Visiting Hours: Hugs and Heartaches

A simple hug can make a world of difference for someone behind bars. Join us as we sit down with Gene Downing, a former prisoner-turned-advocate, and Robert Barton, co-founder of More Than Our Crimes, to discuss the emotional and logistical labyrinth of prison visits. Gene shares his most traumatic memory of the power correctional officers wield over family connections: the day his daughter was turned away from a highly anticipated visit. And Rob takes us deeper into the heartache and hope that accompany the rare moments of physical touch with loved ones.

Picture this: A family travels hundreds of miles, enduring financial strain and struggles to comply with the strict dress code, only to face the crushing disappointment of a canceled visit due to constant threat of a "lockdown." We share how the system's failures and oversights add to the emotional toll on both prisoners and their families. Through their stories, we explore the stringent security measures, from underwire bras triggering alarms to invasive searches, and question the necessity and ethics of these practices.

This episode offers ad eye-opening explanation of the struggles surrounding prison visits, emphasizing the urgent need for reforms that prioritize social ties and the psychological well-being of adults in custody and their families. Listen in and join the call for a more compassionate approach to criminal justice.

Follow this podcast so you'll be informed when new episodes are uploaded (twice a month). Meanwhile, read more stories and learn how you can contribute to reform; visit MoreThanOurCrimes.

Transcript

PAM BAILEY: Hi, I am Pam Bailey. I am co-founder of More Than Our Crimes, which advocates for individuals in federal prison. And this is Voices Unlocked, in which we try to bring to you the humanity inside prison, hidden behind very thick walls and in remote areas of the country. We try to bring them out to you so you can get a glimpse of what it's like. The topic of this episode is prison visits, when people get to physically visit their loved one. In previous episodes, we've talked about emails, we've talked about phone calls, but what everybody really wants and is so hard to get is in-person visits. And the co-host for this episode is Gene Downing. He was incarcerated for 21 years, released in 2021, but since he's been out, he's been really busy. He's a very talented spoken word artist and mentor, but he also works with several criminal justice-related organizations, including the Council for Court Excellence, Free Minds Book Club and Poetry Workshop and Thrive Under 25, which focuses on juvenile justice. I want to ask you, Gene, to start off. When you think of prison visits, what do you remember about how important that was to you? And explain a little bit the reason why it's actually not so common. Because it's really difficult, since federal prisons are scattered all over the country.

GENE: Yeah. Well, first I'm going to say that prison visits, or visits in general while incarcerated, is the most important thing because that's the only time you get to physically see your family and friends. But one thing I want people to understand is the BOP makes sure that we know…The BOP is? The Bureau of Prisons…makes sure that we know that our visitation “rights” isn't an actual right. It's a privilege. So it can be used as a weapon against us. And that's why having visits becomes something you give more value to. Because you know now, if I do something wrong, they can take my visits or they can threaten to take my visits and they know how important these visits are. But just knowing that your family is traveling maybe three hours, maybe 18 hours, to come see you, puts you in a unique situation because now you want to try to stay out of trouble as long as you can to make sure you can at least have your visit.

But the unique situation is also that you're not the only person who can get you in trouble, right? Somebody else who’s totally unrelated to you can do something. And the consequence of that, like if they lock the whole prison down, guess what? No visits. And that's something that plays also a psychological trick on our minds because we can't even get all the way excited about the visit because the more excited we get, the more we have to hope that nothing happens in the process. And so it becomes a lot to deal with. Plus, the distance, right? I mean, DC doesn't have a prison, so when we are…

PAM: You mean DC doesn't have its own prison. 

GENE: Yeah, we don't have any prison. And so, when we are sentenced and sent to prison, we are sent all across the country, oftentimes rendering us unable to get a visit because our families don't have the resources to travel halfway or completely across the country. And so that's what also makes visits something that's so valued. But at the same time, it's just crazy to think about how just to see your mom or your wife or your son have to go through all of these different channels before it gets to that.

PAM: What was the farthest away from home you were when you were incarcerated?

GENE: The farthest away that I was from home was Pollock, Louisiana, which was roughly an 18-hour drive. And quite frankly, because of the distance and the environment of the prison, I told my family don't even come.

PAM: How often did you get a visit when you were there?

GENE: When I was there? None. I told them, do not come because, again, the distance, coupled with the environment of the prison, wasn't necessarily conducive to visits. I was in that prison for about four years and I think we spent at least three of those years on lockdown.

PAM: That was actually the subject of one of our earlier episodes: lockdowns. You also mentioned that you can have your visits taken away because of something somebody else did. But what's increasingly common now is it's short staffing. So, nobody's done anything wrong, but they're short of staff.  I recently went to visit the co-founder of More Than Our Crimes, Rob Barton, who you're going to hear from in a minute. He's in Florida. And the weekend before I went, I was monitoring this Facebook group of family members and they were reporting back about how they had canceled visits. People had traveled there, they had called ahead and they got there and found out that the visits were canceled because of short staffing.

