Goodby Saturday Followup
If you would like to read background information, read this and this.
I talked with my uncle today, the father of my cousin who is in prison. I told him about driving all the way to Gatesville to visit her, only to be turned away because the address on my driver's license didn't match my address on her visitor list. I was irritated, but assumed that rules are rules and the guard had to follow this one.
He laughed and told me a couple of interesting stories. He's been visiting his daughter two or three times a month for three years in three different prisons in Texas.
Once he showed up with no driver's license at all. He reached into his pocket and realized he didn't have his wallet. The guard said, "Ah, go on in." Remember, these visits are heavily supervised. You are sitting in a room with the inmate, but guards are all over. You're not even allowed to touch the inmate. I guess the guard was in a good mood, or decided not to worry about it since there really isn't anything you can do wrong during a supervised visit.
My uncle said he has not been able to find any rhyme or reason for the way visitation rules are enforced or not enforced. A lot of it has to do with the mood of the guard on duty. If the guard happens to dislike a particular inmate he can often find reasons to deny the visit. These guards are sometimes just a step or two out of jail themselves. There's no doubt some of them get a sadistic pleasure by excercising their power. They aren't highly supervised and many times they dislike an inmate just because of the way she looks or talks. Sometimes the inmate has no idea the guard dislikes her until something like this happens.
Here's another interesting story. The first time they visited her they brought her a bible. On the first page of the bible, my aunt wrote all the addresses of friends and family she might need. The guard was obviously in a surly mood. When he saw the addresses he said, "I can't let her have this bible. The inmates can't be given books if there are handwritten notes in them."
My uncle, generally a happy man and eager to please, said, "Okay, this is easy to fix." He ripped out the first page and handed the bible back to the guard. The guard looked at it and said, "I'm afraid I can't let her have this book. It's been altered, and that's against the rules."
Undoubtedly this is a rule to prevent people from smuggling things in books, but in this case the man watched him rip out the page. Obviously the alteration wasn't of a serious nature. On another day with another guard, it might have been fine.
In light of this new information, I replayed the incident in my mind and remembered a detail I had not thought was important. When I told the guard at the gate the name of my cousin, she said, "Oh yeah, I know HER." And then my visit was denied. Never mind that she could see by the city on my license that I had driven for hours to get there.
I now think the most probable explanation is that the guard was either irritated at my cousin for some reason or just in a bad mood. You ought to know that my cousin is keeping her head down and trying not to make anyone angry. She's not a hothead or a troublemaker. Who knows what was bothering this guard.
This is life in a Texas prison. It's like a cross between Animal Farm and Dilbert.
rlp
4:30:45 PM 
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