Editor’s Note: In March 2010, we began posting the work of Enceno Macy, an inmate in a U.S. prison. Enceno’s articles are sent handwritten, then typed and edited by a trusted editor. Comments typed into the response area will be sent directly to Enceno. Thanks for reading and for the warm response he’s received each time. –efc & ajp
By Enceno Macy
My home is where I am. – Bob Marley
Soldiers and sailors dream of home, and from their songs and old poems so did colonists and pioneers. Some day a poet or song writer on a distant planet or terraform will write longingly of a polluted, war-wracked, strip-mined, uninhabitable home called Earth light-years away.
In a prison cell you think of things like home and no longer know what they mean.
I have settled in to my most recent prison, mentioned in my last article. But settling in is an ongoing process that is never completed in the system. Even with a life sentence you can never be 100 percent settled in or comfortable. The variables that can affect a person’s ability to adjust range wide. The possibility of being moved again – to a different cell, unit, complex or institution – is always in the back of your mind.
The move could be of your own doing, like being sent to the hole for some infraction, or it can be at the discretion of a resentful guard or sadistic administrator. Or maybe a snitch feels intimidated or disgruntled by your presence and uses his influence with upper management to banish you to the hole or to another prison. You might never know who the snitch is or that you intimidated him. Just as common is an officer that you have offended or angered who sets out to disrupt your comfort and moves you out of spite, forcing you to readjust. It does not take much to offend an officer. Most of them are so challenged intellectually they consider a prisoner who reads a book or even National Geographic a threat to security.
When you get to a new prison, complex, unit or cell, evaluation begins immediately. As I’ve mentioned before, prison is a predator/prey environment, so you must quickly identify those you will ‘run’ with: other convicts who have similar or comparable interests, backgrounds, ideals or maybe only have survival in common. Then you must identify those opposed to that group; they become the ones you watch the most (though you always watch those closest to you the hardest). Next you identify your boundaries: what chairs you can or can’t sit in, what tables you are allowed to sit at, what showers you can use and what phones you can call from.