Government Shutdown

For the last 16 days since the government shutdown became a reality, it's been an amazing tribute to the difference in occupations listening to federal prison guards freaking out about pay cuts, responsibilities of the government, and timelines for this suspension to wrap up. Three months ago or more, when the original sequester was threatened, prison officials and guards alike came to work with death in their eyes and fire under their feet.

There has been a lot of distress among the guards, though, and they certainly do take it out on the inmate. Is this justified? Probably, to a certain extent. Most of the public would shed no tears over inmates being disrespected, but reality is more than entertaining considering that these officers make over 50K per year to do nothing but walk around a unit and sit in front of their computer....occasionally respond to a fight..eat..spit chewing tobacco or smoke a cigarette in front of others for whom that is illegal, and talk on the phone about guns and ammo, nightclubs or "who's humping whom?" They are the most over paid group of human beings on this planet, with very little expertise or training in any field beyond the aforementioned activities. Yet the very inmates who impulsiveness and criminal misbehaviour created their jobs are the first target for the ire.

Mark Twain said long ago, " If you would see the scum of society gathered in one place, visit the front gates of a prison at shift change." I think these words are indicative of the close relation- in spirit and intellect-between the general population of inmates and the staff that elect to spend 8-16 hours each day lording over them.

Take a quick look at many of the similarities that find inmates and staff gathered together under a common roof:

• They all want as much as possible for as little effort possible.
• Achievements are a fleeting and, often a illusory concept. When achievement is realized, the trends and standards and popular onions of their everyday life are affected only minimally." Miracles and Luck" are more creative factors than consistent effort.
• The rich are, for the most part, "greedy and self serving and uninterested in the happenings of life at lower levels of income".
• Life can be summed by "It's a dog eat dog world", Life's a bitch, and then you die, the boy with the most toys win.

These are, for the most part, problem oriented rather than solution-oriented thinkers, and the natural response is reactivity over proactivity. Did you know that the average salary of a federal prison guard begins at almost 40K, with a full scale of benefits, 10 million days paid vacation, every freaking holiday offered by democratic countries. It is the least demanding and most spoiled career available in America, yet it remains this country's best kept secret-otherwise Americans would be doing something about it. The days surrounding this shutdown by the federal government are filled with more than the small concerns of small minds in and around prison, there are amazing points from men and women who do view society as a place to redeem themselves. The majority of inmate comments and opinions, however, do definitely reflect the kinds of thoughts and opinions the public expects from criminals. Calls for entitlements to the poor and a bunch of paid-for free shit compose most complaints heard in defense of "society" against the oppressive sides to government and corporate America. While older Americans and genuinely disabled people are struggling to find a fair and honest way to live out there, a bunch of jerks in here are planning to abuse a soft federal system that allows their stay behind bars to qualify them as disabled and collect $1,200 per month. They dream up insurance scams that will ultimately raise premiums for honest citizens. They cry about the unfairness of a long sentence they are unwilling to use for self-improvement, and they cheer about the dishonest abuse witnessed with the welfare card shopping spree on 10/15.

When we talk about government shutdown and sequestering it's important to point out that the Federal manufacturing corporation UNICOR is run with a budget separate from the budget that keeps the prison afloat. Although it serves the federal government and creates furniture/ products strictly for government contract and purchase, UNICOR is a private entity. Those employed by unicorn are protected beneath a corporation umbrella and are fairly unaffected by the shutdown. So there is a little animosity between the unicorn staff/guards that are being paid and the compound administration/guards that are officially "furloughed". Recently, the Colorado news and a Spanish television station aired a piece with a Florence prison guard complaining that the inmates were paid anywhere from $5-500 per month(depending on the job) while the guards were paid nothing. Imagine that some scumbag inmate living high off the hog while the guard goes penniless. The truth of the matter is that any inmate making more than $100 per month works in the unicorn factory up to 160 hours per month( making couches at $250 that the government buys for $2,500). The rest of us earn between 12 to 40 cents per hour which comes out of the inmates trust fund, an interest bearing account created from the money inmates spend on commissary. In other words, unless an inmate works for the private corporation entity of Unicor, he or she pays themselves.
From the perspective of a federal prisoner doing enough time to make a Cialis commercial look like porn, many of the inconveniences suffered by federal employees have been created by their own greed and laziness. It isn't criminal what the federal employees do-not by any means-but it certainly isn't the community-minded participation that the government would have us believe.


