Monday, April 20, 2020

LUCK OF THE DRAW

I'm not in the habit of re-reading my old Quora answers. In fact, I almost never do. But this morning, I clicked to answer  a question and found an answer I'd already written at the top. With nothing much else to do, I checked out my response and was somewhat amazed at how good it was. (I often don't like posts I've written after stepping away for a while and then reading them as if somebody else wrote them.) The question was "How are cells assigned in prison? How can you change cellmates?" Obviously, a good question deserving of a well thought-out answer.

Where I was at MCC in New York, self-surrenders generally came in on Monday. After all the intake bull shit, I was escorted to my unit and brought to the bubble officer whose responsibility it was to find an open bed. 

There was no grand plan as if prison is a wedding with the bride and groom convening before the ceremony to figure out the seating. Whoever is working at that moment gets a fix on which guys are living alone and then decides where to put you. 

 Generally, the officer will make a nominal effort to place a new inmate with someone he’s more likely to get along with, factoring in race, age, appearance etc. But it’s certainly not science. Essentially, he just wants to get it done and return to the bubble or whatever else he was doing. 

 While as time went on, I noticed that inmates were generally placed with their “kind” (read race), it wasn’t that way with me when I entered. My first two bunkies were black. One was civilized. The second was not. 

I never mistook it as a punishment thing. Because it wasn’t. Locating new inmates was a pain in the ass for officers. I know because one of my best CO friends (he was one of a few who ran the kitchen) told me so. He related a story about having to find beds for 9 inmates on one shift and how each and every one was a fucking diva. 

In summation, arranging of cellyship is a haphazard and not particularly well thought-out process. At least where I was. Officers would check back after an hour or two to ask if the boys thought the partnership was going to work. Or officer Thomas did when he placed a stone thug with me, realizing he’d mixed oil and water. Dave more or less told him the white boy was cool and we’d be all right. Curiously, the officer didn’t ask me what I thought. 

Changing bunkies was really easy. The CO’s had no problem accommodating your wishes. All they wanted was for the moving inmate to write down his name, reg number, and to which cell he was going. And “make sure to include lower or upper.” I never heard of an officer saying “no, you can’t move. You have to stay where you are!” 

They didn’t want guys slashing each other’s throats in the middle of the night (something that had apparently happened at one point), and realized making guys stay together was a poor idea. 

And now to some intrigue. Our unit had 96 beds. At any one time there would only be 80 something inmates - which meant some lucky prisoners had a single. And I noticed that some of them were keeping them. When one of my bunkies was to be released and I would have one for myself, I decided to inquire about how to keep that single. 

I went to my counselor and said “I’m working 10 hours a day for you guys at an average of about 12 cents per hour. You think I could keep my single so I can get enough sleep to perform my duties efficiently?” Amazingly, the counselor answered “Sure! We’ll put you in as the last guy to get a celly.” 

This blew my mind. How could it be that easy? My bunky was to leave in a week when I asked this question. Hardly believing my good fortune, I doubled back a few days later to confirm what he’d said and not to my surprise, his response was different. “Can’t do it.” 

I was not to be denied. “What if I give Lurch” (the name of the gorilla inmate who’d been tasked with helping the bubble officer place new inmates) “food from the kitchen? Would that work?” 

The counselor shook his head and said “Don’t do that”…meaning Lurch will take your food and then give you a bunky. Lurch was that kind of guy. He’d cut the food line at almost every meal, grab his food and almost dare anybody to fuck with him. 

I continued…”so what I gotta do to get this done?” prepared to pay whomever it took. Again, I knew there were a few guys who had an “arrangement” and I wanted to know what that arrangement was. 

The counselor’s response was “too many mouths to feed.” “Really? Try me!” was my final comment. The counselor gave me a look which said “case closed.” Infer what you will. I’ll not convey my thoughts at that moment. 

Chris left two days later and shortly thereafter, they moved Paul Manafort into my cell. And no, Manafort wasn’t a grand plan who prevented me from getting my single, although I was more or less hand-picked for Paulie. But he was a special case (ya know…high profile inmate) so they were careful about who to place him with. They didn’t need to be as it turned out. Paulie could handle himself fine. They could have put him with a gangbanger and he’d have managed.

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