As you might think, prison has a multitude of rules. So many, in fact, that a person must virtually violate one rule in order to be in compliance with another. There are general rules, grooming rules, commissary rules, schoolhouse rules, safety rules, and a dress code. Then there are the rules governing a person’s living quarters, rules for being in the hallway, for being in the shower, in the dayroom, and on the yard. Rules ad nauseum. TDC’s rules begin being imposed even before a person arrives in TDC, but the minute upon stepping on the bus. Shortly after being remanded into TDC’s custody and, as they are being processed into the System, everyone is issued an Inmate Handbook and encouraged not just to read it, but to commit it to memory. The majority of people just toss it in the trash. For the most part, it says exactly the kind of crap that you would expect a prison rulebook to say. More interesting, however, is what it doesn’t say.
From the first page onward it is emphasized that the State now exerts total control over your life. This is actually the point being driven home more so than it is an explanation of the rules. What is permitted to do, who it is permitted to be done with, when it is permitted to be done, and how much of it is permitted to be had. All this as well as the choices regarding permissibility. For example, the Inmate Handbook, under the heading of “Standards of Grooming,” it says that “Offenders shall brush their teeth daily.” Although, I think, that while the majority of us are in the habit of brushing our teeth at least once a day, as well as performing other daily rituals of cleanliness and personal hygiene, others….uh….maybe not so much.
Just the fact, however, that this is a written rule means that a disciplinary case can be written for violating — or seemingly to violate — it (although, I admit, I’ve never actually seen or heard of this happening). But you can bet that the case would stick. TDC, by making this a “posted” rule, has thereby created a crime where there otherwise wouldn’t be one. I mean, there are plenty of scrubs in the joint who have somehow developed an aversion to fresh breath, but these folks are “strongly” encouraged by their peers that they might consider changing their attitudes. It doesn’t need to be an actual rule. TDC cannot enforce it anyway. Many of the Handbook”s rules would appear, under normal circumstances, to be obvious, simply a reiteration for us to use our good common sense while regarding what is to be expected of us and what is acceptable behavior: no grab-assing in the showers, no spitting on the floor, and no feeding the inmates. If only such an animal as this existed.
Common sense is the unicorn of pragmatic mythology. The longer I live, the more convinced I become that the only thing common about sense is that it is commonly uncommon. I, therefore, do understand the need for a codified set of rules, whether in a microcosmic prison society or a larger free world one. But TDC, as an arbiter of its own rules has been found wanting. This was true in 1981 (cf. Ruiz v. Estelle 503 F.Supp. 1265) and it is true in 2023.
TDC staff and administration ease through the cafeteria line of policy, deliberately picking over the assortment of delicacies on offer, choosing only the choicest portions of what is to be consumed by others. The vast majority of the rules enforced are those expedient to enforce, while those inconvenient to their current agenda go ignored. It is not by accident that the standards for what is acceptable always seem to be in flux according to the whims of the warden. The one constant that can always be depended on is that the cops are encouraged to not only write disciplinary cases, but to create situations for disciplinary cases to be written.
And in order to encourage these cases to be written, TDC bosses make certain of these cases being processed regardless of their legitimacy. Disciplinary cases are written for a variety of reasons, not all of them having to do with rule violations per se: meanness, racial prejudice, bigotry, or a simple unwillingness to work. TDC has turned the concept of “Just Punishment” into a card trick. They attempt to legitimize their actions by hiding behind highbrow words like Security, Public Safety, Professionalism, Moral Integrity, and Compliance. This is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
In truth, the majority of people that gravitate toward prison work wouldn’t understand the meaning of integrity or professionalism if it balled ’em all night long. What they really mean here is a passive-aggressive petty revenge, tough guy posing and posturing, moral ambiguity, and schoolyard bullyism. It is under these pretensions that the Handbook is defined.
The best example of this that I can come up with is their definitions (plural) of “Possession of Contraband.” There are four basic ways in TDC that a person may possess contraband. In fact, this term is so loosely defined that it can literally mean anything. And usually does. Almost every single person in TDC has been found guilty of violating this rule at some point. The only way that a person can avoid being in possession of contraband is to toss everything that he or she owns onto the run. In other words, all you can do is the best you can. Any time that a cop walks into your house, all bets are off. I mean, things can go wrong for you, not only if he legitimately does find some contraband, but if people are being mean to him, if he didn’t get laid last night, or if his drawers are stuck in the crack of his ass.
One definition that the TDC Handbook gives for Contraband is “any item altered from its original condition.” This is not to be construed to mean a kitchen serving spoon that has been filed into a “banger” (i.e., a homemade knife), or the repurposing of a typewriter relay to make a tattoo gun. These are different cases in and of themselves (it would only be contraband, say, if the tattoo gun was disassembled).
The type of contraband that I am referring to here is more like an empty peanut butter jar being used to hold coffee, a deodorant label being used to “tape” a radio antenna on the wall, or several mini bars of soap refashioned into one larger bath-sized bar. Truthfully, it can be said about prison that there is always too much of the one thing but never enough of the other. In other words, while there is no short supply of this bullshit, that bullshit, or the other bullshit, there is always any number of other little things that we have regular need of or use for but are unavailable to us unless we make it, steal it, repurpose it, or buy it on the black market. I am referring to items here that, in the free world, we all take for granted: tape, glue, scissors, bleach, paperclips, rubberbands, staples, clothesline, or even a Tupperware container, among other things. TDC, however, states in their Handbook that “any item … not bought by an offender for his use from the commissary” is contraband. The clear implication here is that if TDC does not sell it to us through one of their commissaries then we have no need of it. Okay, but how many people can honestly tell me that sometime within the past twenty-four hours they haven’t needed to cut something: a piece of paper, a loose thread, maybe a piece of chewing gum out of your kid’s hair? How many ladies out their slogging through their family’s dirty laundry honestly believe that their whites will turn out fine sans bleach? Or, who hasn’t needed to put a piece of tape on something: a cardboard box, the torn page in a favorite book, or maybe their old lady’s mouth?
TDC defines contraband as “any item which, in the judgement of TDC personnel, unreasonably hinders the safe and effective operation of the facility.” Huh? I don’t know what the hell this even means. Anything? It is so vague that it can refer to anything from some asshole that set his pet rattlesnake loose in the main hallway to some old perv who got popped with some kind of homemade … adult novelty item. Almost as stupid is their definition of “items in excess of the amount authorized or stored in an unauthorized manner.”
Uh-huh. This is a classic example of TDC doublespeak: a group of words that when strung together to form a sentence mean absolutely nothing. Or, could mean absolutely anything, depending on whom is reading it. TDC’s vague and loosely defined rules have always put me in mind of either a Rorschach Test or a couple of kids seeing shapes in the clouds. One kid sees a turtle whereas the other sees a locomotive. It’s all relative.
This might even be funny if so many people’s lives weren’t being forever altered by such vaguery. But the loosely defined rules as found in the TDC Inmate Handbook have cost many their freedom: and by extension have cost these same people their homes, their families, fruitful employment or other opportunities. This is the just punishment that your tax dollars buy.
J.S. Slaymaker #04078087
Alfred Hughes Unit
2101 FM 369 North
Iowa Park, TX 76367
