{As we enter the last week of Lent 2024, I am looking at only six more rooms in my series. Today, I consider what it must mean to be locked up in a cell for a night or a lifetime.}

I was locked up at the maximum security Virginia State Penitentiary more than once. I had not been sentenced there, however. I was there for “work.” And each time, I was let go only hours later. But my brief experiences there are still vivid memories. To paraphrase the old saw, “It’s not a nice place to visit, and I for sure wouldn’t want to live there.”

The Virginia State Penitentiary had been located in Richmond since its founding in 1800. Thomas Jefferson was behind a reform movement of some sort, and he designed a building to house inmates. That design was never used, but (and this is fascinating to me) the initial building design came from none other than Benjamin Henry Latrobe. It was his first American design; he later designed the United States Capitol up the road in Washington. When I first entered the penitentiary, it was said that the oldest building still standing dated way back to the early 19th century, and it was still being used.

[Note: the whole penal facility was demolished in 1991, and the maximum security prison is now in Greensville County, Va. Lovely name for the home of their electric chair.]

I first entered the Richmond facility in the late 1970s, and when I say I was locked up there…well, of course, any visitor is locked in. I entered, was searched for contraband of all sorts, and was buzzed into and beyond the very imposing prison gates. Then I was escorted across the open prison yard to a classroom where I was to address the Prison Civil War Roundtable. I had been invited by the group because one inmate had heard my radio program. On it I had featured the music of a Native American rock group called Xit. I had also interviewed some members of the Virginia Mataponi tribe about their history and then-current position in American culture, centering on social justice issues. The inmate found the convervation and the music so interesting that he thought I would fit into the discussions the inmates were having about the American Civil War Era.

I’m pretty sure I lugged some playback equipment into the classroom, with the permission of my prison contact, perhaps the chaplain, the Rev. Bill Dent. The worst part of the event there was that initial entrance into the ancient facility, the clanking of the bars as the front gate closed behind me. Then there was a walk through the yard between buildings, knowing I was being watched by scores of inmates. (This was the era of rioting by prisoners at Attica and other institutions.) But the reception by grateful members of the Round Table, their attention to my comments and the music I’d brought (maybe the inmates just loved the group’s name: Xit!), made for a very positive experience that afternoon. Naturally, my remarks had been less-than-comprehensive and probably didn’t add much to the inmates’ understanding of the issues faced by Native Peoples. And they could have spent hours educating me about the Civil War. It was an afternoon well-spent for us all, but I was glad to escape.

As I think about the proliferation of white supremacy gangs in today’s prison facilities, I am trying to recall the racial make-up of the Round Table participants so interested in the Civil War. I can’t remember. I wonder about that.

Another visit, maybe five years later: our church “couples club” had heard about the offerings of the “Spring Street Theater,” and took in a Friday night play offered by the prisoners. [The penitentiary was located on Spring Street not far from Richmond’s downtown.] It isn’t surprising that what I remember most about the evening is not the play, but the general experience of our church group seeing this as an interesting way to spend an evening…behind those fortified bars, watching inmates perform, seeing the result of their wanting to tell a story to the outside.

Finally, there was the invitation of a chaplain associated with the Virginia Council of Churches. He wanted to describe to church folk what being in prison is like. I was invited to bring my still camera and an audiocassette recorder into a cell block to record brief interviews and take slides of the general conditions there. That we had gotten permission for this project still surprises me. Apparently, the prison officials had some say over what we reported (and what we recorded, for that matter), but I recall no censorship once the audio-visual production was edited. One inmate was a young man who appeared frightened, and vulnerable. He told me of how unsafe he felt even in his cell, what it was like to be incarcerated in the general population, and he noted the screaming we heard echoing through the cell block, a cry I can still hear now. The shouting was not so much anger, but lament. It was on the tape as we played it back on the soundtrack and later on my radio program. Haunting.

In our conversations with inmates on all three occasions, we knew enough to never ask, “What are you in for?” Better we didn’t know. They had already been judged by juries of their peers.

As I type this I recall one other visit with inmates, but not at Spring Street. This was a video my colleague Billie Brightwell and I made at a women’s corrections facility in a county west of Richmond. That visit was very different from the others. I think we had two recording sessions there, and the women, sitting in a circle, told their stories, shed some tears, and offered us honest appraisals of their situations. Afterword, one person back home had recognized one of the women prisioners in the video and told us of her horrific crime. Again, better we had not known that day.

I have other stories of my media-mediated visits to cells and their occupants. One young man told his story of being befriended by an older man who had known him from the neighborhood (and from church) before the kid had gotten into trouble. We told that story in a video I produced for the national organization of Presbyterian Men. It was called “Mentors and Proteges.” The young man’s mentor had helped build bridges back into society, aiding in the protege’s restoration into the community. The mentor, a meat cutter at the A&P Market, told of how all the adults in his downtown neighborhood were responsible for one another’s children’s behaviors. I took it that it was a kind of surrogate parenthood when any kid was getting into trouble. The mentor was still dedicating himself to nurturing the recently released young man.

I tend to write sometimes with tongue-in-cheek or with a light touch, even about serious matters. I hope I have escaped that (for the most part) today. Serious, even tragic matters lead to convictions and sentencing to cells. There are victims of every crime. Directly, indirectly. And I am certain that some (many?) who are locked up were initially victims, too. Poverty. Racism. Mental health and addiction. Youth without nurturing homes. Various injustices. No, those conditions may explain but do not excuse laws or persons broken. But meeting prisoners where they are does remind us of their humanity, for better, for worse.

“Lord, when did we see you…?

“I was in prison, and you visited me.” — Jesus.