The Meaning of Freedom

The last exit to San Quentin on Route 580 is an easy right turn just before the Richmond Bridge. Entry into San Quentin, the only prison in California that executes its inmates, that vibe of which is palpable, is a whole other matter. So let us go then you and I to San Quentin Prison.

Most visitations are by appointment only. Just phoning to get a visit appointment requires jumping a bunch of hoops and considerable phone time and can take hours of busy signals, put on hold and then getting disconnected. Hours easily turn into days of trying to get through and make an appointment. Days and times to call and to visit are limited. Once there, getting inside to see family or friends is a strictly regulated procedure and you’d better know the Rules of the Game of you’re in for some misery.

Most of the guards I’ve come across are a pretty decent sort, but of course there are jerks, just like everywhere else. Once you pass through the outer first station and pass muster with its long list of restrictions it’s a long walk up to the second station inside the prison and its visiting sections. Visits with inmates are either what’s termed “contact visits” – face to face in the same room, metal cage actually – or “non-contact visits,” which are by phone and through a thick Plexiglas separator like in the movies. The sound quality on these phones ranges from very poor to inaudible. Such is the fun of prison visits.

That’s the most I’ve ever seen of the inside of San Quentin and it’s enough. SQ, as inmates refer to it, was built in the 1850s, but I’d say its current buildings were constructed much later. It’s not a dungeon, but it is institutional to the max and run on a bureaucratic scaffolding of rules and regulations that cannot, will not, be broken or bent.

So what, you might think. Prisons aren’t supposed to be playgrounds. People are incarcerated for a reason and that’s true. But there are also people there, guards and visitors for instance, who’ve not committed any crime, but nevertheless are spending time there. Truth is nobody cares that much about either party, especially the visitors, but the guards have a union and therefore a voice. Curiously they too spend time in lockup, and that’s what they have in common with their prisoners. Among these inmates are some bad, angry and violently aggressive people who need to and deserve to be there. There are also many who don’t fit that bill, but that’s another matter. The fact is we incarcerate more people in our prisons and jails per capita than any other country in the world. That’s a statistic to ponder. We are also one of the few countries in the world with the death penalty. We share that distinction with China, North Korea and Yemen. That’s an even more startling fact to consider.

From time to time I visit a friend in the E Section in SQ, which is for Death Row inmates. Visitor and inmate share a (apprx.) 4×8 heavy steel mesh cage, about six per row and there are three rows in total. They’re all joined together forming in aggregate one gigantic cage partitioned by steel mesh walls. Of course there’s no privacy, guards patrol or just hang out constantly, and if one wants, conversations in neighboring cages can be overheard. Me, I’m too much in concentrated conversation with my friend to even hear what’s going on around me and I couldn’t care less anyway.

In the E Section of SQ along one wall are vending machines with all sorts of fast foods and drinks. They all take quarters, the only form of currency you can take into the prison in a clear plastic bag, and food item prices range from $1.25 to $4.75, a shipload of quarters. Frozen and refrigerator stuff is warmed in a microwave, shared by all the other visitors getting their people the rare break from prison food. Once you’ve gotten your food a guard lets you into the visiting cage usually already occupied by the inmate.

When the prisoner hasn’t already arrived at the appointed cage he comes in from a separate entrance to the visiting room, accompanied by guards of course, and the makeshift cell is opened at the other end from the one the visitor went in and the inmate, his hands behind his back in steel handcuffs, stands at a narrow opening on that side of the cage, brings his hands up to it and the cuffs are unlocked by a guard. You are then allowed one hug if you so want and you’ll be allowed one more on departure when visiting time is over. Visiting time is three hours max.

I’ve become increasingly claustrophobic with time. Airplanes freak me out and I’ve pretty much given up flying. I can overcome it in this situation because the cage lets air, light and sound in and if I concentrate on the conversation at hand I can pretty much drown out the surroundings and ignore the other cages and their inhabitants. We humans are nothing if not adaptable, otherwise why would anyone put up with steerage class air travel or commuter traffic day in and day out? We can even adapt to jail, some of us.

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The point of this blog is not about what prisons look like or how they operate. The descriptions I’ve given you are more by way of setting the scene. This little story is about freedom and what that word, that concept, has come to mean for me.

Prison not only confines the human body to a designated space, approximately an 8 x 10 cell, it also restricts practically all human activity except thinking. There is no freedom of choice, all decisions are made for the prisoner by the prison authorities: When and what to eat, when to sleep and get up, when to bathe, when to exercise,

what to wear, with whom you can communicate and so on. Even when to die in some cases. Everything we who are not in prison take for granted in our everyday lives no longer applies. Prison life is regulated and regimented every hour of every day, week, month and year until you’re out, or dead.

That’s life in our prisons for the masses. What it’s like in the putative country club prisons for the elite criminals I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet it’s not nearly so bad.

When you go to prison in this country you have abandoned your freedom of choice in every respect. Your life, for all intents and purposes no longer belongs to you. Your life belongs to the state and its representatives, the prison officials. Your life, defined by choices, the choices that govern almost every aspect of it is in the hands of others, and what you want or don’t want, what you need or don’t need, and how you want things to be or not is no longer up to you. In a sense you have been reduced to zero and remain as such for the length of time you’re there.

Leaving SQ after a visit I’m always struck by two things: What it means to be free, and the odd juxtaposition of the beauty of the natural environment just beyond the prison walls. SQ is built along the coastal bay, practically right up to the water – a high, fortress-like tower dominates that point. Across the bay you can make out a housing development nestled into the coastal hillside, an upscale one I’d imagine given its location. Anything along the San Francisco Bay is high-end property. One imagines any developer would sell his soul, or is that an oxymoron, to get his hands on the property on which San Quentin sits.

You walk out of the prison and you take deep breaths of sea air as if to cleanse and revive yourself, and you welcome the cries of the gulls. You feel the ocean’s breeze, sometimes a cold wind and invite the chill. You become aware of your own footsteps and feel your body as it carries you to your car and then…wherever you want to go. Any direction you choose and any destination you want. And you realize in that moment, that is freedom.

Freedom is not “just another word for nothing left to lose.” Freedom is not a word. It’s not a concept. It’s not a lyric in a song no matter how good that sounds. Freedom is something real and tangible. Freedom is the freedom of having choice. And don’t let anyone tell you different.