Intro 

Myra: 135 days until my husband comes home. 

Myra: I know, I know. It’s been a minute, but listeners – if I still have any – It's been a minute because I have been going through it over here. Last time we talked I hadn’t heard from my husband on time, and I said it would mean nothing or it would mean something. I didn’t want to scare you, or me, really, at the time by telling you my gut was telling me it meant something, because, you know, sometimes my gut is wrong – like when I eat a whole cheese pizza and my gut tells me that was a mistake – I’m sorry gut, eating a cheese pizza is never a mistake. But in most cases, and in this cases, my gut was was right. They took him to the hole while I was at the gala. 

Him: Hey babe, by the time you get this I will already have spoken with you. They came and got me last night, took me to the hole. Told me I was transferring out in the morning on the chain bus. I am not sure when but my guess is Wednesday since that’s the next chain bus out of here. I still don’t know where I am going but I sent a kite over to the counselor. 

Sound: Myra Breaks in

Myra: Okay breaking in here because I need to clarify something right away before anybody gets the wrong idea. When he said ‘counselor’ I know you may have imagined something like -

Sue Thing: Hello, welcome, please have a seat, I am your counselor Sue Thing but go ahead and call me Sue. Im here to help you navigate your troubles, your worries, your wrongs and celebrate your rights. 

Myra: Yeah, no. Get that out of your head. Counselor is just a fancy way of saying cop who handles all the paperwork. So, my husband needs to program – he sees his counselor, my husband gets transferred – counselor. Okay back to him.

Him: I love you. Don’t worry. Ps. I Promise Pss. I was thinking about the time we showed up late to your mom’s wedding because we had the map upside down. Do you remember that?

Myra: Do I remember that? Sometimes I think it’s the strangest thing ever that my husband and I have known each other since we were kids. My mom’s wedding will forever be burned into my brain because of my mom’s wedding song – which will go down as the worst wedding song in history. If I saw you in heaven by Eric Clapton. I remember it starting to play and my husband and I look at each other - 

Him: isnt’ this song about –

Myra: His kid. Yes. So, of course I remember. I love to think about us as kids, kids who had already been through much, not realizing how much more they would suffer through. 

Myra: His letter – as usual – kind of glosses over everything because to him it’s all normal. But to me it’s despicable. They call it corrections – under this assumption that they go to prison to be punished for what they did – or didn’t do – and correct behaviors that make them antisocial. Right? That’s the DOC line – we’re in the rehabilitation business. Give us all your money. But no kind of therapeutic environment would encourage ripping someone from their home in the middle of the night, not allowing them to say goodbye to loved ones, and then shackling them and placing them on a bus. What exactly is my husband learning? I’ll tell you. He’s learning how to detach from people, how to dissociate, how to never feel grounded, or supported, or loved.

Myra: So, you ask, what does a prison transfer mean to us? The real people behind these horrendous and callous decisions. For starters we can all agree moving sucks. My husband has moved 15 times in 18 years. He’s been in state public, out of state private. His custody levels have been Super Max, medium, minimum, and spring break – which is how he refers to doing time at the  private prisons in Arizona. He’s traveled by bus and transport van. When he travels he is shackled, and has to ask permission to use the restroom on the bus. He transferred from Arizona to Washington in a transport van, no bathroom unless at a scheduled stop. Although this van was the most uncomfortable, this was the best trip because they got McDonalds.

Myra: The trip itself is miserable, but that's only the beginning. A transfer to a new facility means he is without his stuff for a few weeks – or forever – depending on whether or not the DOC manages not to lose it. 

Myra: He doesn’t say goodbye to anybody – because he didn’t know he was leaving until the night before. This time he managesd to get a kite out to somebody in the hole but it’s not the same as saying goodbye.

Myra: This kind of environment  that the DOC fosters is creating longterm issues. Years from now people will wonder why he doesn't check in regularly, or maintain relationships, they’ll say he never calls, just kind of disappears, and they’re right. Because for 18 years the DOC  taught him how unimportant he is to any community he's involved in. 

