The late Latin word ‘apprehendere’ means to seize or grasp. It’s the base or root for the word ‘apprehension’, which in Middle English meant learning or the acquisition of knowledge.

If you jump on the Google Box every day like I do to find out what words mean or how to spell them (because, you know, you hate seeing that fucking red line under things you write in Word), you’ll see that ‘apprehension’ on today’s Dictionary.com has three meanings:

1. anxiety or fear that something bad or unpleasant will happen
2. understanding; grasp
3. the action of arresting someone

Those are some interesting definitions especially when pertaining to our friend Craig. There’s little question he had anxiety and fear throughout his stay at camp, considerably more at the beginning and, as you’ll see here, especially at the start of each move in the system. And he always, in his own reverent way, tried to seek understanding, not only of his situation, but his surroundings, of the people he was locked up with, of the future that lie ahead of him.

And, well, as far as being arrested? Yeah, going all stabby on someone makes that one self-explanatory.

Thing is, during our conversations, there was little of what we all would consider the first definition of apprehension in his voice. What I heard was confidence. Absolutely not because he was proud of what he had done. No, there was no pride at all. It was just that, now that he’s gotten through the 18 years on the inside, he seemed satisfied that he came out at least as well as he had hoped from the beginning; that he wasn’t corrupted, incorrigible and irredeemable; that he had made it to the actual start of his adult life, long-ago delayed because of his own action. He wasn’t afraid to speak openly about his situation, his past, his trials and tribulations. He enjoyed the chance to share what he had encountered and pass along the knowledge he had gained, which is significantly different than what you and I have learned over half of our lifetimes.

Possibly the only moment in our talks that he did act a bit apprehensive came recently when we were talking after publishing Chapter 8. I told him I had a couple people make comments about the fact he was mentioned as a ‘shot-caller’ at some point during his incarceration. He definitely didn’t deny the actions, but he had no intention of making them bigger than they need to be. He explained that sometimes life is not seized, but thrown on you. Such is the case with his tenure, albeit brief, as a yard leader.

So, how’d that come about? Craig said it was a minor leadership stint, and not one that he was looking for but more something that he fell into considering the circumstances. Those included a move across state lines and into a new facility that changed the playing field.

Basically, Arizona was shipping inmates out of state and into Texas. Prison is a big business if you didn’t know. Private prison contractors make millions for housing, corralling, and “correcting” inmates. In fact, it was $4.8 billion — that’s with big boy B — industry by 2015. Craig’s current landlords were pushing him and another 100 convicts at a time off to a different facility by, in this case, putting them on a 900-mile, one-way bus ride. In shackles and handcuffs. That’s a 24-hour Greyhound trip you probably don’t want to pay for a ticket to join.

The course ran from Tucson, Ariz., to their new camp at the Newton County Correctional facility, a private prison in Texas which was located about 13 miles from the steamy Louisiana border on the southeastern side of Texas. There were roughly 50 inmates on each of the two buses, which was about double the number of inmates currently housed there when the crop of newbies arrived after covering one of the longest possible drives across Texas. They were the second group to pull into their new home and with Craig being one of the longest standing in terms of time down, it gave him a definitive role, by default, as one of the leaders. For the time being anyway.

“Somebody had to step up and be in charge. We had a bus coming in every few weeks and until the place was a filled and more people got there who wanted to be in charge, we had to make do. The hierarchy, they sent the word that they wanted this person in charge because they knew who he was, who he is. It was like a judge getting appointed. The higher-ups in Arizona would send word and as the population grew, those people would show up and I willingly and thankfully handed over the reins. It was short-lived by choice.”

Like everyone else, Craig had no desire to go to Texas. Once delivered, again like everyone else, he was pissed when they walked off the bus and saw the living conditions. It was substantially different than Yuma. They had had all the privileges and only a few restrictions based on Department of Corrections’ policy when they were in Cheyenne Unit. This new predicament, which was more of a warehouse system without any classification process, felt like a disciplinary situation. And remember, they were on essentially a 3 yard before leaving Arizona where they had seven buildings holding about 50 guys in each. Two buildings were Level 2 while the other five were Level 3. When they got to Texas, they were kept locked inside all the time, and were all segregated by level. The officials at this private facility didn’t understand how things worked in Arizona, as they thought a 3 level felon wasn’t allowed to bunk with a Level 2 prisoner even though just weeks earlier they likely could have been cellies or bunkies. It wasn’t an ideal situation based on their comprehension of the status quo from inmates matriculating from the Grand Canyon State.

