Shakespeare Saved My Life Page 11

  “When did you start fighting it?”

  “Shakespeare did that to me too!”

  “I wasn’t thinking Shakespeare.”

  “Actually, I was. Because it’s my investigation of Shakespeare’s characters bleeding over into myself. You start asking questions of yourself: ‘Why are you doing this?’ It definitely came during my Shakespeare experience.”

  “But if it kept you sane—?”

  “Why would you defend against it?” he asked, anticipating my question.

  “Right.”

  “You start using it too much, you start getting addicted. I wanted to do it more and more. Instead of an hour, it got to where I was spending six, seven hours a day! And I did start to question my sanity.”

  “Did you lose touch with details of your identity, like your age?”

  “I knew I was born in ’76; I didn’t lose that part. But I didn’t necessarily know what year it was. I remembered that my birthday was November 9, but I didn’t necessarily know what day it was. And then if I figured out that it was my birthday, it would bring on the question: How old am I?”

  “How did you celebrate your birthdays?”

  “I didn’t celebrate at all. In a strange way, every year was kinda worrisome, ’cause I thought, ‘Oh, man, that’s one more year, I’m losing time!’ I was still a kid, but I really felt that pressure: ‘I’m running out of time!’”

  Newton was just a kid, aged nineteen, when he entered supermax. And he wouldn’t get out of that box until he was a thirty-year-old man.

  CHAPTER 33

  More House Calls

  One late-summer Friday night I arrived at the SHU to find the unit manager, Ken Gilchrist, still in his office. Because my sessions took place in the evenings, the administrative offices typically were dark and empty during my time in the unit. Usually, I was the only one there.

  “This can’t be good,” I said, trying to force my usual cheery voice.

  “It’s not,” he replied, not as cheerily. “We intercepted a message indicating that one of your guys”—one of the largest prisoners in the unit, with a history of instigating prison riots—“is planning an assault on staff tonight.”

  I wondered if the prisoners considered me “staff.” Apparently, the administration did.

  “Does that mean that I can’t have him in the group tonight?” (Is that a stupid question, or what?)

  “No,” he replied. “You can have him.” I was surprised, and rather pleased that he trusted me enough to share the information and leave me alone. As he headed out of the unit, he added, “Just don’t get too close to him.”

  “You mean physically, right?”

  He turned back and looked at me. “Right.”

  After he left, I ran off copies of the day’s assignment on the unit’s photocopy machine, collated the pages, opened up my vitaminwater, and headed down the long hallway toward the sally port that leads into the unit. First I stopped at the unit mailboxes. Under boxes labeled “Unit Team Manager,” “Casework Manager,” “Lieutenant,” and others was a box labeled “Shakespeare.” I reached inside: four more requests to join the program. At the end of the hallway, I pushed the intercom button and announced myself: “Shakespeare!” After another set of steel double doors rolled open and shut behind me, I entered the officers’ sealed-off glass-enclosed pod, the central control unit. The lieutenant and his staff were focused on their computer screen, apparently monitoring activity in one of the cells on their closed-circuit television monitor. I gave them a cheery greeting, but immediately I could tell that they were not happy to see me.

  “You can’t have your group today,” the lieutenant informed me, without turning around.

  “Gilchrist told me about Jones,” I said (not his real name). “He told me I could have him as long as I don’t get too close to him.”

  “Can’t have Jones,” said the lieutenant. Then, turning to face me, he added, “And can’t have your group.”

  “We’re all worried about him,” said one of the officers, a female. “What he might do.”

  “Well, what if I’m with you?” I offered. I was not suggesting that I could protect an officer better than he (or she) can protect me, of course, only that it’s possible that the prisoner might not try an assault with a volunteer present.

  “It’s you that we’re worried about,” said the officer. “What he might do to you.”

  “Oh.” It was looking like I’d have to make some more house calls to pick up homework and pass out next week’s assignment. “Well, then, can I go out and talk to him at his cell?”

  The officers looked at one another. The lieutenant shrugged, “If you want to.”

  “No group tonight?” said Bentley when I arrived at his cell. “Damn! I had some good questions.” He handed me his homework. “Guess we’ll have to discuss ’em on the range.”

  The others were equally disappointed, but when I arrived at Jones’s cell, he was sitting on his bunk, angry. He wouldn’t even come to the door.

  “It’s bullshit!” he shouted at me. (As I mentioned earlier, cussing in front of the Shakespeare professor was not common. It was, in this case, an indication of how angry Jones was.) “Come on, you know me, you know it’s bullshit! Tell ’em! Tell ’em it’s bullshit!”

  “Obviously, Mr. Jones,” I replied, “you are mistaking me for someone with power. What I think or say doesn’t carry any weight around here, you know that. Now here’s the assignment for next week.”

  I opened the cuff port and showed him the paper. He still wouldn’t get off the bunk. I waved the paper at him and stood there. Eventually, he shuffled to the door, took the paper out of my hand, and gave me his homework. As he turned away he muttered again, “Bullshit.”

