| ||||||||
|
||||||||
|
All I can tell you is this, when I spent my numerous incarcerations,
at the infamous M.C.I. Bridgewater, notable for the brutality
from the guards, where I
was tortured by the screws,
for nothing more and nothing less, than being
returned by the courts, time and time again, on the same old
trumped up charges, by a demented judge,
by the name of Alvin Tampkin, chief judge of the
Hingham Dist. Court. Every time I’d land in his
court, he would keep sending me
back to Bridgewater, for criminal responsibility hearings,
or competency
hearings. This is the infamous institution,
a dungeon-like place where they
filmed a famous film, to this day I believe is still outlawed in the
commonweath of MA called Titticut follies.
This is the place were Albert DeSalvo was kept, and escaped from. He’s dead now, killed in Walpole State Prison. He was the alleged Boston Strangler. He was killed by the inmates in Walpole over his drug dealing, and black-market activities, some hustle re stealing money from the other cons about food. Albert by the way was never the Boston strangler, he used all that hype to avoid or cover-up the crime, still un-solved by the way. The real strangler is inside Walpole State, so goes the prison grape-vine. Albert was never tried for any of those murders. 
Rage, in Bridgewater,
the screws out-numbered the inmates,
and beat the
shit out of us daily, the goon squad,
as part of procedure, takes all new
arrivals to the infamous F-ward, where you would be oriented, or to be
clarified, dis-oriented by a dozen or so screws, beating you bloody, dumping
you into a cell, with a 24 hr. light, a paper johnie, and a
hole in the cell to
piss and defecate into. They would open the door when-ever to give you your
medication and food. You took a beating no matter what, you never knew,
whether
they were going to let you out or beat you up. This went on for a week to ten
days. The purpose here was to break you, to let you know who was in
charge.
At M.C.I., a dumping ground for all the inmates in the state correctional system who had flipped out, or were pretending to be, in order to get out of their institutions, for a breather. There were also a lot of inmates in protective custody there. Snitches, that worked with the screws. The percentage of the men who were there on murder charges was approx. 40% and many had committed some pretty horrendous crimes. They were part of the entire population, the inmates who had been adjudicated n.g.i. were together with all the other very dangerous inmates, in fact most if not all of the inmates were dangerous. Law-suits later helped change this by getting the inmates who were not, or never should have been sent there out, and many were transferred. The screws got away with their brutality due to the fact that state corrections was in charge of security. Mental health was there as a by-stander — they performed a function, but had no say as to how the prison was run. When you got out of F-ward, you went to maximum-security, modules; if you kept your wits, and did what you’re told, didn’t get into a beef with other inmates or the screws, you’d do your time, and wait to be ‘habed-out’ [habeus corpus]. This is what I always did anyway. This was the worst place I’ve ever been in. The place has a history of countless inmate deaths, suicides, that were covered up as murder by the screws. So why were they so brutal? They were scared, the screws came there from all the other joints were they were typically out-numbered by the cons. If they gave the cons any shit the way they did at Bridgewater, they’d get shanked, and they knew this. They were empowering themselves, translated, they were scared to death, and they weren’t gonna take any chances. They beat you bloody from day one, they had plenty of help,and besides, who was gonna believe anything from a bunch of crazies. Honest to God’s truth. I saw things there that gave me nightmares for years, I still have the scars on my elbow from the bursitis, from the beatings. This was the place were they kept people who they lobotomised. I knew two of these men. I spent a lot of time off and on growing up, county, jails in and out, juvenile hall once as a kid, lots of time in the stockade in the army, which was no picnic, during the Vietnam War. Andrew talks about institutionial racism, he’s right, it was that way in the army, same way in the stockade. Ft. Sill stockade was so bad, I purposely got court-martialed over and over again just to get out, went to Leavenworth, Kansas, United States disciplinary barracks, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas just to feel safe. I was turning 18. As perverted as it might sound, it was because a psychiatrist, was investigating me for a routine top-secret clearance, first time I’d ever seen a shrink, he was a major, got ordered to see him, had no idea why, the criminal investigation unit assigned to do the background checks set it up, the guy asked me if I’d ever used drugs prior to enlisting. I confessed to smoking a little pot, never mentioned the acid, he gave me a dx. as character disorder. That was kind of the end of my military career, and clearance. No Pershing missiles — instead I was fast tracking my way to being re-trained to go to Vietnam. It wasn’t the politics, the war. What I saw from our own men was enough to convince me that this was not what I’d bargained for. But that’s another long story. Fear, rage, oh yes, I know this subject all too well, from the prisons, the prisoners, the guards, the system. To my clients, their families, who have grown up in poverty, generation after generation of violence, drugs, gangs, mental-illness. I’ve seen more people dxed. with P.T.S.D., women, and men too from the violence, rape and rage, in the eleven years working in this field that probably surpasses the men who came back from Nam. The laws, the system, yes something does need to be done. We have more people locked up in this country than in China. Some of them do get out, only so damaged that they return, so quickly, some to many after all the trauma can’t figure out how to live on the out-side, and we haven’t committed to trying to help them in a humane, realistic way, a tolerant way. We want to feel safe, because we’re afraid, so we write them off, entire generations of young, black, brown men and women, because it’s easier to do that that try to get to the roots of the issues and problems that have screwed up these folks lives from day one, they never had a chance. I think we have a responsibility as a civilized society to do something, to change the system.
All I can say say is thank God I survived it.
If I had ever had to do a long
time in one of these places, for a fact,
I would have jumped off a tier, I did
try after five months in the hole at Ft. Devins to kill myself, I was so
despondent. I’m not big enough,or tough enough,
I don’t think I could do the
time, I was always afraid of being assaulted or raped,
many times I’d prefer to
be in the hole, staying out of population
and away from the guards, I used to
chant, do yoga, that Ram Dass taught me. The
last thing I’ll say about these
folks is that that facade, the mean, slick exterior,
is a human being, trying to survive in a very scary place.
The rules are like no other,
it’s no surprise
some of the things as bad as they are happen,
It’s the system, but it can change. I had to first, and I keep working on it. First me, then it. Gerald MinskL.A. | ||||||||
 |