Regarding an earlier blog entry, Henry Snyder, a reporter for the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen, commented that inmates are no longer allowed to smoke. Thus, cigarettes can't be inmate illegal tender nowadays. Further, he wrote that convicts are now confrontational with staff, or as Henry wrote, the inmates are "in staff's faces," unlike the way men behaved when I first began teaching English to inmates at the prison.
I assumed readers of my blog realized I was writing about the years I spent working in Wisconsin Corrections, either teaching or administering to the institution's education program or its treatment program from Nov., 1968 to July, 1996. I've been retired for almost eighteen years now.
I've also been warned time and again about the word assume: It can make an ass out of u & me. Thus, I'm writing these blogs mainly about what I observed during those specific years: 1968-1996. If I'm not writing about them, I'll make mention of that fact.
Related to Henry's comment, I've often been told there are two things we cannot avoid in life: Death and taxes. I'll offer a third: Change. When I started working at the Wisconsin State Prison (WSP), now called Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI), the institution, and thus the state, realized a profit of $175.00 per inmate per year. Each inmate now costs Wisconsin taxpaying citizens over $25,000 annually. That amount doesn't include the family left behind, many being forced to collect welfare since the family's breadwinner is incarcerated. Talk about change.
Inmates washed, dried, and pressed sheets and pillow cases in the Upper and Lower Laundry for most state-supported institutions, including its mental institutions and university system. Also, they washed and dried towels, handkerchiefs, undershorts, T-shirts, singlets, socks, and fart sacks (mattress covers) for fellow inmates.
Tailors cut and sewed hand-picked material for two or three-button suits for soon to be released brethren who wanted to look their best upon release. In addition, tailors regularly cut material for and sewed the resultant parts into inmate uniforms, khaki shirts and trousers, in addition to warm weather and winter jackets. They also repaired clothes for staff, the prison business office collecting the fees, which went into a state fund.
Cobblers made certain shoes and work boots lasted as long as they could. They re-heeled and re-soled my and other staff shoes back then for a fee, collected by the institution's business office and placed in a state account.
Factory workers manufactured Wisconsin vehicle license plates. In the metal furniture factory, metal fabricators, brake operators, shearers, and welders mass-produced steel furniture for the prison and other state supported institutions. The furniture they produced included, but was not limited to, book shelves, school and clothes lockers, and student and teacher desks.
Machinists contrived steel replacement parts with their lathes and drill presses in the large machine shop. They made certain worn out or temporarily inoperable mechanisms in prison industries were put back to work as soon as possible.
Printers operated offset presses, their output including many state brochures and forms.
Chemical workers mixed up highly volatile ingredients for paint, sprayed on Wisconsin highways, those endless yellow and white lines. Silk screen artists produced yellow and black highway caution signs in addition to octagonal stop signs.
Bakers mixed and kneaded dough each weekday, proofed it, and formed dough into loaves, baking them, in addition to mixing ingredients for cakes and pies and doughnuts and jelly rolls and hamburger and frankfurter buns, and baking them to near perfection.
Minimum security inmates raised pigs, cows, and chickens on Farm #1, just east of Waupun's city limits. Other men plowed #1's fields, planted, and then harvested oats, alfalfa, soybeans, and corn for animals. In addition, they planted garden vegetables for men not only locked up in our institution but for inmates in other state institutions, as well.
A few men collected eggs from the hen house each day. Fresh eggs were delivered weekdays to WSP. When hens became too old to lay eggs, they ended up as southern fried chicken served to inmates in both their dining halls. Staff cooks and their apprentices made certain they offered good, tasty meals each and every day.
Farm #1 butchers slaughtered large farm animals while prison butchers prepared quarters into normal beef and pork cuts. They also smoked bacon served for many an inmate breakfast.
Paid civilian supervisors oversaw most inmate work, acting as journeymen working alongside apprentices, teaching acolytes the many facets of each job.
Primarily, the institution administration made certain inmates were busy working, and, as a result, not getting into trouble. A secondary outcome was that working inmates were learning work ethic basics, reporting to the job daily and on time, performing as well as possible, and receiving pay for doing those mundane tasks in order to buy "extras," which included tailor made cigarettes. Their "three hots and a cot," plus the clothes they wore, were on the state.
I personally knew some men who sent their monthly salary of seven bucks to their families. Although it wasn't much, it was the least they could do, they thought, in order to make amends.
Then, along came Lucey.
Former Governor Patrick Joseph Lucey recently died at age 96, his public life lauded in the media by fellow Democrats. As Shakespeare wrote, and I paraphrase, "Man's good is often buried with their bones." However, I did not praise Lucey while he was alive, and I do not laud him after his death. I suspect a lot of Corrections old timers have responded in similar manner.
After he was elected, it didn't take long for Lucey to hurriedly form a Citizen Committee on Offender Rehabilitation. We staff members learned, via the media, Lucey was determined to phase out and shut down major institutions by 1975 and shift their tasks to what he called, "Community-based treatment centers." WSP was the primary major institution to be replaced.
Soon after he was elected, Lucey visited us with an entourage of press members and political hacks, who chased after him like lemmings, making their hurried way to the high cliff overlooking rocks and tempestuous ocean waves.
Avoiding staff members as if we had some awful communicable disease, Lucey chatted amiably with more than a few inmates as if they could vote for him in the next election. Media folk ate it up and took countless photos.
Lucey hardly talked to staff, and when he stopped to listen to the few of us explain our roles, he gave us summary treatment, saying nothing while hurriedly moving on to the next staff victim or delightful inmate.
