Released On Parole By “Mistake”: Frog Gravy 39 [updated]

Below is the uncorrected full-text version of “Released On Parole By Mistake.”

Today I found the original sentence as well as the amended sentence, and I looked at the date stamps on the two orders.

Here is the sequence of events:

I lost my jury trial and was remanded to custody on January 23, 2008.

I was final sentenced to eight years, verbally, from the bench in March, 2008, but the written order reflected two concurrent four year sentences. In other words, there was no clarification or order mentioning consecutive four year sentences, so DOC must have read the order as a total of four years.

Om June of 2008, the judge amended the sentence to reflect a “typographical error” correction that reflected two consecutive sentences for a total of eight years.

In October of 2008, I went home on parole, after serving 20% of four years on a four-year sentence and becoming parole eligible (ten months on four years).

On October of 2008, I was rearrested and taken back into custody, to serve the other half of the consecutive four-year sentences. In total, I spent a little more than 20 months in custody, ten in jails and ten in prison.

At some point I will provide photographs of these orders.

Train. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Ink, magazine ink and colored pencil.

Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration, first in jails and then in prison in Kentucky, during 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

PeWee (pronounced PeWee) Valley women’s penitentiary (KCIW) near Louisville, KY, my father’s birthday, 1-7-2009

The end of my stay in Fulton County Detention Center (Ricky’s World) came with a notice of parole. I had hoped for this result but not necessarily had I expected it. Inmates had warned for nearly the entire year that parole on the first try is extremely rare. They told me to expect a one-year “flop,” known as a denial of parole and continued detention. Nonetheless, I had maintained a clean jail record, held steady employment, and arranged for job, counseling and a return to my supportive husband, were I to make parole.

In March of 2008, Judge Craig Clymer denied all forms of treatment and monitoring that I had arranged, that totaled nearly six years. He denied shock probation three times and, since I refused to plead guilty in my immediate case, drug court was also denied. He sentenced me to eight years, assuring the concerned jury, who voiced a desire for me to enter drug treatment, that this treatment would be offered “in the penitentiary.” I had never made it to the penitentiary, and the jails had no treatment programs. Judge Clymer’s written sentence reflected that the eight-year sentence be served as two concurrent four-year sentences.

On October of 2008 I received this notice:

On the notice, the requirement to seek sex offender treatment was a mistake. But the rest of the order was real, and I went home to my husband on parole. As I stood outside in the sun waiting for him to arrive, I was struck by the sounds of birds, the touch of grass and the feel of the air. I conversed with another released inmate who also awaited a ride.

My husband wanted to take me out to dinner, but I was afraid to go inside a restaurant so we ordered some take out. We visited the bookstore and I picked up a copy of the 2009 Writer’s Market, because I had already done copious writing in note form, and I wanted to write about the reality of jail conditions in Kentucky.

The next day, I met with my parole officer, arranged counseling, and visited the college to see about educational programs. I attempted to meet with the man who had agreed to employ me, but he was not in. I had a required mental health evaluation. I attended a 12-step meeting.

The next morning I arose at 6 AM and went for a jog. I stayed outside for quite a while because it had been so long since I had been outside. I came home and made coffee. There was a knock on my door.

Two armed parole officers entered my home and held up a warrant, issued by Judge Craig Clymer, for my arrest. They were apologetic and almost embarrassed. One of them said he had never seen such a thing before. I was handcuffed, and I kissed my husband again, for the last time. I was jailed in the McCracken County Jail in EA, one of the two large population cells. A few days later I was shipped to KCIW, or “PeWee,” the women’s penitentiary.

Judge Clymer claimed that, after ten months, he suddenly realized that he had made an error on the written sentencing document that he called a “typographical” error. The typo had excluded an entire sentence clarifying that my eight-year sentence was two consecutive four-year sentences.

On arrival at the prison, I lost my jogging suit and every possession that I had, which was little, except for my husband’s watch that I had worn for my morning jog. Again I submitted to strip squat-and-cough searches typical of any incarceration beginning. This would be my home for the next year. Already, due to my case, I had missed my son’s last play where he was the leading role in a college play, and I had missed his college graduation, and his entrance to law school at Georgetown. My parents were elderly and not doing well and I had not seen them in years. My husband had lost his job because the law school where he taught went under. He had been evicted and moved, all without my help or support.