GENE: So, the myth, as I like to call it, of "short on staff" is something that I noticed they started to do more consistently over the last maybe four or five, or maybe five or six years, before I came home. And what they would do is essentially say that enough people didn't come to work. We do not have the staff to operate the prison at its full capacity. However, there's always correctional officers in the prison. We would never know, as the residents – I hate the word inmate -- as the residents of that facility, we would never know the staff is short because there’s always staff there. But when they tell us it's short of staff, we just believe them. That's why I call it a myth because it's like this is one of the few businesses that is a direct service business and stays open 24 hours a day. So, that means you have to have staff. How do you get your business to the point where enough people don't come to work? And instead of reprimanding the people who did not come to work, you take it out on the people in the facility and say, well, you can't do this because they didn't come to work. 

PAM: And they're not taking a look at the mental health effects. So, it seems to me that one big problem with the Bureau of Prisons is that they're never weighing…I mean, they’ll say, for instance, “Oh, we want to keep drugs out of the facility, so we're going to do this, this or this.” But they won't look at, okay, what are the ramifications of that? What could be the consequences that could be negative to mental health and therefore maybe lead to more violence and frustration, et cetera. And they don't seem to do that.

GENE: The funny thing about that is…You're right, first and foremost, they do not do that. But it’s strategic though. They don't do it because everything else they do is for a reason. They use these things against us in prison. The lockdowns…Sometimes they lock us down, and I think that is probably one of the most psychologically traumatizing things, being suddenly thrown into a cell and not knowing when they're going to open the door. They know that though. They threaten us with that. “Oh, if anything else happens we are going to lock you down for such and such, such and such.” They use our little bit of freedom against us. I guess what I'm trying to say is, they don't care about our mental health and, this is a different topic, but if you venture into the mental health side of the BOP, you will see how they operate, that they really don't care, because that isn’t efficient at all.

PAM: Well, I interviewed two people for this episode. The first person you're going to hear from is Robert Barton, the co-founder of More Than Our Crimes, who is currently housed at a high-security prison in Florida called Coleman. And in this first soundbite, he talks about how he views the importance of having that…well he focuses on the hug, on touch. So, listen to this.

ROB: Man, the feeling of just having a hug. Yeah, a hug, or we do man claps with our friends and stuff like that. But to have a hug from a woman or have a hug from your mother or your child is something different. That human touch. And then outside of that, it just takes you out of prison. When you’re out there [in the visiting hall], you’re not in jail no more for a little bit. You can go the whole week and then you’re out there [visiting] for like a day and you got time to deal with whoever it is. So it means everything. It keeps you human basically.

PAM: I've visited Rob several different times in prison and I'm going to tell you a little bit from a family member’s or a friend's, it's mostly family members, but family members’ or friends' point of view, what is involved in actually getting there and then getting into the prison. Actually, there are a lot of rules. The first thing to emphasize, which Gene mentioned, is that it's expensive. So, I went to Florida from DC and I had to buy airfare, I had to rent a car, I had to get a hotel room. Usually the visits are two to three days. If you're going to go to all that trouble, people usually want to spend more than one day. So, it costs me close to a thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. And here’s the thing: You can't try to get cheap airfare. Because you don’t know..We talked about lockdowns. You can’t buy airfare in advance. You have to wait until that week. So there's no opportunity for special deals.

ROB: And that's why it's so expensive. It’s a lot of money and most people, I would say, family members of people inside, don't have high incomes as a general rule. That's one thing to keep in mind. So, you get all the way there. And the first time I went to visit, this is sort of a funny story because I had called ahead and I asked, what are the rules for dress? Because I couldn't find them online, so she told me. So, I thought I was complying. It turns out, I don’t know if you knew this, but women cannot wear underwire bras. I knew that. And they should list that. I didn't know that. So, [the guard] gave me a pair of children's scissors. They were really blunt; they weren't sharp or anything. She tells me to go in the bathroom and I'm supposed to cut them out, but it didn't work. It would not cut fabric. I mean you have to try to picture this, right? 

So I said, okay, it's not working. And meanwhile, I'm conscious of time ticking away. You may visit from 8 until 3, and by this time, everybody else has gone in. And I know that Rob's there thinking, where's my visit? He's anxious, he's waiting for me to come and wondering what's happening. He has no idea what's happening. So I said, “Okay, fine, I'll just take it off.” I take my bra off and figure this is no problem. You have to wear loose clothing. They do not let you go in with tight clothing. I got through the X-ray machine and then the guard…There's a female and sometimes the females are the worst, I have to tell you. She shouts across the room, “Did you take your bra off?” Really loud. “No, you can't do that!” So, she sends me back in to bathroom. She finds another pair of scissors and this time they're a little sharper. So, I finally managed to hack the underwire out. 

