POLITICS
Photo via www.browniemarydemclub.org
Darkness
The
Into
Part two - Hawaii Vacation By: Dale Schafer
Travel within the prison industry is called “diesel” and/or “kerosene” therapy. You’re either put on a bus, diesel therapy, or a plane, kerosene therapy. The therapy part is the inside joke for inmates because it’s horrific.
Pahrump, Nevada is famous for its “whore houses” and a private prison run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). It’s a secure facility which means there are fences with razor wire, no freedom of movement by inmates and entry is through locked and monitored gates. I was removed from my medical solitary room and taken to the area where inmates are processed in and out. Because clothing is not an item that is swapped between facilities, especially private vs BOP facilities, I was given boxers (gray with streaks that I hoped had been laundered), socks that were overstretched and falling apart, cheap throw away slip on shoes and a paper jump suit that was disposable. Then I was sent into a concrete room that was cold, supposedly for germ control, without any comfortable seating and packed with those of us scheduled to leave - at least a dozen guys - and the door was locked. Also among us was a single open toilet.
I had been unable to communicate with my family since San Bernardino County Jail. No one in the family knew the horrors of prison travel or that I was off to Hawaii. As I sat in that ice cold concrete room, I wondered what my kids were thinking or doing. None knew I was in Pahrump or that I was now being moved. The BOP website that keeps track of inmate locations does not post an inmate’s location until the inmate is in a location for a while. How long that recognition period takes is still a mystery to me.
Those of us in the concrete refrigerator are told to line up and get ready to go. We are taken out five at a time, identified, put into leg shackles, hand-cuffed to a chain around our waist and put into the box. The box is a plastic device that covers the lock on the hand-cuffs so that a curious inmate, on a long travel
adventure, can’t manage to unlock them. We were shuffled out to a waiting bus, names confirmed and up we carefully shuffled so as not to fall. When all are loaded up, off we went to Las Vegas airport.
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