place like Folsom?  Didn’t all sorts of awful things happen there?  Yes.  I was witness to and affected by a whole lot of terrible events that took place in my years there, from suicides to stabbings to riots to murders to you-name-it. It all happened.  An environment like that, I’ll admit, would make most any normal person grow to hate it.  I definitely see why Richard thought of it as he did, especially after the day he was unfortunate enough to be standing right next to a man who was quite literally hacked to death.  Still, as in all aspects of life, a lot of it depends upon what one chooses to focus.  99% of the men who go to and come from prison focus on the mayhem.  But it’s not all mayhem.

First of all, Folsom didn’t look like most prisons.  Or, perhaps, it is exactly what one expects a prison to look like, depending on how one looks at it.  Most prisons in California are of the modern variety with prefabricated cellblocks, electronic door vaults, miles of electrified fence studded with the occasional corrugated steel gun tower. There is nothing modern about Folsom. Built in the late 1800’s, it looks more like a medieval castle than it does a prison, with its thirty foot high granite walls and iron portcullis as a gate. Within the prison there is none of the cold efficiency of a modern lock-up; all of the cell doors are keyed by hand and windows are opened with rusty handcranks.  Folsom’s look and history give its inhabitants a certain sort of pride in living (or working) there.  Its mystique is such that even visitors are attracted to the Folsom Prison gift shop and museum where they can purchase a “my son went to Cal State Folsom” coffee mug or tee-shirt (yes, my parents have both). But that’s not all.

When it comes to level three (low maximum security) prison yards, Folsom is relatively mellow. Thus, it is a popular destination for the thousands of lifers throughout the state who want to do their time in “peace”.  The yard is packed with lifers, most of them men who have been down ten, twenty, thirty years or more. These men have a seen a lot in their decades in prison and a lot of them have grown because of it.  Instead of becoming bitter, they became better.  Some of them have spent decades reading voraciously in their cells, other have spent the decades meditating, some have learned every trade imaginable, and many have done all of the above.  And there is nothing more humbling that being a man with a release date standing next to a man who has accepted the fact that he may never have one at all.  Granted, he may have murdered someone to warrant his sentence but that didn’t change the fact that he and I were in the same place at the same time, doing time together.

I found the role models and camaraderie that I previously would’ve never thought imaginable in a place such as Folsom. I made friends that I will probably never see again, no matter how hard I try.  I took part in meditation groups and contemplative fellowships and shared ideas on spiritual growth with other men in the same predicament.  Imagine sitting in zazen between two convicted murderers and being okay with it!  All of the experiences and more contributed to a transformation within myself, a growing up of sorts, a finding of who I am, a glimpse into the future of what I have the potential to be.

I spent many days in my cell studying, reading, writing, and thinking. I sat in half-lotus for hours, gazing out my bars at a world that I was part of of, imagining myself as part of something even greater.  When terrible things happened, as they often did, they served as a focus for contemplation, as an opportunity to put things in perspective and be grateful for what life I still had. I didn’t welcome the misery of Folsom, but I welcomed the opportunity to learn from it.

I don’t know when it was that I figured out what it was that a lot of the lifers had figured out before me, but I just started to get it.  At some point I thought about the fact that, even though I was in prison, this was still my life and there was no need to waste it any further than I already had.  Resenting where I found myself at the moment could only contribute to the process of killing time, and that is not what I wanted to do.  Killing time is akin to killing oneself.

Two nights before I was transferred out of Folsom, I went to my usual Monday night meeting of the Contemplative Fellowship. A cold December night outside, Greystone Chapel issued forth a warm and welcoming light, begging the weary to come within its walls. Over thirty men sat in the circle that night, some of them on zafus and zabutans, some on regular chairs, for the twenty minutes of silence we enjoyed before each meeting.

Knowing it was my last night there, I gazed around at the men in the circle just to take it all in.  I loved these men and I loved where I was at.  Despite the fact that I was going to a lower security prison, I knew that I was going to miss Old Folsom.  It dawned on me that evening that I truly knew what was meant by the word “holy”.  What we had there at Folsom, what I took part in, the process I went through, was sacred.

Men and women have done it before and they will do it for all time to come, this trial by fire, this forcible dark night of the soul.  For the willing, prison can serve as the perfect mechanism by which to transform oneself, or at least get a start on it.  It is no coincidence that a monastery, like a penitentiary, has cells.   And I suppose it is no coincidence, then, that prison has made monks out of convicts.  It is only proper.