At the prison, I immediately took an outside job in landscape, and then set about seeing what it would take to enroll in college. Still in jail mentality, I gathered a few art supplies, but I was now busy with work and entrance testing for the college. On a couple of math aptitude tests, I was told that I scored “higher than anyone in the history of the institution,” and that was a perfect score. I scored 99the percentile in other aptitude tests, and my goal was initially to try for the legal aide program, where inmates assist other inmates with legal case work. However, the legal aide training program was eliminated due to lack of funding.

Since I was considered a Class D instead of the more serious Class C, residential treatment was not an option for me, so I signed up to attend AA meetings, twice, but was never notified that my request had been approved for meeting attendance, during my entire stay at the prison. I eventually signed up for the Horticulture program, which was excellent and enjoyable. I also took Biology at night, on a “Canteen Scholarship” that was offered because of my test scores. I became active in tutoring other inmates in math. Again, I maintained a clean record.

Horticulture was one of the most enjoyable programs I have ever participated in. The drawing that I did do now was of plants, mostly, and I drew because it helped me to memorize the plants.

The poppy Papaver rhoeas by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil. Prison art.

Yesterday I met with inmate records and had a conversation about my curious release on parole and then rearrest.

“How could this mistake happen?” I ask. “Why was I released and then taken back into custody with a doubled sentence, when I had work, school and counseling all in place? How could…”

“This happens.”

“I mean, it’s unusual, isn’t it? I have never heard of this happening.”

“It’s not uncommon.”

“So, it’s common then? People just go home by mistake all the time? Please answer correctly because I am contacting the newspaper.”

The inmate records woman looked at me, shocked. She said, “We actually had one who went home, and the judge called and asked, “Why is she out, I ammended her sentence to eight years…”

“Just what I thought. That’s all I need to know.”

“You haven’t heard the rest…”

“We knew. It’s okay. I write a lot, and I wanted to get it right, about what happened here. I have no beef at all with DOC or PeWee. None at all.”

“Where are you from?”

“McCracken.”

“Ohhhhh.” Eyes roll.

“I did not commit this crime.”

“I am not stupid enough to think that, with 30,000 people in Kentucky locked up that some of them aren’t innocent. I will tell you this, though, that an appeal is an uphill battle.”

“I know.”

“But if it was me, I would stick it out until the very end.”

“I am, believe me, I am.”

“That’s what I would do.”

“Hardly anyone else would.”

The Ice Storm: Frog Gravy 35

Cardinal couple. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. colored pencil and magazine ink.

Frog Gravy is a non-fiction account of incarceration in Kentucky, first in jails and then in prison, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmates names are changed.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW, PeWee Valley women’s penitentiary near Louisville, 1-29-09

We have been on lockdown in Ridgeview Dormitory for a couple of days now, due to an ice storm. Ice has weighted down the razor wire, the power lines, and the trees. This morning, a few of us made our way through the ice wonderland to the dining hall for breakfast. Ice-laden tree branches rattled, like dry bones. Every few minutes there was a loud crack, followed by a thunderous crash, as large oak and maple branches gave way.

After the ice formed, it snowed, re-misted, re-iced and snowed again. The cracks and crashes interrupt a beautiful silence.

The inside of Ridgeview Dormitory resembles a huge assisted living disaster zone. Inmates from Pine Bluff Dormitory, which houses honors-status inmates serving lengthy sentences, have been moved to the floors of Ridgeview Dormitory, because Ridgeview has power and Pine Bluff does not. In fact, Ridgeview and the recreation building are the only buildings with heat, and so the entire campus has been moved into these two buildings, and placed on lockdown.

No “movement” is allowed during a prison lockdown. Inmates must stay in the dorms at all times except during meals. Prison lockdown is an infrequent occurrence. The prison is locked down, for example, when an ambulance comes onto the campus, or when an inmate is unaccounted for. In this case, the lockdown is for everyone’s safety.

During the course of the ice storm, an inmate had a heart attack. Another had a seizure. Then, there was a fire in cell block, the disciplinary segregation dorm (fire in the hole!), so they added the cell block inmates to the Ridgeview mix as well.

The dayroom floor in my wing is wall-to-wall inmates on the floor. We have many pregnant guests, as well as disabled women in wheelchairs who cannot care for themselves, and they sit, drooling, looking out through marbled eyes. We also have diabetics and epileptics that need medicine. Medical staff is short.

I stay in my room and study. I am enrolled in the Horticulture program, and I am designing a greenhouse as well as a small business. My business, I decide, will be a container gardening business that I will call “Little Eden.”