The inmates found it immensely difficult to acclimate. They were pushed, prodded, cajoled into the position they were expected to assume, making it anything but easy to adjust. Another area that was felt deep and cut hard? No TVs.

I know. You’re probably thinking, “Wait. Their big issue, the one these prisoners were most upset with was a first-world issue like whether or not they would be able to see ‘Must See TV’?”

In Arizona, prisoners could have TVs in their cells or if it was a run, by their beds. It was their link to the outside, to the real world they no longer had daily access to in person. That connection helped them feel at least mildly informed, no matter what topic they cared about. It also provided stability, a connection to everything they knew on the outside, and in many ways, many times, it was their only interaction with anyone outside. And inside, it was a way to get away from anyone and everyone around you. But here, in the Lone Star State, they weren’t set up yet for inmates to have their own televisions. No outlets, no stands, no cable hookup in the runs. There was only a community room with a TV, which felt to all the newbies from Arizona like they were going back to county jail, a lesser facility than where they came from. This did not sit well, especially after they “volunteered” to go to Texas. And by “volunteered” I mean they did not volunteer but instead were told to get on the bus and that was the end of the discussion.

“As petty as it sounds, one of the biggest things we had to deal with was loss of TVs. There was absolutely nothing, no facility that would allow a TV for us.”

Their immediate response?

“Oh, hell no. That wasn’t going to go over well.”

Not that there was really room for a TV if the administrators had allowed one. Let’s just say not everything is bigger in Texas, especially when it comes to prison facilities.

All the bed spaces in Texas were double bunks; a bunk bed with no locker to separate the space from the next set of inmates. In Arizona, whether a bunk or a single, in an open space in a run, there was a 3-foot-high locker in between, which was then the backrest of your neighbor’s bed. That way you had separation between inmates. And separation gave people comfort, allowed them to recharge away from others or at least recede away from the daily barrage. It allowed for a protective barrier of sorts.

Until people got seniority, when they moved around the yard, they’d start on the top bunk, the most inconvenient, and then go to the bottom when it opened. If they were lucky, they’d then get shipped over to a single cubicle where they’d get a single bed, a locker and their own desk space. Quite the difference between there and Texas, where it was bunk bed, open space, bunk bed, open space. Nothing was left to separate the living areas. And the livable area wasn’t anything comparable to Arizona either. Back there, where they longed to be again, the beds were reasonably sized. They were a decent twin-sized bed, one that was about 34 inches wide and 7 ½ feet long. Someone Craig’s size, who weighs in at about 200 pounds and is 6-foot-4 tall, slept well in it and was fairly comfortable. He didn’t hang over either the end or the sides, something that wasn’t quite the same in Texas. The beds there were 27 inches wide, 27 inches apart, and on top of that, everything was made of steel. It was welded together, bolted to the floor and the bed itself was only 6 ½ feet long, while the actual mattress was about 5 ½ feet long. They were just a hard black foam, something encased in the cheapest cross between naugahyde and a blue tarp from Farm & Fleet, the agriculture outlet on the West side of Rockford that we all reference regularly but which few actually ventured to when we were younger because it was on the wrong side of town. Craig could lay on his back on the mattress and touch the bed frame on both sides — outside of the mattress — with his shoulder blades at the same time. He could barely lay on his back with his elbows on the mattress. If he moved an inch either way, they’d hang off. That’s how narrow it was and yet this is what they were supposed to sleep on every night.

The inmates’ perception was that they were essentially in lockdown within the new situation. No windows in the runs, no ability to go out to the yard, no ability to converse or interact. The administration had all seven buildings restricted because they didn’t know the difference, didn’t know that where these inmates came from it worked differently than this, but it still worked fine. These facts – going from a single cubicle, in many cases, in Arizona to this, and no separation, no windows – made it feel, in the prisoners’ minds anyway, like they were being handed a penalty just for stepping off the bus. And this led to one of the few confrontations Craig had to deal with as a leader on the yard.

Craig was put in a position he wasn’t comfortable commanding. He didn’t want it at all but for a number of reasons, he was quickly anointed among all those in charge. It was just his luck that the facility was so small and he was so senior, being “down long enough” in his words, and he had been enough places and knew how prisons worked well enough that everyone else felt he could speak intelligently enough to be a part of the primary group to represent them. Usually, it’s a different type of person who takes command and makes the calls.