Myra: It’s not lost on me that I was at a gala when my husband was being dragged away in shackles to the hole. I hate that I have to dress up and beg rich people to donate the excess gobs of money they have to people who don’t have it. They can’t just give it they need a whole fucking party to celebrate themselves doing the absolute least. They want to name buildings, give speeches, raise paddles, win awards, and meet other people naming buildings, giving speeches, winning awards, and raising paddles.

Myra: As I’m sitting in my car watching fancy people go in and out of an even fancier party sick to my stomach about where my husband is I’m reminded: Galas are just tits and ties, the visual representation of philanthropy which is marketing and networking. Rich people don’t even give a large percentage of their wealth away – but you know who does? Poor people. Poor motherfuckers will have 2 dollars to their name and give away one. I don’t even have any jokes, or anything quippy to say here except for the fact that it really, really makes me angry to serve as rich people’s do-gooder credential, and then be absolutely nobody to them when you actually need them to use their power for good. For actual good. Fuck ‘em.  

Myra: When I found out he was transferring I tried to do everything I could to get help. I called everybody associated with my org with any power.

Rich Donor Voicemail: Oh Myra,  you know I would help if I could, but… why is he always going to the hole?

Myra: I’m used to this response – and this was pretty much everybody’s response. Normally this isn’t surprising and certainly wouldn’t upset me – I know what time it is. But the end of it – Why is he always going to the hole. This made me rage. Because they should know this. I have explained the system to them so many goddam times. the DOC uses the hole as a catchall for everything. Behavior? Hole. Investigation? Hole. Your life threatened? Hole. So what happened this time? Well, we don’t really know. All I know at this point is that somebody who works at the prison knows him and disclosed that. It could be a person who was hired in any department, it could be a cop who moved over and feels threatened. Who knows what it is. But the accusation in that voicemail is clear, and they tell on themselves every time they say dumb shit like that. What he really wanted to say is ‘shouldn’t your husband just stay out of trouble and then this wouldn’t happen.’ Like I said, fuck em.

Myra: The anxiety of not knowing what is happening to your loved one, where they are going, and knowing that you can’t be there for them is just very stressful. I live with a fair amount of daily stress, but these moments spike it to levels that I know cause me a lot of damage. I feel like every transfer takes about a year off my life, so I feel like the DOC has shaved a cool 5 years off my life so far. Fortunately, this time he was able to send word out so I knew that he was transferring before I talked to him.

Myra: You're probably wondering why do they transfer? Well sometimes its to participate in some new shiny program the DOC is piloting. First and foremost the DOC loves money, so if they get some new budget money to do some kind of treatment experiment with some well intentioned grad student they will ship your ass to the other side of the state to fill beds. In my husband’s case it seems like somebody transferred into the prison – a cop who doesn’t like him or somebody he knows – and so they transferred him out to –

Cop: we just want to make sure there aren't any problems.

Myra: To recap they created a bunch of problems to temporarily solve one problem – which if that ain't the fucking perfect job description for law enforcement I don’t what is.

Myra: At least we got lucky, he’s only two hours away, but they will ship your ass across the state, out of state, - my husband has done time in Minnesota -  not giving one fuck if you have children, family, friends, nothing. They do this regularly and then go out and tell legislators with a straight face that they value family relationships and believe strong family connection is vital to stability and well-being of the incarcerated individual. I believe it was Jay Z who said ‘Is it Oochie Wally Wally or is it one mic.

Myra: So as you can imagine a transfer means a new commute. It’s a two-hour drive, and in the winter time that means 4 hours of driving each week on a snowy highway. It means significantly less visiting because I can’t get there on Friday nights or Monday nights, and I can only visit for 7 hours on Saturday or Sunday – and they switch days which means you need to be on top of it or you show up on the wrong day and you can’t visit.

Myra: It also means a new check-in in process. a lot of prisons in the state have the same basic design, so it would probably make sense to standardize this check in process, but again that would only ease the stress of loved ones and the DOC can’t have that.