Then I go through [the X-ray] and I'm feeling really happy and she says, “Oh, you're only allowed to try [going through] twice. You can't try three times. And I didn't know whether to cry. I almost did actually, because all that money [I had spent], all that time, and you're really going to turn me away now? I was fortunate that there was one male guard, a nice guy who…She would've turned me away. As Rob says later on, you get to know who the nice people are and who are the assholes. One nicer guy finally came up and talked her into letting me in, but I came close. Actually, I know a lot of people who have extra clothing in their car in case they say, “Oh no, you can't wear that.” There’s these different rules, like regarding color or pattern. Or, this looks like a gang [insignia]. You have to go through all this. And very often, another thing I encountered this last time I visited Rob, I had really bad traffic and I got there right before the count. We're going to talk about that later. But I ended up getting there and I had to wait. So, it was like 11 o'clock and something was going on inside the prison and I had to wait until that was over. And then the guard says, “Oh, I want to wait.” There was two of us waiting. He didn't want to let us in until we had five [people]. Meanwhile, the clock’s ticking and they don't care. They do not care

Anyway, so there's a lot of angst and anxiety whether you’re wearing the right thing before you get in. In the next soundbite from Rob, he talks a little bit about what he's feeling and thinking inside the prison while I'm going through all this.

ROB: So, for me especially, I always tell my visitors to get here, try to be the first person there because I want to be the first one out there. Mainly because you don't want to get caught at count...They take so long to get you up there and clear the process. I know that has been a strain for you, and Monica or whoever else omes to see me. You don't want to get caught at count and you’re not getting out there until after 11 o'clock. [If that happens,] your visit’s going to be cut, like two hours left. And you want all the time as you can with your people.

PAM: In that soundbite, Rob talks about how important it is that the visitors try to get there before the count. What does that mean? What's the count?

GENE: The count is probably the most important thing to the administration in the BOP. The count is exactly what it says it is. It's a count. They count every single person in the facility, three, sometimes four, times a day, depending on what day of the week it is. Oddly enough, visits fall on weekends and on weekends you have what we call a 10 o'clock count. And the 10 o'clock count is standing count. They come around and lock everybody in the cell. You have to be standing at the door when they walk past so they can make sure that you are alive. That's their reason. And nothing, absolutely nothing happens until this count clears. And if it doesn't clear, then we won't come out of the cell until it does, whether it takes the rest of that day or the next day. So, we tell our families to show up as early as they can. Because if you don't, you get caught in the count.

And so, if you show up closer to count time, then they already have started preparing for count. They already have started doing recall. Recall is when they send everybody back, all of the residents of the facility, back to their housing unit to prepare for count. Once they start recall, that's like recalling even people, like your family, that's on their way to the prison. If you are not there by the time we’re called for recall, then you’ll have to wait until after count clears to come in. And oftentimes the count doesn't clear. But we don't believe the count didn't clear. We believe that they deliberately hold the count up.

PAM: And when you say "count clear," that means finish it?

GENE: No, actually what it means is, it means that everyone is accounted for, right? So if we say that the population is X, Y, Z and we do a count…It's like a census count basically. And if we do a count and the bottom line doesn't match the top line, then we’re either going to recount or…Well no, we're going recount. If that recount doesn't add up, then we start figuring out where is the missing person.

PAM: So what I think is sort of funny… This is a side comment. Recently I heard about a case in a prison where somebody died in his cell and they didn't know it for four days. So how did that happen?

GENE: It all depends on the institution, believe it or not. In the Bureau of Prisons, even though it is one system, each individual prison within the BOP operates differently. Why and how they're given their own autonomy, I have no idea, but they do. So if you were in, say, a place like Pollock where I was at, it can very well happen when somebody could have died or was killed and they just didn't know.

PAM: But if they do the count, they'd know somebody was missing.

GENE: So, about the count. In those kind of places, [like] Pollock, count is a formality, right? You kind of got to put your mind in the space of some of these correctional officers. They come to work every day to the same place. Who knows what their home life is like, and this place could be better or worse than their home life. So, it’s repetitive. Count time? Some of them walk right past the cell and won't even look in it. Or they’ll let their flashlight do the looking and they’ll do this…And that’s how things like that happen.

PAM: Okay. It's funny; I have a friend who's a former Bureau of Prisons employee and when I first heard this [about the body that wasn’t found] and I hadn't confirmed it yet, he said, “Oh no, that could never happen. It couldn’t go unnoticed for four days. No, that can never happen. Then we found out it was true. He actually talked to one of his friends who was working in the prison, and it was true, it did happen. I’m laughing about it but it’s like…And people were smelling the body.

In the next interview segment with Rob, he talks about the state of mind. We've already talked about the count, and the last time I visited him, I showed up at 9 because of the bad traffic on the road and I had to wait till 11, two hours. I couldn't even go in the building. I had to sit out in the car or go do something else. And so, he of course is wondering what happened. He didn't know about the bad traffic. So he talks a little bit about mental state, because remember, these visits are so important, and you don't get that many. He talks a little bit about what's going through his head, the anxiety and the excitement at the same time.