Dear Old Folsom!  I never want to see you again, but in my heart you shall forever stay.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017

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Scrambled eggs, tortillas, & salsa

Mike was sentenced to fifty years to life for stealing $200 from a convenience store.  Mike was a Jehovah’s witness.  Mike was my cellee.  And Mike was sick.

When I first moved into the cell with Mike, I wasn’t sure what to think.  He was old, at least he looked it.  He walked with a cane and slept with a CPAP strapped to his face.  Other than his apnea, Mike didn’t really know what was wrong with him and the prison doctors certainly didn’t know either.  What he did know was that it was getting progressively harder for him to walk each day.

When I moved in, Mike had already been waiting six months for the “emergency” transfer he so desperately needed which would house him in a medical facility where he might get better treatment. A bed had been made available at a medical prison a few months earlier, but the transfer had been cancelled.  Something to do with not taking patients who’d previously been treated for depression with medication.

So, Mike got dramatically worse each and every week I lived with him.  He was slow and mobile when we first met.  He would make the exhausting trek from the cell to the chow hall to the pill line and back to the cell twice each day.  He would make the journey out to Greystone Chapel every Saturday afternoon.  The rest of the time he spent in our four foot by nine foot broom closet lying on his bed, reading his Bible, writing home to his wife, or watching television.

Two months later, Mike was no longer mobile.  He couldn’t walk.  I brought him breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a tray from the chow hall beneath the suspicious gaze of the guards who were convinced I was actually trying to double up on meals. I fetched the nurse to make sure he got his meds, and the cops just thought I was trying to get the pills for myself.

Mike continued to get worse.  He cried to himself on his bunk because he was in so much pain.  He often fell down trying to get to the toilet at night.  I would catch him when I could but I wasn’t always there, in time or at all.  I'll never forget the look of shame on his face when he opened his first pack of adult diapers.  Day by day, I felt like Mike was slipping away and I felt powerless to do anything about it.

The fellas on the yard told me that I needed to move out of that cell for my own well being.  You see, if Mike died while I was living with him, the guards would assume that there was foul play; I would go to the hole until an autopsy cleared me of any potential murder beef.  I would lose my job in the welding shop. My classification hearing would get delayed which meant my actual release date could end up being further out.

I spoke with my homeboys to see if there was any way I could talk to the cops about what was happening but that was a no go.  It could be misconstrued as snitching, even if well intended.  I talked with my most trusted friends and they, too, thought I should take care of myself and move out.  But none of these people knew Mike.  To them, he was just that guy that lived with me.

I decided to stay in the cell with him.  Of course, I was scared.  I was scared of the idea that Mike might die in the cell with me there and I was scared of the idea of going to the hole and having my whole program fucked up.  But I think I was more fearful of what it would feel like to move out, abandoning him to whatever knucklehead may end up in the cell with him.  Would he bring him his food?  Would he help him out?  Would he tolerate the multiracial Jehovah’s Witness crowd that sometimes gathered outside the cell to check on him?

So, I stayed.  And one locked-down afternoon, I discovered Mike motionless and breathless in the cell with me. His arm, hanging over the edge of his bunk, hadn’t moved in a couple hours.  I couldn’t see his face because he covered up his respirator with a towel while he slept.  I shook his foot and no response.  I yelled his name and nothing.  Finally, I walked up to the head of his bunk and removed the towel, only to see his purple face with the CPAP strapped to it, bubbles blowing from his mouth.

“MAN DOWN!” I yelled from my cell until the cops, nurses, and gurney showed up.  They used a sheet to drag his pale blue body off of the bunk, out of the cell, and onto the tier.  A nurse pronounced him dead by swiping her fingers across her throat. The cop standing next to me quietly uttered, “Snap crackle pop”.

I was escorted away in handcuffs and locked into a coffin-sized, plexiglass-lined cage,  pending transfer to the hole.  Anxiety had the best of me. I  raged with all the selfishness of somebody who saw the immediate future and dreaded all of it. I struggled to find my breath and had to squeeze to the bottom of the cage where there was air.

