Anne Frank Center USA/PEN American Center
                              Prison Diary Excerpts


Samuel Harris
Federal Correctional Complex
Petersburg, VA 23804

October 28, 2008
Dear Diary,
… I could try and start with the dramatic, but it is always better to tell the truth. I am not your typical criminal, whatever that is. I didn’t get here by growing up in a ‘hood’ and one of their many statistically deficient categories that demonizes black people. Nor did I shoot my way out of a bank. I actually had opportunities, which in themselves can be very dangerous to someone like me who was completely unprepared for them. I’m a 44-year-old black male (I don’t believe there are any more African-Americans except maybe Barack Obama) who’s trying desperately to hold onto the remnants of my youth. Like I said I wasn’t destined for prison. I was not collateral damage left by the ‘Haves” of our society. No, I made mistakes and got hooked on drugs, and when my money ran out I robbed stores to get more. (I have never written that before so I took a second to re-read it and see if I could place that description somewhere or to see if it sounded dangerous or exciting; it was nothing.) So, minus the loves and lost and youth and family that’s where I’m at and who I am. The echoes because of the high ceiling and metal drown out everything.

If you’ve never been to a Federal Prison, think the armed services. Not that I’ve been there but I could not think of any place with so many people that moves in such choreographed routines. From the clothes to the food to the people to the officers to the night and the days, these places could go on undisturbed forever. That’s the only scary part of this prison, being able to survive the monotony. So for me, I write. I read and write and I pray. And somehow, it all goes together.

The jazz music allows me to write my thoughts easily so sometimes I get lost in the harmony but I never forget where I’m at. NPR is my lifeline…I’ve got 18 months left. I think I’m going to make it.

November 6, 2008
Dear Diary,
…One of my biggest problems is discontinuity, which is a term used in the (500-hour residential drug treatment) program to describe behavioral shortcomings, and mine is discontinuity. I do believe though, that the election of Sen. Barack Obama may give me a legitimate alibi. I must say that this was one of the happiest and most soul-cleansing events that I have witnessed in my 44 years. I am so proud. I am so honored. I am so happy with America now that I can put it into words. You see Diary, my great-grandmother, who has passed, was born into Martinsville, VA in the late 1800s. When she was born, she was a slave. She never got more than a 6th grade education. She died over 30 years ago. I cannot even remember how her voice sounds. I remember the things that she told me, like, “all people are the same,” and “spider webs will stop a bleeding cut,” but her voice, the tone, the actual sound of it, is lost to me. But not her wisdom. Her wisdom spoke to me in the early hours of Wed., November 5th, 2008, when I listened to Barack Obama tell us that we can be better, all of us, and with that, the United States of America became a dream for me. I dream of this shinning light that was finally turned on for me and it illuminated a path for me and that path had a beginning and an end and a lot of beautiful people along the way, and hatred became an abnormality that thrust its carriers off of this path, and all of the people there walked with me, the blacks and the whites and the Latino and the Asian and all of their faces had promising smiles like the one that stood in Chicago’s Grant Park, listening to Barack Obama. They turned and looked at me and we went back to the beginning of the path and I was held and lifted high in the air by a million soft hands of hope.

                                             
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Clifford Barnes
Denison, Texas


October 3, 2008
I don’t know. Am I the only person in this program who is on the “outside”? I don’t know. I’ve been out ten months. I have a place in a nearly 100-year-old hotel in Denison, Texas. It’s been a struggle, but what else is new.

It is amazing to me how similar life out here is like being inside prison. I always think about Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Prisons are just concentrated visions of society’s power. Wow! How did Foucault come up with that? How well it helps to narrate…my existence in this society.

I mean, in it’s not like I don’t appreciate being out but I can’t help how seeing how out here isn’t so much like “in there”. Other than a few more creature comforts, it is alike. All of my life: schools, work, prisons—they’re all the same, or as Foucault would say, instruments of the same power.

Writing long hand feels good to do again. I may stop writing on the computer.

October 9, 2008
Yesterday was my birthday. Went over to my parents and had dinner and a small party.

Today, otherwise has been pretty good. Got a lot of work done. Got my motorcycle finally inspected and fixed. I still have to get the full license. I guess I’ll try to take care of that in the next couple of weeks. I’ll love that motorcycle, I think, once I get to riding on it. It’s a small 650, learner bike for me, but I do think I’ll immensely enjoy it.

Not much else to speak of I suppose. I’ve been looking at city council’s agenda but there’s nothing on it that particularly interests me. I do notice an unusually high amount of street people around, but I wonder if that is some how connected to the tanking economy.

November 12, 2008
The only thing I do like about journals is this writing about dreams. Since my release, I’ve often had cops coming after me in my dreams…Finally, last night I finally put a stop to them. Two of them were agents, the rest just flat foots. I was absolutely clean. Some of the guys in the crew I was with weren’t, but the one guy that was dirty dumped his dope while they focused on me.

I stood up to them. I was clean. I mocked them. And they did nothing.

It seems to be a rather good sign about my general psychological health and about the confidence that I have in myself and to come out of the nightmare or at least survive the nightmare of crimp, prison, and poverty.

