Visitation at Lancaster

I was able to visit Ted again yesterday for three hours. He has been moved to the work camp across the street from the correctional institution at Lancaster. The work camp has its own visitation center.

All week long I had worried about Ted being cold. The visitation room at Lancaster C.I. was cold when I visited on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. The inmates’ jackets are very thin – more like Dickies long-sleeved work shirts. During that weekend, the temperature was probably in the mid-60s and he and I both shivered for most of the visits. Ted said the dormitories at the main correctional center did not have either air-conditioning or heating. I wondered how he would fare as the weather got colder.

The concrete-block-walled visitation room at the main correctional institution measured about 15’ X 30’ with five long tables. Each table had eight chairs. (Approximately 35 inmates received visits on Thanksgiving and 15 received visits on Black Friday.) Inside the room was a bookshelf with children’s books, crayons and toys for any children that came to visit and a vending machine. A trustee sat behind a caged window to sell canteen food items, photo tickets and playing cards. Two microwaves were used to heat up the frozen canteen sandwiches and pizzas. Three doors led to restrooms (one for men visitors, one for women visitors and one for inmates.) Glass doors led to a 40’ X 50’ fenced-in outside area with concrete benches and tables. We did sit outside for a bit (in a patch of sun) and watched his unit quite a distance away as they clustered around an area (to dig holes he said) and then marched off in rows of three.

This weekend, Ted's stepfather and I arrived at the work camp. It was much smaller than the main institution. A guard asked for IDs through the wire fence and disappeared inside. Through the fence, I saw groups of young men marching in platoon formation, sounding off to a CO’s drills. I noticed that those young men were wearing the same blue uniforms and BoBo’s, but had red hats.

The officer returned and we emptied our pockets. We walked through a metal detector. As before, a female CO led me inside to a separate room and I took off my shoes. She checked the insides of my shoes and the bottom of my socks and patted me down for contraband. We were handed visitor’s passes and led to a fenced-in area close by the entrance.

The work camp’s visitation area was much larger than the C.I.’s. Probably twice as big. (The room doubled as a chapel, Ted said.) There were also three restrooms and a caged canteen, microwaves and a vending machine. This room contained more tables that were three times as long as the C.I.’s visitor center. Small shelves held decks of cards, chess and checker sets and books, and a desk contained crayons, Xeroxed word searches and coloring pages for the children.

Glass windows looked out over the large outside visiting area with concrete tables and benches. The windows facing the rest of the work camp had white paper taped over it. The portion of the chain link fence outside facing the camp had white material also blocking the view of the camp. There was a small section of fence that had not been taped on the other side where I could see Ted’s dorm and even his window and bed. (He was on the top of a bunkbed.)

Ted will tell much more (I had two letters of 14 pages waiting when I returned home), but the inside of the dorms were not cold, he said. He had two blankets, two sheets and a PILLOW (which he didn’t have before).

He received ALL of the books I had sent to the various prisons when he arrived at the work camp. He is now working in the kitchen washing pots and pans. Another young man washed the dishes. Two or three more cooked the food for the 270 people at the work camp.

It was very good to see him. He had been issued used black work boots because the kitchen floor was slippery. (No more BoBos!) He also now had THREE uniforms! No photo tickets were sold this weekend, so I was unable to get a picture of his new boots.

Last Tuesday, he had sat all day in a just-issued new uniform in confinement at the correctional institution waiting on an interview with an ABC reporter. (Someone had neglected to notify the reporter of the interview date until the day before.) The reporter told me the new interview date was scheduled for December 15th and I will call the prison to make sure that they know as well.

Ted said Lancaster work camp was the best out of all the prisons where he had been.

Photo: Google Earth aerial photo of Lancaster Correctional Institution and Lancaster Work Camp (Click photo to enlarge.)