  The last member of the group I visited was Newton.

  “Oh, hey, Dr. Bates!” he called out to me as soon as I stepped onto the range. “I’m in the shower.”

  SHU prisoners had no control over when they were brought into the shower, and the officers didn’t take the Shakespeare sessions into account, I’m sure, when they scheduled the prisoners’ showers.

  “My paper’s in the cell,” Newton called out through the pegboard door of the shower cell. (I made a point of not looking in his direction.) “Door’s open.”

  I walked in. It was my first time inside a segregation cell. It felt claustrophobic. I tried to imagine what it would feel like if the door suddenly rolled closed. I shuddered.

  The light was on; the Shakespeare book was laid open on the bunk. I looked around for the paper. I took those five steps that Newton’s walked a million times, from the door to the bunk: one…two…three…four…five.

  I saw the paper on the steel platform that serves as a writing desk. I picked it up and stepped toward the door: one…two…three…four…five…

  Six. I exited the cell with a sense of relief.

  “See you next week!” I called out in the direction of the shower as I left the range.

  CHAPTER 34

  Administrative Segregation versus Disciplinary Segregation

  Newton was dressed in bright orange scrubs when he came to the group, but most of the others were in more subdued khakis. Eventually, I learned about the difference between A/S versus D/S, or Administrative Segregation versus Disciplinary Segregation. The two supermax units in the state designate a prisoner under one of these two distinctions. A prisoner who is considered a potential risk, perhaps due to alleged association with a gang, will be designated A/S. Because he is not being punished for a conduct infraction, he has many of the same privileges that prisoners in general population have, while enjoying the “luxury” of a private cell. Prisoners who voluntarily “check in” are also in this category; they have requested long-term segregation because they fear for their lives in general population. Prison snitches and child molesters are two common examples of check-ins.

  D/S is altogether different: a much harsher and more restrictive environment. It is never the original crime that sen
ds a prisoner to supermax with a D/S designation; it is his conduct while incarcerated. Prisoners who have accumulated more than two years of segregation due to serious conduct infractions are sent to supermax for D/S. At one point in his segregated term, Newton had more than fifteen years of D/S time accumulated. Through good behavior, beginning with the Shakespeare program, he ended up serving “only” ten years in solitary confinement.

  “I did ten years of D/S—straight! No break!” he emphasized. “Don’t be thinking I was on A/S living the cushy life.”

  He was being ironic, of course, in referring to any kind of life in segregation as “cushy,” but I got the point: it’s one thing to have survived ten years of A/S; entirely another to have survived ten years of D/S.

  “One of the hardest things about D/S,” he told me, “is there’s no liberty whatsoever. None. You can’t just order food off commissary for a snack, you starve all night, you gotta bear it till breakfast, you gotta eat every piece of crap. When you have food, like the A/S guys, you just have more options. To someone on the outside looking in, that’s just ridiculous, but that’s a huge difference in lifestyle. Food is…liberty.”

  Granted, the conditions in any kind of long-term solitary confinement cell are tough, but they have also been earned. I want to be clear that I do not consider myself a “prisoner advocate” in that I am not crying over their conditions. And neither was Newton. One of his most common philosophical expressions applied here: “It is what it is.”

  Although they were committed many years ago, offenses such as attempted escape and assault had earned him a lengthy term in segregation. But Newton’s last violent incident occurred during the escape attempt of May 2000. Should he spend the rest of his life in segregation?

  CHAPTER 35

  Killer Dog

  Is rehabilitation possible? This topic came up one day when we were talking about his past behaviors, and Newton said, “I think I was like a killer dog, just aimlessly ‘Raa! Raa! Raa!”

  The metaphor seemed apt—and led to the idea of rehabilitation.

  “But here’s the thing, man,” he continued. “There are people that work dogs like that, rehabilitate ’em, so they ain’t got to be euthanized.”

  I saw a metaphorical parallel to Newton’s not being euthanized on death row and to the possibility of his rehabilitation.

  “That doesn’t mean that the dog would never bite somebody,” Newton acknowledged. “As long as this dog has teeth there’s no way to guarantee that he’s never gonna bite somebody. But the circumstances for why the dog bites are different. If he’s backed into a corner, he might bite someone, but he doesn’t want to bite. He’s not walking around looking for someone to bite. His motivation in life is different. It’s all the way different!”

  It was a serious topic, but I had to chuckle at the idea of a dog’s motivation in life. (A few biscuits and a scratch under the chin, perhaps?)

  “But how can you tell somebody this and successfully convince them?” he asked. “If all I know is that this used to be a rabid dog and now you’re telling me that he’s a peaceful, cool dog, it’s gonna be hard for me to absorb that. He used to be rabid so he could still be rabid; that’s what’s gonna attach to my mind. Because there’s the danger.”

  And there’s the challenge for me, in writing up his life story and the story of our program.

  “But if it’s true,” he continued, “if this killer dog really is a peaceful kind of dog now and he won’t revert back to the rabid dog, then that’s amazing. That’s awesome. That is just the greatest thing ever. What a dog!”

