If taking the suggestion to call the hotline at face value, the first issue would be that suicide deaths frequently occur in solitary confinement, where we have no access to prison phones.

The second would be that prisoners are already wary of voicing anything with the faint whiff of suicidal ideation to staff—are they going to be comfortable punching in their GDC identification number to describe those thoughts in detail on a recorded call? GDC did not respond to Filter’s request for comment about usage of facility phones to call the hotlines.

“Call the suicide hotline? [Getting shanked] is a better option.”

The phrase “Don’t be afraid to ask for help” is irritating in the free world, but especially vexing in here. 

“Call the suicide hotline?” Al*, who has spent most of his life incarcerated in GDC facilities, asked Filter. “What for? So I can lose my property and sit in a paper gown in the hole, freezing? Fuck that. [Getting shanked] is a better option than increasing the misery.”

Once someone’s demonstrated any behaviors that indicate risk of self-harm, per GDC policy they’ll be put on Suicide Precautions status and whisked off to solitary confinement for mental health observation. They will be observed shivering in a paper gown and eating “finger foods,” since they can’t be trusted to wear clothes and eat off a tray, until whenever GDC decides to return them to the same environment that prompted thoughts of suicide before. Hopefully they’re feeling better. 

“I do not want to talk to some far-away counselor about the shitty day I’m having,” Burt* told Filter. “I want to talk to relatives and friends, hear about normal lives. And make plans for returning home.” He, too, has spent most of his life in prison.

Talking to a loved one would do more to ease the suffering of many in here, but GDC makes it nearly impossible to do so. The suicide hotline number is toll-free—though you wouldn’t necessarily know that without reading the very last pages of our Inmate Handbook—but regular numbers sure aren’t.

In a prison system where the currency used in many facilities is Ramen soups (two soups = $1) the wall phones use USD. You need actual legal tender on your account to make calls at 13 cents per minute. But GDC pays us $0 for the jobs we go to each day, and prison phone operator Securus doesn’t accept soups. Even if you can afford the call, you might die waiting to get the number approved. 

A contraband cell phone, however, can be rented for an hour by anyone who can scrounge a couple of soups together. Even the poorest among us can often get a sympathy call home in exchange for making a bed.

So of course, as the suicide toll climbs higher and higher, GDC invests more and more into cell phone crackdowns. 

What does GDC expect us to live for?

“Yard call would be nice,” Al said. “You know we went a month and a half without yard call recently? I think I’ve been able to just go chill on the yard twice this year so far. It’s depressing. Walking to and from chow isn’t a substitute.”

Between 2015 and 2020, suicide accounted for nearly one in 10 deaths in GDC facilities. The exact number of suicide deaths inside state prisons each year is unknown. The Department of Justice used to publish annual in-custody death reports, but doesn’t anymore. Corrections departments are meant to report the data too, but rarely bother.

“I wake every morning and the first decision I make is: Will I kill myself today?” Al said. “I’m tired. I gave up on parole years ago. I don’t know what happened but no one in my situation is getting released anymore.” 

Al has the sort of disciplinary record the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles supposedly likes to see, has spent well over half his life inside GDC facilities, and by all accounts should have gone home a very long time ago. Like so many others who remain.

“I settled in hoping to live out my days as best I can,” Al said. “[But] there’s nothing left to hope for. One way or another, I will die soon.” 

Looking around, I see a prison full of old men. Many have served 20, 30, 40-plus years, each day fighting off the urge to end it all by holding on to the hope that one day they might go home, and it hasn’t gotten them anything but older.

*Names have been changed to protect sources.

Top image and inset image of contraband searches via Georgia Department of Corrections. Inset graphic of poster displayed inside GDC facility via Anonymous.

The post If Suicidal Prisoners Should “Ask for Help,” Stop Taking Away Our Phones appeared first on Filter.

Smoking leads to almost 500,000 early deaths in the United States every year. Can’t deny it has a wide appeal.

My grandmother, born in 1899, died in 1977 from breast cancer with a pack of her beloved Lucky Strikes at her bedside. They reminded her of her Rosie the Riveter days, working in the aircraft industry in WWII. For her, and for many women entering the workforce, cigarettes symbolized equality. No longer was their smoking relegated to kitchens and backyards. And just look at all we have accomplished since then, she would conclude with a theatrical lighting of a Lucky.  

When my father was an Army combat engineer in Korea, a cupped Kent cigarette kept his fingers warm enough to safely disarm the mined bridges. Another as a reward to look forward to, after not dying once again. He wasn’t looking forward to resuming a life of sharecropping after his draftee stint was up. He wasn’t even looking forward to the payday at the end of the month. He was living one hour at a time, looking forward to his next Kent. To my father, lighting a cigarette was always a reaffirming of life. 

I started smoking when I was 9. I took to it by osmosis. The people around me smoked, so I smoked. That’s how it tends to work.

My mother, adjusting hems to fit a growing family, would use a lit Benson & Hedges to cut her sewing thread. She smoked them continuously before, during and after pregnancy. In the 1960s, every room—homes, offices, restaurants—was filled with that dim blue haze. All my Tennessee childhood memories are filtered through it.

Watching my grandfather’s tobacco-stained fingertips as he repaired watches. His squinted eye huge from my point of view across the desk, through the lighted magnifing glass, a trail of white smoke rising past.

As a child, I once disturbed a wasp nest. Screaming in pain from the welts on my head and neck, dampened tobacco was applied and instantly relieved my misery. When ticks or the occasional leech needed to be prised from my head, the hot top of a cigarette, held at just the right distance, would do the trick without burning me.

In the deep South, a lit cigarette is gnat-repellant when working outdoors. One just doesn’t appreciate the brief respite of not having bugs in your eye until the cigarette burns up, and you again have bugs in your eye.

I started smoking when I was 9. No one told me to start; I took to it by osmosis. The people around me smoked, so I smoked. That’s how it tends to work.

For a while as a teen, I liked the smokeless tobacco products. Cans of dip that impressed a circle in the pocket of my jeans; the small sacks of longer leaf chewing tobacco with their aromas of maples or apples or cherries. Living in the countryside, these were as natural to me as the honey we poured over my sisters’ homemade bread.

When I moved away and began going to clubs, dating the city girls, my preferences shifted with the tide. I chose kisses over chews, started smoking filterless cigs, liking the size and full flavor. I was a Camel man, but enjoyed the strong menthol kick of a filterless Kool King here and there.

I would vape, if the option was available to me. Don’t see those much in prison.

At 50 I was smoking five packs a week and jogging 35 miles a week. My knees and ankles ended my running, but my lungs are still strong. 

I never cared to be drawn into the debates that strangers felt entitled to—when and where and for how long I was allowed to enjoy a cigarette. It’s a more violently enforced ideology in prison than in the free world. Plenty of non-smokers in here.

At age 58, I was working maintenance in a prison elevator that had two other men in it, and I pulled out a Camel Light. The rules used to be different. I can see why they considered it rude that I didn’t ask before lighting it, but not why they didn’t consider it as rude to beat up an old man. Bolstered by anti-smoking propaganda, they decared it a public service to teach an old dog a new trick. 

I quit after that. Cold-turkey. Water helped; not drinking it really, but I did a lot of washing my face and hands, to help the moment pass. I would vape, if the option was available to me. Don’t see those much in prison.

I’m 79 now. And I don’t enjoy my life as much as I did when I was smoking. I miss them, the cigarettes.

Photograph by iemlee via Pixabay

The post I’m 79 and in Prison. Cigarettes Have Shaped My Life. appeared first on Filter.