Myra: So at his new place, you line up - in your car, outside the prison waiting for a ticketing booth to open. When visiting opens the arm opens and as you pull through you pull a ticket with a number which determines which place in line you get when you go inside. So, this is more organized as long as there is paper in the ticket machine – which you can probably guess that there isn’t always paper in the machine.

Myra: You’re probably thinking this is a great system because it means no savesies in line once you get inside. True. But it just means the savesies happen outside. If you want to save a place in line you just make sure you leave about a car and a half length in front of you and somebody will come parallel park their way into line. This causes problems when somebody decides they don’t want people saving car length spots, and parallel parks themselves right into it.

Visitor: You’ve got all kinds of room BethAnn, turn your wheel to the right!

Myra: Another new thing… is me.. I don’t know many people here, and I am definitely missing my family. Brianna shows up sometimes to see her brother, but that's it. Going to a new facility means both of us are on edge. He is having to navigate new people, new cops, and so am I. I’m meeting new prison wives.

Prison Wife: My hubbie loves it out here. They’re so nice out here, and there is a farming program. My husband learned how to grow tomatoes. You should show up to the family council meeting next week. They really listen to us, you know.

Myra: No comment.

Myra: But I will show up to the family council meeting because It’s a good place to sort out who's helpful, who’s bullshit, and who just wants better chips in the vending machines. 

Myra: Speaking of chips in the vending machines. I met a new lady on my first visit. She’s a rich and powerful white lady and her son is here on drug charges, despite her deploying every resource she had to keep him out,  and she is just appalled when she sees what prison is actually like. And the funny thing is her son doesn’t even get the worst of it because he’s got money to put on people’s books. 

Rich Lady: I mean when he first went into prison it was quite a shock. I called up the place he was at and asked to talk to him and they said no. 

Myra: First time she ever heard that.  

Rich Lady: Thankfully he’s here now and we can visit but the treatment is just appalling – my son is just a drug abuser, he's not some criminal. 

Myra: And there’s the issue. She thinks her son is different, better, not like the others. My prediction - at first she goes gangbusters on the Department of Corrections, - uses the full force of her resources- and they are vast and powerful – she knows powerful people, they owe her favors etc. But then DOC notices, and instead of pushing back, they neutralize her by bringing her into the fold. Asking her for her advice, asking her to sit on task forces, and work groups, and head committees. She becomes a reformist – no not even a reformist – a tweak-ist. A better chips in the vending machines at visit kind of person. As long as the little changes she wants done are done she feels powerful and helpful and in charge. I’ve seen this before, tale as old as hard time.

Myra: After they neutralize her, they start using her against people like me. She’ll show up to public comment and seem like she’s the reasonable, smart one, assuring congresspeople they would be wise to listen to her and naïve if they listen to unpolished and unreasonable people like myself. 

Myra: And I get it – power is enticing. Even the perception of power is enticing. So enticing, I’ve only seen one of these affluents ever successfully avoid this trap and that’s SoPhie - big S little-o-phie as she would say. It’s rare - as rare as she is. I think the difference is she didn’t always have money. Quite the opposite, i mean she definitely lost herself for a minute, but it just took her famous country singer husband getting locked up – and I guess meeting us, the Family – to remind her who she is. Anyways, like I’ve said before the Family has their own story to tell and it isn’t mine. But I hope someday to convince them to share with you. 

Myra: So, I handle this lady like all the others: “You want to pal up to cops pal up to cops – none of my business. But remember, you may be able to swim with great whites after they’ve had a meal, but you're fucked as soon as they get hungry again. 

Myra: So that’s my experience. New people, new cops, new rules, same old bullshit fuckery. 

Myra: Back to him. When he gets to the facility he has to go into a 4 men cell. It’s like short term housing until a two man opens up. 2 days into his stay he’s hit with a cell tag.

Voices: What the hell is-

Professor Myra (cutting them off): Don’t worry anxious listeners, Professor Myra back once again to answer your questions before you even have the chance to spit them out. A cell tag is an infraction given out to every single person in a cell. It happens when nobody cops to a crime. 