ROB: Well, every time you hear the police’s keys, you run to the door to look out to see if it’s for you. They come to get you. Every time you hear a phone ring, you’re looking to see if that's your visit and why it's not coming in a timely fashion. For instance, when you was late that one time, it's like, man, “What the fuck is going on? Is my people here? Can you call up there to see if they there?” So, It's just like that anticipation. You’re nervous, and excited. You want to make sure that they’re even allowing visits. So, first thing you do is ask the officers if they’re even having them because you don't know if they going to cancel because it’s short staff. And then on top of that, you’re nervous and want to make sure your people made it here on time. Then you’re anxious to see them and just anxious to get out there.

PAM: So, Rob talks about that fear that's always there, especially at Coleman, where he is. It's known throughout the system as being one of the prisons where there's the most lockdowns. So having a visit canceled at the last minute or even after people are there is a reality. Do you recall that being a concern when you were in prison?

GENE: Yeah, all the time. I mean, like I said, when I was in Pollock I didn't, because I proactively told my family that, don't even waste your time or money. I already knew how this movie was going to go. But when I was in other places where I had more frequent visits, I was closer to home. That's when I worried mostly about whether my visit would get canceled due to someone else's actions or that emergency count thing or short of staff or any of the things that can rear its ugly head on the day that you have a visit. It just seemed like it's coming. But I think for me, the most impactful cancellation, if you will, of a visit, didn't come because of what someone else did. It wasn't a count. It was when my sister brought my daughter to see me. At the time, my daughter was 16 years old and she brought my daughter and my nephew. Just two weeks earlier, my sister brought my daughter and we had a lovely visit.

Two weeks later, she came back and she brought my daughter and my nephew. But when I get to the visit, I only see my nephew and my sister. And so I'm wondering, where is my daughter? I was notified that they did not let her in. She had no idea why, but we were all under the impression that…At least I thought I read the rules correctly…that if you were 16 or under, you did not need an ID. But they told us that no, that was wrong. It's 18 or under. And so we're like, okay, but they were here last week. Someone let her in without the ID. And [the CO] was like, “Well, that someone wasn't me.” And you know how that story went. So my daughter didn't come in. I was infuriated. I couldn't even enjoy my nephew who I was meeting for the first time.

PAM: And she must have been crushed.

GENE: Oh, she was crushed. Yeah, she was crushed. And as you alluded to earlier about coming on a visit and oftentimes it's a multiple-day thing. The next day they're still here. So they come back and I called my family on the phone that night and I'm like, “Hey, you’re up here now, so just try again tomorrow and maybe somebody different will be at the door. As you alluded to, you know who the jerks are and who the good people are. So, the next day they came back and it was the same routine: ID, no ID, she's this age, she's that age. And they got all the way through and then the person from the day before popped up and saw them, and she was like, “Oh no, I told you yesterday that X, Y, Z. And so another debate ensued about the week before and they went and got a lieutenant, the wrong lieutenant, and he came and sided with his officer and just canceled the entire visit. So I didn't see my sister, my nephew or my daughter. 

And while all of this is happening, I'm in the unit so I don't even know until after a while, and time is ticking. I call my sister and I'm like, “Hey.” And they're already on the road heading back. Everybody was in tears. And so for me, that was probably the most devastating visit experience I had throughout my whole 21 years. I was incarcerated. 

PAM: Oh yeah. That’s bad. And here's what Rob had to say:

ROB: Yes, it has happened to me. We go on lockdown and they just cancel the visit and my people had already left [home] and are already down here and they’re thinking they’re going to come in. But then they get here and they tell them no, they can't visit. They travel from DC or California or wherever, all the way to Florida, and spend all this money and you can't get your money back. It's just like, yeah, there's nothing you can do. You can't call, they won't let you out of the cell to call to stop the visit. They won't call for you, nothing. They make you feel helpless. They got complete control over you. They decide when you see your family, how you see your family and you're just mad, you’re outraged, because you know they wasted all this money coming down, outside of you wanting to see your family members.

PAM: When I was visiting Rob a couple of weeks ago, there was a woman in her 70s who had driven three hours and like me, she had checked and all the rules weren't explained and she was not allowed in because she had had a knee replacement and had some metal in her knee and they said she had to have a letter from her doctor. At least she hadn't flown in. I mean, that's one thing. And I remember at another visit there was a woman who had made it into the visiting hall, but about maybe 20 minutes in, I believe…[The prisoners] had to wear Crocs on their feet and he had slipped his foot out of one of his Crocs and they canceled the visit for that.

GENE: Wow.

PAM: Yeah. And again, I think it’s a matter of who the assholes are. The other thing is that during the visit you still have to sit so far apart, like COVID distance. I mean, how close could you get before?

