Counselor Edwards

   Counselor Edwards came on the tier a few moments ago to facilitate a “legal call” with a prisoner down range from me. I had already asked another prisoner to send me the “cell phone” (a touch-tone princess telephone with a really long cord that is plugged into an outlet in the hall and then passed into the cells through the food slot by a guard), and if Edwards were interested in doing his job for once then he should have passed the phone for me while he was waiting for the legal phone to ring (The legal phone is plugged into a separate “unmonitored” phone jack that allows incoming calls, which are prearranged with an attorney for certain times at which the counselor comes on the tier to answer the call then passes the receiver only through the food slot so the prisoners can talk to their attorneys). But instead, Edwards stopped in front of the door of a prisoner that he knows is mentally unstable and is prone to making ridiculous demands like, “I need to talk to the governor!” And it’s usually a matter of life and death, of course.

   Edwards knows full well that Jeff (the unstable prisoner) is going to holler and scream about something “urgent” and completely nonsensical, and yet he frequently goes to Jeff’s door seemingly just to provoke him, or at least to sadistically patronize him. (And Edwards isn’t the only one I’ve seen do this, the head of the SCU used to do it a lot too, until I called her out for it once by yelling, “Jeff! Jeff! Don’t listen to her! She’s just riling you up and has no intention of helping you with anything!” I’m not sure why she reacted the way she did, but she immediately stopped “talking” to Jeff and left the tier; later that same day Jeff got a “shot” (disciplinary action) for “threatening staff” because of how he yelled at her, even though she clearly provoked the whole episode, and in the past, even when he was far more threatening, he had never been written up before; maybe she was punishing him to cover up her own guilt, a very common practice with such small minded people). So, anyway, I waited patiently for ten minutes (I checked my clock) while Edwards stood outside Jeff’s door listening to the urgent rants about how he was being killed illegally, to which the counselor would interject such equally nonsensical retorts such as, “You’re not being killed, Jeff. You’re standing in your cell talking to me,” as if the figurative context of Jeff’s meaning were completely lost to him. Jeff, of course, did not realize he was being patronized, and would then shoot off on an urgent tangential explanation of what he meant, making the whole conversation sound even crazier and pointless- Apparently this is what Edwards does to alleviate his boring existence, not surprising in places like this.

   When Edwards finally decided he’d better go pretend he was working someplace else he simply walked away from Jeff’s cell while Jeff was still talking. I was watching and waiting for him to do this from the door window of the cell I am in, and as he walked past I asked if he would pass the phone for me. I waited until he was done talking to Jeff and directly in front of my cell so he couldn’t just ignore me like he is most of the time. And because he couldn’t ignore me he said that he phone was “being used”. I quickly replied that the other prisoner was not using the phone and had already agreed to pass it to me. But by that time Edwards was already exiting the tier so he could ignore me; classic.

   Now, I don’t mind so much when Edwards or other staff mess with me because of my crimes (child rape/murder), but it bothers me a lot when I see them playing games with a prisoner who clearly does not even really understand why he is here. I wouldn’t say that Jeff is stupid, he shows signs at times of real intelligence. But his thinking is confused and unorganized. He is unable to make connections in his thoughts that most of us take for granted. In other words, he is clearly mentally handicapped, and everyone knows it (including him it seems). He simply does not have the mental capacity to appreciate why he is on death row. It doesn’t matter to me what he did to get here (I don’t even know, and really don’t care), but it matters to me a lot that HE doesn’t know! So when staff like Edwards deliberately provoke him and patronize him for their pleasure, I get upset. Because of this I couldn’t just let Edwards leave the tier without taking a shot at him for what he had just done. So, I yelled, “You spend ten minutes pulling Jeff’s chain but you can’t even take one minute to actually do your job for once!”

   Edwards actually came back to my cell and asked, “What did you say?” I knew full well that he heard me, so it was just as obvious that he was fishing for a reaction. Great fun for him, I suppose. So I just calmly repeated my statement, word for word. At this point he stymied, and I could see the wheels in his brain working desperately to find some witty provocative thing to say, but apparently he found none and just said, “That’s right [I’m not going to do my job]” and walked away.

   I saw that I had the upper hand, so pushed the advantages by berating him further as he walked away, “That’s what I’d expect from someone like you; cretin!” And this time it was me who got a reaction. He practically stormed back to my cell door and exclaimed, “Cretin! You’re calling ME a cretin?!”

   I just smiled and waved at him. I had nothing more to say, especially since I knew I had won. This time it was him that got his buttons pushed, and as if to confirm my victory he hollered angrily through the steel door, “Look in the mirror you fucker head!” (Yes, he cussed, which only better illustrated my point, that he did not have enough intelligence to even think of something coherent to say).

   And such is the bane of my existence. Edwards is no more than a typical example of the kind of people who are drawn to “positions of authority” like flies to dead flesh. And somehow society expects justice to be served? Perhaps in some poetic way you could call it justice. I just call it insanity.

P.S. Some Notes:

   When I write cynically like this I try not to forget that it’s always my own insanity that I’m “exposing”, not anyone else’s. I’m sure Mr. Edwards is in many ways a decent person who would be unfairly considered if someone thought they could judge him based solely on what I have written here. No one can be, or should be, judged in this way. As I have argued elsewhere: not even the extreme rigors of the law can justify the judgment of any person (which doesn’t mean we should not protect ourselves or society for that matter, only that we need not pass judgment in the process --- it is out judgment alone that is the fundamental flaw in our system, and in our thinking; and it is this judgment alone that makes all of our efforts to protect ourselves so futile and counter-productive). So, when Edwards suggested that I “look in the mirror”, I could have told him that, “I do, all the time, and what I see is every man (person) reflected back at me.” But like Jeff, I don’t think he would have been able to understand.