THE FLOWERS OF LOMPOC

GREAT NEWS!

In an email from Corey today he gave me the news we've been waiting for this past month or more, and with bated breath at that! The news that he had received his designation for the RDAP. The news he will soon be transferred to a new prison to enroll in this program! And AS importantly, WHERE he will be sent. He could have been designated anywhere in the country, so for a long time now we've had some anxiety over exactly where, how far away, he would be forced to go, to be enrolled in the program. The program that would signal his last leg of this long prison sentence. Our sons destination prison is Lompoc. It was with mixed emotions we embraced the news, the upside being he will still be within driving distance (3 1/2 hrs drive west) for us to visit, the downside being he HAD hoped to be transferred to Sheridan, oregon, which would have placed him in the closest prison to his home since starting his sentence, along with the fact it would put him closest to the woman he loves and who loves him so very much. THAT would have made HER visits to him easier and more affordable. But we roll with what we are given, and all in all, this works for us far better than other locations he could have been sent.

Lompoc is due west from here, over on the coast, and he will enjoy something he's not had in a long, long time....balmy, cooler, cleaner air!!! Rod and I have spent time in the quaint little coastal town of Lompoc, and ourselves look forward to when we will visit him there in the time remaining on this journey. We've explored Lompoc and other coastal towns (Pismo Beach, Cayucos, Morrow Bay to name a few) several times in the past years, as we've sought to escape the summer heat of Taft and Bakersfied, if only for a day, a few hours!). These many years in the desert have left us all feeling older, dryer, more wrinkled, LOL, having lived all our prior years in the northwest with all four seasons, spring, summer, fall, AND winters with glorious snows. Anyways, moving on here, Corey will be enrolled in the 9 month program at this coastal prison camp and he is more than ready for this move. The Rdap is the BOP’s Residential Drug and Alcohol Program.

Dare I exhale, dare I let myself enjoy this moment? If I do I accept the consequences of being vulnerable again, as in this world one is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Murphy’s Law and all versions of it (“if anything can go wrong it will”) had to have been written for prisoners or the downtrodden everywhere as a way to prepare oneself for what might lay ahead or result from an unwelcome action (actually the “Law” is subscribed to Captain Edward Murphy, at Edwards Airforce Base in 1949, the very year I was born. Hmmmm). Early in this journey we all fully embraced the fact of “no expectations, no disappointments.” It steeled us all from the beginning and served us well on many an occasion, keeping our emotions from see-sawing as we faced and dealt with one disappointment or injustice after another along the way. I’d say the only thing common to both worlds, the one outside the prison walls and the one inside them, is that life is not and will never be, FAIR. Accept that, embrace that, and move on.

Not everyone is eligible for the RDAP. One must have a history of drug or alcohol abuse, in fact over the years the burden of providing proof of this dependancy has been laid solidly on the inmate. In the past a Judge could make a ‘recommendation” that a prisoner be taken into the program, but this recommendation seems to not carry much weight any longer. Much like everything else that goes on in our nations courtrooms these days, sentencing discretion was taken from the hands of Federal Judges, when the mandatory and minimum sentencing guidelines were put into place in the 1980’s, when parole was abolished, when the “War on Drugs” became the Gov’t’s new manifesto. And as we’ve seen the facts attest to, what would become an utter failure as "wars" go. We are less safe than ever, as a nation, from the violence that prohibition of any kind brings, drug cartels and corporations and governments are the only ones who benefit from the prohibition of drugs, and America leads the world in mass encarceration of its citizens for non violent drug crimes.

But I digress, back to the RDAP…Corey was subjected several months ago to lengthy interviews, Q&A’s, requests for documented evidence of past drug and alcohol abuse as the time neared that he would be eligible to apply for the program. An inmate must be within 36 months of release in order to "qualify" for the program, in order to begin even the interview process. The administration strives to determine inmates are genuinely “in need” of such a program, that it isn’t "just" a means of getting an earlier release from prison. I spent days going back through, and making copies of, all pages in the court transcripts made by the Judge and prosecutor alike, related to our sons use and abuse, and the consequences of, his drug and alcohol usage. Securing past records from the DMV and municipal courts that documented his traffic infractions and Dui’s was also required. I was able to pull together more evidence than was needed I suspect, but it was important to us that our son get the benefit of the treatment program, to elevate his chances of successful re-entry into society upon his release. With the closing of the BOPS’ intensive Boot Camp program in 2005, the RDAP also became the only opportunity for sentence reduction in the federal prison system. Those serving 30 months or less are eligible for up to 6 months reduction upon completion of the program, those serving sentences of 31 – 36 months are eligible for a 9 month reduction, and those serving 37 months or longer are eligible for a full 12 months sentence reduction, the maximum allowed by the law. Corey, with his lengthy 12 ½ yr sentence is of course eligible for the full year off upon completion of the program.

According to the BOP’s math, Coreys current release date is set at April 13 of 2015 (according to how the BOP does its math, allowing 54 “good time” days off per year, but at odds is the method the BOP actually does its computations. In reality, based on the way the BOP calculates good time prisoners only earn a maximum of 47 days of good time for each year of the sentence imposed. But, suffice it to say, 47 days are all the federal inmates get for good behavior, and it is taken from them at every opportunity, for every slight infraction of “prison rules”. Ultimately, at this point in time, if Corey gets the maximum time off sentence upon completion of the RDAP and is allowed at least 6 months off for halfway house placement, we expect he will see freedom come sometime in October of 2013, theoretically October 13th, as the Timeclock in my earlier post suggests.

I’ll talk more about RDAP as Corey begins to experience it, but for now, I’m going to allow myself to bask in these next few days, since hearing of his eminent transfer, as we all prepare for this next and final leg of our sons journey behind prison walls.

"Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate." ~H.L. Mencken