In 2010, Winthrop University established the Common Book project, which was an initiative that gave the incoming freshman class an equal opportunity to read and discuss the same book within HMXP. Each year there have been different books that discussed topics such as inequality, injustice, racial bias and overcoming obstacles.
This year’s Common Book is “Just Mercy,” a book that is not only a call to action, but an inspirational tale that was written by Bryan Stevenson, an activist and lawyer from Alabama, a state historically known for its racism and discrimination. Stevensons’ book, “Just Mercy,” talks about the unfair and unjust practices of the criminal justice system, something that is overly prevalent in today’s society. Take for instance, the exonerated Central Park Five. Five African American children were convicted of a crime they did not commit and were falsely imprisoned for years.
It’s stories like that that the book “Just Mercy” focuses on. The book follows the narratives of people of color who were convicted of crimes that they were falsely accused of doing.
Statistically speaking, between the 1970s and 2014, following the war on crime and drugs, the U.S. prison population jumped from 300,000 to 2,300,000. Of those incarcerated 58 percent identify as black or Hispanic. This is an increasing issue in the current climate of the United States. A lot of political campaigns are addressing the criminal justice system, and how fair the current system is on African Americans or Latinx Americans.
Bryan Ghent, an English professor at Winthrop University, decided to do a hands-on experience with his HMXP class this year. Ghent said that, “As the Common Book this year focuses on incarceration, I wanted to tour a prison facility to give the class a better understanding of what prison life is really like.”
Ghent got in contact with Kirkland Correctional Institution on Broad River Road in Columbia, and on Nov. 8 Ghent drove 14 students to the prison. Kirkland, which was built in 1975, is a Level Three maximum secretary male penitentiary. Kirkland currently holds over 19,500 inmates. It houses 37 of the 38 inmates that are on Death Row in South Carolina.
Before walking into the building, the Captain walked outside to receive the students and gave instructions on how to act inside the prison. “Do not look at an inmate in the eyes, do not speak to an inmate and do not touch an inmate.” As the students waited for permission to go inside, five or six different inmates wearing jumpsuits walked past the group, some looking and others ignoring the group entirely.
Once inside, the Captain and Head Representative, both of whom are female, led the students on a tour of the facility. While walking to the medical wards, there were a plethora of inmates in different-colored jumpsuits. These colors help to maintain order and make it easy to identify what level of threat the inmates might be.
The Captain said, “Yellow uniforms equal inmates in lock-up [maximum security and solitary]. Orange and white stripes are new intakes These are inmates that just come into the system and are being processed. Orange are permanent intakes. They are housed in Kirkland and even have jobs within the units. For example, cooking, cleaning, electrical, etc. Tan jumpsuits are those that do not fit in the system and are level 2 offenders that have yet to be placed in a job. Those that work in the kitchen, these inmates wear green jumpsuits. The last color you might see is forest green and those signify death row inmates.”
In the medical unit, the group was met with the Lead Practicing Nurse, the Associate Warden in charge of activities and events and the X-ray specialist. The LPN shared that South Carolina is one of the only states that has an in-house facility in one of the prisons that is able to do all forms of clinical needs except for surgery. This saves the state a lot of money. They also don’t provide prenatal care for pregnant women. That is held at a different prison: Camille Graham Correctional Center in Columbia. It’s also important to note that the State of South Carolina has 21 state penitentiaries, and of those 21, only two are female institutions.
The medical ward of the facility strives to help all inmates to the best of their capabilities, and this includes those that are transgender. Currently in the Kirkland Correctional Institution there are two transgender inmates that receive the care that they need.
Following the medical ward, the tour group took a turn over to the cafeteria, where there were about eight different inmates cooking in the back and getting the cafeteria ready for lunch. When it comes to being transported over to the cafeteria the yard is silent, and the inmates must eat in silence. They eat for about 15 minutes, and those that can not abide by the rules are made to throw out their food and stand outside until their unit is done eating.
The tour then travelled to the intake facility, which is where all new inmates get their fingerprints, pictures, uniforms, head shaven and are made to watch a welcome video. Every male inmate that serves over 91 days must be transported to Kirkland to have their fingerprints and IDs done regardless of the county. It takes these intakes about two to six months for reception and evaluation before they are placed in the correct prison for their county.
The group from Winthrop watched as one new intake got his hair cleanly shaved before going back to where the new intakes receive their jumpsuits and turn in all of their belongings over to the state. Typically, if an inmate doesn’t have enough money to have their valuables (phones, expensive watches, etc.) sent home or collected, they have to be automatically donated, but at Kirkland they are a little nicer and give the intakes up to three days.
The Head Representative then took us to a classroom located in the intake area to have an inmate speak to us just like he would a regular intake. This was a lesson on the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, which serves to limit the amounts of sexual assaults in prison. The inmate who was in charge of the lesson was a PREA Peer Educator who was taught how to explain the ins and outs of what prison is like to the new inmates.
Ghent asked, “Does this typically help lower the amounts of… ‘you know’ in prison?”
The inmate responded, “Yes, it does. It changes things when you have a peer here to explain to you that prison doesn’t just mean that you’re going to get raped, so having someone here that knows the ins and outs, that knows that the programs work, helps some of them.”
The last place we were taken on our tour was to an inmate cell block. Before going inside, another cell block had inmates that came outside and started yelling and catcalling the students in the group. Inside the cell block, however, things were a bit quieter, but just as rowdy. To the left and right of us were two giant corridors that housed the inmates.
One of the gates were opened by the Captain who yelled at an inmate almost immediately for trying to show off in front of the visitors. She yelled a warning to let the prisoners know that there were females coming down, and the group of students went down the stairs and into the rooms. The rooms were small six-foot by nine-foot rooms that housed between one to three inmates per room (meaning one of the men had to sleep on the floor). In the middle of the block, there were showers that locked on the outside and had just a small shower curtain.
Walking out the block was just as intense as the first time, considering the louder block on the left. This group of inmates is one of the more secured units because of their behavior was once again yelling. At this point we neared the end of the tour and went back to where we started for some wrap up questions with the woman in charge of death row.
She shared with us that there are currently 38 men on death row in South Carolina. One of the men on death row is currently in California because he got in trouble there, but he will soon be expedited back to the state. The inmates on death row are given a choice of execution the electric chair or lethal injection. Most choose lethal injection. The last execution carried out by the state was done in 2011. There have been four men since the current head of death row was appointed in 2017 that have been taken off of death row and given a life sentence.
Michael Waldsmith, a sophomore art education major, reflected on his trip to the prison. “The image I had in my head was not at all how the prison was when we arrived. I had imagined something of a much smaller scale. The number of inmates, employees, facilities and the sheer size of everything was much larger than any books or movies led me to believe. What shocked me the most was that some inmates walked around somewhat freely in their designated work areas, granted there were guards posted everywhere. One man who spoke to us about PREA explained that he works as a sort of mentor for incoming inmates, and was much more polite and well-spoken than any mass media source would have led me to think prisoners could act.”
With the prison tour coming to an end, the Captain shared one final thought, because at the end of the day the people in prison are human too: “Check your humanity.”
