OK, now I'll go to Crossing the Yard,
and I've chosen a particular passage, which I will talk
to you about after I read it.
I just need to say that the prison program started
in '74 at Florence.
It's moved around the state in the various prisons.
At one time, we had as many as seven workshops going.
Have had two recently going out here at Wilmot.
This takes place, says when I've been doing it
for I think 13 years.
I've been doing it now for 35 years.
And this is a passage concerning a previous chaplain.
They have a peculiar arrangement.
The head chaplain of a complex, which
may include seven or eight prisons,
is in charge of the volunteer program.
So it doesn't matter if your program is educational rather
than religious, the chaplain is in charge of you
and can obstruct or help.
I've had some fairly obstructive chaplains.
The one that I'm writing about here
is two chaplains ago, that is, he was there for a long time.
He retired, and then we got a really good chaplain,
a younger man who is just terrific and very helpful.
And then he retired under pressure.
He couldn't stand it.
And we got another chaplain.
And that chaplain, I'm having difficulties with.
This is the third back, so I had not even
met the current chaplain when I wrote this,
but I'm sure he's read it now.
"At this point, I had been directing creative writing
workshops in the state prison system for about 13 years.
And in that time, the number of inmates
had increased from between 2,000 and 3,000 to almost 11,500.
Full time staff members had increased from about 1,000
to over 5,000.
I had managed to survive a riot in the most bloody year
in the history of the Florence prison, the most
dangerous prison in the state, but I had never been properly,
quote unquote, "oriented."
I had no idea that these orientations for volunteers
were to become annual nightmares beyond my wildest imaginings.
Since the majority of the prison volunteers
are religious volunteers who conduct various kinds of church
services in the prisons, and these are very valuable people,
the entire volunteer program at the huge Tucson complex
is administered by a division called programs administration
under the direction of the head chaplain at the Tucson complex.
Nonreligious volunteers, such as those
who conduct Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous
meetings, and a very few educational volunteers like me,
I'm the only one now actually, are simply
lumped in with the religious volunteers
and given over to the mercy of the head chaplain.
Currently, I and my associate, Mac Hudson,
who is no longer my associate but was for years,
are the only educational volunteers
in the huge Tucson complex.
When I first began at Cimarron and for many years thereafter
including my years at Santa Rita, probably 15 years in all,
I suffered from the annual orientations
that I believe are best described by a line from Dante,
abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Only a few things I have ever experienced
in 30 years of prison work have been
as bad as the orientation sessions conducted
by that particular head chaplain.
And I and the people who worked with me were forced
to endure them each year until that particular head chaplain
retired and a younger man, intelligent and reasonable,
took his place.
It wasn't orientation.
It was brainwashing, bald and adulterated and so offensive
as to be comical at times.
After a few years, I knew most of the chaplain's lines
by heart, so they didn't bother me too much anymore
although his attempts at humor still made me wince.
The chaplain held what I have come
to think of as the monolithic view of prison inmates.
They are all alike.
All are attempting to take advantage of volunteers.
None can be trusted.
All our conniving to cheat, rape, or kill a volunteer
at any moment.
All are con artists and drug addicts
who will attempt to use you to bring in drugs.
All are plotting to escape.
All are violent.
There are no exceptions.
He began his session by cautioning the male volunteers
about their neckwear.
If we wore a necktie, he said, the danger
that an inmate would use it to strangle us was very great.
Consequently, only clip-on ties should be worn.
All of this, he demonstrated by attempts
to strangle himself with his own tie,
only to have it come off harmlessly
in his hand, a clip-on tie.
The melodramatic demonstration got very old over the years.
After I had seen it many times, finally, I
asked him how many volunteers he knew
who had been strangled with their own neckties.
Since none had, he didn't answer but merely glared at me.
The chaplain's patter was either silly or offensive,
sometimes both.
He would say such things as, of course,
I realize that none of you vote, or I
know you all exceed the speed limit on Wilmot Road getting
out here.
He showed a Department of Corrections film
in which a prison visitor was caught smuggling drugs
into the prison.
Then the chaplain nattered on again.
None of the information he gave was of any practical value,
the kind of information the volunteers
needed to know like whether they were supposed to use the staff
or inmate toilets and where those toilets were,
or what to do if an inmate had a seizure or became ill,
or what to do when an alarm sounded,
or what materials, books, pens, pencils, religious tracts,
and so on could be brought in.