GENE: Typically, in any one visiting room, it's similar to this. You sitting there, I'm sitting here and we'll have a table. I mean, obviously the table is more in between us, but it's something like this. We can hold hands and everything. 

PAM: Oh no. Oh no, no, no. So, all of visits I've been on now, and I've been on several, and even with COVID over, you're still sitting with social distancing, like six feet apart, which means the whole visit, you really have to raise your voice to talk.

So, there's no touching. There's no touching. It was really sort of a little bit crazy. I went to FCI Cumberland, a medium-security prison in Maryland, and they instituted this new procedure where, normally the only time you can touch is in the beginning of the visit and the end of the visit and then you could hug and kiss. But they decided during this visit to tape a little square in front of the guards’ station. And if you wanted to hug and kiss, you had to stand in that square. So I guess they could stare at you.

GENE: I mean even that, why would you ask a person, no matter who they are to you, to humiliate themselves? You want me to get up from my intimate space with my family, and I don't get very many of these, and come over there and stand on a square almost like a hot seat, so to speak. While you stare at me. Come on.

PAM: And then what was really sad, I mean I just about cried, about this one. So, you have two seats here and then two seats across. And let's say a woman comes in with two children. The man who she's visiting is across from her. If you have two children, then one child is allowed to sit next to the father. But if you only have one child, he can’t. He has to sit next to the mother. But here's what's crazy. So, you have the mother with two kids. Well, one of them went to the bathroom, and this guard, the CO, said, “Okay, now you've got to move.” I mean that's how precise they were. 

GENE: Wow. And where that was that?

PAM: I believe that was Big Sandy, Kentucky. 

GENE: Oh, man. See, yeah. I don't understand why, but when you say Big Sandy, I can see it.

PAM: What's hard is that little children don't understand. They want to go and crawl into their dad's lap.

GENE: And I was fortunate enough or brave enough…When I used to go on visits, I guess because I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong, like in terms of contraband, I was a little more free with how I interacted with my family without even thinking what [the COs] were going to say. And so I've had my nieces and nephews come up and I pull 'em onto my lap and take their shoes off their feet and try to be funny. And subconsciously, I know I'm not doing anything wrong. And if I was, I'd be more deliberate about it: I'm not going to touch that, I'm not going to touch this, because I know I need to do this. 

But I was fortunate not to have those experiences. But I do know [it’s different at] other institutions and even over time, because my experiences were maybe 15 years ago. And we know it changed considerably since then.

PAM: Yeah. And what's also crazy, just one of little note is, that the chairs, as I mentioned, have to be six feet apart and there's one guard, one CO, this is the last time I was at Coleman, his job the entire time was to walk around and scrutinized us. And he actually said, “Move it back an inch.” He wanted to make sure that everybody was [apart[. And yeah, it sort of shadows the entire visit. 

GENE: It kills everything. It kills everything. And it also highlights the fact that you are not treated as a human, because why would another person come and be that precise if you will, with something like a seating situation? If I scoot up a little bit or scoot back a little bit, did that really change the way I'm interacting with my family? No, you do that to remind me who's in charge, that I am an inmate or I am someone who has no rights. So I am always at the mercy of whatever you decide about my day, how my day should turn out. Our families get a glimpse, in that moment, of what we go through all the time, whether it's them coming into the prison or for the visit. They get to see some of the things that we're subjected to. But [the BOP] needs to make visits a right and not a privilege. And if you make it a right and not a privilege, that totally changes the whole infrastructure and how you run visitation. Because then you can't do certain things that you could do if you had the green light, so to speak, to just do whatever you want as an administrator or as staff. If you take that away, you have to now abide by rules just as much as we do. Because we have rights.

PAM: Well, and one of the interview segments you're about to hear is…You're absolutely right. I can complain all I want about what I have to go through, but when I hear Rob talk about the procedure after he's taken out of the cell and brought up to the visiting hall, and what he's going through before I see him walk in, it brings the point home. So let's listen to Rob.

ROB: Once they come get you and they bring you up there, I mean you walk up there by yourself, but when you going, you strip out, they take all your clothes, you put your clothes in a bag that has a number on there, that's your bag. And then you got to show your anus and just go through the routine. So, lifting your arms, your toes, run your fingers through your hair if you got hair, lifting your privates, all that type of stuff. And it's the same thing coming in and going out.

GENE: Some jails, every time you go to use the bathroom, they want to strip search you. It's part of the routine, to the point now that it is not even given a thought. I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t give it a thought. I just get naked.

Going back in my own mind, my family often asked me what I did when I went through that door, what happened? And I told them, because they think, when you don't tell them, they think that when they see me, this is how I'm walking around and they don't know that these aren't my clothes, not my socks, not my drawers, not my T-shirt. Every single thing I had on was given to me in the room behind that door over there. So I have to get stripped in and stripped out. I have to squat and cough. So, I'm basically getting humiliated again, right, to come and see my family. And then when I see them I have to try to act like that didn't just happen and I'm happy, I am smiling. And then once it's over, which is always a bad time because that's when it sets in that, damn, they're leaving, right? It's never a good time when the visit is over and then I have to go back through the strip search. A lot of people don't know the psychological and mental strength it takes to even do a visit, having gone what you’ve gone through just to get to this point.