“There are always people who want to be in charge, because it’s a power-hungry deal. Normally when they show up, I just step back. When I was involved in that situation, it was early on and there wasn’t much leadership because almost everyone there didn’t know what to ask for. The other part is, you have to understand how the system works to work it to your advantage. Guys would just jump up and down, acting like, ‘I gotta have this,’ and they’d ask for stupid stuff. ‘We need a porn channel.’ Well, no, no we don’t. It looks stupid on us. It may not look sexy now to ask for other, sensible things, but it does the community good in the long run.”

The problem was that no one else would stand up and do that. Craig knew they had an opportunity to gain something but they needed someone to do it. He was just one of a handful until the other couple hundred inmates made the trek from Arizona. At that time, someone else – someone affiliated with white leadership – would be tasked with taking the reins and being the idiot in charge, as Craig said.

Until then though, they had to deal with the current housing situation. TVs or no, the remaining living situation was dire enough to necessitate a major play. A defiant play.

Almost from the minute they got there, Craig and three other guys turned the tables on the officials. They essentially had just gotten off the bus and been told to move in, and so they walked in, looked around and then walked back out. They said no, and a few other choice words.

“We said, ‘Fuck you, no we’re not going back in. So you can either send me to the hole or take me back to Arizona.’”

That was a hell of a tactic. Kind of Marko Ramius-like if you ask me. You know, the Sean Connery character in Hunt for Red October. We’re going to talk a bit more in a later chapter about how some of these stories have similar plot lines to movies or TV shows. I doubt though that we’ll reveal whether life imitates art or art imitates life. Anyway, Ramius takes a huge risk when he moves the sub back into the path of an oncoming torpedo. He cuts the distance in half, based on his theory that the projectile wouldn’t be armed in time and would just land a glancing blow.

The inmates were trying to do something similar here. Instead of bowing to the administration, they sent a message: this was a Level 3 facility and if things didn’t change, they were going to become instigators. They were going to purposely jack up their score – the arcane points system that determined what level of privileges they could receive – and go up to a Level 4 on purpose. That meant more work for the officers, more difficult days and nights, more paperwork, and more anxiety, never knowing what’s going to happen at any given time. For this play to work, the inmates had to make sure the administration believed their intent. When an official said that even scoring a 4, they’d just put them in another part of the facility and they’d still be here, that’s when Craig and Co. cut the distance in half.

“We looked him in the eye and said, ‘You have a Level 5 here? No, OK then. That’s where we’re going.’ And the look on their faces changed so quickly. That’s because you have to do some really, really bad shit to get back to a 5, like assaulting an officer.”

As it happened, Craig and one of the other yard leaders were bunkmates at a previous camp, and that helped them feel like they had strength in numbers. So they made their play. And immediately, the officials took them to the hole. And in case you’re wondering, the hole actually has a cell number. Like he was at 8-C-10 when he left Yuma – that’s Building 8, Run C, Cell 10 – the hole is 101-03 in Newton County. That’s a far cry from A-2-47 – Building A, Run 2, Bed 47 – that he, for the time being, would not be occupying anymore.

He was down about 30 minutes before the cell door opened and in came one of the correctional officers, a guy Craig had seen before while they were being transported from Arizona. Fittingly with it being a privately run company, the prison guards were not required to wear insignia, so Craig wasn’t sure of his rank. That was likely on purpose. The more anonymous they could be, without corporal or sergeant’s patches or even name tags, the less likely an inmate could identify one of them if they were, say, accidentally punched in the face.

So this guy comes walking in and all kinds of thoughts start screaming through Craig’s head. Because, you know Texas has been on Dateline and other news programs for having abusive staff members, and this guy is, as Craig said, “A mountain of a man, at least 6-foot-6, 300-pounds, no insignia, no nothing. And the first thought is, ‘Oh, this is going to hurt.’”

Imagine that. You’re locked in a cell and here comes this guy walking in. There’s no place to run. No place to hide. It’s like running with the bulls in the shop and you’re what’s made out of china. These are all thoughts racing right then, and then … it’s pretty much over. The guy talks with Craig and wants to know what the inmates’ concerns are, what they’re demanding.

