Chickenhawk: Back in the World

Superintendent Honsted welcomed us to Eglin. He was a good-looking guy, and considered very fair. He said he was approachable if we saw him walking around the camp, but the best way to get our needs known was to go through the chain of command. The camp was divided into two units, north and south. Each unit had a unit manager. Each unit was further divided into six teams. Each team was comprised of a case manager, a counselor, and a secretary. These teams had offices where we applied for furloughs, job changes, and relief from whatever grief we wanted to complain about. The forms used for these various requests were called “cop-outs.” He finished with: “You may be surprised to know that the Bureau of Prisons does not consider your stay here, in any way, as rehabilitation.” Honsted waited to let that sink in. “It is the common belief, mostly from movies, that the state is trying to somehow rehabilitate its criminals. The Bureau of Prisons considers that you are here to be punished. Plain and simple. If you want to further your education, learn a trade or something; these things are possible, but whether you do them or not is your responsibility. Not ours.”

The warden left and the assistant warden, younger and not nearly as friendly as the warden, lectured us on the various rules of the camp. He said that Eglin was created in 1962 under a maintenance contract with the Air Force. That’s what we’d be, most of us, contract laborers working for between eleven and thirty-four cents an hour. The Air Force paid the prison camp minimum wages ($3.25 an hour) for our time, which helped make the camp self-sufficient. It only cost taxpayers half what it would cost to put us behind bars. We’d read that in our pamphlets. What we wanted to know about was the furloughs.

“You are eligible for your first furlough, a one-day pass in the local area, when you’ve been here at least six months and you’re within two years of release, assuming you have no points against you and if your counselors recommend it,” said the assistant warden. “Within eighteen months of release, you’re eligible for an overnight furlough in the local area. Every six months after that, you are eligible for a five-day furlough to your home community. These furloughs are not automatic; they are granted to help an inmate keep his family together and to help his transition back into society as he gets near the end of his sentence. They must be applied for, your family has to request your visits, and each request has to be reviewed before it is granted.”

“Does anybody ever not get a furlough?” asked an inmate.

“Almost everybody gets their furloughs. We weed out real troublemakers and send them to higher-level prisons,” said the assistant warden. “Like Superintendent Honsted said, you’re here to be punished, but we realize that it’s to everybody’s benefit that you have some opportunity to readjust to normal society.”

After that, a man called Coach told us about the athletic program; the director of education told us how we were going to be tested, screened for job suitability and educational level. All prisoners would work every day, all day, except those not having a high-school diploma or those who didn’t demonstrate a high-school level of competence. They would have to attend the camp’s school in the mornings and work in the afternoons. He said also that it was possible to take courses at the local community college. We heard from the food service director, the finance manager, and the chaplain. Lady-hack, Miss Reed, told us how the commissary worked.

By ten, we’d heard from most of the people who ran the camp. The director of education, Mr. Gossen, said that the following morning we’d begin the testing. Now we were excused to go have lunch. After lunch, we would report to Dorm Two and get our work assignments.

During lunch I talked to some inmates who’d been in camp for a year. They said that while we were in A&O, the counselors and hacks would be deciding what our permanent jobs would be from the forms we filled out. They never let doctors work at the clinic, or dentists assist the dentist, or lawyers work in the business offices. Usually, however, they assigned plumbers and carpenters, phone installers, mechanics, machinists, and air-conditioning men to their respective trades. I had a useful trade for a prison career: I could type. I figured I might be able to get a job as a clerk or as a teacher’s assistant at the school. Either one would give me access to a typewriter.

That afternoon, Tarzan assigned me to landscape detail, known as “Iandscrape” in camp. I hung around the landscape shed in the shade of an oak tree. The shed was next to the service road that looped around the south end of the camp, and about twenty inmates were sitting in the sweltering heat waiting for Officer Simpson, the hack in charge of landscape. His regular team of a dozen inmates were there, including Barnett, along with about ten temporaries like me from the A&O gang.