Judging from this article that my spouse showed me — https://www.wivb.com/news/local-news/collins-abbreviated-federal-prison-sentence-was-hell/ — Chris Collins is mad. Yes, that Chris Collins: former US Congressman, Trump crony, convicted insider trader, FBI misleader, and Trump pardon recipient who was sentenced to 26 months in federal prison last October. He got out, thanks to The Donald, before Christmas, but yeah, two months can be hell.
Normally, I try to avoid exercises in comparative oppression. Little comes of claiming that my misfortune is bigger than yours. But if I slip for a moment when I react to Chris Collins, I think I can be forgiven. After all, this is the guy who, as far as I can tell, spent most of his time and energy in Congress — when not getting illegal stock tips — sponsoring anti-abortion and pro-gun legislation. When he was the county executive of Erie County, NY, he was sued by the US Justice Department for overseeing a local jail system that “routinely and systematically deprive[d] inmates of constitutional rights” ( https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-challenging-conditions-two-erie-county-new-york-correctional ). As a member of Congress he co-sponsored the snarkily named “Kids Before Cons Act” that would prevent federal funds from being used by any inmate to receive a college education, conveniently forgetting that cons are someone’s kids, too. And yet I understand why Chris Collins is mad. Now he has actually beheld the prison system in all its dangerous and useless glory and felt its powers of dehumanization.
Welcome, Chris. I have never imagined that the Road of Damascus ran through Florida, but if that was your journey, who am I to judge? Chris, I feel you anguish over bing placed in a solitary confinement cell for three weeks as a COVID precaution on your way in to prison. It’s truly ridiculous, especially when prisons have demonstrated no ability to protect inmates against COVID whatsoever, even though the BOP has cooked its books in many ways to make the situation appear tolerable to those on the outside. Let me tell you, Brother Chris, I sent 27 days in solitary on my way out of prison, as a different kind of “COVID precaution.” That’s even more time than, as you rightly point out, the 14 day quarantine the BOP claims as its policy. Get this, Chris, the first 10 days I was in a 6′ x 10′ solitary cell with someone else! Because we both were scheduled for release on the same day, the prison figured they would save some space and pack us in together. Eventually my cellie, a kind of Proud Boy wannabe, was taken away because of some prior misdeeds that were going to delay his release, but still I feel your pain, Chris. Oh, and Chris, do you realize that after I was quarantined for 27 days they sent me to a halfway house that had absolutely zero chance of keeping out the Corona virus because they send residents in and out every day to go to work? Yeah, there was an outbreak there during my residency, too.
As you further point out, Chris, that BOP public relations happy talk about treating inmates with respect and the high level of professional training among the staff is really just a lie. A lie like Trump winning the election and Mexico paying for the wall. But we have all gotten so used to lies in the country, it’s going to take everything we have, Chris, to get people to recognize even a shred of truth again. If you had hung around the BOP long enough, you would almost certainly have seen how prison staff lie to put people on solitary on a fairly regular basis. And Chris, you would have had it good, too! You were going to be chilling in a Federal Prison Camp, the level of security all inmates aspire to. “It’s sweet there!” all the higher security inmates used to say. Not to fantasize to your detriment, but I wish you could have found out a little more about the very system that has upset you so much.
Still, Chris, welcome to the fight again the prison system. OK, so you didn’t get your activism when you were in Congress and really could have done something about it. Sometimes we have to be the persecutor to become the reformer. OK, so now that you have a pardon, you feel as if you don’t have anything to fear from the Bureau of Prisons. That’s good. But now you have to use your Get Out of Prison Free Card to help your brothers and sisters who, you suggest, still DO have something to fear from the BOP when we speak out. And quick question: did you fear the BOP before you became an inmate, too? Can only pardons set us free and give us the temerity to speak truth to power? We are glad to have you on board. Call your former colleagues — if they will take your calls because I know many of mine wouldn’t take mine — and get them on a reform footing. I imagine you are much changed by your two month ordeal. I pray that the people you know will be transformed by your experience, testimony and analysis.