One workday morning, upon entering the prison's administration building, I saw and heard a group of white shirts, blue shirts, and civilian staff members jabbering among themselves. Angrily. Naturally inquisitive, I joined the assembly in order to discover what the heated topic was about.
"Those were the originals. Antiques. They're worth thousands apiece," said one blueshirt.
"I heard they're worth a ton," said another.
"What's worth so much?" I asked.
"Tommies," replied the second officer. "Gun collectors will pay ten grand, or more, just to say they own one."
"I still don't know what you're talking about?"
"A pair of Thompson submachine guns," explained Lieutenant Harvey Winans, looking straight at me while jabbing an index finger at my chest but not actually touching it. "The prison's had them ever since the twenties."
"Yes, I saw them. What about them?"
"They're gone. They were taken from the armory last night."
"You mean somebody somehow broke into tower eight and stole them?"
"No, Governor Lucey's chauffeur, a state patrolman, came here last night. He showed his identification card to the shift captain and said he was here to pick up those guns and take them to Governor Lucey in Madison. So, the shift captain gave them to him."
A few blueshirts mentioned a "Lucey buddy" who had wanted those weapons for some time, and now he had them. I don't recall the name but it was mentioned. Although I can't prove that Lucey's chauffeur picked up a pair of Thompson submachine guns because I did not personally witness the act, there's no doubt in my mind the event took place.
During my probationary training class, Lt. Spiering showed those weapons to me and new Officer 1 Cliff Neuenschwander while we visited the large Tower Eight, overlooking Madison Street that runs in front of the institution. Tower Eight at that time housed the prison's armory. It was the only tower with two separate floors. The armory was located beneath Tower Eight's top floor on which the assigned armed tower officer stood in order to survey the entire front of the institution.
Around the same time our Democrat governor was attempting to close all state lockups and supplant them with community-based treatment centers, the federal judge of Wisconsin's western district, James Edward Doyle, former chairman of the Wisconsin's Democrat Party from 1951-53, was also interested in changing the prison system, judicially making certain that inmates were shown the Constitutional respect he felt their citizenship demanded.
Doyle was a politician through and through. He ran for governor in 1954 but lost his bid to Republican Walter J. Kohler. Although state voters thumbed their noses at Doyle, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed him to the federal bench eleven years later in 1965. If you can't get elected by your fellow citizens to an office of power for four years, then wait for a President to appoint you to one that lasts for a lifetime. Judge Doyle, by the way, was the father of future Democrat Governor James Doyle, the state's leader from 2003-2011.
At the same time Lucey and Doyle were hot to trot in their push to drastically change Wisconsin corrections in order to fit their political theories, “professional legislators” who entered the picture made sweeping changes to all state bureaucracies, forcing civil service employees to be accountable to their political whims. While most employees held on to the old way of doing things, some workers became aware as to who buttered their bread. It wasn’t the local administrator, but the legislature who slathered their staff of life with the emulsified dairy product. Some of them became political hacks, and when their political party was in power, they moved up in management’s table of organization.
Young lawyers only a few years out of law school soon sought and won elections. In time, they made the state legislature a full-time operation, with concomitant rising wages for themselves.
Getting the picture? I was just starting to understand how government really worked. Politicians started jamming through a multiplicity of programs for which ordinary citizens had to pay.
Meanwhile, activist-federal judge James Doyle and the American Civil Liberties Union worked hand in glove in order to make changes both Doyle and the ACLU wished to implement. Although not an attorney, I recall reading Doyle's rulings regarding our prison's treatment of inmates. Most bordered on fiction. Unbelievable is all I can say.
For one thing, the judge halted staff's opening and reading letters to inmates as well as letters authored by them because inmates had privacy rights, the same as free citizens. Incoming and outgoing letters could only be inspected from their exterior for contraband.
Inmates don't necessarily change their dishonest ways. Catholic chaplain Fr. Dismas discovered that fact of life the hard way. He was approached by an inmate he had recently baptized. The man asked the good reverend if he'd mail the man's baptismal certificate in an 8x11 manila envelope he handed to the priest. The envelope was addressed to the inmate's mother.
At first, Dismas was going to perform the act of kindness. Then, his B. S. detector started working overtime. The priest checked the mother's address in the man's personnel files, which was different from the one on the manila envelope. After the priest opened the envelope, he found in it, placed between two pieces of cardboard, hundreds of automobile license plate tags, printed by the prison's print shop.