December 14, 2008
I feel like I’m in the groove again. Healing from incarceration comes in spurts. I’m working on that poem. I have this larger work. And, I’ve gained good yardage on getting our criminal justice reform site up. I have the basic design. I’ve done a lot of SEO and keyword research. It’s time to start building. I have a little PHP programming, too. No OS stuff, if I can help it. Anyway, I feel pretty good about it, at least right now I do.


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Charles Selby
Marquette Branch Prison
Marquette, Michigan

July 22, 2008
I have been in solitary confinement for a decade now and I’m being told by prison officials that I will have to remain in this miserable situation until they have thoroughly broken my spirit.

I have seen many prisoners come and go who have been driven mad or bitter and violent by this excessively harsh environment, but none of whom I judge as being weaker than myself. There are just too many variables in a person’s life to fairly say what he should be able to endure.

However, I have paid close attention to the behavior of my fellow prisoners in this situation. And in doing to, I have learned from their mistakes and misfortunes so that I can effectively contend for my sanity. I determined long ago that I will be released from solitary confinement, one day, a far better man.

In order to do so, I find strength in my Christian faith and I stay busy every day all day long doing constructive things like reading, writing, drawing, maintain quality relationships with my family and friends, and exercising. Also, I have found it to be imperative to avoid negative influences and to never allow men who can’t think for themselves to advise me on life’s matters.

July 24, 2008
My neighbor is under the misconception that this environment requires brute strength in order to survive. He told me flat, in here, the strong rule the weak, yet he remains confused as to why the guards always mess with him and not me. I told him, “yeah, the strong definitely rule the weak but it is the wise who govern the strong. The reason the guards don’t bother me is because this is a thinking man’s era—basically, if we were swimming in an ocean and being pursued by a shark, I don’t have to swim faster than it, I just have to swim faster than you. Which is what I do in here on a daily basis with all you guys. If you want the trouble, I would be a fool not to allow you to keep them focused all the time.”

July 31, 2008
I can be just as stubborn as the next person, but experience and wisdom have taught me the importance of not burning bridges I must cross again; not unless I’m important enough to pass the underlying waters, or walk on them.

A guard, who never gives me any problems, can’t stand my neighbor so he takes his food trays every now and then. But instead of that prisoner directing his anger towards the guard for taking his meals, he curses at me for not speaking up against that guard’s actions.

If I did speak up, the guard would only take my meals as well. It won’t put a stop to that guard’s cruelty. So I would rather keep silent and share half of my food with my neighbor so that neither will have to go to sleep starving.

Sometimes we have to deliberately lose some battles for the sake of winning the war.


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Michael Hicks
Mike Durfee State Prison
Springfield, South Dakota


July 17, 2008
I have been trying to go to a trustee here for a while. I took a firefighting class last year for wildlife fires in hopes that I would be able to go to Rapid City trustee unit and fight fires in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I have a “hold” on me from North Carolina that at this time is preventing that. I’ve paid this lawyer down home $1,000 to take care of this, and the only thing now he needs from me is something in writing from administration here that states what my sentence is here and when my dates are for release. Nope, those things we can’t have. Imagine that, the most important thing to an inmate, his release date, he can’t have in writing! If there’s one thing about this place it’s that you receive absolutely zero help from the people that are put in your unit to do that very thing, unit/case managers. It just seems that you really can’t pinpoint their job descriptions. I’ve been here 4 years and really don’t “know” what the hell they are here for. They never help you. Anything you ask them for they delegate to someone else. They work very hard not to have to do anything. My dad would say that’s typical employee but I know state employees here that work very hard.

July 22, 2008
I received the Anne Frank book today. Now I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be typing this diary or writing it in the book that was provided. My handwriting is terrible and this is probably the best way, so I’m going to stay with this format, I hope it is okay. I talked to my mom today. She is a retired nurse of 30 years. I am definitely the black sheep of the family. I am the only one to graduate college out of my brothers and cousins. I am also the only one out of this clan that came to prison. This pretty much throws the theory of an education keeping people out of jail out the window. I really think you have the “one” defining moment in your life where you decide then and there if you are going to follow rules or not follow rules. Once that question is answered in your head there’s no turning back. It could be at age 5 to 85, but at some point we all face it. My mom, Marline, has always been on the legal side of the equation. I on the other hand decided at East Carolina University to become a rebel, and never quit in the last 18 years.

July 23, 2008
Half way through the Diary of Anne Frank. I didn’t realize how much the Jews were looked down upon. That’s saying it lightly of course, but I can’t think of any way else to put it. I don’t understand the reasoning. There has never been any “good” reason for racism, racial discrimination, racial bias, bigotry, racial prejudice, race hatred, segregation, color bar or color line, but it seems in every case it’s always been some “reason.” With African Americans it was color, with Jews in Germany and surrounding countries they were so much like everyone else they had the wear stars to be identified. It is just beyond me how a collective group of people could be convinced to do this to another group that hasn’t done anything to them and are so much like themselves. I guess I need to read some history books to fathom this reasoning. I don’t understand.