Waiting for a Visit

by Michael Santos

category: Prisoner Perspective

Published July 06, 2009 @ 05:49AM PT

As a long-term prisoner, visiting has had different meanings for me at various stages of my confinement. In the beginning, after my initial arrest, I spent my first year locked inside a large county jail. I was only 23, and never having been confined before, I didn’t know much of anything about living in an institution. Visits gave me a break from the monotony.

Those initial weeks in jail, beginning in the summer of 1987, passed slowly. I had been charged with leading an “enterprise” that trafficked in cocaine. Although neither violence nor weapons were a part of our group, my leadership role in the crime exposed me to a possible sentence of life without parole and thus persuaded my judge to deny my release on bond. After pacing from wall to wall in my jail cell day after day, I looked forward to Saturday visits.

My ritual to prepare for the Saturday morning visit began the night before, when I would lay my pants and shirt carefully beneath my sleeping mat on the concrete platform that served as my bed. The weight of my body through the night would press creases into the drab clothing, and I hoped the effort would make me look sharp. I’d wake early. By knocking out several hundred pushups on the floor of my cell, I could get my blood pumping, swell my muscles, hopefully giving the illusion of strength. I’d take a bird-type bath in my sink, shave closely, then pull on my jail outfit, methodically folding up my sleeves to flaunt what I thought were impressive biceps. Then I sat on the corner of my bed, minimizing movement so as not to wrinkle my clothes, and waited for jailers to escort me to the visiting booth.

The procedure was not so easy for family members. Living far away from the jail, my parents and sisters had to wake early, drive for an hour, search for parking, then stand in a lengthy line. When our visiting time came, we weren’t able to comfort each other with an embrace. Instead, we sat across from each other on stationary steel stools. A thick glass window separated us, and while wiping away our watering eyes, we spoke through telephone handsets, all the while knowing that jailers were listening to our conversations. After 30 minutes in the visiting booth, our time expired until the following Saturday.

Visits in the jail couldn’t alleviate the anxieties I felt, but they helped. Instead of focusing on the seemingly interminable judicial proceedings, I could look forward to the friendly faces and voices; those visits gave me support when I needed it most. A crushing hangover always followed my time in the visiting booth, but within a few days, I’d welcome the familiar anticipation building while I waited to see my family again.

Once a jury convicted me and my judge imposed sentence, marshals transferred me to a high-security penitentiary more than 2,000 miles away from my family. That distance brought an end to our weekly visits.

Visiting less frequently suited my early adjustment. I had decades to serve and I needed to toughen my spirits. The penitentiary environment differed from the jail, as lengthy sentences extinguished hope for thousands of men locked inside the walls. They adjusted, but in setting into the culture, many purged thoughts about returning to the outside world. They learned to live inside, and for some, that adjustment became easier by forgetting about the outside. With such attitudes, visits were dead weights, burdens to carry, painful reminders of all that prisoners missed.

Instead of visiting through glass, those in the prisons where I’ve been held had the privilege of “contact” visits. Once visitors passed through a series of security precautions that began with confirmation of their authorization to visit, and followed with metal detectors, drug detection scans, possible pat searches, waiting in lines, ultraviolet hand stamps, and escorts through numerous sliding gates, an officer would assign them seats in the brightly lit visiting room.

At the penitentiary where I began serving my sentence, the seats were aligned in long rows that faced an officer. Surveillance cameras recorded all motions and several officers in gray slacks, white suits, and maroon ties walked around the room as if they were cops on the beat. Their obtrusiveness made the prisons and visitors feel as if the visiting room was hostile territory, with the guards on full alert for the hazardous duty.

When called for a visit in the penitentiary, prisoners would report to a dressing room. They would strip down to submit for a body search. After inspection, the officer would recite rules then instruct the prisoner on his assigned seat. Rules permitted the prisoner to kiss and embrace each visitor at the start and conclusion of each visit, but they did not permit touching during the visit. Once the prisoner sat in his assigned seat, rules would not allow him to stand again without first receiving permission from a guard. To use the bathroom, he would raise his hand and wait for an escort.

Although the strictly enforced conditions could make aspects of visiting uncomfortable, administrators had reasons for imposing them. High levels of stress characterized the penitentiary. It was a cauldron with volcanic pressure that could blow at any time. As an important link to the outside world, some prisoners exploited the visiting room as a point of entry for drugs or currency they could use to corrupt officers.

Family pressures sometimes erupted as well. Some prisoners couldn’t handle the stress of separation and all the difficulties that accompanied imprisonment. Once while I visited with my father, I saw a prisoner stand and start slapping his wife across her face while he yelled obscenities about her choice to divorce him. Others disregarded the rules and public setting; they scoped opportunities to relieve sexual tensions. My visitors and I have seen couples openly fornicate against a wall, hiding in the open as families lined up to leave at the end of visiting.

During those first 15 years of my imprisonment, I was content to receive only one or two family visits per year. I enjoyed seeing my family, but decades and thousands of miles separated us; it was painful to see them leave at the end of our visit.

To avoid the emotional roller coaster, I went into a kind of self-imposed hibernation from the outside world during the middle stretch of my imprisonment, focusing exclusively on my studies. I found it more empowering to prepare for my emergence from prison rather than my day-to-day existence. Spacing out my trips to the visiting room kept me steady, until I fell in love.

[UPDATE: Part two of this post - "Getting Married in Prison" - is here.