Vehicle owners must annually pay the state's motor vehicle department for an updated plastic covered tag with stick-um on its backside. With payment in hand, the department sends the updated tag to the vehicle owner who must affix it to the rear license plate. That way, law enforcement officers upon seeing it can usually be assured the driver is in compliance with state law. Usually.
Milwaukee detectives were alerted. They discovered that particular inmate had been sending out only a few tags at a time in a regular envelope to a compatriot on the streets who sold them to other lawbreakers for a quarter of the price the state charged. Business was so good the compatriot demanded more than just the few tags the inmate could stuff in a common envelope.
After Fr. Dismas turned the manila envelope and its contents over to his supervisor, the warden, the prison chief said, "Now, do you understand what I've been trying to tell you? Like this fellow, most inmates for whose welfare we are responsible are definitely a different breed of cat."
The main loss to us prison employees was definitely overlooked by Judge Doyle: Our well-being. When officers were able to read incoming letters, in which the news might have been about a sick infant, an unfaithful wife, a death in the family, or some other emotional trigger, officers sent those letters to the inmates' social workers. Social workers were then able to break the news in such a way that the inmate didn't "go off" and attack the nearest staff member at the time.
That was no longer the case. Assaults on staff increased.
I referred in an earlier blog to the inmate Kangaroo Court. Doyle disbanded it as well as he erased all prison rules after he implemented a new statewide rule book with the help of the University of Wisconsin law school. In addition, he stated because inmates were U. S. citizens, they had the right to question their accuser in a hearing whenever they received a conduct report. In addition, they could call upon inmate witnesses to the hearing. Also, the prison had to assign staff members as inmate advocates, assisting inmates in presenting their "cases."
Guess who became a staff advocate? It didn't take me long to dislike the task. The same thing happened with other staff members. Thus, new positions were added to our staff complement, full-time inmate advocates. And who paid for them?
In time, Wisconsin Corrections, a division of the state's Health and Social Services Department, became a Department all of its own.
I learned over time that a book I had read was correct: Bureaucracies have one job — and that is to grow themselves. The number of Corrections employees drastically increased but those additional employees did not serve in institutions. Instead, they overran Madison's Central Office. It was like a small rabbit hutch with overly prolific parents. The bunnies’ primary task was to serve state legislators, not our clients on probation, parole, or the incarcerated.
"Those were the originals. Antiques. They're worth thousands apiece," said one blueshirt.
"I heard they're worth a ton," said another.
"What's worth so much?" I asked.
"Tommies," replied the second officer. "Gun collectors will pay ten grand, or more, just to say they own one."
"I still don't know what you're talking about?"
"A pair of Thompson submachine guns," explained Lieutenant Harvey Winans, looking straight at me while jabbing an index finger at my chest but not actually touching it. "The prison's had them ever since the twenties."
"Yes, I saw them. What about them?"
"They're gone. They were taken from the armory last night."
"You mean somebody somehow broke into tower eight and stole them?"
"No, Governor Lucey's chauffeur, a state patrolman, came here last night. He showed his identification card to the shift captain and said he was here to pick up those guns and take them to Governor Lucey in Madison. So, the shift captain gave them to him."
A few blueshirts mentioned a "Lucey buddy" who had wanted those weapons for some time, and now he had them. I don't recall the name but it was mentioned. Although I can't prove that Lucey's chauffeur picked up a pair of Thompson submachine guns because I did not personally witness the act, there's no doubt in my mind the event took place.
During my probationary training class, Lt. Spiering showed those weapons to me and new Officer 1 Cliff Neuenschwander while we visited the large Tower Eight, overlooking Madison Street that runs in front of the institution. Tower Eight at that time housed the prison's armory. It was the only tower with two separate floors. The armory was located beneath Tower Eight's top floor on which the assigned armed tower officer stood in order to survey the entire front of the institution.
Around the same time our Democrat governor was attempting to close all state lockups and supplant them with community-based treatment centers, the federal judge of Wisconsin's western district, James Edward Doyle, former chairman of the Wisconsin's Democrat Party from 1951-53, was also interested in changing the prison system, judicially making certain that inmates were shown the Constitutional respect he felt their citizenship demanded.
Doyle was a politician through and through. He ran for governor in 1954 but lost his bid to Republican Walter J. Kohler. Although state voters thumbed their noses at Doyle, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed him to the federal bench eleven years later in 1965. If you can't get elected by your fellow citizens to an office of power for four years, then wait for a President to appoint you to one that lasts for a lifetime. Judge Doyle, by the way, was the father of future Democrat Governor James Doyle, the state's leader from 2003-2011.
