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138 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
self. Before you get your act together, you will have to face several cold, hard
truths. Nothing beneficial to you comes easily in prison.
Let’s start with the education department. If you want to study for and take
the GED, you must cross several hurdles. First, the prison system doesn’t encourage
you to better yourself. To get into a GED class, you must get on a waiting
list. Then you must keep an impeccably clean record while you await placement.
In prison, guards hand out disciplinary reports like popcorn in a movie
theater. If you receive a disciplinary report (DR), you can’t get into a GED class.
You must have a clean record for ninety days to be admitted.
Before I continue, let me explain how easy it is to get a DR. In your dayto-day
routine, you will come into contact with numerous prison guards. “Sanitation”
(as in highly polished floors and shiny surfaces) is a big deal in prisons.
That being the case, you may be assigned to clean something. A sergeant or lieutenant
on one of their rounds may tell you to clean something in a specific manner.
After they leave you with instructions, a lower-level prison guard may come
and question your actions. If they give instructions contrary to what the sergeant
or lieutenant said, you must comply with them. This leaves you in a situation in
which two or more people are telling you to do something different. So, regardless
of what you do, you will fail to follow someone’s instructions. When
one of the officers walks by and sees you doing something different from what
they instructed, you will receive a DR for failure to follow instructions. If you
try to explain the conflicting orders, you will be given an additional DR for insubordination.
The DRs, when they are investigated, may be thrown out. Still, you are
charged four dollars for each DR. Additionally, receipt of a DR makes you ineligible
for a GED or vocational-trade-class waiting list for ninety days. You must
have a clean record for ninety days to be admitted.
Once you are placed on the list and then admitted to a GED class, this in
no way means you will get your GED. To take a GED, a prisoner several years
ago had to score 225 on the pre-GED test. Quite a few men studied and struggled
to bring their scores up to that point. When a lot of men were ready to take
the pre-GED—confident that they could pass with 225—something happened.
The state overnight changed the score needed to take the test, raising the hurdle
from 225 points to 250. A lot of men were frustrated and disappointed at having
the rules changed when a GED was within their grasp.
At one time, college-level courses were taught in prison. A study had determined
that less than 2 percent of prisoners with some college under their belts
returned to prison. At the time it cost $7,500 per year to provide the books and
instruction required for a prisoner to receive a four-year degree. It costs the state
roughly $30,000 per year to house one prisoner. When college-level classes were
offered, prisoners had to work during the day and go to class at night. In addition
to keeping up their grades, they daily had to run the gauntlet of guards that