Michael Santos

The husband of a friend of mine (I met Carole online in the early part of my sons prison journey, a long story I’ll write about another time) has a website and a Facebook site where he contributes articles related to his lengthy progression through the prison system. Michael is a longtime prisoner currently residing at Taft Camp where my son is serving his sentence as well. Over the years Michael has written/published several books and manuscripts, has a new Foundation in his name (a nonprofit organization set up to assist offenders post release as well as todays at-risk youth), and contributes in blog form to the Huffington Post. He and his amazing wife strongly advocate for prison reform as well as offer assistance to anyone preparing to serve time within a Federal prison, navigating their way through the sentence they are, or will be, serving, as well as post release. Anyone wishing to learn or read more about this fascinating and most interesting man and prolific author can currently visit his Facebook page or his website (google MichaelSantos.net). I urge anyone reading this post of mine to visit him at:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Michael-G-Santos/101936186518234

If clicking the link won't take you there just copy and paste the above into your webs browser.

My intent today in bringing this up is to copy/post a story Michael wrote, earlier this month, about an inmates experience in the Taft Prison SHU, aka Segregated Housing Unit, aka The Hole. I do so because I am very familiar with the topic of which he writes, the SHU - the “prison within the prison” - as my son who, now in his eighth year of encarceration, has spent time in SHU four times. And, like the young man in Michael's story, all were for incredulously ridiculous, as well as a few “trumped up,” charges. More on that another day. Michael does an excellent job of describing the SHU conditions and how little it takes to find oneself relegated to it’s tiny confines.

Again, I encourage you to visit Michaels Facebook page and learn more about this man and the system of which he writes, todays prison industrial complex and the nations so called "Correctional Institution." And now, heres Michaels post:

“A recent article in Rolling Stone describes the level of injustice in America's prison system. On some level, all of that is understandable. Self-dealing has been around since human beings began recording history. Machiavelli wrote about our treacherous world hundreds of years ago. After 24 years in prison, I’ve become mostly immune to it. I don't care that Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers clings to money he schemed to obtain through fraud. It doesn't matter to me that federal prosecutors chose to forgo insider trading charges against John Mack, the CEO of Morgan Stanley. Rather than complaining about it, it's best to pursue peace in spite of it.

That was the advice I gave to a young prisoner at Taft Camp who just returned after longer than two months in “the hole.” He was taken to the hole (SHU, segregated housing, a prison within the prison) for what I consider a ridiculous reason. The prisoner had requested placement on a special diet. Staff complied. One of the rules of being on that diet is to refrain from eating anything from the standard menu. A staff member accused the prisoner of touching a piece of cake that was part of the standard menu, but not part of the special diet. She charged the prisoner with a rule violation that resulted in his being locked in the hole for longer than two months.

The alleged offense was that the prisoner touched a piece of cake. Wow! For that egregious offense, a staff member condoned the young man’s isolation in the hole for months.

Time in the hole comes with many consequences, not the least of which is a solitary existence inside a closet-sized cell. Time in the hole means the prisoner cannot access the telephone. It means he cannot purchase food from the commissary. It means the prisoner cannot exercise freely, or access the library. It's suffocating.

To me it's a gross abuse of power. If someone in society were to lock another human being in a closet for more than two months, people would scream of it being inhumane. In prison, such a course of action is condoned as a normal, routine procedure. People complain about animals being locked in such conditions. For prisoners...no problem at all.

The young man asked me what he could do to prevent another stint in the hole. I told him there wasn't anything he could do. Being a prisoner means being vulnerable to the whims of others. Although a man can control his own behavior, he cannot control how others will behave, and anyone can be locked in the hole at any time.

One solution to finding peace in prison is to live without expectation of anything except disruption and corruption. That way, a man can make himself less vulnerable to the trauma that follows. I define myself through the choices I make every day; I consider it my duty to find peace regardless of what forces complicate my life. It’s the path to living with dignity and creating meaning—just breathe in, find ways to strengthen the mind, move on with a total acceptance that life can become better through the decisions we make.

Every man must carve his own path, and navigate his own way to peace. I wrote about steps I take in my book Prison! My 8,344th Day."



It is not a Justice System. It is just a system. ~Bob Enyart