Lucey's citizen committee members followed his example. They treated staff members as if we were the Unclean, accusing us of protecting our jobs. As an alternative, they paid heed to every inmate accusation with excessive care, rarely with caution.
There's more. Much more.
I assumed readers of my blog realized I was writing about the years I spent working in Wisconsin Corrections, either teaching or administering to the institution's education program or its treatment program from Nov., 1968 to July, 1996. I've been retired for almost eighteen years now.
I've also been warned time and again about the word assume: It can make an ass out of u & me. Thus, I'm writing these blogs mainly about what I observed during those specific years: 1968-1996. If I'm not writing about them, I'll make mention of that fact.
Related to Henry's comment, I've often been told there are two things we cannot avoid in life: Death and taxes. I'll offer a third: Change. When I started working at the Wisconsin State Prison (WSP), now called Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI), the institution, and thus the state, realized a profit of $175.00 per inmate per year. Each inmate now costs Wisconsin taxpaying citizens over $25,000 annually. That amount doesn't include the family left behind, many being forced to collect welfare since the family's breadwinner is incarcerated. Talk about change.
Inmates washed, dried, and pressed sheets and pillow cases in the Upper and Lower Laundry for most state-supported institutions, including its mental institutions and university system. Also, they washed and dried towels, handkerchiefs, undershorts, T-shirts, singlets, socks, and fart sacks (mattress covers) for fellow inmates.
Tailors cut and sewed hand-picked material for two or three-button suits for soon to be released brethren who wanted to look their best upon release. In addition, tailors regularly cut material for and sewed the resultant parts into inmate uniforms, khaki shirts and trousers, in addition to warm weather and winter jackets. They also repaired clothes for staff, the prison business office collecting the fees, which went into a state fund.
Cobblers made certain shoes and work boots lasted as long as they could. They re-heeled and re-soled my and other staff shoes back then for a fee, collected by the institution's business office and placed in a state account.
Factory workers manufactured Wisconsin vehicle license plates. In the metal furniture factory, metal fabricators, brake operators, shearers, and welders mass-produced steel furniture for the prison and other state supported institutions. The furniture they produced included, but was not limited to, book shelves, school and clothes lockers, and student and teacher desks.
Machinists contrived steel replacement parts with their lathes and drill presses in the large machine shop. They made certain worn out or temporarily inoperable mechanisms in prison industries were put back to work as soon as possible.
Printers operated offset presses, their output including many state brochures and forms.
Chemical workers mixed up highly volatile ingredients for paint, sprayed on Wisconsin highways, those endless yellow and white lines. Silk screen artists produced yellow and black highway caution signs in addition to octagonal stop signs.
Bakers mixed and kneaded dough each weekday, proofed it, and formed dough into loaves, baking them, in addition to mixing ingredients for cakes and pies and doughnuts and jelly rolls and hamburger and frankfurter buns, and baking them to near perfection.
Minimum security inmates raised pigs, cows, and chickens on Farm #1, just east of Waupun's city limits. Other men plowed #1's fields, planted, and then harvested oats, alfalfa, soybeans, and corn for animals. In addition, they planted garden vegetables for men not only locked up in our institution but for inmates in other state institutions, as well.
A few men collected eggs from the hen house each day. Fresh eggs were delivered weekdays to WSP. When hens became too old to lay eggs, they ended up as southern fried chicken served to inmates in both their dining halls. Staff cooks and their apprentices made certain they offered good, tasty meals each and every day.
Farm #1 butchers slaughtered large farm animals while prison butchers prepared quarters into normal beef and pork cuts. They also smoked bacon served for many an inmate breakfast.
Paid civilian supervisors oversaw most inmate work, acting as journeymen working alongside apprentices, teaching acolytes the many facets of each job.
Primarily, the institution administration made certain inmates were busy working, and, as a result, not getting into trouble. A secondary outcome was that working inmates were learning work ethic basics, reporting to the job daily and on time, performing as well as possible, and receiving pay for doing those mundane tasks in order to buy "extras," which included tailor made cigarettes. Their "three hots and a cot," plus the clothes they wore, were on the state.
I personally knew some men who sent their monthly salary of seven bucks to their families. Although it wasn't much, it was the least they could do, they thought, in order to make amends.
Then, along came Lucey.
Former Governor Patrick Joseph Lucey recently died at age 96, his public life lauded in the media by fellow Democrats. As Shakespeare wrote, and I paraphrase, "Man's good is often buried with their bones." However, I did not praise Lucey while he was alive, and I do not laud him after his death. I suspect a lot of Corrections old timers have responded in similar manner.
After he was elected, it didn't take long for Lucey to hurriedly form a Citizen Committee on Offender Rehabilitation. We staff members learned, via the media, Lucey was determined to phase out and shut down major institutions by 1975 and shift their tasks to what he called, "Community-based treatment centers." WSP was the primary major institution to be replaced.
Soon after he was elected, Lucey visited us with an entourage of press members and political hacks, who chased after him like lemmings, making their hurried way to the high cliff overlooking rocks and tempestuous ocean waves.
Avoiding staff members as if we had some awful communicable disease, Lucey chatted amiably with more than a few inmates as if they could vote for him in the next election. Media folk ate it up and took countless photos.
Lucey hardly talked to staff, and when he stopped to listen to the few of us explain our roles, he gave us summary treatment, saying nothing while hurriedly moving on to the next staff victim or delightful inmate.
Lucey's citizen committee members followed his example. They treated staff members as if we were the Unclean, accusing us of protecting our jobs. As an alternative, they paid heed to every inmate accusation with excessive care, rarely with caution.
There's more. Much more.