"Too Late!!" - Guest Blog from Jackie

Since Ani is in segregation, and I haven't heard from him for awhile, I decided to use his blog for a bit of a rant.

I remember when the judge sentenced him in 2002 that she gave a very brief nod to the concept that if he were younger she might consider suggestions for evaluation and treatment. This sense that something is "too late" and therefore the only thing we can do is to lock him up for basically the rest of his life, riles me. How can something be "too late" when you were never offered it in the first place? What is "too late"? Has the train left the station? Has the doctor gone home for the day? Is there not another day, another train?

There seems to me to be something monumentally cruel in telling someone it is too late to allow them to learn, to grow, to find out what they can do to make things better. Ani is a slow learner and a late developer in some areas. He is grappling with how to make decisions by thinking through options and consequences rather than acting without thought. I don't know how much he can develop this ability, but I would never discourage his desire by telling him "it is too late" or "that ship has sailed" or "that's water over the dam." Do we send people to prison to "think about what they've done" or do we do so to lock them up forever so we don't have to think about them? How many people actually give any thought to what happens to people when our judges, on our behalf, give out sentences that give up on a person?

The bitter part of it being "too late" for Ani is that we are just for the first time learning what may have been the cause for many of his difficulties and we are attempting to get this evaluated. For a variety of reasons, this was never done before. If there is something going on that caused him to have difficulty in several areas, it offers hope to find that out and see what can be offered to him to deal with this. This seems to be all about hope and possibility, learning and growth...and yet the judge acted on her belief that it was all "too late" for Ani.

It has been a fragile thing to offer hope to Ani. For as long as he can remember, he has been offered shame and punishment whenever he failed to live up to the expectations of others. He was told over and over that he was lazy or he didn't care or he wasn't trying hard enough - that the thing being expected of him was within his power to do. And then, over and over he was heaped with scorn and rejection, blame and punishment when things didn't work out the way others had expected. He came to have a deathly fear of all expectations. Our recent sojourn into the land of neuroscience has been frought with anxiety for the possiblity of hope, the possiblity that things might not always have been his fault, and the possiblity that upon learning where he is having difficulty there might be something that could make things work better. Dang those expectations!

So, in spite of the judge's pronouncement that life was pretty much over for Ani, and no one would be making any more expectations of him, I have labored to help him find answers. In my mind, prison is - or should be - about learning to take responsibility, learning to act in a way that changes things and makes them better. However, I have found very very little of that going on in prison and I wonder if it explains why there is such a high recidivism rate. It is really a dangerous thing, in my mind, to lock people up without giving them the tools to make changes, as it is bound to actually make them worse.

Taking responsibility, I believe, starts with knowing what you are capable of, what is within your power to do. If we take responsibility for something we have no power over, it kind of messes up our sense of responsibility. Likewise, if we believe we are powerless when there actually is something we can do, we have warped our sense of responsibility. I hope I am not being naive in my belief that an evaluation will help Ani to learn more about what he is capable of doing, and what he is not capable of at this time. And, that this will form the basis for a truer sense of responsibility.

Ani's last letter also addressed his current state of understanding on this issue, making the following request of me:

"On my next worksheet series I would like to work on my decision making abilities. I should point out this is a biggie. Even though I know what I'm supposed to do I more often than not will do what I want to do. Its a terrible habit for me to break. Nothing works. Not logic, reason, beatings, or Prison; I'm incorrigible. I would like to be corrigible."

I agree that there is something very impaired in his decision making abilities. I am encouraged by his growing awareness of this fact. I am hopeful that with the help of some professionals that we are hoping to be able to bring into the prison to evaluate him, we will know more about what isn't working. And then comes the possibility of growth and change. Much better to be here than to be left at the station watching the train of life departing with just about everyone else on it.

Happy New Year!
Jackie

Birthday Greetings

(with an intro and closing by Jackie)

Ani's last post was written while he was in segregation. He got out in early November, after about 50 days and was in GP or "general population" for about 6 weeks. I noticed that he seemed to be taking some time in adjusting to the stresses of adapting to a new cellmate and to the demands of his neighbors on his tier. He was just talking about being ready to send a new post to his blog.

