-Scott, Correctional Facility in Chino, CA
“The links between a bizarre time perception, and an indeterminate future”
There’s a peculiar sort of deformed time experience called inner time where a smaller unit of time, like a day seems endless, and a larger unit of time, like a week seems to pass more rapidly. In the history, of our peoples there are only five distinct social groups known to experience this warped perception of time. World War I POW’s, prisoners in the death camps during the holocaust, chronic tuberculosis patients of the 19th and early 20th century, unemployed coal miners of the 1980’s, and the men and woman under the verdict of life without parole. Eerily in each group this time phenomena spell was aggravated by an indeterminate future.
A. Vischer (1884-1974) was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, and his early research on the mass warehousing of prisoners forms the bedrock of our understanding of the psychiatric syndrome he coined, barb wire sickness, which he characterized as something elusive and darkly shrouded with fear.
Vischer concluded, “Being held behind barbed wire for prolonged stretches of time, prisoners develop a form of psychosis which isn’t confined to a minority, but was common to all prisoners, and the several depended on the length of captivity.”
In John Yarnall’s (Barb Wire Disease 2011) he explains that mass warehousing was a modern phenomenon during World War I, and at the time of the (1918) armistice more than six million POWs were interned. The colloquial. Stir crazy, was applied to those first POW’s who experienced psychosis from mass warehousing. Vischer compared these early prisoners to, polar explorers, heroic men navigating an unexplored, monotonous, and hostile terrain.
Experiments conducted by the French during the Great War used rats in cages to study the effects of this strange time paradox, exhibited by both German POW’s and the rats. This malady was given the word, cafard to describe an expression of spiritual homesickness to be fought against.
Auschwitz Survivor, there’s a dramatic link between losing faith in the future and giving up. A prisoner who loses faith in the future is doomed because with this loss he also loses his spiritual hold and subsequently lets himself decline into mental and physical decay. In the final stages of chronic tuberculosis, the disease progresses into a very slow drowning. Patients were documented experiencing a never ending ever present distorted view of time, also noted was the cascading effect of the disease that corresponded with their grim outlook on the future.
LWOP Prisoner, when I meet someone for the first time and tell them that I have life without parole, they say sorry as if someone has just passed. In Janelle Skeard’s (Come Hell or High Water 2015) she describes the emotional distress caused by losing the primary employer in a single industry community. Think about the coal industry and the entire State of West Virginia.
It decimated entire communities with some becoming ghost towns, creating a void that was filled with an opioid epidemic of Biblical proportions. Studies done on unemployed coal miners of the 1980’s identified several unique commonalities with LWOP’S. The dangerous and peculiar environment deep within the earth forged bonds of friendship where men were required to trust each other and look out for potential hazards.
Below the earth’s surface weird perceptual experiences occurred. In the grips of this inner time you dare not avert your eyes because minutes felt like hours. Fused with their unemployed state, and an indeterminate future, those friendships forged under mountains were decimated with a scourge of suicides, and overdoses.
Auschwitz Survivor, the more knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups even those which it would be easy to condemn. We mustn’t try to simplify matters by saying these men are angels and those are devils.
There’s a stark contrast between how men come to grips with life without parole. There are those who view everything beyond the barb wire with a ghostly aspect. Then there are those with some higher power dynamics and are able to inspire their communities with a loftiness of spirit that enables them to bear calmly with an existence of unknown limit.
A tenet of Governor Newson’s paradigm shift towards the Norway model proclaims, “An environment for transformation must already exist for transformation to take place.”
I say that an idea untethered by machination is the genesis of transformation, and it proceeds the data driven modeling, and the statistically analyzed architecture of the warehouse space at San Quentin. Like the coal miners, LWOPS also form friendships under the weight of mountains, after everything has been stripped away and the last of human freedoms remain, and the ability to choose one’s attitude.
There are seventy men here at Chino under that sentence, and their reactions differ from man to man. Each must find out for himself or herself their purpose. Nobody can tell another what that purpose is.
There are men whose pasts still linger, but this is a story of men whose inner strength, tested by the difficulties, imposed by such a bizarre perception of time have taken every opportunity to give their lives meaning. A Roman road is long, and the mingling of crucifixion and the sentiment of pity are bricks in the road that’s led to a system that stifles hope.
In my research I gained many insights into the folklore of life without parole. As I learned of superstitions some men won’t walk in the shadows of LWOPS. I thought it ironic because the two men explaining this macabre superstition have displayed the kindest smallest gestures towards fellow LWOPS who are struggling and view everything beyond the barb wire with a ghostly aspect.