So far, my fantasy greenhouse is even-span, on one to two acres with room to expand. It has an aluminum frame, trusses and purlins, a roof ventilator, two natural gas forced air unit heaters, two horizontal air flow fans, two exhaust fans and polycarb or rigid acrylic glazing. Later, I will choose an evaporative cooling pad and investigate solar power options.

I need to decide on a crop for my fantasy greenhouse. I am thinking about roses, because when I suggested tulips, my teacher looked at me like I had just arrived, by way of martian ray gun, from outer space. Also, my mother loves roses. They like 63 degrees and may do well in ground beds, but this would require drainage tile and an irrigation system.

Poinsettias will be a group project for the entire class, next year. Poinsettias are a huge cash crop in this country. The flowers are actually modified leaves. Poinsettias take months of advance planning, and they are “forced” to bloom like they do at exactly the time that they do. For this to happen, the entire greenhouse must be completely blacked out like a photography darkroom. Poinsettias bloom in response to short day lengths and any interruption in the blackout can be disastrous to a poinsettia holiday greenhouse crop. Our teacher told us a story of a poinsettia grower who lost the entire crop, because a curious neighbor sneaked into the greenhouse at night with a flashlight to look at the plants.

As I study, I also worry about the birds outside. Today I saw a crow surveying the situation but that was it. I have a small collection of bread slices so that, when we are allowed outside, I can toss the birds a few morsels.

As I am studying, another inmate stops by and I help her with an algebra problem.

I take a break and walk down the hall to use the restroom. Alecia is in the restroom, struggling with the faucet. Alecia is in her forties, and she has the worst case of OCD I have ever seen in my life. She stands at the sink, pants rolled up, clutching a wad of toilet paper that she uses to turn on the faucet. She says, “This place is filthy. Nasty-assed, trifling filthy bitches.”

I look at the bathroom. It is spotless.

Alicia unrolls half of a roll of toilet paper for the faucet, then produces her own bar of state soap, and ritualistically, painfully washes her hands that are chafed from so much constant scrubbing. She leaves the faucet running full stream, lifts up and holds her pant legs off the floor, and tip-toes back to her room, cursing all the way down the hallway.

We have sort of learned to live with Alicia and her severe OCD. We avoid touching or brushing against her. She has been known to assault people who accidentally touch her. She has been sent to the hole for such attacks, and I shudder to think how she fared mentally in the hole, where it is virtually impossible to wash your hands.

Most inmates just leave the faucets running full stream, because they have given up the faucet battle with Alicia. So, any hour of the day in this wing, both the upstairs bathroom faucet and the downstairs dayroom faucet are running. Somehow the running faucets bother me. I guess I am not used to it and so I wait for her to retreat down the hall and then I turn the water off.

I return to my room and look out the window to the field outside. The scene is white and peaceful. This is the field where the turkeys and the deer and the fox live. I look for birds.

The field with the ice and the white and the silence is perfect. There is no chaos.

The Red Song: Frog Gravy 31 [with jail art]

Grace. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Ink, colored pencil, magazine ink, a discarded hymnal page, and coffee. I soaked the page in coffee to age it, then tore the soaked edges to make it look charred, dried out the page, and then affixed it to the background page with commissary toothpaste. Again, for the magazine ink (great stuff, I might add), put some canteen Secret deodorant onto toilet paper and then rub the magazine picture. The ink comes right off, but the ink does not look identical to the picture. You have to experiment. “Amazing Grace” seemed appropriate for today.

Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration in Kentucky in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.

However, Barkley is a real name.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Other posts are at Firedoglake.com in the MyFDL diary section.

KCIW (Kentucky Correctional Institute for Women), PeWee (pronounced Pee Wee) Valley women’s penitentiary near Louisville, Ky, Christmas Eve, 2008

Today I will work alone all day, in the heavy rain. As I leave Ridgeview Dormitory, an inmate says, “Bird Lady. Look at that bird.” She points and I look.

A gorgeous male cardinal perches on the razor wire.

Razor wire stretches in every direction, inside and outside the prison. The prison itself is located in an upscale community called PeWee Valley, a suburb of Louisville. Here you have your cul de sac, and here you have your prison. Over here is the dry cleaners and the coffee shop and the bookstore, and yes, over here, the penitentiary.