Four anxiety-ridden hours I remained in the cage.  A guard finally approached and I was set free to return to my cell.  “Go pack up your cellee’s shit," he told me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because somebody brought him back to life in the ambulance.  You didn’t kill him because he ain’t dead now.  You’re a lucky motherfucker," the guard said nonchalantly.

I learned later that Mike is brain dead.  A vegetable.  In a sick twist of fate, Mike got the emergency medical transfer he so desperately needed. He was hooked up to life-support in order to serve out the remainder of his life sentence.  If he could remember anything, his last waking moment was me bringing him breakfast.  Scrambled eggs, tortillas, and salsa.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017.

[hahnscratch-blog]

The Men Of China Hill

One doesn’t usually see hills within prison walls.  Prisons are customarily built upon flat ground. This allows the surrounding gun towers to have a clear, steady line of sight upon the perimeter, ensuring a clear shot towards any desperate convicts who might choose to make a break for the wall.  Folsom Prison, unique in so many ways, is perhaps the only prison in America to have a hill within its walls.  Called China Hill, it sits nestled within the Western bend of Folsom’s granite walls, peering down upon the compound below.

Rumor has it that China Hill was named after the migrant workers who helped build Folsom Prison.  They quarried the granite stones into the one-ton blocks that eventually became the formidable, 30-foot wall that would envelop the notorious prison for the criminally insane.  In the late 1920‘s, once the work of quarrying was completed and the wall erected, China Hill became the only open land within the walls of Folsom.

Historically, food grown for an inmate population was either tilled on land outside the prison, where low-security inmates could be used for labor, or purchased from local growers.  China Hill presented a unique opportunity to the prisoners of Folsom.  Because it was located within the perimeter, the high security prisoners, accustomed to labor in confined areas, could be used to grow fruits and vegetables in order to supplement the meals in the chow hall.

The hill was terraced and fruit trees were planted.  Depending upon how one chooses to define employment, inmates were hired or forced to till the soil and grow squash, peppers, tomatoes, peas, corn, lettuce, pumpkins, and beans.   It was a win-win situation for the prison authorities: cheap labor with subsequently cheap food, and happy inmates who had the opportunity to perform fruitful labor outside their 40 square foot cells.  This mutually beneficial arrangement remained in place for many decades.

By the time I got to Folsom Prison in 2007, there were no longer any fruit trees on China Hill, and it was covered with the knee-high grass typical of the Sierra Nevada foothills.  The stories as to why inmate agriculture on China Hill was shut down vary and they depend upon the people telling the story.

According to inmates, there was an incident that happened on China Hill in the late 1990’s.  A dispute between two drunk convicts eventually led one to kill the other with a shovel, and the man who perished bled beneath the shade of one of the hill’s many fruit trees.  The guard in the gun tower adjacent to China Hill said that he may have been able to stop the incident, or, at the very least, get medical attention to the victim, were he able to see what was going on.  Instead, the incident went unnoticed by the gunner, thanks, in part, to the restricted view through the trees.  As a result, the trees were cut down.  Some inmates think the trees were cut down simply because prison officials were tired of the convicts making pruno, prison wine, and the best way to stop that was to remove their unregulated access to fruit.

Undoubtedly, these stories have an element of truth in them, though they do not explain why inmates weren’t allowed to continue growing low-lying vegetables like squash and beans.  My guess, if I were to make one, is that China Hill could no longer support the increasing prison population, and, simultaneously, it became cheaper to purchase food from the industrial food market.  All of these circumstances combined and resulted in the closure of China Hill to prison agriculture.  This doesn’t mean, however, that China Hill ceased to produce food.

My first job at Folsom Prison was as a landscaper, and I was assigned to the unit atop China Hill.  There were about twenty of us up there and our job pretty much entailed weed-whacking.  China Hill was covered with grass and weeds and it was our assignment to make sure that it didn’t get out of control, i.e. tall.  Our work day was a bit longer than 6 hours, yet we were only expected to work for two or three of them.  For the remainder of the day, the guard, who was our supervisor, would let us do whatever we wanted.  And that included gardening.

Technically, we weren’t allowed to garden, but that didn’t stop us from doing it.  The unspoken agreement between the guard and the inmates was that we would keep China Hill from becoming a jungle and he would pretend that he didn’t see any of our vegetables growing there.  It was fine enough motivation to keep the guys working.