Myra: It happens because there isn’t a crime to cop too.

Professor Myra:At at at – before you say but professor – is it crime? We’ve been over this one before – these COs? They’re cops, and what do cops do?

Class together: Look for crime that doesn’t exist.

Professor Myra: Very good class and now without further ado I present ‘the case of the mysterious goop in the intercom. Here's the info we have: The cell had 4 men housed in it. None of them had been there longer than 4 days. A cop couldn’t get the intercom in the cell to work so he showed up to the cell and did a search. He found the speaker had a bunch of goop in it to block the sound. He asked who done it.

Cop: Who dunnit? 

Professor Myra: They all looked at eachother - not really but it’s more dramatic that way. None of them had done it. So when nobody cops to a crime cops tag everybody in the cell with infractions. Hence, cell tag. Later that day maintenance came by to fix it. My husband asked him what he thought about the goop. He said it was old, probably more than a month. Couldn’t have been them. My husband asked him to be a witness. He said sure so we thought everything would be cool. He wrote him down as a witness for his upcoming hearing and thought he and the other guys would beat the infraction. But, here’s the thing.

Myra: Okay breaking in here – because Professor Myra is about to get all 500 level research class assuming you have some prior information on your subject. I mean cell tags, infractions, and hearings oh my.

Myra: I mean it’s hard because it’s like that song the skeleton dance. The foot bones connected to the leg bone, the leg bones connected to the knee bone, the – you get it. Let’s take a pause real quick, go to commercial, and come back and start with a little prison 101 – infractions.

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person: don’t the cops have to come and shoot them first?

Commercial voice: no need, we’ve replaced them with actual services designed to get you and your family out of fight or flight mode, or crisis, and back into a low level of stress where you can thrive. And - if your loved one needs inpatient longterm treatment, we’ll make sure they are placed in a care facility close to you – there are so many care facilities, almost as many care facilities as Starbucks and the best news yet – it's all paid for – with your membership to ACAB Security Systems.

Voice: this sounds great – where do I sign up –

Commercial voice: ACAB security Systems is currently not available in the States. To inquire about when ACAB security Systems may be available in your area please call your representative and let them know you want care not cops. ACAB Security Systems is paid for by the people and is exclusively for the people. Fuck the police.

Myra: Okay so, he’s been transferred out here – two hours away from an already small city to a small town, surrounded by wheat fields. You’re probably wondering what the new prison is like? I mean, they are generally the same but as this one is really in the middle of nowhere there are definitely some – um – differences.

Myra: Remember when I told you about the prisons in rural areas, that there were lots of reasons they were placed out in the middle of nowhere, and one of them was to hide the problem. Well, another reason is that it also solves a problem. Two problems actually. This little town out in the middle of nowhere couldn’t exist without the prison. There wouldn't be any jobs. Prisons are placed out here to create jobs. Good paying state jobs, socialist jobs, with benefits, pensions, and protected by unions. The people who take these jobs then vote for majority Republicans and complain about socialism and government handouts on Facebook. I know. I know. The audacity of sucking at the teet of government while you try to destroy it is beyond me. 

Myra: Alright, Maybe when you imagine a prison, you picture cops, yes, but you also imagine some of these jobs that are created are maintenance crews, kitchen staff, you know all the labor that would support running a prison. I'm so sorry to say that your imagination would be wrong because the majority of  those other jobs are done by incarcerated individuals making cents on the dollar per hour. No pension, no benefits, no union. Meanwhile, the cops that sit around on their asses all day trying to find reasons to issue infractions have some of the highest paying jobs in the state.  

Myra: The second problem building prisons in rural areas solves is legislating power. See, rural areas are overwhelmingly white - about 80%, and overwhelmingly vote conservative, but even though they show you vast areas of red on TV to make it look like the whole US is red minus the coastal elites, the reality is the vast majority of people live in cities, yes those big swaths of red blocks you see are land not people. So, to actually build more voting power for these overwhelmingly white small towns, Republicans realized they could build prisons and add people without adding voting power by those people. It’s called prison gerrymandering and it’s just one of the many ways the right maintains their power by minority rule.

