48 Years Ago and Counting
I unlocked the car door and watched my husband come through the gate, leaving razor wire and prison walls behind. Older, grayer, thinner, more reserved, more watchful; his face softened as he caught sight of me. He began his long walk across the prison parking lot toward freedom, “Re-entry” and me. Life Inside Out!
“Let’s go home Babe.”
The story of this home-coming begins 48 years ago with a rape conviction and a life sentence shortly after he returned from Vietnam at 23. He served 15 years inside. We couldn’t know those first 15 years were just the first down payment on a conviction destined to place him in prison or paroled to the Sex Offender Registry for life.
Back in the day, his parole conditions were the same as every other ex-felon’s: no alcohol, no firearms, no associating with other ex-felons, gainful employment, and regular monthly parole visits. Back then, parole officers still wore street clothes, not swat gear. They realized rehabilitation was possible even for those convicted of a sex crime.
While he was on that first parole, we married, moved, found “gainful employment,” and bought a house. We built a very ordinary, law-abiding life together. Normal. Rehabilitated.
So we imagined.
Ten years into that first parole, my husband was re-arrested and sent back to prison; not for breaking the law but for drinking beer; a “technical parole violation.” With him back inside, we waited for a parole hearing, expecting release to a second parole with conditions much as before. But while we were building that ordinary life, laws changed, gradually tightening the noose for sex offenders released on parole.
With the passage of the Adam Walsh Act (AWA) in 2006, America’s Sex Offender Registries soon ballooned to an unwieldy list of 900,000+ “sex offenders.” Parolee’s names and addresses could suddenly be trolled on Google. Prosecutors got elected claiming they were “tough on sex offenders.” No one seemed to care that the AWA’s unwieldy, bloated Registry failed to make any child safer. Sex Offender supervision fees became law enforcement’s “Cash Cow.”
To accomplish Mass-Registration, the AWA forgot rehabilitation, and cast off Risk-based offender management. So long as the original conviction had even a faint “sexual component,” the AWA was applied retroactively, starting with convictions in 1956, and going forward to forever. Life on the Registry. No exit. “Once a Offender, always a Sex Offender.
We were lucky. Some got labeled SVP (Sexually Violent Predator) and sent to civil commitment “facilities.” For them, there is no exit. Collateral damage run rampant.
***“If the Board releases on parole a prisoner convicted of a sex offense, the Board shall require as a condition of parole that the parolee reside in a location only if it has been approved by the parole department…***
While he was on that first parole, we married, moved, found “gainful employment,” and bought a house. We built a very ordinary, law-abiding life together. Normal. Rehabilitated.
Absent a loved one like me on the outside, frantically trying to put together an approved re-entry plan, in this state, a parolee may stay in prison for 12 months after “technically” being granted parole. Past that initial 12 months, the parole board solved the prisoner’s no-approved-re-entry problem. The Board just rescinded the prisoner’s parole and he remained incarcerated, caught in a loop, to await his next parole hearing in a year or two.
Overjoyed but at first unaware of all the changes brought about by sex panic and the passage of the AWA, I wasted a precious 11 months expecting he’d be approved and paroled back home to me, to the house we’d bought, to the life we’d built, to the good job still offered by his employer. The perfect Re-entry package?
Not after the AWA became law.
Approval Denied. No Re-entry to a different state. Back to the drawing board.
So, with barely 30 days remaining, I rented the house we owned, quit my job, and moved from out-of-state to a town near his prison. All in hopes of getting him outside prison walls before the parole board rescinded the parole they’d granted nearly a year before.
Time was running out. Parole in his pocket, he still walked the yard.
Once moved, I found a job and called the parole department, “Please come look at the apartment I found. Please approve this Re-entry plan.”
“No.” “Too near the park.” “Too near a daycare, a church, a McDonald’s with a Play-Station, a …” His Re-entry Plan denied and denied, again and again, by a parole department bent upon applying AWA to what was left of our personal lives.
“No.” The parole officer smiled. Got back in her car. Not her problem.
I try again.
“No.” This time because the parole officer spied a bus stop over on the next block.
***“The Parolee shall not have contact with a person less than 18 years of age…” ***
“But his conviction had nothing to do with children.” I protest.
The Officer shrugs. AWA: One size fits all.
Not her problem,
I try again, “Where do you let sex offenders live?”
“The Blue Canary. It’s a downtown residency hotel. Approved for sex offender Re-Entry.” The Officer smiles.
I try to smile back. I’m afraid she’ll smell my fear. Afraid she’ll see the desperation, the anger bottled up inside.
But The Blue Canary?
The officer nods. Home sweet home. Take it or leave it.
I am suddenly nauseous. A downtown residency “hotel”? But I can’t just drive away and abandon him in prison with a parole in his pocket.