None of this practical kind of information
was covered because the chaplain was too busy for six hours
convincing us that we were all potential drug
smugglers or at best the intended
victims of mad killers.
At Florence, I had given up trying
to find the bathroom, simply used the open air facilities
provided for the inmates.
Later at Stanford, I did the same thing,
in spite of the female guards wandering about.
Even this unsatisfactory arrangement
would not be an option for a female volunteer
in a men's prison.
Such mundane and undramatic matters
were not considered important by the chaplain.
His dire warnings managed to scare off
many of the potential volunteers, which
I can't help but believe was his purpose all along.
The fewer volunteers he had, the fewer problems
he would have to be bothered with.
One of the chaplain's main rules,
which he uttered as if it were one of the Ten Commandments,
was that no volunteer was ever under any circumstances
to have any contact with an inmate
after that inmate was paroled or released.
"What kind of rehabilitation system is this?"
I wondered, when the time of re-entry into society
is precisely the time when the former inmate needs the most
support and encouragement.
The rule was so illogical and stupid to be treated seriously,
although it was seriously troublesome to many
of the religious volunteers who wanted to welcome paroled
or released inmates into their congregations
where the men would have a spiritual guidance
in a ready-made support group.
Years later, after I had been to many of the chaplain's
orientations when I and three former students
were conducting workshops in the Tucson complex and all three
of them threatened mutiny if something wasn't done
about the orientation sessions, I wrote a two-page letter
to the complex warden complaining in detail
about the sessions we were all required to attend once a year.
By that time, I had been working in the state prison
system about 20 years and felt that I was sufficiently
oriented to continue on without undergoing the chaplain's
annual torture.
The warden wrote back that he appreciated my concern
and he would look into the matter.
The way he looked into the matter
was to give my letter to the head chaplain,
the cause of the problem.
Nothing about the orientation sessions
changed, except that the chaplain
would stop in the middle of his patter
from time to time to glare at me.
I would look up from the crossword puzzle
I was working and glare back.
Antagonizing the head chaplain, it
would not have been such a problem,
except that he controlled all clearances into the workshop.
When I wanted to bring in a visiting writer, as I often do,
I would send a letter giving the date of the proposed visit,
the visitor's date of birth, their Social Security number,
and a reason why I wanted the person to come into the prison.
Normally, it took about a week to get
a clearance for a visitor, but my letters
could be mislaid or lost.
Sometimes the date of the visit would be approaching rapidly,
and I would have no clearance although I had applied
for it a month in advance.
Maybe I was being paranoid, I thought,
but I could see the head chaplain rubbing his hands
and gloating over my apprehension.
Once a visiting writer, W R Wilkins,
came all the way from the state of Washington
and did not get in although his clearance had
been approved in advance.
The paperwork had not arrived on the proper desk.
Several other times, the necessary papers
could not be found.
Although I had copies in my hands,
they were not honored at the gate.
Looking back, I feel relatively sure that the chaplain did not
deliberately sabotage me in the matter of clearance
although I had given him every reason to.
I learned enough about the general inefficiency
of the prison system and the programs administration
office at the time to realize that I was probably not being
singled out for inexcusable treatment
although these gross malfunctions in terms
of clearances for visitors were inexcusable and still are.
At the end of the first orientation session,
I was fingerprinted, photographed,
and presented with a green identification badge.
The badge, like the necktie I was supposed
to wear if I wore a necktie, clipped on,
but I don't think the direction in which I
was oriented had changed much."
I'll stop there.
I was going to go on a little longer,
but I've just about finished my time.
I didn't want to cut into Ken's time.
I will just tell you that about three weeks ago, I
was thrown out.
They are not renewing my badge.
I haven't been able to get back in since.
And that is because of the chaplain, Phil Irby,
who runs this program.
I'm fighting it.
I'm writing letters and trying to get some help with it.
But this program has brought to prison more good publicity
than any program they've ever had
or any individual they've ever had.
We've had a show, the Jim Lehrer NewsHour show,
had countless films, countless interviews.
It was largely because of an interview in High Country News
that I was thrown out and planning for such an interview.
And Doris Schriro, who was the head
of the Department of Corrections,
left to go with Janet Napolitano just before this happened.
I didn't realize she was protecting me, but she was.
And as soon as she left, things started
to crawl out of the woodwork, and I'm no longer there.
Thank you so much for coming.
[APPLAUSE]