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Below is an essay contributed by Tony Lamb. Mr. Lamb went to prison in 1988 as a 17-year-old for two relatively minor, non-violent offenses. In prison he remains today. The sordid picture that Mr. Lamb paints of prison life should be of concern to everyone living in Missouri. Some will say anyone who lands in prison deserves everything he gets. This position is wrong for both legal and moral reasons, of course. But even if you put the law and morals aside, subjecting offenders to brutal prison conditions is wrong for purely practical reasons. One is that just about every person sent to prison will get out one day. Will people coming out of Missouri's prison return to society prepared to work, able to support a family and contribute to the community? Or will they come home physically and emotionally scarred, not fit for community life? Sadly, that question is partly answered by the fact that two-thirds of people who are locked up will return to prison. It is in no one's interest to allow prisoners to be brutally used. Take the case of Alis Ben Johns. You may remember Mr. Johns as the subject of Missouri's largest manhunt, a chase that ended in 1997 when he was shot by a Water Patrol officer in Benton County. After Mr. Johns' capture, his mother told a television reporter that while in prison her son had been raped as prison guards watched and laughed. After serving his sentence, Mr. Johns killed a man during a drunken affray. While he was on the run, he murdered Leonard Voyles, of Camden County, a man for whom he had worked, and Wilma Bragg, of Newton County. This is not to say that had Mr. Johns not been brutalized in prison he would not have killed three people; he may have anyway. But how much rage did he carry with him as a result of his prison experience? If Mr. Lamb's account is even partly correct -- and his story rings true -- one can only conclude that the inmates have far too much control at the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center, home to 1,500 maximum-security inmates. It sounds like the classic old-style prison, in which gangs dictate the tenor of prison life. One can only hope that this is not true. The Missouri Department of Corrections has a duty to protect the safety of offenders in its care to the extent practically possible. It is unconscionable to tolerate a system in which a prisoner's choice is to submit to rape and other assaults or to join a gang for protection. Prison officials can and should minimize the role of gangs and confine the most violent apart from the general population. To do otherwise is to create more Tony Lambs. That ill serves society. A Glimpse Of Prison HorrorsBy Tony Lamb
On my way to the big house, at the age of 17, I sat chained, silent and trying to swallow back all those fears trapped inside me, while headed towards the path of the unknown. I was forced to live a dark experience that no one wants to hear about. Stripped naked while all eyes were penetrating my flesh, I was a youngster in a grown man's prison. The steel bars slamming shut was the sound of finality, the beginning of the end. The sign above the gate at Missouri State Prison read "Leave all your hopes and dreams behind." This I did the minute I woke up, after being knocked out and finding that my shoes had been stolen off my feet that same day. I got up and headed for my cell, while my eye was swollen shut and dripping with blood. My celly informed me about the laws of prison life (fight, become a turn-out or hit the fence). With his prison wisdom, I was handed a knife and guided to battle, stabbing the man who stole my shoes. I was young and only knew the way I was told. My pair of shoes almost cost a man's life and got six people sent to the hospital, including me, along with my shoes. The brutal way of life I was forced to deal with changed me into the hardened criminal I am today. Through this, I became a member of the Aryan Brotherhood at the age of 17. Scared, separated from family, just trying to stay alive day-to-day and no one to turn to except myself created emotional and physical hardships. Many of the people who came in with me are now turn-outs, men turned to homosexuality, thrown from one man to another, spreading diseases. They wear makeup and survive through homosexual activity, while others became junkies on prison-distributed mental health drugs that are passed out like candy, or simply committed suicide. There is no backing up. Take your pick, because everyone in here has to. Now as a grown man, I write this. I'm a hardened criminal turned hunter with animal instincts. I rose through the ranks fighting Crips, Bloods, Gangster Disciples, etc. Plain and simple, "make your bones" is the motto on the prison yard. Through assaults by convicts and cops in prison, hearing gang rapes, prison murders, stabbings and with tattoos all over my body, I'm now filled with hate. I know no other way after living this life for the last 18 years and, in the process, getting my bones broken, acquiring a drug addiction and losing half my lung by a 10.5-inch piece of rugged prison steel. A hit not accomplished. Looking back to the day I walked through the front gate, I no longer see a child with a growing heart, but an animal with a lost heart. Every day new teenagers are coming to prison. Stepping off the bus, they are being whistled at, hear catcalls and by the end of the day you hear their screams of pain, hear them crying for help at the end of the cellblock. The vicious cycle every inmate has to go through. Today, I stood with about 15 members of my gang and watched the bus unload to see who has the look in their eye. Will they become an enemy with a rival gang? Someone's girl? Or join me? There is no in-between on this yard. The young ones I can't help, unless they fight and make a stand. They have to show me something. For the ones who will not fight, well they are somewhere in the dark, raped, beaten up and drugged out with hopes to be able to commit suicide. In the morning, he'll be forced to call and manipulate his family for money, being told it will not happen again with promises of protection. Maybe, just maybe, he can pay his way out of this type of slavery. If so, someone else will be there offering a small gift of heroin, cocaine or meth. One way or another, the money must flow for any gang to stay on top. In here, you have to stay on top, even though to society we are at the bottom. This life is unknown to all, except those who live it. We have our own rank and file. This is a city within a city. To stay on top, you must push others down and climb over them. For the ones who do stand and fight, I'm here to pass on the tradition of "making your bones." You'll do a year of solitary confinement for this, but a year in max is what you need to make it in prison. Max, solitary or what we call the hole, breeds hate, anger and aggression. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, inmates scream, bang, pound and kick the cell doors. "Meds, bring me my meds!" Depression sets in from sensory deprivation, no hugs, no affection from family, no hopes and no dreams. The front gate shut them behind. The smell is of urine, feces and Mace from the fire extinguisher size can called MK-46 and a hand grenade tear gas bomb called a PK-45. Goon squads, five-man teams dressed in all black face masks and body armor. They come in our cells throwing hand grenades (PK-45s) then see how fast they can break something, while mentally ill inmates stand in strip cells with feces smeared all over them, screaming, crying and trying to commit suicide. One year in this hostile environment, you argue, make enemies and form alliances swearing to kill each other as the correctional officers promote racial violence. Then and only then, filled with this type of emotional damage, can a teen hope to make it in prison, if you call this making it. This is the life. This is the vicious cycle that awaits teens in prison. |
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