  Yes, what a dog! This is not just a rehabilitated dog lying down passively; this is a dog who is actively rehabilitating other killer dogs. That’s what Newton was doing in his approach to Hamlet. As the acknowledged leader of the group by now, he threw out another challenge. In his most daring move, he insisted that in the group’s creative adaptation of the play they change the ending. In their version, with the title “To Revenge or Not to Revenge,” Hamlet should choose not to kill.

  CHAPTER 36

  Extraction

  One day as I was about to enter one of the ranges, I heard a sudden commotion behind me. Before I could turn around, I was nearly knocked over by a team of officers running onto the range—as many as eight officers, most of them wearing body armor, helmets with visors, and heavy leather gloves, and carrying shields. It looked like some sort of medieval duel, only more frantic. I was about to witness my first extraction.

  Extraction is the forcible removal of an inmate from his cell. The specially trained team consists of at least five officers, accompanied by a supervising sergeant, a video camera man, and a medical assistant. Each team member is assigned a body part to subdue and place in restraints: right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, head. In its early years of operation, the SHU averaged several extractions per week.

  Newton was involved in a group demonstration at WCU that had ended in a cell extraction of each of the prisoners involved. The hostage incident in the SHU was his second experience with forcible removal by an extraction team. By then he knew what to expect when the officers arrived at the range in which he and his accomplices had been sealed off following the stabbing of Sgt. Harper.

  “They suit up and come and get you,” he told me. “They come in with all this gear. It’s really intimidating.”

  And then he described the conditions he endured after the SHU extraction.

  “I’m not claiming the ‘victim’ issue,” he said, “but this is no joke: I was stripped out for like sixteen days in my boxers, that was it. Sixteen days sitting like that on a strip cell.”

  A strip cell is an empty cell in which a prisoner sits in nothing but his underwear. I once got reprimanded for handing a prisoner in a strip cell a single sheet of paper (a Shakespeare speech).

  “And they would bring me these sacks,” he continued. “I didn’t get trays. I’d get my meals in sacks. And they would spray OC into my sack. You know what OC is? That chemical they use [pepper spray]. Aw, man! That stuff’s terrible! They would spray it in my little coffeecake sack, and it’s not a hallucination, you know when your eyes start burning. Like, ‘What the—!’ And I don’t go around making issues like, ‘I got treated bad!’ But the point is, what do you do? You buckle down and you freakin’ eat it. For two reasons: on principle and you’re hungry, you know what I mean? On principle, I’m not gonna let ’em win, I’m not gonna let ’em get to me.”

  It’s understandable that the officers would harbor resentment against any prisoner who had attacked one of their own, and published reports such as Cold Storage: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Indiana suggest that officers in the unit were more, to use Newton’s term, “rowdy” in the past than they are today.

  “They’d sit outside my cell and just stare at me all night,” Newton recalled. “They had a midnight shift, they were rowdy and obnoxious and just thought they were untouchable, and they would come and stand outside the cell. Just stare at me. All night. I don’t have no TV, I’m on a strip cell, I couldn’t hide from it. I’d have to sit and just look at them, and I would, and they’d look away. I’m sure internally I was worried, nervous, all that kind of stuff. But I’d refuse to show any signs of break whatsoever. Not that I didn’t want to, but just on principle, you know? Same thing with the food. So I would eat that out of spite. Like, ‘Yeah, okay!’ That stuff just eats you up. Everything burns in your face. But I would eat it. In those days, they had vindictive officers like that back there, no joke.”

  Based on my observations of the hardworking and well-intentioned officers during the ten years I worked at the SHU, it was clear to me that conditions improved a great deal since those days. But when he recalled his early experiences, Newton concluded: “I don’t know, man, the SHU does something to you.”

  Following the hostage attempt, Newton was housed in B-East, the most notorious wing of the SHU. That experience certainly did something to him—it drove him to the brink of suicide
.

  CHAPTER 37

  B-East

  B-East, also known as Beast, was still the most notorious wing of the SHU when I started working there. Three ranges in particular housed the worst of the “worst of the worst.” Most of the pegboard cell doors there were covered with clear plexiglass that was smeared with the bodily fluids that had been thrown by the desperate prisoner inside. When I tried to talk to a prisoner through that barrier, I wondered how he could breathe. “You just feel like you’re suffocating back here,” one prisoner said, “like you’re always coming up for air.”

  Newton had spent more than his share of time in what was almost exclusively the insane ward of the SHU. Imagine the challenge of retaining your hold on sanity in long-term isolation. Now imagine that all of the other prisoners around you are insane: not a single sane voice to hold on to. That was Newton’s situation when he was held in B-East after the hostage attempt.

  “That was the worst time ever,” he told me, recalling the experience. “Worst time in my life! I was never as bad before that incident as I was after that incident. I was on B-East for like two years. It’s only supposed to be ninety days but they kept me there, on Range Five, which was the worst range.”