The situation de-escalated rather quickly, before anything malevolent could start, and ended up being a negotiation of what’s acceptable and what’s not. Craig helped him understand how the prisoners felt they were in a worse situation than what they left in Arizona, almost a disciplinary scenario, even though they didn’t do anything wrong, didn’t earn anything for misbehaving, and why that was resulting in their current standoff, which by the looks of it, Craig and Co. were not winning. That’s the downside of being in charge: when bad things happen, you are the first one they come to. If someone is beat up, you are the first one they come to, and then you go to the hole, too.

At this point, the officer said they’d work on it. He promised some things would get better, said which things the administration could try to work on, mainly the TV issues. The storage area and lack of personal space, well, he said they’d take it under advisement and run it up the flagpole. Hard pill to swallow for the inmates, but what else were they going to do? The leaders were already in the hole, and the guy the administration sent to negotiate, who knows what his role really was? He didn’t have insignia on, they never learned his last name that day, there was no way for them to tell if he was a lowly pee-on or a bigwig or just someone really large they sent in to get people to behave.

So, they did the only thing they could at that point and went back down to their bed spaces to carry on with life.

The other big gripe for the inmates was that they needed jobs, which were few and far between because the yard wasn’t as big as Yuma, Tucson or Florence. It wasn’t as big but they still needed money to live. They couldn’t expect family to just send cash simply because they moved from Arizona for no reason. They wanted to work and make their own money and pay their own way. It took a while for the administration to come up with enough jobs, but after a couple months, things had pretty much settled down except for one issue: the TVs.

When they left Yuma, the officers had packed everything up, put it on a truck and shipped it with them. TVs, personal affects, everything. The problem was the buildings weren’t even completed when they showed up. Arizona needed the bed spaces, so they shipped inmates off and Texas took them, ready or not. Just another lovely day of institutionalization.

“They had plans to put in outlets, cable boxes, make better space for beds, but we came before the improvements were made. They put us in one building, maybe for a week at a time, and moved electricians into another building to work there putting in the cable boxes, electricity, everything. Then we moved in and the electricians, welders, everyone was in there where we were. As they completed a building, they’d bring in the next bus load and fill it and start over.

“So that’s when it led up to a kind of sit-down strike.”

What the inmates did was actually something a bit different, and according to Craig, it, “absolutely fucking freaked them out.”

The section Craig was in – a total of 300 people – instead of everyone refusing to go to work, everyone went out onto the rec field. All at once. All the races at the same time. At that place, it was an open yard setup where you can come and go out of the building to the rec field as you please as long as you’re not in count space or in bed. Because by this time they did have TVs, usually there are 50, 60, maybe 80 guys who are in bed sleeping or watching TV, but in this situation all the buildings emptied out with all 300 prisoners on the field at once.

“They were like, ‘Oh shit, something is going on.’ Immediately, a major came down, and it’s funny because when big brass comes out, all the middle management, the sergeants and lieutenants, oh, and a major here or major there, they’re all like ‘I’m doing my job.’ We look and we’ve never seen them before in our lives, and all of a sudden they come out of the wood work, just doing their job? It’s a crony thing, just so they know the big guy knows I’m here doing it and that I have his back.

“But a major at the time came out and earned all our respect. We were gathered at the rec field, sergeants were surrounding him to protect him from inmates, but the major stopped and said ‘Stay there,’ and he walked on the rec field by himself. He stepped up and asked for the 3-4 people to talk to, you know like, ‘Whoever is in charge of the idiots, come out to talk.’”

Obviously, Craig was in that group at the moment and was asked what was going on, what was the grievance? The major said the first 1 to 2 items could be remedied within the next couple days, while items 3 and 4 they’d check into. The next two things the administration threw out, but the inmates already knew they would never get it. It was just to try. The main point Craig got across to the officials though was, “You have to communicate with us better. If we knew the first two topics were being worked on and you say it’ll happen in the next two days, then we wouldn’t be out here. It was a learning experience for them.”

It turned out to be a learning experience for the inmates too because it was one of only about three times Craig could remember all races working together at once. It was a ‘Get your ass outside’ moment and it wasn’t going to work without everyone – every prisoner of every race – taking part to get the point across. They lucked out that it did. It wasn’t long after that that the facility was nearly full and Craig stepped back out of the spotlight, effectively ending his leadership role as quickly as he could.

Oh, and that mountain of a man Craig had the pleasure of meeting in a dark, solemn cell? Turns out he was a vice president of the company that was running the facility. He and Craig sort of became friends over time, and he was an escorting officer on the bus when Craig went back to Arizona 3 years later.