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    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison
    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison
    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison

    By JoAnne DeWitt

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    About this ebook

    JoAnne DeWitt is a writer and a teacher of writing. Her first publication
    was in her local newspaper in Darlington, S. C. and told the story of her fifth
    grade class going to Columbia and meeting Governor Strom Thurmond.
    Since this beginning she has been published in several newspapers,
    professional journals, and magazines in her current state of North Carolina.
    Education is the topic of most of these writings. She has also published two
    non-fiction books.
    JoAnne has taught students to write in high school and university. Her
    writing classes use journals to stimulate their thoughts and prepare them
    for publication.
    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison is a collection of the writings of her
    class in creative writing at the Butner Federal Prison in North Carolina. In her
    teaching she encouraged the inmates to write their beliefs and their observations
    of their world. The essays and poetry include love, family, current events and
    philosophy.

    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison answers many questions that we would
    ask if we could visit the inmates.

    Are our schools educating our students ?

    How does our education system company compare with other countries ?

    Would year round school raise our students test scores and intelligence ?

    Are inmates given any opportunities to improve their lives in prison ?

    What are the reasons for judges sending young men to Butner?

    Does family life, or lack of it, cause young men to go down the
    wrong path?

    Read the inmates' writings and find their answers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateJan 28, 2011
    ISBN9781456852825
    Inside the Walls of Butner Prison

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      Book preview

      Inside the Walls of Butner Prison - JoAnne DeWitt

      Inside

           the

               Walls

                     of

                         Butner

                            Prison

      Writings by the Inmates

      JoAnne DeWitt

      Copyright © 2011 by JoAnne DeWitt.

      Library of Congress Control Number:   2011900712

      ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4568-5281-8

      ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4568-5280-1

      ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4568-5282-5

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      This book was printed in the United States of America.

      To order additional copies of this book, contact:

      Xlibris Corporation

      1-888-795-4274

      www.Xlibris.com

      Orders@Xlibris.com

      93280

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      CHI CHI

      Dear Ms. DeWitt,

      Rehab in Prison, Is It There ?

      PETE JONES

      Tati And the Monkey

      World Peace-Is it Possible?

      Three Different Ways: One Single Goal

      A Look at Education in the United States

      How Destiny Affects Peoples Lives

      WEED MAN

      Dealing with Substance Abuse

      Year Round School

      XU KAYO

      Life here is good, but . . . . .

      Dear Mom,

      Should Senior Citizens Drive?

      Parker’s Four Leaf Clover

      Music and Violence

      Failure is the Mother of Success

      RON RICHARDS

      People Who Influenced Me

      MARK BOOZER

      The South

      You Are Perfect For Me

      The Perfect Teacher

      Now I See

      Let’s Go

      Rainbow of Joy

      Why Wait

      It Hurts

      GENMAN

      The Service Call

      What is a Government Seizure?

      JAMES HARRISON

      Fact or Not

      What Kind of People Go To Prison

      ALLEN MARCUS

      Untitled

      The Best Love

      Offering My Heart

      Life Lessons

      SCOTT SANDERSON

      Hi, my name is Stewart and I’m a poll addict.

      Black Men Can’t Walk Fast

      Admissions and Confessions

      Missed Opportunity

      Dear Katie,

      Prunes

      On Orange Juice and Modern Life

      I Want My Court TV

      MICHAEL WILLIAMS

      Digging A Hole

      Our Children Are In Need

      HARRY BOYD

      Educational Program in Prison

      INTRODUCTION

      Prisons and jailhouses are the settings of many songs, films and novels. Each literary work is filled with a sense of isolation, a feeling of oppression at being forced to meet the authorities’ demand for conformity, and a plan for escape.

      In 1967 Donn Pearce wrote the novel Cool Hand Luke which was made into a successful movie. Paul Newman starred in the title role as a inmate in a Florida prison camp who refuses to submit to the system. His efforts to conform to life with his cellmates included a contest among the inmates to find the man who could eat fifty eggs in the shortest time. His inability to conform drives the plot of the movie and results in his death.

      In 2005, the United States Library of Congress deemed Cool Hand Luke to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

      Clint Eastwood starred in Escape from Alcatraz which featured the prison’s cramped cells, rigid discipline and hard-line routine. It was America’s premier maximum security prison. As the main character, Clint could not conform to the demands made upon him and planned an escape through a tunnel that he and two other inmates dug from his cell to the surrounding water which was the only way back to California. The three convicts were successful in escaping but never made it to California. There was speculation that they drowned.

      Hello, I’m Johnny Cash. The man in black used this introduction to greet his country and western fans. The majority of his songs told how he broke the law, got caught, and ended up in jail. Folsom Prison Blues was one of his earliest songs that used a jail as a setting. He recorded a A Boy Named Sue while at the San Quentin Prison in 1969.

      My only encounter with a prison came when I was invited to teach creative writing to the inmates at the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. Johnny Cash, Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman would have compared the Federal Prison System in Butner to paradise.

      I accepted the opportunity to teach creative writing to the inmates at Butner without hesitation. I had taught at-risk young men in my high school teaching career and assumed that it would be similar.

      When I read the news release of Bernard Madoff, the mastermind of the biggest Ponzi scheme in United States history, which cheated investors of a staggering $65 billion, I was overwhelmed when I read his punishment. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in the Federal Prison in Butner, North Carolina.

      Journalists began to speculate what life in Butner Prison would be like. I pulled my file of writings from the students in my classes at Butner. As I read them, I remembered the stark white of the floors, ceilings, and walls. There were no private cells. As many as eighty inmates were assigned to each cadre which has five bathrooms and two telephones. Two inmates are assigned to a cubicle which is eight feet by ten feet, just enough space for two bunk beds. Who is Madoff’s roommate ?

      The majority of the inmates at Butner have access to money, an education and family. Many are angry that they got caught selling drugs or committing white collar crimes.

      Security is intense. Before an inmate can enter, there are wire fences and locked doors that must be opened in the presence of guards. Lockdowns or counts are called many times a day with a roll call at each. A lockdown is provoked by the inmates’ fussing, feuding and fighting.

      When admitted to the prison, inmates are stripped of everything they have on their body. One inmate described the feeling as like you were when you were born. A khaki uniform, shoes and other basic necessities are issued by the prison. The inmates work for less than 25 cents an hour at jobs that vary from watching other inmates who have mental problems to mopping the white floors. A limited amount of dollars may be deposited to the inmate’s account by family or friends.

      The inmates who were in my writing class were high school and college graduates. There were several who used their writing professionally before being assigned to Butner. In my class we used the writing process to write stories, essays and poetry. Each inmate kept a private journal. I did not read any journals without the permission of the writer.

      The following selections from the class were written in longhand because many of the inmates did not have access to a computer. Each section presents the essays, stories or poetry of one inmate. The essays give detailed descriptions of life in prison, world peace, the destiny of

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