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How We Deal with Kenny Mac by Simon Lavitagus
Every prison has at least one of these guys. He knows
he is going home within a month and unless he kills some one while in
prison, he will be set free on a specific date. We have a guy we call Kenny
Mac. The fact that he is Black is irrelevant; his behavior is the story
here. His avowed goal is to make our lives as miserable as possible.
Forget the prison movies...they are bullshit and it
doesn’t work the way they show it. Believe it or not, we have guidelines
and limits that we do not cross mainly to protect inmates and our jobs. In
other words, we are not allowed to beat him senseless in order to modify his
behavior. We only talk about beating him senseless, but we dare not act on
it. And, as the manager of the maximum custody unit, my job is to make
sure, no matter what I feel, that these policies and guidelines are not
broken. However, there is no law, except professionalism, that keeps us
from imagining the demise of this unpleasant character.
When he began throwing urine on my officers, they
learned not to peek at him near the crack in the door. When he broke his
food trays, we learned to feed him on Styrofoam trays. If he refused to be
cuffed, he was not allowed out to go to recreation; simple precautions that
made everyone safer.
If you ask Kenny Mac what he was thinking about, he
usually says “I’m just wondering where I am going to bury you when I get
out” We usually ignore such idle threats, but this allows us to talk about
how we can shoot him on sight if he were ever to come to our small town and
show up at any of our houses. All of us are “white racist mutherfuckers.”
Our complex sergeant, who is unfortunately blond, is called “you Britney
Spears looking white racist mutherfucker.” His tirades pass as amusement
for us and mild embarrassment for the sergeant.
Every day I would get a call from the unit officer:
“Kenny Mac won’t come out of his cell to be searched!” No big deal. I call
the shift captain who assembles an extraction team. When the team arrives,
taser in hand, he will comply and they leave. We want so much to “light him
up”, but our policies do not allow this for someone who complies with the
orders. One guy in the unit was shot with the taser and while all the
other inmates watched through their cell doors, he shook and wiggled like
.... (I can’t find the proper metaphor) anyway, these new tasers, you may
have heard of them in the news as they can kill people, are most effective.
All the inmates saw how good it worked and not even Kenny Mac will go so far
as to get lit up by one.
Over they years, I have used a trick that we call a
behavioral contract. This is a simple tool that the mental health staff
might use on a suicidal inmate to make them change their behaviors. I
decided to try this on Kenny Mac, but I had to first understand his
motivations and find something he wanted more than to aggravate the piss out
of us.
About a month ago, he received a disciplinary for some
minor infraction and as punishment I took away his TV for a week. AH HA!
He cried , whined , threw piss under the door, smeared shit on the walls
and mutherfucked us extra hard. I had found his secret motivation. “So Mr.
Kenny Mac, you want your TV back I hear?”
Interesting.... what’s in it for me? I could tell by
the look on his face that I had him. I found out his secret and he was not
happy. I gave him a day or two to decide what was more important to him; a
TV or a cup of piss. To rub it in, I made an official looking contract that
spelled out in legalese all the things he had to do in order to get his TV
back. No more piss throwing, no more mutherfucking the staff, no more
calling the nurse a fat bitch. No storing of piss or shit. He had to agree
to bathe at least twice a week. I then signed and dated the contract and
sent it in for him to sign and date.
The next day he got his TV back and the bookies went to
town. We made a tip board, like we do for the NASCAR races. (P.S. I don’t
watch or gamble on car races ) You got to bet on one day or up to two weeks
to see how long it would take Kenny Mac to break the contract and lose his
TV. I had to remove the money part of the bet, because I overheard one of
my officers state that he would gas Kenny Mac up so he would win on the day
he bet on. Smart thinking, but this was not my objective. No one suspected
that he would behave for almost two months. The tip board didn’t even go
that far as no one expected him to be able to go this long. And although I
was hailed as a genius for this clever ploy, I reminded staff that this was
an old mental health trick that has been used to trick nuts for years.
Two months of peace and quiet; no piss thrown and no
mutherfucking. However, all good things must come to an end and finally
Kenny Mac got mad at the fat bitch nurse and tried to spit on her. This got
his TV taken and he returned to his normal routine. As of this writing,
Kenny Mac has only two weeks to go before he expires his sentence. And
since all bets are off, he has been told that he will be taken to the bus
station in the middle of the night by a few of the officers he drenched with
piss in the past. We all got a mutherfucking over this, but it is just all
in fun. Like I said, I can’t beat him or starve him or keep him from filing
grievances. (He averages three a day and has over 300 pending from as far
back as a year ago)
You gotta smile when he tells us: “If you white racist
Britney Spears looking honkey mutherfuckers will give me back my TV I will
behave!” I’m wondering if he really thinks this is the way to get things
done. Who forgot to teach him about basic interpersonal relationships when
he was a young boy? Just today he admitted to my Britney Spears looking
white racist Sergeant that he was really afraid to go home. He had no
family or friends that wanted him and he really had nowhere to go. This is
sad even for someone who needs to be shot in the head.
Our real concern is that he may harm some innocent in
order to get back into prison where he belongs. I blame the state. There
is no excuse to let some deranged idiot back out into our neighborhood who
is destined to fail miserably at reintegration back into society. Just
because he has done his time and paid for his crime is no excuse to let
someone like him just go free. Don’t think my counselors haven’t tried to
find halfway houses or missions that would take him in. We have tried and
no place in their right mind is willing to deal with this type of behavior.
What are we to do? I offered to take him to the local vet to be put to
sleep, but he failed to see the humor in my suggestion. The sad part is
that if this were legal, I would consider it the right thing to do. What
are we do with the Kenny Macs in our world? |
