Release from Prison-Conclusion

 By K.M. Rockwood



In my last two blogs, I wrote about fulfilling a promise I made to pick Smitty up when he was released from prison after over twenty years of incarceration. Below are links to the first two blogs.

Because his release had been from a maximum-security prison, Smitty didn’t have access to the resources the department of corrections offers at pre-release centers. He hadn’t achieved work release status, so he had no job. No social workers or councilors were available to assist.

Thanks to the chaplain at the prison, Smitty had applied for and been accepted into a religiously based re-entry program. After I treated him to his first non-institutional meal in 20 years, we went to the address they gave him.

His new home was a rowhouse on a narrow street where most of the buildings had been razed. It was old, but it was well-maintained and the neighborhood, while certainly not upscale, was comfortably stable.  The houses were occupied by the people who took obvious pride in their property. It was within easy walking distance of shopping, potential employers and, most importantly, the parole office. Smitty had twenty-four hours to report for the first time.

The residence was shared with other parolees, but Smitty had his own room. And a key to the premises in his own pocket. Once he got it, he kept pulling it out and staring at it.

I left him there, but he got a phone and kept in touch with me to let me know how he was doing.

His first trip was to the parole office, where he was assigned a parole officer and given his reporting schedule of every Thursday morning. When he noted that might make finding and keeping a job difficult, he was told they would deal with that after he found a job. He had a GPS monitoring device affixed to his ankle and was given a drug test, to make sure he had made it through the first twenty-four hours without spending his fifty dollars “gate money” on some illegal substance.

Since I had worked with Smitty while he was incarcerated, I knew he had a good work ethic. He soon landed a job on a small contractor’s crew and went right to work renovating a store front. It was easily walkable from both his new home and the parole office. His parole officer wouldn’t change the Thursday morning appointment, but the contractor was flexible enough that he could take a few unpaid hours to make it.

The job was going well, and the contractor said he had a few more lined up after this was done. Smitty got his first paycheck and was ecstatic. He wanted me to come so he could take me out to dinner, but it was a long drive, and I had other obligations. Besides, I didn’t want him to spend a lot of his money on that. I promised to come for breakfast one Saturday as soon as I could get the time.

Smitty said I had been right about going straight from prison food to his preferences, which consisted mostly of greasy fast food. His stomach hurt most of the time, but not enough to make him eat a healthier diet.

He had a scary accident at work. As he jumped down from the back of a truck he was unloading, the strap of the ankle monitor caught on the edge of a pallet and ripped it off. Smitty landed face down on the pavement.

The contractor, worried about possible injury, told one of the other workers to drive him to the emergency room.

Smitty got in the car, but refused to be taken to the hospital. He insisted that he had to go to the parole office instead. He hurried into the office, the ankle monitor in his hand, and reported the problem. He was justifiably worried that the tracking system would report he had cut the device off and police would be notified to pick him up to return him to jail.

His own parole officer wasn’t in, and he panicked, but a supervisor replaced the strap and reattached it. Crisis averted.

Attending frequent NA or AA meetings was a condition of both the re-entry program and parole.

The church that ran the program asked participants to attend services and other church activities. Smitty wasn’t particularly religious, but he wasn’t a non-believer. He especially liked social functions, where the parishioners were welcoming and understanding.

At one, he met a guest who talked his about retirement from the nearby prison, where he had worked as a correction officer. Smitty said, “Yeah, I spent a lot of time there.” The retiree assumed he’d also been an employee and went on to disparage the inmates. Smitty just didn’t respond.

The days rolled by. Smitty worked, attended NA, went to church. When I talked to him, I could tell he was justifiably proud of himself.

The stomach aches got worse, though. He finally went to see a doctor. It wasn’t his digestive system. He had liver cancer.

Although he had been treated for hepatitis C while in prison, and declared cured, his liver was severely damaged. His intravenous drug use where he had shared needles was probably to blame. He’d been in prison for over twenty years, so the hepatitis had a long time to work.

Smitty transferred to a residential hospice program, and died four months later.

In our last phone conversation, he said, “At least I didn’t die in prison.”



Links to earlier blogs:

https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2019/08/release-from-prison-by-km-rockwood.html

https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2019/09/release-from-prison-continued-by-km.html