Counts, Strict Rules, and Other Things I am not naturally good at
"COUNT"!!!! I am starting my 3rd week at Leavenworth camp and already the word causes me to panic. Count is when everyone in the prison lines up in their dorm and gets counted. If you miss count your in serious trouble. While walking, I thought I missed it last week and you have never seen someone run so fast. Count is at 4pm and 10pm (on weekends it is also 10am). The guards also do silent counts at 2am, 4am, & 5am. So, you wake up to flashing lights several times a night... There are all sorts of rules here. Rules for making your bed. Sorting your stuff, doing laundry, and eating. Things need to be done a certain way and that’s that. Everyone is assigned chores (not a big fan of chores) ...but if I get one thing out of this experience it will be to address the issues I need working on. So, I’m going to do EVERYTHING and keep my mouth shut. I feel like I have gotten lazy in the past few years, so I want to address things like this (& improve).
The one question I have been asked by everyone is... what are the people like? It’s the most diverse group of people I have ever been around. It’s fascinating. The people are from everywhere you can imagine however they highly trend to the cities in states I haven’t spent much time in (Iowa, Kansas, Montana). Most are religious and hardcore NFL fans (there are plenty of people in here that stopped watching the NFL the minute someone started kneeling). However, the one thing that especially cracks me up is this place is Kansas City Chief kingdom. Everyone watches the chiefs on Sunday. It is wildly ironic I am a chief’s fan.
People are very expressive about their beliefs. There is more than one "FFUK Biden.' cup in my dorm room. I will be keeping my opinions on faith and the economy to myself. The consensus in prison is that the real world is in terrible shape. Really bizarre. The diversity is overwhelming. I have never engaged so many people from different walks of life. For the most part people are friendly and glad to be in a camp vs. Max prison. It’s safe. BUT don’t get me wrong it’s still a prison.
The difference in what you expect and what is expected of you is its own book. There are TV rooms for each ethnicity (even an Indian rock structure in the yard). So, you need to be careful where you sit down to watch TV. But people let you know. I’m not sure what I expected but this blew any expectation I had out of the water. I hear new information about this place daily (it’s the oldest camp in the United States and it has its own set of rules. So, another camps handbook will mention Leavenworth and add these rules apply everywhere except at Leavenworth.
Now that I know where to look and I feel better I found the white-collar section of this place. It’s a solid group that has crazy stories about incarceration, trial, and their personal experience in our legal system (my advice...don’t ever get mixed up in it...its broken). They want to get out ASAP so they work on just that. I will write more about them later. Feels like I have been here more than a couple weeks, but I haven’t, going on week 3 in Kansas.
World series tickets to the earthquake game in 1987. I was there again with Scott K. , and it was scary.
Comment from Father Carper
Scott just got his access to CorrLinks back, so the newsletter is somewhat brief. For those of you who are detail oriented I have included the release date now scheduled by the Bureau of Prisons next to his surrender date. We are hopeful that Scotts release date will be sooner than that date. Release dates can occur sooner based on completion of programs such as the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP). Completion of that program should reduce his sentence by 6 months. Completion of other programs, a prison job and a release program put in place to deal with Covid all can potentially reduce the amount of time Scott is incarcerated.
Notice my resemblance to my parents.
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