PAM: Right. Rob would come out in a jumpsuit, usually a bright lime green or something like that, and prison-issued shoes. And then what happens afterwards? I talked to another member of the network, Leon, who you're going to hear in a second. He’s in the McCreary prison in Kentucky. And He was really looking forward to his visit because there had been some really harsh restrictions. Like they kept up the partition for a very long time during COVID. They had a plexiglass partition. I did one visit that way where I had to put my mouth up to a grid and it's very unnatural. And finally, that had come down and, in some respects, the visits were back to normal. They allowed visitors to eat, but the residents were not allowed to eat. Still, they at least didn't have the partition. But he had something really upsetting happen when he left the visit, which I found a bit shocking.

And it's interesting. He's going to talk about something called a dry cell. Mainly [prison staff are] very concerned about contraband. So, a lot of the things you're hearing about, even what you wear, how come you have to have to have a strip search, etc., the reasoning behind it is that they're looking for contraband: drugs, anything else you're bringing in that’s illegal. And it is true. On the one hand, I've heard from my friend who used to work in the Bureau of Prisons that there's some very inventive ways people use. So it's not something that is without basis to some extent. I mean my friend described how sometimes people hide things in their throat and they'll spit it up when they kiss or something. So everything is about looking for the contraband. But, and we were having this conversation before: A lot of times they don't really look at the negative consequences of these dehumanizing procedures and what it leads to. Leon is going to talk about the fact that when he went out, in addition to doing the whole strip search, which by itself…I mean, I can't even imagine, to be honest, going through that. But on top of that they did an X-ray, a body scan in which they can see inside your intestines. And he describes what happened when they thought they saw something that perhaps was contraband. It turned out it was a mistake and it wasn't. And he talks about what happened next.

LEON STANTON: Well, my visit concluded. I go back, I get strip searched, I go through the formalities and they walk me around to the receiving room to the X-ray machine. We get around to R&D, where they take everybody, they do the X-rays. I'm in the machine from about two minutes, then I hear them huddling up. There's about three staff members down there. They're having a conversation,: "Have you been shot before?" I'm like, no. They're like, "Have you had surgery before?" I'm sitting there like, “You just strip searched me. You know I don't have a mark on my body besides tattoos. What are we doing here?” You know. He's like, "Well, you have something in you." I said, “I have nothing in me.” He's like, "We'll see." They call Medical. A guy from Medical came around and he is a part of the shenanigans. 

So long story short, I'm in an observation cell overnight, waiting to go to the bathroom. Now I had contracted H pylori at another instiution. I don't know if you're familiar with what that is. It's stomach bacteria. I have abnormal gut bacteria, which comes from undercooked food and dirty utensils, which is thriving in the BOP. Anyway, I tell him, I said look, I need assistance in using the bathroom. I contracted H pylori. You can look at my medical records. Everybody's giving me a hard time. Even the medical staff. "We can't give you nothing. It's in the policy. Do you want to see it?" I said, “Yes. I do want to see the policy. I need assistance. I've been constipated on top of this baloney diet that [Warden] Gilley has us on for all this time.

Lemme rewind a little bit. I came off the visit about 3:00, 3:30 in the afternoon. I'm in overnight waiting to defecate. They brought oatmeal in the morning and I eat it and I felt it working. I told them, “All right, hey, I need to go to the bathroom.” I see them get on the phone. Same way they can see me in the observation area, I can see through the glass and see them in the little office. He calls down there. A couple minutes go by. Now, this is 10 minutes to 7 that he called down there and let them know I've got to go to the bathroom. So about 15, 20 minutes go by. I say, “Hey, look. What are they doing, man? I really need to go. I have a problem. I'm not being smart about this. Y'all can look at my medical records. I have a problem. When I need to go, I need to go.”

About 10 more minutes go by. Nobody comes. I'm pacing back and forth in the observation cell. Pacing back and forth. It's like an hour. I said, “Hey, look. You call somebody to find out what's going on. What is the hold up?” Inside the cell, there's no sink. There's no toilet. It's just a concrete slab with a mattress over top of it with these little things that lets them put you in a four-point restraint if they feel that it's necessary. My stomach is hurting more and more. I said, “Look, you need to get somebody down here or y'all are going to get it off the floor. I'm serious.” He's like, "Man, you've seen me call." Now the shift changes and another guy comes and says, "He let me know that he called down there. I know you need to go to the bathroom." He's like, "It's out of my hands. The lieutenant has to be the one to watch you go to the bathroom."