At the same time Lucey and Doyle were hot to trot in their push to drastically change Wisconsin corrections in order to fit their political theories, “professional legislators” who entered the picture made sweeping changes to all state bureaucracies, forcing civil service employees to be accountable to their political whims. While most employees held on to the old way of doing things, some workers became aware as to who buttered their bread. It wasn’t the local administrator, but the legislature who slathered their staff of life with the emulsified dairy product. Some of them became political hacks, and when their political party was in power, they moved up in management’s table of organization.
Young lawyers only a few years out of law school soon sought and won elections. In time, they made the state legislature a full-time operation, with concomitant rising wages for themselves.
Getting the picture? I was just starting to understand how government really worked. Politicians started jamming through a multiplicity of programs for which ordinary citizens had to pay.
Meanwhile, activist-federal judge James Doyle and the American Civil Liberties Union worked hand in glove in order to make changes both Doyle and the ACLU wished to implement. Although not an attorney, I recall reading Doyle's rulings regarding our prison's treatment of inmates. Most bordered on fiction. Unbelievable is all I can say.
For one thing, the judge halted staff's opening and reading letters to inmates as well as letters authored by them because inmates had privacy rights, the same as free citizens. Incoming and outgoing letters could only be inspected from their exterior for contraband.
Inmates don't necessarily change their dishonest ways. Catholic chaplain Fr. Dismas discovered that fact of life the hard way. He was approached by an inmate he had recently baptized. The man asked the good reverend if he'd mail the man's baptismal certificate in an 8x11 manila envelope he handed to the priest. The envelope was addressed to the inmate's mother.
At first, Dismas was going to perform the act of kindness. Then, his B. S. detector started working overtime. The priest checked the mother's address in the man's personnel files, which was different from the one on the manila envelope. After the priest opened the envelope, he found in it, placed between two pieces of cardboard, hundreds of automobile license plate tags, printed by the prison's print shop.
Vehicle owners must annually pay the state's motor vehicle department for an updated plastic covered tag with stick-um on its backside. With payment in hand, the department sends the updated tag to the vehicle owner who must affix it to the rear license plate. That way, law enforcement officers upon seeing it can usually be assured the driver is in compliance with state law. Usually.
Milwaukee detectives were alerted. They discovered that particular inmate had been sending out only a few tags at a time in a regular envelope to a compatriot on the streets who sold them to other lawbreakers for a quarter of the price the state charged. Business was so good the compatriot demanded more than just the few tags the inmate could stuff in a common envelope.
After Fr. Dismas turned the manila envelope and its contents over to his supervisor, the warden, the prison chief said, "Now, do you understand what I've been trying to tell you? Like this fellow, most inmates for whose welfare we are responsible are definitely a different breed of cat."
The main loss to us prison employees was definitely overlooked by Judge Doyle: Our well-being. When officers were able to read incoming letters, in which the news might have been about a sick infant, an unfaithful wife, a death in the family, or some other emotional trigger, officers sent those letters to the inmates' social workers. Social workers were then able to break the news in such a way that the inmate didn't "go off" and attack the nearest staff member at the time.
That was no longer the case. Assaults on staff increased.
I referred in an earlier blog to the inmate Kangaroo Court. Doyle disbanded it as well as he erased all prison rules after he implemented a new statewide rule book with the help of the University of Wisconsin law school. In addition, he stated because inmates were U. S. citizens, they had the right to question their accuser in a hearing whenever they received a conduct report. In addition, they could call upon inmate witnesses to the hearing. Also, the prison had to assign staff members as inmate advocates, assisting inmates in presenting their "cases."
Guess who became a staff advocate? It didn't take me long to dislike the task. The same thing happened with other staff members. Thus, new positions were added to our staff complement, full-time inmate advocates. And who paid for them?
In time, Wisconsin Corrections, a division of the state's Health and Social Services Department, became a Department all of its own.
I learned over time that a book I had read was correct: Bureaucracies have one job — and that is to grow themselves. The number of Corrections employees drastically increased but those additional employees did not serve in institutions. Instead, they overran Madison's Central Office. It was like a small rabbit hutch with overly prolific parents. The bunnies’ primary task was to serve state legislators, not our clients on probation, parole, or the incarcerated.