Among Murderers. Sabine Heinlein
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in the air. “Angle . . . Angel, what does it matter? I’m dyslexic, so for me it reads right.” We shared a laugh, and I asked him what he carried in his big backpack.
“Money, ID, parole release papers, a sweater, a sewing kit, a toothbrush, an extra shirt—you never know if you might have to spend the night or if the bus breaks down or if . . . I tend to be overly prepared,” he said, excusing himself. Having spent twenty-nine years locked up, Angel had no idea what to bring for a daylong excursion, so he brought everything he could think of. My question opened a valve. He talked for the next four hours without taking a breath.
After Angel mentioned the length of his sentence, I asked the inevitable: “What were you in for?”
“I killed a friend in an argument,” Angel said, adding somewhat apologetically, “I had just turned eighteen.” I envisioned a bar fight between two drunk teenagers. Things must have gotten out of hand, I thought. I caught myself giving Angel the benefit of the doubt because of his charming demeanor, his eloquence, and his outspokenness. I would have plenty of time in the future to ask him more questions. I decided to start with whatever Angel was willing to share.
By his own reckoning Angel had changed. Wasn’t that what imprisonment, punishment, and rehabilitation were all about? Had prison made Angel a better human being? Would we forgive him for his crimes and welcome him back into our world?
Until his release from prison Angel had considered himself prepared for freedom. He had found God and redemption. He had accumulated countless letters of recommendation from his Quaker friends for his appearances in front of the parole board. The letters asserted that he was ready to be released. He was “corrected,” no longer a risk to society but a contributing member.
But the matter of Angel’s assumed correction was somewhat mysterious. In 1993, after serving fifteen years of his life sentence, he first became eligible for parole. He was denied. Every two years after that Angel would present his ever-growing folder to the board, but each time he was slammed with yet another two years. He was denied parole six times. For twenty-nine years the parole commissioners considered his release “incompatible with the public safety and welfare.” Then, suddenly, after the seventh parole hearing, the board spit him out into our world.
When Angel first went to jail in 1978, the food wasn’t too bad, and the correctional officers were, for the most part, “all right.” He liked the “old-time career criminals” who took him under their wing to protect him from “booty bandits.” (Angel liked to say “booty bandits”; it made him chuckle.) Back then he may have still been able to attend a variety of rehabilitative programs, but for the longest time Angel didn’t think he “needed fixing.”
Over time the prison food became unbearable and “the cops” dictatorial. The state decimated its rehabilitation programs. In the 1980s the crack epidemic swept in thousands of “crazy people who,” Angel said, “turned prison into an insane asylum.”
When he finally felt ready to consider what had led him to violence and murder, the only programs available were run by other inmates and outside volunteers. “For the most part,” he said, “rehabilitation was up to myself.”
But if he was ever going to be released, Angel had to somehow prove his successful rehabilitation, despite a lack of opportunities and the dubiousness of the remaining programs. The folder he carried in his duffel bag brimmed with GED, college, work training, and Narcotics Anonymous certificates (although he claims to have used marijuana only “recreationally” when he was a teenager). He had attended “transpersonal counseling,” which was run by a volunteer social worker who encouraged inmates “to look at their inner child.” He also went to a slew of Alternative to Violence meetings and to Life Skills programs run by fellow inmates and outside volunteers.3
Leaving the task of rehabilitation to the inmates themselves wasn’t a fluke; it had become the norm. These programs were not scientifically proven to lower recidivism, but one had to do something. The folder needed to grow.
In 2005 Angel was required to attend Aggression Replacement Training at Attica prison. He graduated from a one-hundred-hour program that focused on social skills, anger control, and moral reasoning and prides itself on reducing recidivism.4 But after almost three decades in prison he didn’t feel safe trusting the state. For twenty-nine years he had endured society’s unwavering punishment. “Justice without mercy,” he said, adding, “By that time, I had already done the work.”
Free at last—away from the regimentation of prison—Angel was discovering where “rehabilitation” would really begin: on the bus, on the street, on the job, and in society’s judging eyes. He would have to find out for himself what it really meant.
In the summer months following his release I began to accompany Angel on his walks and to his appointments. His struggles appeared mundane. In the mornings Angel didn’t know what to eat. “There is five boxes of cereal and I don’t know which one tastes good, so I just walk away. Besides, food tastes different today than it did in the past. Everything tastes different,” he said. His eyes flitted left and right, as if toggling among choices.
Angel preferred apricots, plums, and steak over apples, mashed potatoes, and tuna. In prison he had a pale apple every day and tuna prepared in every way possible. He had no intention of ever eating tuna again. “Fuck fish altogether,” he said, laughing.
But in his first weeks out, plums and apricots were hard to find. Not only did Angel have to face children screeching and women talking on cell phones in high-pitched voices, he also had to cross the street to go to the store. And for Angel there were a hundred decisions involved in crossing a street. The mere idea gave him a headache. There were people on either side of him, and he didn’t know whose example to follow. Which way do I go? Do I follow this person or that person? he remembered thinking. “I was using too much brainpower to make the decision.”
If it were simply a matter of ridding his diet of the foods and dishes he hated, life would have been easy. But discarding one thing always meant having to choose another. The first time Angel went to the Fairway Market in West Harlem to buy spaghetti sauce, he was outright terrified. There were hundreds of different spaghetti sauces. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He fled back to the Castle without buying anything and put all thought of making spaghetti out of his head.
“I have to learn how to shop,” he told me. “How do you buy a suit? How do you go about making a doctor’s appointment?” For similar reasons he chose to abstain from having sex. “I just wouldn’t know what to do,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s all too overwhelming.”
Angel found himself staring at a piece of fabric for hours at a time, intrigued by its texture and pattern. When he walked through the park, he did goofy things like sniff roses and exhale with a loud “Aaaah!” He sometimes looked in the mirror just to greet himself. “Hi!” he would say with a laugh, waving at his reflection. Things that might cause other people to curse and stomp could make his day. He fondly remembered stepping on dog poop on one of his first days out. Every once in a while, seemingly unaware, he spit out little verses. “I’m a Latin from Manhattan, but I have the sweets for Brooklyn.” In these moments I almost expected him to start skipping.
In his first weeks of freedom Angel became obsessed with doing laundry in the washing machine and with washing dishes. Which knob do you turn and when do you turn it? Do you first soap all the dishes and then rinse them or do you do one piece at a time? How much did you pay for the rag, how much for the piece of soap?
Angel was tired during the day, yet at night he didn’t sleep well. His body missed the one-inch mattress and the steel slat he had grown accustomed to. The door of his room at the Castle kept opening and closing all night long. In prison, waking up in a split second was a survival reflex. “The door opens and you automatically wake up,” he said. “When somebody comes in your cell and you lay in bed wrapped up in sheets, you can’t defend yourself. You are very vulnerable.” But at the Castle, to be awakened by every little screech and knock got downright annoying.
Despite his struggles, or maybe because of them, Angel’s favorite word became beautiful. In the first weeks out