The bird’s foot is almost completely amputated, hanging by skin, turned backward. He extends his wing to occasionally correct his balance, determined to make the best of the very razor wire that caused the injury. I pause to allow an epiphany to take effect, and then continue my walk to work.

On the way to recycle, where I break down cardboard boxes, I come across a large earthworm beached on the sidewalk, so I move him. Everything is, thankfully, a quarter of a mile walk or so, a walk I always enjoy.

As I pass the main building that houses laundry, Assessment and Classification (AC), library, transportation, legal aide and commissary, the most hateful reverse racist guard in the prison that I call Ogre because she is hideous, is yelling at a white inmate that I also know, who is a soft-spoken nurse on the outside. Ogre shouts, “Why don’t you just go to Hell! Why don’t you just go on back to where you came from. Get the hell out of here. Get out of my sight!” I can see that the inmate is near tears. I was also near tears one time, when Ogre screamed at me for no reason whatsoever, and forced me to put on high-water pants and clothing small enough for a child.

I would not be at all surprised if Ogre spoke backward or neighed like a horse, or spoke in a complex mixture of ancient languages and dialects.

I see my friend Lisa, who killed her brother-in-law in a drunk driving accident where she was also in possession of a vast mixture of unprescribed prescription drugs, and say hello. She has less time than me: three years, and, the day after Christmas, two days from now, her father on the outside will kill himself, but we do not know this yet.

I pass an inmate with her vested service dog in training, named Barkley. Barkley is a seven-month-old cream colored doodle. I am not exactly sure what a doodle is (golden retriever x poodle?), but Barkley is very sweet and pretty. Everyone loves him, but we are not allowed to touch him when he is wearing a vest.

At recycle, the boxes are soaked through, and soaked cardboard turns to slime, but I do not care because I love working outside.

After work, I obtain a pass, go the the library, my favorite place in the prison, and check out A Plague of Frogs: The Horrifying True Story, by William Souder, and walk back to my dorm where I speak with my first prison roommate, Ashley, before we go to dinner.

Ashley is twenty-three, six months younger than my son, and she looks like a cheerleader. She has been locked up for the better part of six years. She hears from her family about once a month or so, which I cannot imagine, but she says they are sick of her, and so she has s sugar daddy. A ‘sugar daddy’ in this instance is a male on the outside who provides financial support (often substantial) to locked up women.

Ashley says, “I’ll need about two hundred dollars to get what I need for the rest of the winter.” She flips through a clothing and accessory catalog.

Ashley has a convoluted combination of sentences that she is in various stages of serving, or serving out; I do not really understand it.

She comes from a well-off family, and in fact used to be a cheerleader and an honor student. Her family was proud of her. She had brains and beauty and had earned some type of scholarship with the University of Kentucky.

But then, Ashley was the driver in a terrible car accident where someone was killed. The victim’s family did not want Ashley to serve prison time, but the Kentucky Commonwealth sentenced her to three years at 85%. This marked the beginning of Ashley’s professional criminal career. She learned how to sell and use drugs and put this skill to use on the outside to pay bills, because no one would hire her with her record upon release. She was caught, but then smuggled drugs into jail, charged with more felonies, and so on.

Instead of spending the six years on a university education, Ashley has spent the time in various places of ‘correction’ adding to her skill set as a professional criminal, getting into trouble at one place and being shipped to another. Like me, she spent time in Ricky’s World, Fulton County, where the worst of the worst (or people who write the governor about jail conditions) are sent.

Now Ashley and I are roommates at Ridgeview. She was initially in a dormitory that is located outside the gates of the prison. (Yes, there is a dorm outside the gates of the prison that is akin to a halfway house.) But she got in trouble out there, lost her ‘community housing,’ her job and her parole possibility . All of this for a “six thirteen.”

A “six thirteen” is a write-up for sexual activity of some sort- kissing or hugging, touching or whatever, and like so many incarcerated young adult women, Ashley was not able to set aside her sexual drive, and became attracted to women.

After we talk, I go outside to stand and wait for the announcement call to dinner, and I spot the injured cardinal in a tree. The inmate cardinal is singing.

And that is when I realize that music has color.

Author’s end note: I do not know Ashley’s whereabouts today, but I believe that she is free, based on a couple of look up searches in Kentucky Online Offender Lookup.

I cannot help it:

Penitentiary First Impressions: Frog Gravy 30 [with jail art]

Jail House Mouse by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art, pencil

Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration in Kentucky, first in jails and then in prison, during 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

I also post at Firedoglake.com in the MyFDL diary section.

