The prison library is supposed to be open from 8 am to 3:30 pm on Sundays. For the third week in a row, a group of us (12 of us this morning) show up to go to the library and the C.O. in charge of the library has not shown up to unlock the door. Twelve unhappy and uneducated men grudgingly return to their units. I was going to return three books, read a magazine article and work on my Spanish homework at one of their desks. It is not meant to be.
I am taking a Nutrition class for an hour a day, Monday through Thursday, for two weeks. Yesterday it was cancelled because there was no CO available to open up the Education Dept. I had never been to that area of the prison until I started this class on Monday, May 21. It is really nice down there! Unfortunately, they hardly ever have any classes down there. It is openly known that although they have a nice education department, the CO’s despise the idea of prisoners getting an education and never let them schedule any classes there.
If I were in charge of the BOP, I would start a benchmarking of the various prisons against one another. One of the factors would be how many education classes you have, how many complete a course, how long a waiting list is, timely release to a halfway house, recidivism, etc. There are a whole host of things you can measure on and doing this would cause the system to be more responsive. It also becomes less “punishment based” and more “reform based.” I obviously don’t go to the GED courses, but there is a dichotomy there – half of the people want to be there and are studying hard and taking classes. The other half are screwing around, talking and not listening. Somehow this needs to be addressed.
I work in the Unicor furniture division. Things are very slow there. I am not sure if it is DOGE related or what, but the pace is now much slower than what it was when I started in mid February. I use the time to study Spanish and read books.
Ran into a guy not long ago who said he was from Northwest Ohio. I asked where and he said Toledo. I said I was from Defiance area. Turns out he was a doctor and did work in Toledo, Defiance, Lima and Findlay. He seemed to know the area well.
I saw a guy today and he said how are you? I said “same as yesterday and probably same as tomorrow.” He said “he was going to go crazy and wipe his butt with his left hand tomorrow – just for a change.” That sparked some good laughter & is a good way to end this journal!
