Prison Puzzle Pieces 2. Dave Basham
Spotters are to let you know if an officer starts coming your way, so you can cover up and hide your supplies. You should transfer them to another cell if no officer is able to observe that while an officer is on the way to your location.
3. Spotters are not to be looking at officers directly. Officers are basically inanimate objects to inmates that have no reason to hide anything. If I was being watched, I actually felt it. That is when I would have to go investigate. A lot can be seen with peripheral vision.
4. Spotters are not to leave when they see an officer coming. That tells us that something is definitely going on. That tells us that we shouldn’t just pass by; we should dig deep. That tells us that you are involved.
If someone is a good spotter, we won’t know they are a spotter. We might suspect somewhat, but we won’t know for sure.
CATCH 22
There were times that I was instructed by a superior officer to NOT enforce a policy. I told them to put it in writing and then that would be exactly what I would do. They would never put it in writing. In this place, if you don’t have documentation, it doesn’t exist. Who above those people are going to believe me over them if something bad happens from me not enforcing a policy? Do you think they would admit to telling me to not enforce certain policies? I don’t think so. I’d be the one going down for not doing my job when the liar would call me a liar.
PRIORITIZE
It was impossible to enforce all of the policies all of the time. There are too many policies and too many officers that either won’t enforce them or give up on trying to enforce them. For this massive policy thing to work, everyone has to enforce every policy all of the time. For that to happen, the superior officers have to require that of their officers and follow up on them. Instead it all becomes random. If a big shot comes into the block and notices something, they tell the lieutenant, the lieutenant tells the sergeant, the sergeant tells us and for a while, that becomes a priority.
OK, so if I say I follow and enforce policy, how can I say that, if I say it’s impossible to do all of the time?
Realistic priorities had to be established. I could go into any cell at any time and find violations, time wise that would be impossible. When walking by a cell, if I noticed a violation that had been prioritized, I would give the inmate a heads up.
If I noticed that same violation from an inmate again and again, eventually I would document it and start writing reports. I became known for the large number of reports that I wrote. What wasn’t known was the large number of times that I spoke to inmates and gave them opportunities to comply before I would ever start writing.
ATTITUDE
The big thing that would drastically decrease the number of heads ups that inmates received from me was attitude. If they gave me attitude, the heads up might totally go away and documentation would start.
The smart ones would be pleasant and at least try to make me think they were going to correct the problem even if they had no intention to do so.
Why was that a smart thing to do? If they did not comply and someone came in the block and asked why something wasn’t being enforced, I was covered because I was enforcing it. The inmate had disobeyed.
Obviously, someone that I never had to give a heads up to because they always followed policy was most appreciated.
The next most appreciated were those that complied the first time.
After that, a nice pleasant liar was appreciated. Just to not have a confrontation every minute of the day was a relief. Eventually it would be necessary to start the documentation process, but at least this way I could start documenting when I had the time rather than them forcing me to write it up right away.
In different areas of the prison, different priorities would be established by those in charge. If you were able to enforce those and had more time, others could be enforced.
REDUCE VIOLATIONS BY COACHING
I always coached inmates on not drawing attention to themselves. I would give them an example. If they left a light on in their cell with something on it that could catch fire, I saw it as an invitation. I had to go in and correct the problem. While I was in there, it was appropriate to check for other violations. If I went in and wasn’t thorough, it could come back at me. If there were a shank in there and it was used on someone, I would look incompetent when it was found out that I was in that cell and had missed it.
I told the inmates, I targeted anything that I knew us officers would be chastised for if we were inspected and obvious violations were found. Don’t invite me into your cell with a violation that sticks out to a warden, unit director or lieutenant when they might pass by.
Some officers liked shaking down cells; looking through others property. I didn’t, but it was a necessary part of the job.
AREA DICTATES VIOLATION TYPE
Your assigned working area dictated the kinds of violations that would need to be enforced.
When I first started and was assigned to towers a lot, there was not much contact with inmates, so report writing was infrequent. When it was necessary to write a report or inform someone of a problem, it had more to do with equipment, alarms or activity you observed in the yard from up above in the tower.
When I was on First Watch, the reports had more to do with someone in their cell disturbing others or health issues.
Posting up in the dining hall had to do a lot with inmates being in unauthorized areas. It was necessary for them to have their ID’s clearly displayed, so we would know by their color code if they were where they belonged.
In the cell halls, unauthorized area violations were huge. Policies dictating what was in their cell and where it was or wasn’t allowed were huge.
If the cell hall was a working block with the inmates out in industry, it would be fairly calm while they were gone, but when they came back and all of them were allowed to be out of their cells to socialize and take care of their business, everything under the sun could go on. Also, with inmates coming in from industry, there is a big problem with smuggling in weapons.
B-West double bunking problems were a whole other can of worms. That was addressed in the chapter on B-West.
CELL BAR OBSTRUCTION, REMOVE THE PANELS
An inmate had his coat covering the bars on his door. This was not allowed, because by him doing this, we couldn’t see if he was up to anything.
I had spoken to this guy about this before, so I locked him in his cell for him to await a conversation about it with the lieutenant the next day.
Psycho LT had reamed me for not enforcing this before. Now that I knew how this was supposed to be enforced, I would always be enforcing it. I’m sure inmates never got jumped on as harshly as I did. Most inmates considered me a prick for enforcing it.
When I started working here, every cell had panels covering the cell bars except for a roughly two foot square space on the cell door at eye level. Shortly after an inmate had hung himself in one of the cells in the middle of the night, all of the panels were removed from all of the cells. This was done to supposedly prevent this from happening again. Actually, even without the panels covering the bars, no one would have found the guy hanging until they did the next round anyway. If someone really wants to kill themselves, they have plenty of time to be successful.
COMMON SENSE VS POLICY
Where this cell bar obstruction policy gets out of bounds is that it existed even after the panels had been removed. With just a coat covering part of the cell bars, we could still see in. Granted we couldn’t see in as easily, but they have so much time available to do whatever