Читать книгу Prison Puzzle Pieces - Dave Basham - Страница 25

In order to be qualified to be a corrections officer, the Department of Corrections started us off with a six week training course. When I finished that course, I had filled three loose leaf binders with notes and handouts. This seemed hilarious to the other cadets, especially those that finished the course with nothing.

During my time working in the prison, I took extensive notes on my experiences. I documented the conflicts I encountered, the bizarre goings on and the way this place functioned.

I felt our training could've been a heck of a lot better, so I combined these notebooks with the other notes that I had accumulated. I figured that this would be invaluable to anyone deciding on how to approach this job. With the huge amount that there is to know about handling this job, if the DOC would be interested in using my books to fill some of the gaps in our training, I would just give it to them. Any new officer reading these books and then going to work behind those walls would be far more prepared than any of the rest of us ever was.

However, I knew that the reality was that this was most likely something that would be tossed in the trash when I croaked.

When I told friends of some of my experiences, they wanted to read about them. This resulted in formulating these notes into books that the general public would find interesting. By doing this, these books became even better training devices for corrections officers.

This was an immense task; especially considering that I had never written a book before. I had to condense thousands of pages of notes. It was necessary to add my commentary and to phrase things to make them more understandable and palatable to those that have never been behind those walls. Trying to eliminate redundancy from a project so huge was time consuming and frustrating. It was necessary to rewrite and reorganize this sucker several times; nothing enjoyable about that.

Over the years many people had asked me what went on in Stillwater Prison. It was a loaded question. It can't be answered quickly. There are so many pieces to this puzzling little world that no matter how much I wrote, there would still be pieces missing. I wanted to write about as many pieces as possible without getting sued and tossed into this place as an inmate. I wrote it for those people that wanted to know what went on behind those walls and how it all worked.

I searched the internet to find out about things I was told that didn't seem to make sense and to try to find out more about things I was interested in. I hate inaccurate information. It is difficult to sort out fact from fiction a lot of the time. I wanted this to be as accurate as possible; knowing that total accuracy was impossible. From research and my experiences, I feel that I was able to determine the most likely probability of how certain events transpired and phrased it as such. Some instances will be left up to you to draw a conclusion. If I experienced it, I took good notes and you can be assured of its accuracy. I wrote it for those people that are as anal as me.

This facility is historic. Most people do not know much about this place other than it is a prison. The fact that Stillwater Prison is in Bayport raised questions in my mind. I am interested in history and appreciated working in a place that actually had an interesting history. I wanted to know of the history and thought others might find it interesting too, such as the Younger Brothers connection to the prison.

There is corruption in the Department of Corrections in Minnesota, as there probably is most everywhere. I wanted people to know it existed, however I don't have a legal background to be able to protect myself if I printed the word of mouth things that I found out. By letting people know that this existed, and tossing out a few starting points, maybe someone would dig in and uncover enough facts to be able to end or at least decrease the amount of corruption. I wrote this for them. They must be careful because there is a powerful system out there that can squash most anything or anyone. Just writing this, I may become a target, but hey, I'm getting old anyway. If they don't get me, cancer or a heart attack will probably get me.

I needed this to be interesting from start to finish. I realize that 100% of this probably won't be interesting to 100% of the population. Some of this, I found a bit dry, but others told me to include it because it was interesting to them. I hoped that by interjecting my perspectives and different sense of humor that this would be interesting to most that thought about reading it.

In my opinion, showing how dysfunctional this system is, was important. It was also important to show how and why it actually works, but there could easily be massive improvements. Hopefully someone would read this that could and would do something about it.

Most people think that the inmates are the biggest problem in prisons; not this one! The officers and other staff were the worst problems that I had to deal with. If there was any consistency among staff and officers, the problems that did exist from inmates would've decreased drastically.

It was necessary to inform people how the relatives, friends and society that created the criminals put pressure on politicians to interfere with those that know how to handle situations in the prisons. The prison higher ups have paid some awful dues to get to where they are. Their lively hood is often threatened by a phone call from a politician. It all rolls downhill. Keeping politics out of the prison system would greatly reduce the problems that we have with inmates.

To show how the union protects bad employees was important to me. The jerks need the union to protect them from being fired, so they are strong supporters of the union. The rest of us better watch our backs.

I wanted to show that this could be a great job. If some of the problems were fixed, they could hire people that better fit the job and had better work ethics. Getting the good ones in charge is difficult. Getting the good ones to stay is difficult. Some of the best personnel they have wind up having to ride their time out so they don't get chewed up and spit out by those without ethics.

Training could be a lot better. Sergeants are not trained; they are promoted according to seniority.

During my time working in the prison, lieutenants were chosen more by diversity than anything else. Even though some of these people were qualified, many were not.

The historical society could use this as a rather detailed eight year history of life in Stillwater Prison.

These things and so many more, I felt were important for the public to know.

I realize that endeavors like this are generally not something that produces a cash flow; but if it does, I'd be darn happy about it. After working just under eight years, my pension is not significant. It was necessary for me to leave as soon as I could. Even though I had some supporters in the prison, the ones that weren't, were in much better positions to do me in.