Three days later, Prison doors open and I watch my husband, older, grayer, thinner and more watchful, walk across the prison parking lot toward freedom and me.
“Take me home Babe. Take me home.”
“Welcome to the Blue Canary! Daily, Weekly, Monthly!” The sign screams, “Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! 24/7 Lap Dancing! Free drinks!” Ancient smoke and stale sweat greet us as we step inside. Years of sweaty desperation recirculating through all the tired “housekeeping rooms” stacked six floors above the lobby where we stand. I look around. My eyes sting. My mind screams, “Run.”
“Come on Babe. It’s okay.” He reaches out a protective arm.
*** “a parolee shall abstain from consuming, Possessing or having under his control any alcohol” ***
Together, we move on past the lobby’s in-house grocery, shelf upon shelf of forbidden beer and wine. Temptation. Recidivism. Walk on. Walk on.
Behind the reception desk, a couple of clerks stand around telling off-color jokes. A bald guy looks me up and down, considering.
Better the Blue Canary than watch my guy age and die still in prison. Better this than the pain of keeping a long-distance love alive. Better than to watch hope die year after year in a prison visiting room.
The clerk hands over our key. “Room 605. Month to month. On time, or else.” The desk clerk’s smile, like the parole officer’s, fails to warm his cold eyes.
I can still feel the warm relief that washed over me as we headed toward the elevators and Room 605. An “Approved re-entry” and privacy at last.
***“The Parolee shall not have contact with a person less than 18 years of age…” ***
The elevator door opens. Three skinny little kids spill out, and run across the lobby toward the tiny grocery where a freezer chest offers ice cream bars.
Who knew little kids were “approved” to live in a place like this? Maybe the little kids of one of the Lap Dancers flashing on the screen behind reception? Who knew?
He shakes his head.
The Blue Canary is convenient for the Parole department’s monthly “home” visits. All their “dangerous sex offenders” are lumped together in one place. All officers have to do is throw on swat gear, revoke a few parolees once a month, pack ‘em in the paddy wagon, and take off. Saves time.
Still, what about these little kids?
Just then, the oldest, a thin little girl of about ten, looks up, smiles shyly, and then all three disappear back up the elevator.
.***“A parolee convicted of an offense listed…shall have no contact with a person under 18… shall not be at or near 1) a playground, park, school or school grounds, 2) a Motion Picture Theatre; or 3) a Business that primarily has children as customers or conducts events children attend…” ***
A man in the corner of the lobby, an ex-felon I remember from the prison visiting room, leans in on a teenage girl with an already-old face. She shrinks away, rummages through her purse, and hands over more money.
What’s going on?
I drop my eyes, remembering the life-saving prison rule: “Never make eye contact. Never have his name in your mouth.” A shot-caller in prison, outside a drug dealer, a pimp, a sex trafficker. The Blue Canary’s lap-dancers come from everywhere and nowhere, supplied by pimps and shot callers just like him.
We move on to the elevators, toward the AWA-approved safety of Room 605.
The sweaty sound of bump and grind music blares through the thin wall. Gypsy Rose Lee music escaping from the bikini bar advertised overhead. The PA system squeals, then an announcer’s voice starts hawking lap dances, offering porn to truck drivers.
“A Parolee convicted of an offense listed…shall not possess sexually explicit material…shall not patronize a business which offers a sexually related entertainment…or possess any electronic device capable of accessing Internet sites showing…”
“Never mind, Babe. Parole approved this place, remember? It’ll be Okay.”
The elevator door opens, closes. Silence as the elevator jerks toward the 6th floor and the safety of our “Approved Residence.”
Living at The Blue Canary feels like living under a bridge, only six floors up.
The door to Room 605 swings open. Alone at last. But I’m tongue-tied, awkward, embarrassed in the sudden silence.
How long has it been since he was free to see all of me?
“It’s Okay, Babe. It’s Okay.” He grins, “No fence, no bars, and no guards watching us. Babe. It’s Okay. No rush.”
He moves past me, on down the short hall, exploring. Opens the bathroom door, nods at the sight of one shower, a single toilet. A real bathroom. He pauses next to take in the lumpy queen-size bed. He walks to the end of the room to stand staring out the tall window, whistles at the sight of blue sky, sunshine: the free world.
“No razor wire.” He smiles, really smiles, at me.
I click on the TV and start unpacking boxes full of reminders of the home sweet home I left behind… for The Blue Canary. Suddenly I can’t stop crying…
“It’s Okay Babe. I’ll help unpack.”
He pulls open a drawer beneath the TV and holds out a pair of left-behind thong panties and a man’s dirty tee-shirt.
“Yours?”
We look at each other, then suddenly, we’re laughing, hugging, crying.
Breathless, we surrender to freedom.
Together at last.
Life Inside Out. Submitted by Janet Mackie