Everyone has the opportunity to make a difference-no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. The challenge is making the best difference with the tools we're given, and continuing to apply those tools when progress isn't glaring and obvious.

Beau Hansen

Trayvon Built My Hotrod

It's amazing how one's entire world can be transformed by the happening of a single event thousands of miles away. That has certainly been the case for the wives of war veterans and the fathers of highly successful children; it's the case in times of victory and defeat, glory and calamity. And for a two week period in July, 2013 this was the case for my cellmate and me. We were restricted to our cell for an institutional lockdown, but we might as well been in a Seattle coffee shop discussing the news while George Zimmerman's trial captured the media outlets and gave our minds something to zoom in on.

Those days went by fast for us, waking up to some Robin Meade, flipping to the Glenn Beck radio show, a little Melissa Perry-Harris and throw in some Fox News when these dropped off the trail coverage, nothing held the day like the divisive issues in Sanford, Florida. For us, this trial was not one of race as much as it was one of special interest groups influencing a political atmosphere that can subvert laws and ruin people's lives. For us, this trial was as much about the media's presentation of Zimmerman and Trayvon as it was about our own perception of right and wrong, just and unjust. After all , we are white convicted felons doing long sentences.

We were let off lockdown a couple days prior to the verdict being read. Almost as soon as the doors were cracked and inmates were scurrying to the showers or phones or email, a tense current ran beneath the entire english speaking population. The prison's atmosphere quivered with anticipation of an injustice to come. Everyone had spent the lockdown as we had-intermittently locked on liberal television news or conservative talk radio programs.

What initially shocked me about the verdict were my friends and family who, spewed the CNN and MSNBC bylines as if they were accepted academics. I wouldn't have been anymore pleased had they mimicked other news officials, but for them to have only one version of the case-that a "pyscho, wannabe-cop stalked a 16 year old boy who was merely walking home after buying tea and skittles, confronted him, incited him to fight and then shot him" was very disheartening. It surprised me so much because I have long felt that if something will engage me emotionally and make me question the integrity of the social order I am taught to serve and defend, I want to fully understand it-from both sides, especially the side that I agree with least. Anything less is reflective of the causes that led to my lazy life approach and incarceration. I naively expect greater things from those for whom laziness and crime and entitlements were not the first choice.

The popular media represents the left-liberals and independents who favor special interest group's, affirmative action, federal intervention programs and a general philosophy of equal opportunity, regardless of specific disparities. The less popular media on the right represent a conservative agenda that bequeaths all philanthropy issues to a wealthy and powerful elite which, in the end becomes an American aristocracy.

The Price Is Black and White?

These men are well acquainted with my opinion on necessary punishments for sexual offenders and those who endanger children/elderly. In an environment that lends itself to, and breeds, a character embracing "live and let live", the crimes that are scorned most contain an element of victimizing the helpless. That said, it's still not common for an inmate to extoll the death sentence-most convicts oppose the concept of courts having power over life and death. For any inmate-even one favored by most of his peers-to emotionally express that America's position as a lighthouse of morality and character has obviously passed with the light handed verdict in a sex/kidnapping crime is one thing. Most inmates couldn't give a hoot for the standing of our integrity on the world stage. It's another thing altogether for that inmate to declare that " the piece of garbage should have been publicly drawn and quartered or starved to death in a plexi glass box as a warning for future offenders".

The connection between a prisoner's revulsion to execution laws, and the public's inherent view of crime, never reached my mind as clearly as it did that day. I understood that my emotionally charged statements were wholly inappropriate for a different, freer setting, and reflecting on those statements led me into a conversation with compound's most notoriously jack-booted officer.
When he called me to his office and asked a rhetorical question concerning "excessive" property in my cell, I had other things on my mind-things I figured should be more important in both our minds than some extra packs of tuna or four pairs of running shorts. My mood made it easy to jump right in.