KCIW, PeWee (pronounced Pee Wee) Valley Women’s Penitentiary near Louisville, December, 2008

After nearly a year in two Kentucky county jails, I am thankful to be in prison at last. County jail time is the hardest time that an inmate can possibly do. There is no education, little or no treatment, often no work or not enough work, few programs, and rarely, in some cases, is there even the one hour of recreation. Twenty-three hours a day in a cell is simply not true. In McCracken, for example, I was in the cell for weeks at a time without recreation.

Kentucky warehouses non-violent inmates in county jails, often for years at a time, and it ruins people. Kentucky is turning county jails into prisons.

A brief general note on classification: A Class A felony is the most serious, and carries a minimum sentence of 20 years to life.

Class B: 10-20 years

Class C: 5-10 years

Class D: 1-5 years

I was convicted of two drug felonies: possession of one-tenth of a gram of crack and tampering. I received nearly the maximum sentence for each- four years each for a total of eight years. So, I was a Class D. But since my sentence was so long, in some circles I was considered a Class C. In other words, the sentence length was problematic. It was too long for some things and not long enough for others, leaving me in an exclusion zone with very few options. I could not get to prison, because of my non-violent status. But I could not get into any programs either, because my status was technically not serious enough. The judge denied all forms of treatment. Once I was with DOC, I could not get into some programs such as the Substance Abuse Program (SAP), because I was a Class D and not a Class C. But I could not do Legal Aide training or work in industries because my sentence was not long enough.

Never in my life did I imagine that there would be a time that I would beg to get to a penitentiary, but I did. I often joked that, had I known all of this beforehand, rather than not commit a crime and receive an eight-year sentence that was for non-violent crimes, I might have fared better if I had killed someone. At least I would have been in prison, doing something constructive. Alternatively, I would have been free much sooner, had I taken a deal. However, I steadfastly refused any and all plea deals.

All penitentiary inmates (there are about 700 at PeWee) are required to work. I am ecstatic to have an outside job with the landscaping department.

Last night’s fried fish dinner was awful for everyone except Bob, the resident possum, who was happy to have fried fish. Poor thing. He is so ugly he is cute, and today he came so close that I got a good look at his pink snout.

This morning for work, I put on two t-shirts, my khaki short-sleeve shirt and then my khaki long-sleeve shirt, plus two pairs of khaki pants. The pants are too big, so I wrap rubber band hair ties around the bunched elastic at the waistband. I then put on my only pair of “winter” socks and then my work boots. I don my khaki jacket and over that a nylon rain coat and over that a reflective vest.

I pull out a nail clipper and clip five holes in each of two tube socks, and place the socks on my hands. Over the socks, I put on cloth work gloves.

It is snowing, large chunks followed by smaller, harder, sleet-like snow.

In the cardboard recycle pile at work where I break down boxes, I find two full bags of discarded chips and save them for Bob and the birds. Already, my prison name is Bird Lady. Most inmates do not even know my name. I am Bird Lady, or Miss Bird Lady, a polite, Southern way of saying the name.

As I break down boxes, I read labels. Our produce comes, for the most part, from foreign countries. Indonesia, The Philippines, and so on. Our shoes, socks, hygiene products and almost everything else come from China, Vietnam, Mexico and other places. I notice that some beef products come from Brazil.

My current colored pencils come from China. An earlier set was made in Indonesia, probably in a sweat shop by people who do not read, write or draw. I begin to wonder why we hate immigrants so much in this country, when we outsource our labor. Foreign hands sew our clothes and pick our produce, so why do we get hateful when people want to come to this country to do the same work?

My current inmate work partner, Molly, did not come to work this morning; she uses the weather as an excuse for her laziness. I am relieved, because I would have received some unwelcome, far-fetched lecture about Bob and how, at any moment, he may just attack us for no reason. I got the lecture yesterday, and I cannot reason with Molly by pointing out that possums are hated, abused and harmless.

Sometimes you cannot reason with non-reason. I once heard an inmate go on and on about the danger and aggressiveness of ladybugs.

There is a Jail House Mouse pictured above. Here is his description:

-Born in a hole in Soledad.
-Never knew his mother
-never knew his dad.
-been in every prison, level one to level five.
-Harley wings tattoo in Folsom.
-steals commissary, cell to cell and sneaks into cells and takes cookies from boxes.

Author’s end note: This is to be continued. I am trying to keep each post short.