Visiting Hour With My Pen Pal James Trent
A couple weeks ago, I did a prison visit with my pen pal James Trent. Readers of Sentences will remember I wrote about a clemency hearing for James in July where I testified in front of the prisoner review board along with members of his family. For almost five years, I’ve talked on the phone and emailed with James, but we’ve never met in person.
It was a long two-and-a-half hour past Springfield, across the Illinois River, and down Highway 99, to get to Western Illinois Correctional Center which is situated just a mile outside the small town of Mt. Sterling. Across from the prison, slow-moving tractors moved through the fields cutting down the tall brown stalks of corn for the fall harvest. As I approached, guard towers peered out above the prairie and spirals of barbed wire glistened in the midday sun.
Western Illinois prison was built after people in Mt. Sterling lobbied for a prison in their dying hometown. As a recent WBEZ podcast tells the story, a sweepstakes contest was launched in Illinois during the mid-1980s that had small towns competing for who would get the next prison, bringing the promise of jobs. Western Illinois prison currently holds 1,700 men and employs some 400 guards.
The prison was recently in the national news after three guards were convicted in a federal courtroom of beating and killing Larry Earvin, who had just four months before being released. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
Stopping at the front desk, I filled out a form presented by a guard, and showed two forms of ID. Next, I bought a debit card from a self-serve machine to use for the vending machines in the visiting room. I inserted a five-dollar bill, hit a button, and got a wallet-sized plastic card. I put it back into the machine and deposited an additional twenty dollars on the card. For those in prison, the food from the vending machines was much better than what they were used to eating in the chowhall.
As I sat down and waited to be called, I watched a man and woman push a cart of packaged foods as they were buzzed through the front door by a guard. They were from Four Seasons Vendors which supplies the vending machines. They had a cart stacked with boxes of candy bars, chips, pizza pockets, and other snacks. After they checked in with the guard, the man went to the card dispenser, opened it up, and pulled out a large stack of cash, which included my $25.
In my mind, I started wondering how much money Four Seasons Vendors was making during visiting hour? I filed a Freedom of Information Request and received a 2014 contract for the vending machines. In the contract, I found a statement that 25% of commissions would be paid back to Western Illinois Correctional Center. This is what is typically called a “kickback” to the state agency for the right to have an exclusive contract. It is, in effect, legalized bribery. But it is a common practice in the prison industrial complex.
A guard called me back, I walked through a metal detector, stepped into a room where I put my car key, two IDs, and remaining cash into a locker. I could only take in the plastic vending card. The guard asked me to raise my hands above my head and he did a pat down search. I then joined a group of other visitors—there were six of us total, all young people, four girlfriends visiting their men inside, and one other young man visiting his friend.
I was assigned a table next to a large mural of an underwater scene with starfish and crabs. While I waited for James, I walked over to the vending machines to see what the options were. When I turned around, James was sitting at the table with a big smile on his face. He stood up, growing to his full six-foot-seven inches in height. He wore a prison-issued big blue shirt and denim pants.
We hugged and smiled at one another. After we sat down, I looked into his deep brown eyes, and we started a long four-hour conversation. We talked about our families, what we were reading, the cities we have travelled to, football, Taylor Swift and, of course, prison politics.
James was excited to get photos of us together. He had purchased photos from commissary beforehand. He asked me to call ahead to confirm that pictures would be taken. I wondered why. I called the prison and they told me that an officer was assigned to take photos. James told me later that he went for some twenty years without getting his photo taken with family members during visitation.
So, James was pleased when he saw the guard enter the room with his small digital camera. When he came to us, James and I stood in front of the underwater mural and posed for our photo.
We got three copies of the photos. James let me take my favorite one (pictured above), and he took the other two. The pictures were something he could hold on to, take and show his celly. It was a reminder that someone on the outside cared about him.
As we talked, I made trips to the vending machines for James. For my twenty bucks I got: a bacon cheeseburger which I warmed up in a microwave; a Philly cheesesteak sandwich which I also heated up; a bag of potato chips; a soda pop; and Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, which we shared. I asked James how the cheeseburger tasted, and he said, “Excellent!”
I inquired with James whether he had seen any change in the prison since Larry Earvin’s killing five years ago? James comes from a long line of orators—his grandfather was head pastor of the largest Pentecostal church in Peoria.
James told the story of how when he was young, he had the job of cleaning out a house that had fallen into disrepair in Flint, Michigan. He quickly found out the place was full of roaches. If he sat down, one would crawl up his leg. They called the exterminator who came out and sprayed the place. James asked if the bugs were gone for good. The man said to wait a couple weeks and put out a little food to entice them. They waited, put some food out one night, and the next day, sure enough, the bugs were back. They called the exterminator to come back out. He sprayed again. The exterminator said it usually took three times of spraying to finally get rid of the roaches.
As the guards called for an end to the visit, I gave James a big hug. I walked out and looked back at him sitting at the table. It all seemed so unfair. I got to go out into the “free” world while James went back to his cell.
James has already spent 20 years in prison. He is deeply regretful for what occurred on the day that put him there. As he recounted the story with me again during our visit, tears streamed down his face.
What a complete waste of human potential, I thought afterwards. James was just one of the 29,000 people in Illinois we keep in our 27 prisons. Rarely do we ever hear about what really happens inside them. If we look behind the walls, we will see the horrific things that go on there, like what happened to Larry Earvin.
We also might see people like James, a gentle giant, who spends his days playing chess, reading comic books, and waiting for the day when a governor might see his humanity.