"The word "excessive" is right to the point, boss-I began. How many years are excessive for the heinous crime of kidnapping and child molestation?" His face turned into a scowl, it never gave away amusement to the words or conversation of an inmate. He shrugged noncommittally "There is no more time than a life sentence" This is the point I really wanted to discuss. " you make two good points sir", but neither of them is accurate. First the victims suffered for 10 years of the ugliest torture imaginable, and they have to relive these things everyday in their minds- I really doubt a circus trial will overwhelm them much more-and the finality of a death sentence is the closest thing to closure they can have with our justice system. The officer never moved to interrupt, which actually bothered more than satisfying me-it indicated he could care less, or had never thought of these things, therefor, had no air to debate them. Still I pressed on " And look around here, man, these fools aren't suffering, they love this stuff-television, warm food, clean cells and all the homies to share stories with. Ariel Castro is a high profile pedophile and that means his life will be in danger so he will be stuck in a protective custody block where he'll watch his little T.V and eat his meals in safety-he'll probably even get mail from some freaks out there who consider him a celebrity. He gets another 20-30 years to spend with the sick memories of his crimes, and everyone is a joy to him. I was fairly certain I had made a great point to him, but he wouldn't simply excuse me before finding a way to assert his authority and rights, "What makes you think you are any better than Ariel Castro or any other child molester in prison?" he says. Whoa!! Something at the very surface told me how offended I should I be, after all as a prisoner, there is nothing more anathema than rats and child molesters.

From the lowest, self-serving drug dealer to the auto thief and murderer by negligence, all have a direct effect on the comfort, safety, and general intercourse of the community. Even though truth resides just beneath the exterior of my sober disposition in here, I maintain that there are degrees to crimes committed, beginning with the individual's character and intent. This was my only segue to continue a discussion he so nonchalantly had turned into the advertisement of my own sins. "Anytime you sell drugs, or pimp prostitutes, or defraud the insurance companies in order to illegally obtain prescriptions, you cause a ripple effect through the community that leads to more crimes being committed. In my eyes, everyone one of you inmates is a drug dealer, murder, pimp and child molester", he said. "There is no difference and this system is only set up to hold you, not change you so you will always be drug dealers and child molesters and the community will always be paying for you".

"Is everything black and white?"
"This much is black and white: you run a unit store and it's against the rules. No one really cares whether you sell candy bars and bags of chips-and that's why I only harass you with shakedowns instead of writing you up-but it's black and white that if you can't align yourself with the simplest rules in here. there's no way that you will get out there and follow all the rules of society when no one has an eye on you. You sell drugs and you'll beat people up and you'll kill them if they push you far enough. This wasn't a debate to him, he couldn't debate with an inmate anymore than he could help one escape.

I had no desire to "win" this conversation, but I wanted to know one thing, as he stepped toward me signaling we were done, I asked " Would it seem possible that I may be a highly successful, law abiding citizen in society if I didn't have "excessive" property in my cell? "You're a criminal, You won't".


Beau Hansen

The Future of Prison in America....

What is the big deal about prisoners in America? Maybe the fact that with over 2 million men and women behind bars, there are around 50 million others in this country directly affected by those locked up. That's a lot of guard's, administrator's, moms, dads, wives, sons and friends. I have an idea, Lets hear some of what these criminals and ex-criminals have to say about their stay in club fed( These are the only con's I can speak to and speak for, since I have been a federal inmate for the past 14 years now.) Let the foolios speak for themselves ; and let those who have made a genuine effort to rehabilitate themselves speak for themselves. It's about time I said something worth listening to, after so many years of nonsense.

Sometime in the near future our prisons will be so overcrowded that the government will have to choose between two options : extermination or letting some people go. With the present states of the system and the general inmate being released, I am for extermination-even if that means that I have to jump out there first. There is the chance that if society and some free- thinking individuals with a little compassion will hear what is missing from inside these walls, rehabilitation and a true spirit of communication could be had.

Thank you for opening a page and opening an ear- I promise to be entertaining and informative. I invite all the criticism and advice.

Beau Hansen