Then, on December 16th, when he was coming back to his cell from a meal, he was given something folded up in a wad of toilet paper by the tier tender (a tier tender is an inmate job), and told to deliver it to another inmate when he went up to the library the next morning. He put it in his pocket and before he could decide what to do about it he was stopped by a guard, asked what he had in his pocket, and his cell was searched. Once again, they found a few items of contraband in his cell (although not in his personal property), and when he handed over what he had just put in his pocket, it turned out to be 3 pills in a salt packet. The pills were clonidine, a prescription medication used to treat high blood pressure. (I looked it up.) He was whisked back to "the hole" and has been in solitary confinement since then, waiting for his "ticket" to be heard. Since tickets are only heard on Fridays, and the next two Fridays will be holidays, it looks like he won't have his ticket heard until January 7. That means he will have served 3 weeks before his sentence even starts, since the sentence doesn't start until the day it is given at the hearing.

So, unfortunately, Ani was in segregation for his birthday on December 24, and for Christmas. He wrote me a letter on his birthday, and I thought I would share parts of it with whomever might be reading...

"12-24-2010

"Hey! It's my birthday! I can't imagine a day coming where I won't be absof*inglutely thrilled by my birthday. Can't imagine it. I do hope that a day comes where life will be better, but for now this is pretty good... I woke up and my mind went immediately to my conduct report. I was unhappy because it was written in such a way as to appear that I named names. But then I saw a fruit fly while I was brushing my teeth. I've, for mysterious reason unknown to even myself, always like fruit flys. So I asked it a question and if by way of the universe answering it flew up and landed very close to my mirror on the wall. I was looking at myself and I knew that I was going to be alright....

"I do look forward to book day - new books to read. So I was eagerly anticipating the moment when I heard the book cart trundling down the hallway. He stops at my door, opens my trap and gives me three books. What the hell?! They ain't the books I ordered, in fact the CO gave me my neighbors book order. The CO looks on the cart and no books! I'm...unhappy. But the CO (an all around decent fellow) says, "fill another order out" and he'll go fill it and bring them on the med cart. Wow. And he does it! Ha! And I got my first three choices - which never happens! Joyz! So I got a cooool b-day gift from the universe. Thank you universe. So I have two big fat James Michener novels, Texas and Hawaii as well as the fourth book in the Earth's Children series by Jean Auel, The Plains of Passage. So that's 3317 pages to read in a week if you're interested. Right now Hawaii is first up. The book begins with a king getting brained and anytime a book begins with royalty getting their brains beat out - well, that's an okay book to me!

"...do you want to know what my favorite word in the whole world is? It's not love, or peace, or money (but them's all cool). It's not toys (dear to my hearts), or even Jackie (but its nearly neck and neck!). My favorite word in the whole wide world is: ...wait for it... FLUEGELHORN! That word just makes me chuckle/snort/giggle and fills me with the urge to dance (sucker!) and shout it at the top of my lungs.

FLUEGELHORN

"Yes, I'm being silly but for the first time in a week I feel like me again. Sure, I made a bad choice but I can recover. My reputation might take a hit but I think I'll be okay. ... I'll just disappear into the belly of this concrete beast for a few months...and then I'll be burped up like a bit of undigested pot roast, ready for my next adventure!"

(end of Ani's letter) It never ceases to amaze me how he can let things like this slide off his back and come up grinning. Sure, he's been dealing with set-backs and losses all of his life so I suppose he has developed a knack of some kind that most of the rest of us simply don't have. And, if you don't really have any plans or expectations, you don't get bent out of shape when they are foiled. I can't decide if his way of looking at life is something to be sorry for or wish I had!

We've no pictures this year like last Christmas. Please feel free to share your own with us!!

Season's Greetings and Best Wishes to all Readers,

Jackie