Confession #4: For Ratings

The Trauma of Prison TV

The moment my son rounded the doorway to step into the courtroom, his wrists bound close to his waist, a part of me died.

I am not being dramatic.

Seeing my son paraded out in line with 6 other inmates, shuffling in their floppy slides, killed the mom I once was. The jumpsuit stamped PRISONER made him, undeniably, property of the State.

Responsibility for his life and well-being had changed hands overnight.

Timothy D. Easley/AP

No, I am not the same person that arrived to that courthouse a few years ago. That woman, that mother left her body in slow dissociation. She ascended the paneled walls of that courtroom as a vapor and watched the rest from outside of her body.

My writing today requires recall from outside of me. Try as I may, I can’t get inside of those long moments otherwise, and I am not sure that I want to.

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Spectating

American legal proceedings and their outcomes are interesting to watch unless it is your child, your brother, your mom.

If you look around a real criminal courtroom, you can tell who the moms are in the gallery. We look like squirrels. Darting eyes, hunched shoulders, hands busy in front of us with a shredded Kleenex.

When I saw him, the urge to stand up was powerful as was the pull to go toward him. We were not allowed to speak. Instead, I covered my mouth with one hand and wrapped the other around my ribs, bent inward on myself. One leg crossed tightly over the other; it was the posture of a mother holding an invisible baby.

In some gesture of confidence, I winked and nodded at him as if to say, “Your mom is here. I got you.” Like I could do anything at all; I was as chained down in that moment as he was.

His attorney was a brief comfort, and not because he was particularly good. He was the only person who could get next to my son. Before the judge entered, the attorney walked over, touched my son’s shoulder, sat down, and leaned in to whisper. Someone had showed him some humanity.

But that assurance did not last.

Pangs of skepticism and betrayal stabbed me as his attorney began exchanging jovial quips with the prosecutors table. Lunch plans were being discussed. I watched the judge laugh with his staff as he entered the doorway. The normal 9 to 5 work rhythm for the entire front-half of the room drummed on. Condemnation and indifference, in chorus. Papers shuffled. Chairs scraped across the floor. A heavy door closed somewhere in the distance.

Just another day here, folks.

Reality Show

Except it wasn’t just another day for me.

My boy, my firstborn (it always feels like yesterday), was called up. His chains rattled as he walked.

I felt claustrophobic.

Panic rose within me.

His head low, he was addressed only by his last name. Now a case number, he would eventually become a DOC number that I had to commit to memory in order to communicate with him.

He hadn’t eaten anything but a baloney sandwich. He was withdrawing from months of daily drug use, pale and gaunt. His hands were blue, his ashen skin made worse by the faded orange suit and florescent lights. All of the years that I had cooked him healthy meals, clothed him, made him brush his teeth, made him take a jacket, monitored his sleep; it all rushed forward behind my eyes, and I was suddenly angry.

My internal dialog vacillated between “you reap what you sow” to “I would take your place if I could, son.”

Like Jesus, I guess.

When he spoke directly to the judge about his addiction, I broke and the tears stung. Later in the proceedings, the judge locked eyes with me. He seemed to acknowledge how tired I was, or maybe I just wanted him to.

Artwork by exonerated artist, Daniel Glynn

Stage Left

Papers shuffled again, chains rattled again, and he was escorted out the way he came with the others in their sloppy line.

Please don’t take him.

I wrote him an electronic message the day after court that said, “It meant the world to be in the same room yesterday. Sure wish I could have given you a hug. You look good. You look ready to move on and do better, and live your life.”

Mom, The Ultimate Hype Man. He was in prison garb, in chains, withdrawing from chronic drug use, facing felony charges and I see “good”?

Mmk.

He replied a few days later, in a brief note, that it was so cold in the jail that his hands and feet were purple and that he was hungry. Two things a mom never wants to live with:

My child is cold.

My child is hungry.

Artwork by Brian Hindson

As a result, I couldn’t eat a full meal for many weeks, maybe months. This was an act of solidarity, I suppose. It was also grief belly.

Anybody who knows will tell you that county jail is worse than prison.

