Blood slowly drizzled down Y.W.’s right forearm as it flowed from his knuckle. He blankly stared at the cell wall after feeling somewhat liberated from letting his frustration out on it. A long tear drop shuffled down his left cheek. Y.W. had had enough of the toxic stress built up from being separated from the world and being unable to see his son. In addition, his cellmate, a total stranger that Y.W. had been forced to live with had been making sexual passes at him. Y.W. couldn’t fathom his reality of ever having to live in an environment so unfamiliar to his home. Yeah, he knew he was guilty of the crime he had been convicted of, but he strongly felt that the 20 years he had been sentenced to for his 20 minutes of stupidity was unfair given that this was his first criminal offense. He had been incarcerated for 7 years now and could not forget the look on Judge Ford’s face as he so cavalierly read out his judgment and 20-year sentence. Ford’s feigned smile was etched in Y.W.’s memory as it was followed by the judge stating that he would run the duplicative possession of a firearm charge (which carried 5 years) with the home invasion charge concurrent, as if he were doing Y.W. a favor. A good deal of Y.W.’s frustration was also in part because he felt that his sentence was not proportionate to the crime or what other guys who had been in the bullpen (courthouse holding cell) with him, who had worse criminal records and similar chargers, but better legal representation, were receiving.
Now, seven years in, all Y.W.’s appeals had been denied, family support began to wane, old friends became past associates, finances for simple prison necessities (soap, toothpaste, clothing, etc.) became obsolete, and it had been going on 3 months since he had received a single letter from the outside world. From the vantage point of the author, it seemed like the steady letters Y.W. had been getting from his childhood friend [Michelle] were the only things that were keeping his mind somewhat positive. The letters had allowed him, I believe, to escape the hellish things that take place in this environment. And, I guess because of the excessive phone rates, and no financial support, Y.W. was unable to use the phone as often as I used to observe him using it. The absence of him being able to communicate with the outside world heightened his awareness and caused him to focus his attention on the many internal evils within the prison that he used to work so hard to brush aside. These evils, for Y.W., began to strengthen themselves into full blown issues that I physically observed take a toll on him, and chisel away at the posture of his psyche.
But, as Y.W. felt the blood run down from his knuckle to his elbow, while a tear fell simultaneously down his chin and dripped to the floor below him, he began yelling from his cell for everybody in the unit to hear. “Fuck All Ya’ll Niggas, All Ya’ll Bitch Ass Niggas, Nigga Come Get Me” he kept repeating to himself several times. He then ripped a piece of his bed sheet and tightly wrapped his bloodied knuckle within the ripped linen. Y.W. then sought to find the maggot C.O. [Cottonhead] who ravaged his cell earlier that week, throwing his only remaining pictures of his son and family on the cell floor along with his legal papers (trial transcripts) during a routine cell search. Before he was fortunate enough not to find that C.O., he ran into his cellmate who gave Y.W. the most unpleasant smile. Y.W. was no longer the reasonable guy he had been and was looking for someone or something to release his frustrations out on, so, in an instant, he switched his direction, following his cellmate into their cell in which he proceeded to punch his cellmate in the back of his head, causing him to fall face forward to the floor. Y.W. stood over him with his fist tightly clinched as his cellmate lay before him in a curled fetal position. He yelled over him “Nigga don’t ever disrespect me, from here out, this your side of the cell and this is mine (pointing his finger), stay in your space and don’t violate mine!”
Believe it or not people, I’d rather this be a fiction novel or a fictitious film excerpt, but unfortunately, this is the reality from an authentic scenario here in a Massachusetts DOC prison. As you may have perceived, Y.W. is a pseudonym representing the acronym for young warrior. I decided not to use anybody’s official name because it could lead to actual persons receiving disciplinary infractions, and it is also what we prisoners call “dry-snitching,” which is a form of telling on someone or something without directly informing on someone. Through such narratives, we do not recommend or allow narrators to facilitate the investigatory processes of prison authorities. Providing names could also fuel the gathering of information by jailhouse informants, whose aims are to aid prison authorities in various affairs, but are ultimately victims of a slave structure designed to pit inmates against other inmates. However, “Young Warrior” fit the characteristics of the individual I have been describing in this slave narrative because he has such great potential and is an actual warrior (survivor) of the best quality. He is only lost and misguided by his circumstances. As of today, he is headlong in the fiercest battle/war he’ll ever face in his life, which is the war within himself. No, sorry, there is no fairytale ending to this sordid narrative—but only an opening to discuss the toxic elements that make up Massachusetts’ prisons.
In conclusion, this is another case in which the exclusionary conditions of incarceration had worked to suffocate the soul of an innocent young spirit, in which circumstances were reminiscent of slave conditions in the antebellum south. Slavery actualizes itself in various forms and is not merely relegated to whips and chains or traditional chattel modes of servitude. What classifies Massachusetts’ prisoners as slaves is their inferior status as property of the state in which their physical liberties have been arrested and usurped through their physical bondage—ultimately having dire psychological affects as a result of living in such unnatural conditions. Separating the sexes and isolating them from society in a swath of the forest (state prison) under the absolute control and authority of prison guards with autonomous power, absent the guide of Constitutional protections creates a self-perpetuating cesspool of misery and hopelessness. It is no surprise that in these environments, the strong turn weak, timid turn aggressive, abused become abusive, and murderers become sages and saviors who maintain the civility required to prevent such transient conditions from exploding into pure chaos. Furthermore, Our United States Constitution’s 13th Amendment’s exception clause sanctions this egregious institution of American slavery via incarceration that fosters the type of environment that manufactures the hopelessness Y.W. was experiencing and that gave rise to the hypersexual behavior of his cellmate. They are both victims of an unforgiving system that only aims to punish and strangle the spirits of American citizens whose citizenship or humanity are no longer valued by the state of Massachusetts or the Glorious Liberty Document called our United States Constitution.