A Guard Makes a Bad Choice

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP).  It was an uneventful weekend until Sunday.  I revised my goals and objectives for Phase II and am hoping they’re right this time, as well as completing the worksheet review for the movie 28 Days.  But what really got our attention was the blonde female guard who rarely works on this unit.  She had for some reason looked up the account balance of the swamper who we know is setting up my cellie Brian Whalen to be robbed when he gets out by pretending to be his friend now.  It seems this swamper has a large amount of money on his books.  This guard commended she could use ‘a loan’ and asked for his contact information which he willingly provided.  If I heard this story I wouldn’t have believed it either except I happened to be in the dayroom area when it went down. This swamper is assuming either she wants drugs, sex or both from him as he bragged on this conquest to others.  Either this guard isn’t very bright or this swamper is getting set up.  For her sake, I hope it’s the latter, because he’s not a nice guy.  Never mind the fact she’s been completely compromised in her role as a guard.  Speaking of Whalen he has lost over 50 pounds since coming to MSDF.  He’s always making proclamations how he’s going to stop eating this or that or making bets he’s going to lose a certain number of pounds. He’s betting cellie Larry Sands he’ll lose 20 lbs in the approximately 40 days he has left until graduation.  It isn’t realistic but it’s motivating to him to have this kind of thing out there.  He’s gone from 330 lbs to 280 lbs so he really has done well.  We (Sands and I) continue to discourage his involvement with this swamper in a very careful way but to no avail.  He is a people pleaser and desperately wants to be liked, as we’ve learned.  It’s kind of sad to watch.  Come Monday we were all assembled in the dayroom when we were informed our ERP group coordinator Ms. Grey wouldn’t be coming in and we were to keep working on our goals for Phase II.  Since none of us had them approved yet we had a lot of time on our hands.  While sitting in the room Whalen confided something to me that kind of made my blood run cold.  It seems the now departed former cellie Andre Charles had managed to get his sister’s address and sent her a letter saying how much he wanted to meet her.  Whalen was furious, understandably so.  I could just imagine how I’d feel if he had gotten addresses of my former stepdaughters or friends.  Fortunately all mail between the sponsors including the things you folks send me to read is done through a PO Box.  But it gave me the chills.  He threatened to go to Andre’s parole officer (PO).  I urged him to do so.  Later on,  a guard came down and shook down the cell next door where he collected a whole ton of food the swampers had swiped from the meal trays and medication from the swamper who’d been forced to move to another cell in one of their lockers.  Nothing came of it that I knew of but regular first shift guard Roscoe Peters had us all come out as if it was count and warned us to get rid of any extra food and if he finds any he’d get us kicked out of the program.  The swampers guilty of it all took a bag to collect any donations.  Not a thing was given up.  I’m sure no one was taking the threat seriously.  Anyway, we went back about our business. I just keep to myself, follow the rules and try not to let it get to me, you know?

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