I'm like, “All right. I'm going to tell you like I told them. I said I'm not trying to be smart. I've been holding it for over an hour.” He's like, "He told me how long you've been holding it." I said, “You've got about five minutes or y'all are going to come scrape it off the floor.” Me, being a man of my word, I did what I had to do. Now, when they call down there and tell them, "Hey, look. He went to the bathroom," about seven officers come down with the lieutenant. Everybody's riled up. "What are you trying to hide?" I said, “Man, I'm not trying to hide nothing. Check your cameras. I told you I had to go to the bathroom.” They put me in handcuffs, roughed me up a little bit. They got what I had on the floor. I said, “Now can I finish because that was the first wave.” My stomach was really hurting.

Now, I'm going to the bathroom and these same staff members are crowding the doorway. I go to the bathroom. [They] finish checking through the stuff. About an hour later, one of the staff members came back by himself. He walked me back around to R&D to the x-ray machine. Now, at this time, there's nobody in there but me and him. He put me in the machine and he scanned it and mind you, he doesn't know how to read the machine, just like the ones who did it previously. He's looking and he's like, "Come on. We're going back around." As we're leaving, one of the R&D senior officers, who was coming in to work, like checking in. The guy asked him, "Can you read this x-ray for this guy?" And he was like, "Yeah, that's not a problem."

They put me back on the machine, he looked at it. He was like, "This guy, he don't have nothing in him. He just have a lot of gas in him." I'm like, “Thank you. I said, I've been telling them the whole time that my stomach was messed up. They're saying that I'm hiding something and all that.” "How long you been here?" I said they had me in the observation tank overnight since my visit. He said, "Okay, let me go back to yesterday's scan." He went back to yesterday's. "Whoever did this dropped the ball. They don't know how to read the machine. This guy's not supposed to be back here." 

They take me back to the observation cell. About 20 minutes later, they let me back out in general population like everything is [fine]. It just builds so much resentment on top of the things that I've been through already and it's like, we could have resolved this by them just looking at my medical records. 

PAM: So, we hear stories like Leon's and I can pretty much bet anybody listening to it would say, “I can't imagine going through that. How humiliating and why is that necessary?” And he actually talks about the fact, I mean he told me that the anxiety resulting from that has stayed with him. It wasn't just a short-term thing, even though Rob talks about the fact that you get used to it, so you take it for granted. Some things you don't. That dry cell experience, he hasn't forgotten about. Now, my friend who used to work in the Bureau of Prisons would say yes, but contraband, drugs, drugs are a big problem in prison. So you have to do absolutely everything possible to try to find it. What do you think? No. 1, my first question is, what do you think about it from a resident's perspective? How do you make that balance between doing everything you can to find drugs but also preserving the person’s perspective?

GENE: It’s a very, very unique… I use that word a lot because prison is a unique situation. Sitting here, having a conversation and hearing someone tell the story, yes, we would be like, wow, that's ridiculous. Why would they do that? That's humiliating. But if you're in the environment and you have adapted to that environment, you know what the consequences are, you know how they go about it, you know all of these things. It's actually kind of no different than how it is out here. We don't agree with everything our judicial system does on the outside, with the police and things of that nature. But we do know what they do. And so inside… 

PAM: And we accept it a lot of the time. We accept it. We give up our civil rights all the time. 

GENE: And it is almost similar to the prison system, where we know that we have our ways of circumventing the prison, the system and things of that nature. We know that they have their ways to try to catch us. The only difference is, their ways probably are extreme most of the time because what they do is, whether it's a visit or just something in the unit, like a shakedown, if there is something that's going on in the prison and they feel that they’re losing a handle on it, and they need to [get control], it's almost like they’ll burn the whole village down just to get that one person. Exactly. So they don't necessarily care about, as you spoke to earlier, the ramifications of some of the things they do just to get to that, right? And so hence the dry cell. Somebody somewhere thought, "You know what? I know how we can attack this particular aspect of how they get contraband in. Put 'em somewhere where they have to use the bathroom at some point but can't flush or have no water."

If you don't know, that's what a dry cell is: a cell with everything else in it, but no water. If you have to use the restroom, you'll use it, but it'll stay there. And then they can come in to examine your feces. And just another tidbit about that, once they put you in a dry cell, they don't usually warn you when they're coming. So they can come at 1 o'clock in the morning, 2 o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning and wake you up and see if you went and whatever the case may be. Now I said all that, but I'm going to say this about Leon's story. This is where it gets more traumatic. If I am a resident of a prison and I do indulge in trying to circumvent the system and bring contraband in, I kind already know what I'm doing mentally.

If I get busted or if they suspect me and throw me in a dry cell, I'm in the dry cell, but I'm like, “Ah, they got me in a dry cell.” But I'm really mostly worrying, if I got something, how to not allow them to get it. Not about being in the dry cell. But if you are somebody who doesn't indulge and you’re going to your visit, you're going to your family, that's all that's on your mind. And then you get accused of it and you get thrown in that situation, then that's when it's extra traumatizing. Because I don't know this, right? This is not my lifestyle. Even in prison. In prison, there are different lifestyles. My lifestyle isn't this one. So when you throw me in the dry cell and saying I got to stay here until whatever I have comes out, and I don't have anything…Not only that, I don't even know what you're talking about. Then that's where it gets to the point where it is really dehumanizing. Because they’re not differentiating, one from the other.