The vegetables we grew were few, and none of them made their way into the chow hall’s meals.  We had squash, chile peppers, bell peppers, watermelon, green onions, and tomatoes.  China Hill was divided up into sectors, just like the prison yard.  Black guys had the land in one spot, the Southsiders in another, the white boys near the Southsiders, and the Others near the Blacks.  It sounds very divisive and, in a way, it was, but at the same time it was peaceful.

If the Blacks didn’t have squash seeds, they could trade with the whites for them.  If the Southsiders wanted to eat some peppers with their burritos, they could trade a watermelon to the others.  Food on China Hill, just as throughout the entire prison system, was the currency of trade.  It just so happened that our food was good, it was fresh, and we grew it.  Top Ramen may have purchased myself a cigarette in the cellblock, but it wouldn’t get me a pepper on China Hill.

The guys on the yard would get jealous when we’d tell them how we’d eaten watermelon that day.  Many of the men we lived with hadn’t tasted a watermelon, a bell pepper, or a squash in decades.  We, the men of China Hill, knew that we had something special, but there was no way it could be shared with the rest of Folsom’s population.  Any food we grew was strictly prohibited from leaving China Hill and we were stripped naked on the way back to the cellblock in order to ensure that it remained that way.  Bend, squat, cough.

There was another aspect of working on China Hill that wasn’t usually shared with the fellas on the yard, which nonetheless made it one of the best jobs in Folsom Prison.  It was the peace.  It was the potential for solitude.  It was the lack of noise.  It was the feeling of belonging to the Earth, and having a small part of it belong to me, to us.

My plot was about a 30 foot by 30 foot square and I had dug small irrigation trenches all about it to make watering easy.  When I would get to the hill in the morning,  I would turn the water on at the spigot and let it fill the trenches slowly while I went off to work.  When I was finished a few hours later, I would bring my lunch down to my plot, sit on the bare earth, and watch the plants grow.  I’d watch the bees go from one orange, squash blossom to another, and I’d watch hornets pick up little balls of mud from the edges of the trenches and carry them off to their homes.  I’d pinch any dead leaves off my plants and place my watermelons and squash on beds of rocks to keep them from getting rotten on their undersides.

And I would just sit.  From the bare patch of dirt in my garden, I could look over the wall to the south and see the free world outside.  I could look over the electrified fence on the northern perimeter and see the river and the granite cliffs it had carved out over many millennia.  I could feel the wind and place my hands in the mud.  From China Hill I could see the horizon, something very few prisoner ever get to see.  These were moments of peace.  My time with the vegetables was also the only time I had to myself because once I left China Hill for the day I had to reenter the world below me.  I had to return to the cacophony that was the cellblock, the yard, and the restrictive space that was my cell.

One day, an announcement was made to the men of China Hill.  The gate that we normally passed through in order to get to and from work was going to be undergoing construction and we’d be forced to use a different one.  Initially, this didn’t seem like a big deal, but it became a big deal once we started to use the detour gate.

They stopped strip searching us at the new gate.  We just received a pat down.   That’s it.  Because of the wide-open nature of the temporary gate, the guards were unable to strip us out of our clothes before letting us back into the cellblocks.  Imagine our excitement.

Suddenly, bell peppers started making their way into the cuisines being cooked in Folsom’s cells.  Fresh jalapenos were included in homemade burritos.  Lifers had a watermelon for the first time in decades and, for many of them, the last time in their lives.  My cellee and I watched “Prison Break” on t.v. and munched on fresh peas.  One cell even had a small pumpkin in it, sitting atop the bookshelf, perhaps reminiscent of the occupant’s fall decorations back home.

We were never able to smuggle enough vegetables for entire meals.  We smuggled in morsels. We smuggled in happiness.  We smuggled in the momentary taste of freshness.  We smuggled in the rekindling of long-lost memories...taste-memories, memories of freedom, memories of the last time somebody had eaten this vegetable or that.  We smuggled in something worth sharing.

The vegetable smuggling lasted for maybe one or two months.  I was transferred to a different job in the welding shop shortly before the newly constructed gate was completed, at which point the strip searching resumed.  But for those four months, the men of China Hill brought the farmer’s market down to the cellblock. I bet there’s still a few men in Folsom Prison today who joyfully recall the last time they ate a watermelon.  They ate it in their cell and, for that moment, they were free again.

© Matthew Hahn and Hahnscratch, 2017