University of Virginia Library

A Night In Your State Penitentiary

By Alden Thayer

He said there would be ten or
twelve of us in jail before the night
was over. I thought gloomily, as I
looked at the interlocking shadows
the bars cast on the dirty yellow
walls of my cell. But I sure as hell
didn't have any intention of being
one of them.

There was nobody on the road
back from Williamsburg to
Charlottesville, and the words of
the Black Panther leader at the
Counter Conference on Peace and
Justice had long since faded into
the Jefferson Airplane tapes —
nobody, that is, except me and the
cop. Our paths paralleled in
Goochland.

Despite the fact that my
dash light blow at half past midnight
and there wasn't a station open
anywhere and I couldn't read my
speedometer in the dark and, hell,
officer, it was only 8 to 10 miles
over the speed limit; the Law, I was
informed, made no allowances for
that sort of thing.

Cowed, I followed him
mournfully to a Citgo
station-cum-general store where we
trysted with the Justice of the
Peace, who announced that in as
much as I was from out of state I
would have to post bond equal to
the amount I would be fined if I
were guilty. Not being in the habit
of carrying $35 with me I was then
told that I would have to spend the
night in jail. I was stunned.

Pig Pen

In this how America assumes a
man innocent until proven guilty? I
was frisked and tossed into the
cruiser and we headed for the
Virginia State Farm Penitentiary. A
night in the State Pen for going 8 to
10 miles over the speed limit!! Or
was my crime being from Vermont?
Or was it that I am young? Or was
it my long hair? I told the officer
and the Justice of the Peace that it
was no wonder youth has no
respect for law and order if this is
what Virginia calls justice, but my
words bounced around among the
canned vegetables and STP like a
kid's lost rubber ball.

We were pulling into the State
Pen. Forty foot towers with spot
lights and machine guns, twenty
foot chain link fences with
electrified barbed wire bending
limp-wristed inwards, electric locks
and sliding doors. I was led to my
cell in a brown khaki shirt and
pants. They let me keep my
underwear. I tossed until morning
wondering why I wasn't more irate
and musing over whether
acquiescence to the inevitable was a
defense mechanism or some sort of
Eastern wisdom that I didn't know
I had.

There was dried shit on the
toilet, so it took some time to
overcome my intestinal reticence,
and that kept me up a while. The
sixty watt bulb glaring day and
night into my cell didn't help
either. Morning finally hove
lugubriously into view, and various
whistles, clangs and shouts from
somewhere beyond my walls
dragged the day in with them.

Brunch was abundant but
tasteless. The morning guards
refused to heed my plea to make a
phone call - one is allowed a single
call once inside the cell block, a
fact they had not informed me of
before I went in. It was not until
one o'clock that I managed to
convince them of my rights. How is
one to raise bail in a jail cell, after
all, with no earthly possessions
beyond one's underwear? But then
logic has little sway in a regime of
bars and billy clubs. The rest of the
morning was spent watching two
inch reddish cockroaches get caught
in the mousetraps set for them
outside my cell. I sat hunkering on
my cot in alert misery.

Sometime in the afternoon we
were taken into the yard. I no
sooner got into the hall than the
whistles began. Two prisoners came
up to me and told me the moment
they got the chance they would
fuck me raw. I blanched and
wondered which would come first,
they or my bail.

Personal Maiming

Then the jailers began. One of
them came up to me and said,
"Why do you wear your hair like
that?" I wondered whether he
really wanted to know but decided
from his sneer that he didn't.
Another menacingly announced
that he was coming up with shears.
I told him if he touched me I would
cream his ass in court for personal
maiming, a charge I cooked up for
the occasion but since he receded
grumbling, I guess he didn't know
anything more about the law than I
did. They finally decided not to let
me into the yard since it would
cause a riot. I was beginning to feel
like Jayne Mansfield in a USO
show. Back in my cell I thought of
my cell block mate.

He was about forty, charged
with murder, a rap he had beaten,
and was now waiting to be tried on
breaking and entering. A more
engaging, intelligent man I've rarely
met, a philosopher of sorts, who
spoke of his ten children with
warmth and humor, and held the
love between them in a respect that
approached the religious. He was
framed by the state of Virginia
years after he had gone straight, he
claimed, since they knew he had
committed other crimes they could
not pin on him.

FBI Files

I took all this skeptically until I
talked later with a guard. He
warned me not to visit Frank
because it would be "bad" for me. I
am sure they would have my face
on FBI files the moment I was
placed on his visiting list, but I
remembered the twenty or more
times I was photographed at the
Counter Conference by
quasi-hippies with Nikormats and
thought, what the hell! I asked the
guard if it weren't possible that
Frank really wasn't a murderer
especially since he had been
cleared. The guard looked at me
knowingly and said, "He may not
be, but you can bet your ass that
he's done a hell of a lot that he's
never had to pay for, so don't waste
your sympathy."

The Better Man

I'm sure he has, but I thought,
then Frank was right after all. When
the state can frame a man for
crimes they can't pin on him we are
all in danger. And the thought of
this brutal cretin of a guard
pontificating to me about a better
man than him was almost beyond
endurance. I clenched my fists and
teeth for more than the first time
and walked on. But I was walking
toward freedom by that time and
already Frank was slipping out of
my mind. Just as he said he would.

"When I tell people what it's
like in here they won't believe me.
They can't afford to and live with
themselves, knowing that their
money and their apathy keep this
system going. You ll walk out of
here hating cops more than you used
to, but you'll forget it all too, or
wrap it all up in a verbal box for
show and tell time at the next
cocktail party."

Justice Is Served

There was a kid down the cell
block who was eighteen, married
and out of work. He looked very
stupid. Desperate for eating money,
he ran off with twenty dollars.
They gave him two years in the
State Pen instead of teaching him
a trade and finding him a job. All
he wanted was to eat. Now with a
felony charge he'll never get a job.
What kind of society is it that
values property more than life?
When Rennie Davis spoke of all
prisoners as political prisoners I
scoffed. But listening to that dumb
but very young boy in the next cell,
I realized what Davis meant.

For you kid, with your pimples
and for Frank with his ten children
and his strange, sensitive mind; for
anyone else who "tangles with the
law" I can never forget that it is
precisely our money and our
apathy which feeds the Fascist
regime we call Justice in America.