Covid policies made it 1000x worse. No visits, no books, no time outside, suicides, overdoses, screaming, dog food, locked down 24 hours a day. Along his road to prison, my son did a total of one year in county hell awaiting court dates and enduring sentencing delays.

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Catharsis

Maybe in some perverted attempt to stay close to my son early on, I sat, in my pajamas after long workdays, cueing up a series like Showtime’s Your Honor with Bryan Cranston. Episode after episode staging courtroom scenarios and cameoing jail visits.

Justification.

Comparison.

Normalization.

As my son's down time dragged on, however, I started to look away or linger in the kitchen longer before returning to a scene. I would catch myself not breathing or welling up with tears, a violent scene triggering concern that I had managed to push aside that day.

Then I started talking out loud to the TV, “Yeah, right.” Families do not sit at private, distant picnic tables outside for visits.

Full disclosure: I am a real treat to watch TV with.

Lately, in the months that I have not been allowed to visit my son in person, I can’t watch these shows at all. There is no real life buffer to the tragedies being played out, except my own cognitive gymnastics. I just can’t find carceral themes even remotely “entertaining.”

I present the 3rd episode of Season 1 of The Mayor of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner for review (which is fictitiously set in the State of Michigan): The writers, production, and an entire crew set up and filmed a gut-wrenching scene wherein a mother is watching her son be put to death by lethal injection.

One problem: There hasn’t been a death penalty in Michigan in over 100 years. Thanks, but no thanks, I’m having a hard enough time as it is. I cannot do any more bullshit than is required these days.

And, yeah, do not get me started on 60 Days In.

As we seem to do best, enterprising individuals have cobbled together and marketed a way to make millions on the mistakes and misfortunes of others. Prison life has become the modern day side show, and we are paying streaming services to gasp and laugh and shake our heads at the freakiest, most fringe, most alarming characters put on stage. We are Rome, and this is the Colosseum’s ravenous appetite for blood.

Can we just evolve already?

Not all inmates are hardened criminals. Most do not spend all day in the yard lifting weights. In fact, my son is not allowed to go to the yard at all. A lot of inmates look like kids and others, like grandparents. They are mostly undernourished and pale, not 6’7”, ripped and tattooed. The warden is not always a fat, white guy. In fact, 2 out of 3 of my son’s wardens have been black, and one was a woman.

Our attorney general is a woman.

Our governor is a woman.

Our DOC Director is a woman.

I’ll just leave that there.

Truth

I am not saying that there aren’t threads of truth and good storytelling in these shows. There is a reason that John Grisham is now writing non-fiction. There is also the gritty humanity of Shawshank and Green Mile and Cool Hand Luke that has helped us see prisoners as individuals with wisdom to share. Film and documentary has opened hearts and minds and broken down misconception as well.

However, we live in a society that has a dogged social history of perceiving and portraying people as “good” or “bad,” deserving or undeserving, Christian or evil. This ignores the truth that we are all capable of both good and bad behavior. But for the grace of God you didn’t hit someone the night you left that Christmas party after 3 drinks.

The prisoners that I know are just trying to get through the gross monotony of every day.

The first circle of Dante’s hell is Limbo.

Reframing

Prison programming might make for good ratings, but a mom with a son inside does not need incentive to hate the system more. I do not need a reminder of what can happen with a pillowcase. Seeing the scripted shove of a handcuffed inmate by a CO is personal to me.

Dirty corrections officers

Corrupt DAs

Drugs inside

Gang affiliations

Fights

I’ve learned this: overcoming confirmation bias is required if you are going to watch.

So here is my reset… I have witnessed a flash of empathy and heard kind words from a CO. My son has talked about his “good cellies.” I have great respect for the other parents and sisters and wives and kids in the waiting areas who drove hours to be there. I have witnessed more selfless acts in a prison waiting room than I have in churches and hospitals, combined.

Because the truth is prison reality is like any reality. It is more terrible and more beautiful than we could ever portray on a screen.

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I do not own the rights to the art shared in this blog.

Exoneree artist Daniel Glynn’s work is available HERE.

More about artist Brian Hindson’s work is available HERE.

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