If you endured through the first part of this lengthy story, you know that I'm a 62 year-old prisoner at the Smithfield prison in Huntingdon County in Central Pennsylvania. In 1996 I was one of the founders of this website. It was the first of its kind in the world and, I'm gratified to say, that it has grown and developed an audience of over a million. Our website espouses the interests of prisoners and points out a few of the failings in the system. All that makes me a target for retaliation by prison staff. Rodney Painter, the Columbo of the prison staff, charged me with misconduct because some books were sent to me from a family-owned business. In spite of the trivial nature of the charge, Richard Norris, one of the prison's Hearing Examiners sentenced me to 30 days in the prison hole. Usually a rational man, he had little choice seeing as how a super-sleuth, a veritable Miss Marple, had written me up. Norris' ruling on the matter ran on for four pages! You'd think that he was trying a murder case. Self-importantce does that to some people. In tiresome detail, the following is an account of my punishment. Being an elderly prisoner in vulnerable health and one who might write about what was done to me and by whom, I was treated a bit more carefully than most victims of Smithfield "justice." Generally speaking, Smithfield is a pretty poorly managed prison staffed by misfits and welfare dropouts. It's a girl scout camp, petty, picky and annoying. After being stripped naked for a racy Department of Corrections ("DOC") video when I first entered the prison hole, I was kindly allowed to don my boxers and tee shirt, but no socks! I have no idea why socks are so scary, but they were forbidden. In a lovely pink jumpsuit, with flat, slip-on, sneakers called "dockers" on my bare feet, I eventually ended up in "E-Block," one of 3 bulging holes. For the eight hours or so during which I'd waited, was sentenced, waited, was stripped, waited, waited and waited, I hadn't been fed or had anything to drink, more annoying, for an old man, I hadn't been allowed to pee. Don't let anyone fool you, peeing is good, especially for the bad-prostate set. When I finally got the handcuffs off in my cell in E-Block, it was my top priority (like draining a fishpond through a pinhole). Most persons in the prison (and all of the staff) know me at least by sight. I was repeatedly grilled about why I was in the hole. Nobody bought the truth. Nobody goes to the hole for such a trivial infraction as books from his family, certainly not an old man in bad health. The consensus was that I'd tried to smuggle porn, likely kiddy-porn, or maybe drugs. It couldn't be as innocuous as I was saying. Sadly, most prisoners are illiterate or nearly so. The one I lived with on A-Block, Robert Johnson, who ended up stealing my property, had only a fragmented fifth grade education. The man I lived with in the hole, was almost as illiterate, but he quit in the tenth grade. Such men lack a real understanding of the mentality of their keepers. While they realize that prison is about money and jobs for the staff, not about crime or "correction," they don't understand how very insecure, defensive and even frightened the prison staff is. The staff fears knowledge, hates books and feels that persons must be kept down. To Miss Marple, knowledge is power and to keep me (or any prisoner) powerless and therefore harmless, I (all of us) must be kept ignorant. Sure, I was written up as retaliation and to assure that I wouldn't be paroled even though I'm nine years past due, but the underlying mentality is a hostility toward books, knowledge and power. The men I tried to convince of my misconduct charge just wrote me off as a liar, but one, a worker on E-Block brought me some socks for my cold feet - somebody else's socks, kind of community socks. Still, they were better than nothing and fairly clean. I even got some toilet paper, some bed sheets and a towel, but no cup to take my many medications. Cups are much too dangerous to be allowed in the hole. I was fortunate to spend my punishment in E-Block. It's the least bad of the prison's three holes. In fact, on the 2 PM to 10 PM shift of guards, it was a much better managed and more efficient cellblock than the one I'd left in general population. One advantage of E-Block was that it had a clock. What did folks do generations ago when there were no clocks? or, maybe it's just me, but knowing the time helps to orient me in reality. It was probably just an accident that I ended up on E-Block since all the regular holes were so overcrowded, but being on E-Block had the effect of keeping me out of sight of the beatings that are said to go on in the other holes and the staff smoking going on in the J-Block courtyard. I'm certain to report such abuses. The prison staff wants you kept ignorant, too. It was cold and very noisy for much of my time in the hole, stressful for an old man. The food was bad and in small portions intended to keep a man hungry and uncomfortable, but there was one day when we didn't have rice. I was given to understand that if I was unpopular or a guard got miffed, I wouldn't be fed at all. I saw an example of that one morning when a guard refused to give a man his breakfast tray for no apparent reason. Like all prisoners, I have very few personal possessions. Even after 24 years of accumulation, I have only barely the essentials. When I went to my misconduct hearing and then directly to the hole, everything I own (scrimped for by my wife