"I am a chore." -- Thoughts Behind the Wire
This post hits a little different. You have been notified.
Sitting on my bunk through another count one day, I have what is describable as a low or poor feeling come across my mind. There are many, many people locked away in prisons across the USA, and not all of them have someone, anyone, to talk to outside their carceral environment. These are people that are left all alone to do their sentences, with no help or encouragement in any way coming their direction. No one seemingly cares on the other side of the miles of coils of poke wire walls and fences, not even people who grew up with them.
These people have the sensation that they are very much alone in the universe, and it wounds them at a time where they are most vulnerable. There are too few aspects of their existence that they control, and they have no-one in which to confide, or to commiserate. Some turn to religion to alleviate their suffering. Some turn to drugs to ease their pain of being alone. Some choose violence as their active ingredient for existing.
Then there are the phone warts, the people who can't stay off the phones and kiosks on the wall here. They spend and spend and spend, potentially hundreds of dollars a month to converse with their people outside. The Martha Wright-Reed Act of 2022 finally placed pricing limitations that the incarcerated communication services companies must follow, making phone calls and video visits less unaffordable to the populations serving time on either side of the wire.
To explain: in 2024, before the new rules went into effect, if I made a phone call, I would have to pay 20¢ per minute to any destination I would call. That makes it $3.00 to speak to someone I miss for fifteen minutes on a payphone snatched forward into time.
$12 an hour, in an era of $25 or less per month unlimited talk and text mobile device plans!
In 2025, though, prison phone providers are capped at 6¢ per minute on interstate and intrastate phone calls. 90¢ for 15 minutes? I still miss my unlimited talk option, but 90¢ a phone call stretches the dollar farther for us -- a person can still afford the cost (at least before another price hike) of a pack of Maruchan Ramen after checking in on dear old Dad, or saying Hey, Mama.
But despite the thankful efforts that culminated in the Martha Wright-Reed Act, it doesn't heal a population of people who have no-one to talk to, no-one to write, no-one who is free and willing to say Hello! to these poor beings.
Did you know that it is against Florida Administrative Code, Chapter 33 -- the rules that govern our prison environments -- to use a service that connects you with a written conversation partner? That is, a friend with a writing utensil? Magazines, newsletters, even resource lists can be banned from our facilities for the mention of any of these services -- that's one reason they give for banning Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News in our facilities, as prime example.
Okay, so let's look at this isolationism in action:
You have a gentle in their 70s, who came to prison nearly half a century ago. This person has no one left outside the wire to write or call. They are alone here, damned to spend their remaining days in failing health without a friendly voice to hear from the outside, without the friendly cursive curls of a lover's swooping handwriting in a letter meant just for them.
This serves the carceral desire of a gluttonous system, but does it serve to heal everyone involved?
I firmly say no absolutely not, as I've met multiple people fitting this description above. My heart aches for them, as they endure these years with a lackluster showing of a parole board that could show some karuna (compassion) for old, frail men. I can only imagine the Women's facility in Florida has the same picture going on.
Where am I going with this?
Because pen pals are banned, the work falls on our families, our limited circles of friends, to keep us mentally engaged as we live our time out here. We inside can't just reach out to a service that may help us find a person whose perspective in the world is different, is capable of teaching us something new, might be that voice of reason we needed before we came to Florida's secured, gated bed and breakfast community (and still need when we leave here, #justsaying).
When does the act of our friends and family go from being done out of love, to feeling like a chore?
I certainly hope that I am over thinking this like a plate of beans. But as I lay abed, thankful that it is a weekend where I got sick rather than a weekday, I wanted to share what's in my head here.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings find peace.
May all beings be, together, harmonious.