Humanity & Incarceration Project

I am a 76-year-old inmate at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. A ghost.

 

I come from a generation that has abandoned me, a temporal-spatial illusion, scrambled, topsy-turvy, in a place and time that doesn’t even have music. At least none that I can hear.

 

This isn’t doing time, being here in prison at my age. It’s watching. At most, haunting and watching.

 

A ghost.

 

At my age, what can I do in prison but watch and haunt. When I say "haunt," what I mean is that I’m sure my presence is felt.

 

Still, I'm too old to take a program, and I took all the programs years ago anyway. I'm too old to play sports. And I've outlived everyone close to me so I have no one to communicate with on the outside.

 

Because of age alone it's tough to find common ground with anyone else in here. Can you imagine the conversation between me and someone from a younger generation?

 

Ghost.

 

I’ve been in trouble all my life and in prison, but not for anything serious, no one ever got hurt, all nonsense and what you’d expect from a kid from a broken home, from a dysfunctional family, growing up in the drug culture of the ‘60s. We were the first and I assure you it was all uncharted and no one knew what they were getting into and I’m understating my ass off here.

 

Talk about being a victim of your environment. I can see it all now, the progression, gangs totally different than today, the gang fights, mano e mano insanity, the drugs (I could write till my hand fell off). Then, wise guy, organized crime, and I tell you, I thought it would be forever, a way of life. Even now, I still can’t believe it, the last wise guys standing. Why?

​

Excuse me. I never ask why. That was a typo.

 

What the hell am I doing in prison at my age?

 

I’m not a threat to anyone, health issues are the presiding fact of my life, costing the taxpayer a lot, maybe millions. There is nothing in prison, and nothing prison can do for someone my age. One hundred years from now, people are going to look back at this whole prison system like we look back now at witch burning.

 

Ghost.

 

The nature of life, of time, is change. No one is the same person they were 5, 10 years ago. Seriously, having been so drugged out during my trial, I sometimes forget what I’m here for. I don't remember anything about the trial itself and I think that’s what bothers me most: not being able to defend myself, not putting forth a defense.

 

Ghost.

 

The moral fiber of a country should be judged by the way it treats its elderly. Who else can the young learn from? The old have already negotiated the dangers of life and if one of them is going to explain and tell me how to survive and succeed I’m listening.

 

But this is no life. This is no way to live and the old know it and feel it most.

 

New York State has got to be behind the nation in prison reform by at least 100 years, no good time, no elderly bill where an elderly man does a significant amount of his time and is let out, no earned eligibility like, complete this or that, get a time reduction.

 

New York prisons were never any good at providing practical, realistic programs one could use on release. What, I'm going into floor covering at the age of 76? Going to be a plumber at 80, carrying tools in a wheelchair?

 

Ghost.

 

Age and time, Joe was a bull rider all his life, rode those bulls, now he’s 76 years and he’s no longer a bull rider, in fact riding bulls is the last thing Joe can do or wants to hear yet he’s still in prison on the rodeo, he’s a ghost of the rodeo.

 

Prison nature of the beast, everyone loses.

 

The universe hums like a great harp string, resounding a mighty chord.

Answ’ring each thought by returning a thing

From the place where all things are stored.