or myself) was left in my cell. Robert Johnson, my cell partner at the time, threw some of it into a trashbag. Much of it he simply stole and sold. Eventually the property ended up in the hole. One evening I was handcuffed and marched across the compound to a property room on H-Block, the sort of secondary hole after J-Block. I was allowed to get a little of my property, shower shoes, envelopes, legal papers, stuff like that, but no socks. I was allowed to store some of my property, but only very little. Much of it would be either discarded or I would have to pay to ship it home. Prison employees are the laziest of state workers. They have become so lazy that they don't want prisoners to have more than a minimal amount of property. When the staff does its frequent searches, the guards don't like to be "overburdened." When I went through my meager possessions, I had to discard most of my books, underclothing, paper, records and so forth. I couldn't even keep my little plastic cup and bowl. I did get envelopes and paper so that I could write to Rebecca. I had to ship 39 pounds of essential legal books home. Just as a matter of principle, I wrote an appeal of my conviction. Of course no one is going to defy Miss Marple, but under the pseudo-legal scheme used by the prisons, I'm allowed to appeal within fifteen days to a committee called the Program Review Committe ("PRC"). That three-person panel is comprised of middle-management prison functionaries including a deputy superintendent. With my appeal I sent copies of corporate papers registering the Odd Shop as a business and business advertising material including its webpage. When the PRC snickered at me, I appealed to Superintendent Ben Varner himself. Finally, I'm allowed to go to the Chief Hearing Examiner at the Department of Corrections' Central Office. The scheme give jobs to the otherwise unemployable. Don't think that the Smithfield hole is primitive. I was given the tiny head of a toothbrush with which to scrub my teeth. After a few days I got a hand-me-down paper bag in which to store my trash. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I was allowed a few minutes to shower. Infrequently I was offered the opportunity to shave. I was allowed to rinse out my boxers and tee shirts so long as I didn't expect to hang them up to dry; but socks, I was only allowed somebody else's socks. This is called corrections. So much about my petty misconduct is a microcosm of the "corrections" insanity: drastically misplaced priorities, obsessively compulsive manias and pure extremness which is psychotic by definition. Corrections is a lunatic who doesn't recognize that he's loony. It's like the lax security in the prison which allows the staff to scurry in and out of the front gate to smoke, loaf, eat and smoke. They are seldom if ever passed through metal detectors or drug screening. They carry in all sorts of contraband and carry out who knows what. A former superintendent regularly carried a pistol into the prison. The smoking by prisoners at Smithfield is a 100% staff run black market. One man told me he's "smoke 'n chew," drying out snuff and smoking it in toilet paper. He buys the snuff from a guard for commissary and pity. "It's good," the prisoner exclaimed. "I may smoke it on the street!" The staff and administration openly run gambling operations in the front lobby and it appears that food and stores are looted on a regular basis. Such "official" crimes are ignored by the security staff in favor of harassing visitors and prisoners about trivial infractions. Young female visitors are especially harassed over bits of metal on their clothing or bras. A favorite ploy is to get visitor to strip out of clothing or to refuse to allow visiting as a way to humiliate the women. It's what I call Republican government; two sets of rules for different classes of persons, the privileged get privileges, the oppressed get oppression. Perhaps it's the nature of human corruption and greed, or perhaps the Republican mentality is a parasite. One morning after I'd been in the hole for about a week, there was a sudden bustle of activity. I had to be rushed into another cell. It seems that at a sickly 62, I'm an escape risk! It was much too risky to have me in a cell that looked out onto the exercise yard. I had to be on the other side of the cellblock where I was looking out onto the lawn between the various blocks! It's true that I escaped from Rockview in 1976, but that's 26 years ago by my count. Now I can scarcely climb steps let alone climb a fence. But Miss Marple or some security maven thinks it's too dangerous for me to look at the exercise yard where I go every day for recreation. Brain is not required to be a prison official. It's a Pooh- Bear job. About thirty feet from by cell door was a shower stall. There was a long silly ritual involved in getting me to the shower. It reflects the frightened silliness of the system so I'll share it. Ask yourself why are these people so scared. Stripped to my boxers (I'm an Adonis in boxers, by the way), I was required to put my hands behind my back and try to wiggle them through a narrow wicket in the cell door to have them cuffed. Well, sad to say, my arms and back no longer bend as they did at 50 years old. It was a difficult, painful experience. Frequently my hands and wrists were pinched and cut in the process. Only after I was safely handcuffed and my cell partner was safely cuffed did three, count them, three, powerful guards deign to open my cell