THE LAST WORD
Kerley, Gillam
THE LAST WORD Gillam Kerley Doing Time From the highway, the red brick building could be taken for a boarding school or, perhaps, a cheap roadside motel, but the sign out front establishes it as...
...But two days later I was handcuffed and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary...
...A few were sentenced for such offenses as bribery, illegal firearms sales, or perjury...
...The "policy statements" fill three thick binders in the law library, but the unwritten rules, which change from day to day and from officer to officer, are just as important...
...On any given day, a dozen of the thousand rules will be enforced, but no one knows which dozen...
...It gives you a chance to be really healthy...
...Minimum-security camps are the showcases of the Federal prison system—no cells, no bars on the windows, no steel doors clanging shut, no fences to keep inmates from escaping, just Off Limits signs and the certain knowledge that an escapee who is caught will serve time in a harsher place of confinement...
...They swear they'll never get caught again...
...Nothing in the prison experience is likely to make them change their minds, about that...
...One rule, however, is always in effect: Don't make waves...
...constantly reminded that it was a prison and that we were prisoners...
...But most inmates are content to do their time and leave...
...Another sign warns visitors that they and their vehicles are subject to search...
...We were Gillam Kerley, executive director of the Committee Against Registration and the Draft, was released from the Leavenworth Federal Prison Camp on November 10, pending the outcome of his appeal...
...The "hole" is a twenty-by-thirty-foot holding cell...
...Several prisoners asked me for the name of the reporter I had written to because, they said, they too had information they wanted to share...
...It was a rule I was bound to violate, if only to regain some of the human dignity that had been stripped from me...
...This is a great place to be," one of them said...
...A thousand rules govern the inmate's life at Leavenworth—enough to ensure that every prisoner will always be in violation of at least one of them...
...I saw little evidence of remorse or rehabilitation...
...Only in comparison to the adjoining penitentiary, a medieval fortress surrounded by chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire, could our camp be called a country club...
...The Star ran an article based on my letter, and that same day the warden "clarified" his new policy into nonexistence...
...Iencountered no hostility from my fellow inmates, most of whom had been a bil too free in their practice of free enterprise...
...It wasn't the dungeon I had imagined...
...You can pick up tennis and improve your skill in that, or racketball...
...A dozen other inmates were there, awaiting transfer or disciplinary hearings, or serving time for prison infractions...
...This is the minimum-security Leavenworth Federal Prison Camp (capacity 283, population 450 and growing) where I lived from July to November of last year, serving the first part of a three-year sentence for refusing to register for the draft...
...Those, like myself, who inclined toward sedentary recreation had access to a supply of donated paperbacks, three television rooms (one for sports, one for movies, and one for prime-time cop shows), and what passed for a law library...
...He seemed satisfied with my response that what was easier wasn't the issue...
...A few days after I returned to the camp, I was moved from my "privileged" job as a typist in the penitentiary's business office to what was euphemistically called the "landscape" detail—picking up cigarette, butts, mowing lawns, raking leaves, and the like...
...When I asked for my old job, the camp administrator told me I had been transferred because of "shifting institutional needs and manpower requirements...
...The prisoners curse the system that deprived them of their freedom, the informants who snitched on them, the lawyers who botched the job' of defending them...
...A form advised me that I was there "pending investigation" of charges that I had violated prison rules...
...Our possessions were searched...
...Though I asked repeatedly, no one ever told me what rules I was supposed to have broken or how long I would remain in the hole...
...Seven weeks later, after two letters from the ACLU to the warden, an administrative appeal to the regional director of the Bureau of Prisons, and a Congressional inquiry, I was returned to the business office without explanation...
...When I told my bunkmate why I was serving time, he made a typical comment: "Wouldn't it have been easier just to go to the post office and register...
...Many other inmates ventured the opinion that refusal to register was a silly thing to be sent to prison for, but most thought it was also a silly thing to go to prison for...
...alcohol, drugs, and firearms are forbidden...
...We worked full-time at prison jobs, earning eleven cents an hour for mowing lawns or twenty-seven cents for typing purchase orders...
...Our telephone calls were recorded and listened to...
...For recreation, the camp provided a tennis court, a softball field, a jogging track, and a gymnasium and weight room...
...A majority were doing time foi smuggling or selling marijuana or cocaine, and most of the rest had been convicted of tax evasion or fraud...
...The biggest television audience turned out the night 60 Minutes devoted one segment to prison life...
...THE LAST WORD Gillam Kerley Doing Time From the highway, the red brick building could be taken for a boarding school or, perhaps, a cheap roadside motel, but the sign out front establishes it as a Government facility: Enter on Offical [sic] Business Only...
...We were counted five times a day—six on weekends...
...Our incoming mail was opened and read...
...Judging from their colorful comments, my fellow prisoners were not impressed...
...You can run, you can walk around a lot...
...The Government is far more crooked than they could ever be, they say...
...Irked by adverse press coverage, the camp administrator decreed that inmates could place no telephone calls to the news media without the warden's prior approval...
...My battle against the administration made me a "jailhouse celebrity" for a brief time...
...It was called "Club Fed" and began with white-collar inmates praising the life at Eglin Federal Prison Camp...
...it may be a dozen that have been ignored for months...
...While I was in detention, another, inmate posted a press clipping about my complaint on a camp bulletin board, and it stayed up for a few days...
...The new rule was clearly unconstitutional, so I wrote to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Kansas City Star...
Vol. 52 • February 1988 • No. 2