Myra: Basically, the population of a town or city determines the number of representatives in congress they are awarded. Many states count the incarcerated population where they are incarcerated. So, a town of 300, could actually be counted as a town of 3500 with it’s incarcerated individuals. So in reality, the prison towns here have an outsized representation in Congress thanks to incarcerated individuals who have been disenfranchised. So, to sum it up, Republicans figured out how to add jobs and add voting power. Win Win for the carceral crowd. Isn’t the US just the greatest country in the history of all time across all known and unknown universes.

Myra: Alright, so I've set the scene, middle of nowhere prison town. So, of course we have middle of nowhere prison town cops to go along with it. Holy shit theses cops. They think they are god. A lot of them actually live about an hour away, so a lot of them end up staying in town during the week  and then go home on their days off.

Voice: So they're all fucking?

Myra: Bingo. So you know how when people at work all having affairs and it gets messy, and they try to sabotage each other in meetings and projects? Well, Cory the cop has a lot more power than Stan the paper stapler. So instead of meetings and projects, cops use incarcerated individuals in their sick attempts to sabotage their ex lovers. Don’t believe me, talk to Ratatoni, the rat fuck informant who spills everybody’s secrets – including the cops.

Rat-a-Toni: Hey it’s me, everybody’s favorite rat fuck informant – Ratatoni. Here with the latest update for my prison show: Incarcerated Intrigue – all the latest gossip and goings on delivered straight from the celly of the beast. Word on mainline is Blevins and Venner broke up last week – seems that Blevins wife found some photos from Venner and threatened to call superintendent. So check it out Tuesday my buddy Trix gets pulled up in chow for a late tray by Blevins and tagged with a 406 but Venner is the hearing officer and dismissed it. Blevins got pissed and took Trix to the hole for some kind of made up out of bounds charge. That’s it for this week.  Remember, I spill your secrets to get my time reduced, and I spill cop secrets to boost my girl’s YouTube subscriptions. So hit the like button and don’t forget to subscribe. Ratatoni for Incarcerated Intrigue and remember It’s only hard time if you don’t know who to talk to.

Myra: So, let me explain the infraction. When you’re infracted, you go to a hearing to decide whether you’re guilty of the charge. You get to plead your case, bring in witnesses and it’s heard and decided by a jury of your peers. Just kidding. About the jury of your peers part. Everything else is true but the person who decides whether you’re guilty or innocent is a cop.

Myra: Bringing it all the way back to the beginning now that you’re level 500 grad students in incarceration. In the case of the speaker goop, just like in the chow hall case, the hearing was decided by a cop who was fucking, then not fucking the cop who found the goop in the speaker. So, in this case it worked out for my husband and his short term cellys. She threw out the infraction, not because she believed my husband, but because this week she hates the cop who wrote it.

Myra: So he beat that one, and it’s a great thing because the maintenance guy who said it had been there for a while mysteriously told my husband on second thought he didn’t want to testify at the hearing. Strange.

Myra: So, that was his welcome back to this facility. He was here about 10 years ago, and sadly it’s one of the more awful institutions. These cops are out here in the middle of nowhere and they feel absolutely invincible.

Myra: So I’ll end today on a more personal note because according to some of your letters and tweets I come off as some joyless person whose soul mission in life is to overthrow the criminal legal system. Which, actually brings me immense joy that you get all that about me. But there are other things I am into.  So, what do I do, concerned listeners, when I’m not burning it all down. Well, I love cats, which is going to be interesting when my husband comes home because he is allergic – or was allergic when he was a kid. I’m obsessed with chocolate chip ice cream from Baskin Robbins, generic chocolate ice cream from the supermarket, and Hallmark Christmas movies, in that order. I enjoy long walks in the street calling for the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. I feel like if I was on Ideal Date I would have a strong profile showing. 

Myra: Okay, you’ve heard enough from me this week, tune in next week where I share what it’s like during a visit, and how to catch these motherfucking cops in a lie. As always, you’re welcome and I’ve been great.