door. They escorted me the few feet to the shower stalf where I again had to back up to a wicket, this one impossibly high to be uncuffed. As I said, brains are not a job requirement for prison officials. After one guard had badly pinched my hand, I asked him why they couldn't use handcuffs that would fit without bruising me. He said that that would need medical clearance because it was a deviation from "policy." Of course, the RHU policy is a secret, but we are trying to get it for publication. Because I bemoan the bad guards, I give the impression that the whole staff is bad. That simply isn't true. The staff can be divided into three groups, the security people, the maintenance people and the support people like nurses, office help and treatment personnel. The security staff is guards and administrators, that ilk of oppressive personality types. The majority, say 60% of them, aren't much one way or another, drones who would toss us into the ovens if some administrator ordered them to do it, but they don't usually go out of their way to cause pain, either. But about 3 out of 10 guards are real garbage. They taint the whole guard force. They are the guys who make prisoners worse and thereby harm the whole society. I could list a dozen of them, but they pride themselves on their cruelty, boorishness and oppression. They can't excel as anything good, so they make a name for themselves with their "dark side." A small percentage of guards, perhaps 1 out of 10 are good, decent people. They are the rare people (I've know a couple women, too) who actually try to treat prisoners and one another decently. There are a lot more of these kinds of people among the other segments of the staff. Among the maintenance personnel perhaps 40% are good people with only 10% pricks. The same is true for the support staff. Perhaps it's the job which makes guards callous, or, more likely, the worst people seek out the jobs which express their personalities. In any event, I've known some guards who were good people. After being in the hole for about 10 days, one of them, a lieutenant who had formally been my block sergeant, came by the cell to see how I was holding up. It was a nice gesture and I was doing fine. My meals were fed on plastic trays in my damp cell. They were even worse that the fare in the messhall and much more stingy. Three times a week we were allowed to request "clean" jumpsuits and socks, somebody else's socks. Mine were usually tattered and holy. Once a week we were allowed to request two paperback books from the library and on Thursday we were allowed to buy soap, toothpaste and writing paper from the commissary. My bill was for less than $4, so you know that I didn't get much. I wasn't allowed to have a pen or pencil for writing. They are much too dangerous. I was issued a little stub called a "flex- pen." It was a four inch length of clear plastic hosing in which there was a small ballpoint pen refill. It effectively discouraged writing. The first draft of this report was written in long hand with such a pen and every day I wrote to Rebecca. I've written to her every morning for over 24 years! One morning while guards were shoving a slop-sticky breakfast tray through the wicket in my cell door (guards call them "pie-holes" for some reason), their radio squawked that a guard had "lost" the key apparently to the front gate of the prison. Folks weren't pleased with him, you can bet, but he didn't get 30 days in the hole either. Now, if it had been books, Miss Marple would be on the spot. One night during a violent lightening storm, a guard was sent up the hill to collect urine from me for a drug test. I get tested about three or four times a year. Due to physical and medicinal problems, it's often not easy to give the sample. Sopping wet, the guard patiently waited for my old prostate to cooperate. It took a while, but the guard was very nice about it. He's one of those few decent guys on the staff. On the sixteenth day of my hole sentence, Rebecca came to visit me, what a treat! She drove two hours to get here and two hours to get home; what a special woman she is! We were allowed to visit for only one hour. The visit was through glass and over a phone in a dreary isolation chamber. The ritual to get me into my visit was so absurdly draconian, so inane, that I can't bring myself to detail all the ridiculous antics. It's enough to say that I was tormented and so was my wife. The very brief and infrequent visits work the greatest hardship on the families who visit. They must do all the traveling and endure all the humiliation for so very little time with their loved one. In Pennsylvania "corrections" has become a business focused on tormenting and taxing the prisoners' families, the innocent ones left behind. This is especially true where the prison system schemes to squeeze money from the families. Somebody please tell the crazy Republican politicians that prisoners don't have any money or any income, so when money is demanded from them, it really must come from the families. In our case, there is also strong personal malicious indictiveness. Rebecca is a visitor in some prisons for the Pennsylvania Prison Society. After I was convicted of my charge, someone in "Corrections" informed the Prison Society saying that she broke prison rules. On the twenty-first day of my sentence, somebody decided that I'd had enough and I was released from the hole. My old block sergeant kindly prepared a cell for me and by Thursday, I could visit Rebecca again.