EX-INMATE SHARES VISITING-DAY PAINS

It surprised her to find so many beautiful flowers outside the entrance. The
visiting room was bright and pleasant, too. The unit was brand new. It
didn't seem nearly as bad and depressing as Newt's letters had indicated.

They were old friends who grew up in the same neighborhood. After he got
involved with drugs and was sent up for five years, she thought it would
help him if she visited.

But it's hard to tell. Some prisoners appreciate visitors. Some don't. Newt
didn't.

"For the five-plus years I was inside I had visitors every two weeks," he
said. "and although I tried to discourage their coming, they endured, bless
them all."

The difficulties of a visit began with "coming from a noisy, dark, angry
cell block to the calm, bright, fresh visitation room to see loved ones," he
said. "It is hard to adjust and to leave the vibes behind the last door ...
"

Then there was the awkwardness of the situation. Visitors often are ill at
ease because of the nature of the surroundings, and their friends being held
in there may feel, as Newt said he felt, "the pain of seeing their
discomfort."

And finally, when a visit is over, "The walk back to the world inside can
leave you empty, lonely, and vulnerable," Newt said; "a few moments of
`life' only to be snatched away by the visitation door closing."

But he couldn't think of any way to explain his feelings to his old
neighborhood friend without hurting hers, without making the situation more
awkward than it was.

Roses outside, thorns inside

So he sat there, in the new clothes he had been told to change into for the
visit, and listened as she spoke of her surprise at how pleasant she found
what she'd seen of the new prison.

"It was hard to take," Newt said, "but I made the best of it."

Meanwhile, as Newt later learned, the husband of this old neighborhood
friend "was left at the guard shack up the road a piece and the two guards
gave him the lowdown: fights daily, inmates stabbed weekly, and several
homicides in the first month or so. A really bad unit to work in, much less
to live in. They were thankful to pull outside duty and dreaded going back
inside."

Newt said that after his friend talked with her husband on the way home from
the prison and she understood that "there may be roses on the outside but
there are thorns inside," she wrote him an apologetic letter. And she never
came back.

Newt has been out for quite a while now, has a good job, said he is staying
clear of drugs, meeting all his parole requirements, and won't be going
back. Said that after reading a recent discussion here about the prison
visitation process from the visitor's point of view, he wanted to relate the
visiting-day feelings he experienced as an inmate.

Visitors aren't always welcome

Several guards and supervisors also weighed in with observations about
visiting day from their side. One eight-year veteran made points shared by
many:

"Most of the time when an inmate is advised that he has a visitor he is
either working or at recreation," said this guard. "This means that the
inmate has to walk through numerous locked doors and gates from work or
recreation to his housing area. Once he has reached his housing area he will
shower and dress in his `visitation' clothes, his best set of whites."

The guard said that inmates "take their time, with no regard to the visitor
waiting in the sun or stuffy room," and inmates sometimes respond with anger
when told that they have a visitor, "because they were expecting them
another day, were watching `the game,' were in the middle of a workout,
domino game, baseball game, or simply taking a nap. I have heard more than
one inmate state that the visitor can wait a little while; `I'm the one
locked up.' "

"I would also like to add that I have never been rude, or short with a
visitor," said this guard. "It is not the visitor's fault that their family
member or friend is incarcerated. I have a family member in prison and would
not appreciate being treated unfairly because of his mistake.

"One more thing, there are a lot of bad people in prison right now, but
there are also a lot of good people that just made bad choices."

Thom Marshall's e-mail address is thom.marshall@chron.com.