Asylum Earth. Charles Bragg
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Bubba, Allenwood Prison is 4,000 manicured acres-no fences, no bars, no guard towers. You have a billiard room, a gym, a racquetball court, tennis courts. It's West Virginia and the Appalachians, not the Catskills. Can you understand that the public perception is that you run Allenwood more like a resort than a prison? Would that be a reasonable interpretation?"
"Well now, let me ask you, Mr. Morley, if you had to keep 1,200 prisoners busy twenty-four hours a day, don't you think your acres would be manicured? That's the whole point. Keeping everyone busy. Everybody works here. Not many people know it, but we make all the jockey shorts for the U .S. Army. All of them. Every soldier in Desert Storm was wearing a pair of our shorts, even General Schwartzkopf. It made us real proud that when our fighting men were bravely defending the New World Order, they had their prunes securely cradled in a product we make right here at Allenwood.
"We also make fine walnut executive desks for the government in our furniture factory. They're in every U.S. embassy in the world, and there's a waiting list for them. Our prison workforce earns eleven cents an hour to start, forty hours a week; thirty eight cents an hour after three years; last year we had $4.6 million in sales. If our people meet their quotas, their stays here may not be that unpleasant. If not, they don't get to use any of those little goodies you mentioned. Plus nobody wants to get transferred to Rahway or Attica and end up being someone's 'June Bride' and I do mean 'end up,' if you know what I mean."
"I think we get your meaning, Warden Bubba."
"Here's a story for you," said Warden Coots. "We got 'Pop' Scales transferred here from Leavenworth a while back. He was eighty-six years old, and had just six months left on a fifty year sentence, so they sent him here before he would be turned loose. He had been a model prisoner and seemed harmless enough, and after a half century of hard time in the slammer, you couldn't help but wonder if he could cope with life on the outside. We had planned to use that last six months to train him for a career as a busboy so he could earn an honest living in a competitive economy. But you know, here at Allenwood we don't have fences and that old fuck escaped. Can you believe it? Eighty-six years old and he walks right off the grounds and goes out and robs a 7 -Eleven store within twenty-four hours. They say he had a touch of Alzheimer's and that that's all he could remember how to do, so he went out and did it. Died in a shoot-out he did. Hard Copy did a piece on it on TV. Real poignant, but they really didn't know how mean that old prick was. Getting poked in the boomer since 1936 can do that to a man, I guess ."
Safer thought for a moment, probably about how many bleeps would be in the final telecast, "Hmm ... yeah ... maybe so ... yes, kind of ironic ... Well now, Warden Coots, what we'd like to do today is photograph the grounds and facilities here with your commentary as we go. Sort of a voice-over. Do you have any problem with that?"
"Fuck no, I'm real proud of Allenwood. A couple of our inmates have been on the cover of Forbes magazine for chris-sake, four of them have books on the New York Times bestseller list, and a couple of them have had TV miniseries made about them already.
"I'm sure you make pretty good dough, Mr. Morley, but how would you like to match financial statements with some of these crooked buzzards? I don't think so. We got a guy here who robbed an auto workers' pension fund in Michigan. Just wiped it out. He was fined $400,000,000. He paid it out of petty cash and has plenty left over for when he gets out, which will be in ninety days or so. Of course he's going to have a lot of elderly, penniless, vengeful auto workers after his ass, but I don't think that will bother him too much on the French Riviera."
Coots adjusted his shorts. "Over there is our baseball diamond and miniature golf course. See that guy cutting the grass? That's ex-Supreme Court Justice Orlin Spencer. He keeps the field real nice. Used to umpire our games too but we had to stop that-too many bad judgment calls.
"We got a goddam Hall of Fame baseball player in here right now. But you know something? He can't hit a slow pitch softball to save his ass. Swings like a goddam girl. Now there you got an angle on a story- 'Home Run' Baker can't hit a beach ball thrown by a Wall Street faggot."
With the camera crew taping their every move, Safer and Coots walked past the vegetable garden where several dangerous looking men were spreading manure on the tomatoes. They entered the back door to the the mess hall kitchen.
"Tell me about the food here in prison, Warden Coots. "
"Well, I wouldn't claim it was Denny's or Sizzler's or anything fancy like that. You see that pansy at the grill over there? He's a fruit, gayer than ice cream, but he can really cook! He was the pastry chef at the White House during the Nixon administration. He's been here for eleven years. For what, I've forgotten. But I'll tell you this, when he gets out he's going to be bigger than Wolfgang Puck. He's working on a book, The Minimum Security Prison Diet Book of Recipes. I eat here three times a week, and I've lost forty pounds in the last eleven years. So it works. We got more than 1,200 prisoners here and you can't please 'em all. We got people here who are disappointed that he makes 'shit on a shingle' with meat. Geraldo was interested in that. Anyway, he makes 'Nachos Haldemann' and 'Enchiladas Erlichman' from the old state dinner parties, and they are out of this world. Really stick to your ribs. As a matter of fact, they stick to your ribs for three or four days.
"We got a kosher kitchen here too, 'strictly' as those people put it. Vegetarian food too. See that guy out there pulling up bean sprouts and eating them? Wouldn't harm a cow, but I think he killed his grandmother last year for changing channels on his TV. .. just kidding.
"There is one line we don't cross here-no booze. Cocktail hour here means a twist of lemon in your Diet Pepsi, or neutral spirits on the rocks, no salt, please."
"What are neutral spirits? "
"Water ... and that's tough for some, I guess. Even if you can't drink, you miss just ordering it. I wouldn't know, I've never had to do without it.
"You know we have a lot of brilliant assholes in here, all convicted felons. They're in prison! And yet you never hear about any trouble here at Allenwood, do you? I could dog and grind 'em ... break 'em, you know. But I don't. The secret of keeping peace and order in this place is psychology.
"What do you mean by 'psychology'?
Like, I put a golf pro in the same cell with a coal miner, a faggot in with a bounty hunter ... team a preacher up with a pornographer, and let 'em learn from each other. As I say, I use psychology!"
And does it work?"
"I know it does. I'd like to put Jeffrey Dahmer in the same cell with Michael Milken. Then secretly tape what they have to say to each other. And have it transcribed. Who wouldn't want to read that?"
"Wouldn't that violate their basic constitutional right to privacy?"
"Oh my !! Let's see, let me check my copy of the Constitution . . . hmm ... Bill of Rights . .. hmm, First Amendment. .. uh huh, Fifth Amendment ... Eighth Amendment ... OK! Good, that's it!! It's constitutional! The Founding Fathers would definitely want to hear this. They'd just love it. There's no doubt the Founding Fathers would want to hear what Benedict Arnold said to Aaron Burr when he changed sides after the Battle of Bunker Hill. It's definitely constitutional!"
It occurred to Morley Safer that perhaps the prison system was not the only story here. Warden Coots was! As it so often had in his travels, the Demon of the Unexpected had struck again.
After a short break, Safer resumed the interview just to the west of the putting green.
"Warden Bubba, with so many millionaires and billion-aires as well as very powerful and influential people here, it's hard to believe that they don't get special treatment. What should the public know about that ?"
"Mr. Morley, let me just tell you a story. I was eating in the convicts' cafeteria one day, you know, to show that the food wasn't poisonous. I started to gag. I got numb. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I blacked out. I was choking to death in front of 600 convicts and I was unable to make a sound to let anyone know. Everything sounded like I was in an echo chamber. I was dying, no doubt about that. They