Gangs use fear, drugs to run Miss. prisons

Prison, no matter how you say it, the word invokes dark thoughts. There are no happy thoughts associated with prison.

I spent six years in prison… as a chaplain. Many scoff and say, "you weren't really in prison, you just worked there." True, I went home every night, stayed there on weekends, yet I was in prison. Prison is a place that totally envelops your mind, body and soul; it surrounds you like being bundled in shrink wrap. The days "locked up" don't define you as a prisoner, the lifestyle does. Futility and hopelessness are what captures you and makes you a part.

If you have a picture of prison life from "Shawshank Redemption," "The Chamber" or some other Hollywood portrayals inside the walls, you don't know what real prison life is.

It is a life of danger, terrible food, mental and physical confinement and abuse.

Understand "from the jump," state corrections have multimillion dollar budgets. Yet, with all the treasure spent, they only incarcerate, most assuredly do not correct many. Do policies, procedures, officers in blue run what goes on inside the fences and walls? Not so much.

Quite simply, gangs do. Gangsters, Vice Lords, Ayrian Brothers, white, black and Latino, they control what goes on in the units, zones or single-cell lockdown facilities. What makes this statement true? In short, fear and drugs. The mantras of corrections is "custody and control." This sounds official, like the law of the land, but it ain't so.

Drugs — meth, crack, "weed," any drug of choice — provide cash, cash buys canteen, which is the "coin of the realm inside." Drugs are smuggled in by visitors, creative enough to hide them in areas I don't want to discuss. And they are delivered in locations, private enough many times to escape the prison cameras, body scans and cavity checks. Get caught and penitentiary officials provide transportation to the nearest jail. However, prices are high, sales abound, profits provide access to tobacco, black salmon in a can, Ramen noodles, a cuisine fit for a king or gang leader, and, yes, to make friends with security when necessity demands.

I spent lots of time in the living areas of the famous Parchman prison plantation of the Delta, walked the tiers of MSP, death row and general population. I have smelled the aroma of dinner being prepared in a coffee pot and was invited to partake several times. I understand how the game is played. I never joined in like some dobut I was always respected, not from fear, but from fairness.

Let's discuss prison respect for a minute. There is a saying, mostly among the younger members of the prison population, "you have to give respect, to get respect." In all prison situations, this dictate rules. Many of the young, the majority of the inmate population, arrive in prison from the poorer sections of our towns and cities. There, respect is enforced by a "nine," or weapon of choice when anyone steps outside the parameters of the gang code. Although police cruisers may drive through, they seldom stop and chat. Respect comes from inside out, not outside in. And nothing changes when they are arrested and incarcerated, the control comes from within. Fear from outside permits the control inside. Respect is acknowledging the inside power structure and not going against it.

Second only to finance, fear runs prisons. It doesn't matter if the facility is in the Delta of Mississippi or Louisiana or the bays of the West Coast, fear rules. I have witnessed middle-aged guys with a mandatory third time DUI conviction enter a zone, begin to unpack his stuff, and it gets still. The silence is most disturbing in prison. The newbie, alerted by the stillness, turns and looks, and 40 guys are looking at him as a "mark."

Tonight he will either fight a loosing battle or simply "give up" his stuff. The terror begins in the light and reaches a crescendo at midnight. A young boy about to be assaulted in the Rankin County facility was only saved when a former junior high school basketball team mate — now an ex-McDonald's All American who'd had many scholarship offers — came to his rescue. For the outsider, chaplain, officer, warden, whatever, whenever you hear that steel door clank behind you, you better have the peace in your soul that God is with you.

Do I know prison? Well, I spent more than 2,000 days there, inside the fences. I know the men locked up and those who "keep" them. I understand the men who don't go home on weekends and those who do. For the most part, like the song says, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, nothing don't mean nothing, if it ain't free."

Roger Burdge is a former chaplain at the State Penitentiary at Parchman and the author of "Riding in the Wind: A Prison 'Shot Caller's' Ride to Freedom."