Everybody in here is a criminal to them. So whether you got something or not, the fact that you're in here lends more credence to you having something than not. And so you get lumped in with everybody else and that's where it is really…You used the word dehumanizing and that’s because it is. Because oftentimes, when they throw you in this cell with no water and you use the restroom, they do not come and clean it. They don't clean it; they just want to see what's in it. And now you are stuck with that. You deal with that, in a cell nonetheless. So now you’re worrying about the stench, right? You’re worrying about the unsanitized everything because the cells are already filthy. These are holding cells that are not in a regular unit. They're off in the SHU, a special part of the SHU. And the SHU is filthy

PAM: And the SHU is the hole.

GENE: Special housing unit. The SHU is the special housing unit, where they segregate you from general population and it's really dirty. It's smelly. It's the worst place you want to be, even in the prison. And so this is where they put you. That's where I see the two different sides. It's like, okay, I do understand why they do it, but I'm sure that they could have come up with a different method.

PAM: Yeah, I thought Leon had some good points. We talked a little bit about this. He said, No.1, they did a strip search andan X-ray. The strip search is humiliating enough. Why did they have to do both? That makes no sense. If you're going to do an x-ray, then skip the strip search because you're going to see everything inside anyway. No. 2, he said something that I confirmed with some people in other prisons. He thinks that the scan, the extent of using the x-ray, should only be done if they have some reason to suspect something. That's what I heard from other guys in prisons. They do not routinely use x-rays on everybody, like they do at McCreary. And then the other thing was, they didn't have any appreciation for what his problems were. I mean, you heard him talk about the fact that he had constipation and they wouldn't give him anything to help. So he spent overnight there. So I think that although I understand… That's something we could talk about in another episode. Drugs are a really big problem. But there are other things that they could have been done. And it seems like doing the strip search and the scan…My bet is that some bureaucrat, somebody who worked there, added on the x-ray and no one thought to review the rules and see what could be done. Do we need to do everything? And no one did that.

GENE: Yeah, I would say that it was probably one of three reasons why they did that. It could have been them just doing extra. But it also could have been the fact that they thought he had something, and even before the strip searched him, they already thought…

PAM: They were doing everybody though. 

GENE: Oh, they scanned everybody. Oh wow. That's ridiculous. And also, the other thing that I forgot, one of the main points he made was he felt that they didn't have really well-trained people doing the scans, because somebody else later, when all was done, a more senior person came down and looked at his scan and said that was just gas. This was not necessary. What was strange in the McCreary case was that they were routinely doing it. Leon said he wouldn’t have any problem if there was some reason why, right?

PAM: Yeah. And that's what I was getting at. I was thinking maybe they singled him out. Because I've been in a situation like that, where, not in a visit but in another part of the prison where my job consisted of me having to be strip searched to go into my job and back out. And so there was an incident when one of the guards, he wasn't even a regular who works where my job is, but he thought he saw me pick up something or pocket something and he was so sure of it. When it was time for me to go, I know I'm getting strip searched. So I already tell myself that every day, that it’s a part of the routine. So he strip searched me and when he didn't find whatever he thought he saw, he asked me to turn around again. And then that's when I was like, “No, I'm not, because I owe you that one. You get the one. You get the “come in, take my clothes off…” But if you’re searching me, literally looking for something, no. I'm not. I did my thing. If you didn't see it, I'm not doing it. And then obviously, that wasn't received well. I was about to ask that.

And so he demanded and then went and got more people who said, ”No, you're going to turn around.” And then I turned around. The thing is, once they think they know, there is nothing you can tell them. And even though he found nothing, I can bet a dollar to a donut that even to this day, whoever this guy is, I bet you he feels more that I got away than that I didn't have anything. He felt like I beat him.

PAM: You highlighted another big difference between…You talked about things out here. Another big difference is that at least out here, if we feel like we were wronged by the police or something, there are things we can do. Increasingly today in prison, there isn't. As you just said, if you say no,

GENE: You can…But it doesn't work. You can bring a complaint, but the complaints only bring more of why you’re complaining in the first place.

PAM: Retaliation. Right? And that's a whole other topic for another episode, which we'll do because there is a whole procedure for bringing complaints, and retaliation for filing complaint is very common. So we want to close the show out.

GENE: Yes, first and foremost, thank you for having me. This is absolutely the best experience and being able to educate people about what's going on inside of these prisons, that's something that we need to continue to do. I always support that. And with that said, everybody in the whole entire world, share this with your friends, your family, everybody you know. And don't forget to go and subscribe to More Than Our Crimes. Peace out.