Release: The Brutal Truth

The audiobook version of Falling has just been released on Amazon and Audible. Over the next month or so I will be sharing with you some of my favorites stories from Falling to enjoy while you exercise on the treadmill or take your daily walk. InMinimum: After Parole Will I Fear a Person Wearing a Badge?

Release: The Brutal Truth

In the tender early days of parole, I rode the buses of Portland, Oregon, looking for a job. On every employment application was the question: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

I rode buses for days. Each morning as I crossed the Burnside Bridge, I would see women I met in prison, rolling up a tarp, a cardboard box. One day I saw The Enforcer. Once a mighty Viking Warrior, now lost on a corner.

The women looked better when they were in prison.

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In the tender early days of parole, I rode the buses of Portland, Oregon, looking for a job. On every employment application was the question: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

The women looked better when they were in prison.

G Unit was the discipline unit and housed the roughest women in the prison. Whether you are a from the Country Club or skid row, it is where everyone begins their prison time. It was where this volleyball mom met Celly, the Alpha of the prison, and my new cellmate.

I had heard about her since my first days in the Intake Unit. I expected her to be hard-hearted and distant but, from the moment she entered the cell, she said hello with a sweet smile and a tattoo near her eye. As she settled onto her bunk. She began singing in soft beautiful voice. I wasn’t afraid.

“I like that little tattoo by your eye, it looks like a teardrop,” I said. She stopped singing immediately and peeked her head over the edge of the bunk, grinning.

“You’re really green. You don’t know what that means, do you? I shook my head. “It means you have been to prison or you were ordered to do a hit, and you succeeded. I can mean you were raped.” She withdrew and didn’t offer an explanation for her tattoo.

I the days that followed, one on one, late into the night, she told me the details of who she was. She was the step-daughter of a dominant Los Angles gang chief. She told her story in a soft voice that didn’t match the razors of her world.

“I like that little tattoo by your eye, it looks like a teardrop,” I said. She stopped singing immediately and peeked her head over the edge of the bunk, grinning.

Release: The Brutal Truth

by Karen Campbell

Minimum: Big Buck Offers True Corrections

The Department of Corrections uses discipline before problem-solving. I spoke to a few of the officers who tried to offer problem-solving advise, only to be burned by both inmates and staff. Most of the officers kept themselves, finished their shift and got the hell out of there.

The exception was Big Buck, our Maintenance Crew Boss. He was the first one in my experience to ask questions to our crew about how we plan to make it on the outside.

“Who has a place to live? Who doesn’t have a substance abuse problem? “How much money have you saved from your prison account? Go back to your unit and think about it.” Back on our units, we began talking to each other. We began to think again.

Listen to "Minimum: Big Buck Offers True Corrections"

Miss Clever was released from The Hole after six months for making distributing, and consuming Pruno, homemade prison booze. If a woman was lucky enough to be released from The Hole, she returned to the general population emaciated, and tamed. I had to know what went on back there. Word had gotten around that I was writing. Miss Clever agreed to an interview.

“I was back there long enough to lose about fifteen pounds. Even my eyesight got weird. My ears echoed of months. I heard strange noises from the vent, I hallucinated. Some women swear they hear music or experience hot and cold phenomenon in the room, it’s called Seg-sickness.”

“I remember seeing you across the yard, in a dog kennel. You were waving and calling out our names. We were forbidden to answer. I felt sick inside. It was cruel and unusual punishment for both of us.”

“I like that little tattoo by your eye, it looks like a teardrop,” I said. She stopped singing immediately and peeked her head over the edge of the bunk, grinning.

Minimum: Big Buck Offers True Corrections

by Karen Campbell

Big Buck

The Law Librarian at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility called me. (Once a felon, always find-able). But it was good news. She read my book, Falling, and wanted to do a book group for the women in the Medium/Max side who have borne the brunt of COVID with very few outside services. Big Buck

I told her that writing the book about broke me. “I had to open a very black door of my past. Originally, I was terrified of the women. But many were kind to me and I learned to love the unloveable, including myself. I promised the women inmates I would write about their tragic histories, I would humanize them. I need to ask you, did I humanize the staff of DOC as well?”

big buck Karen Campbell writes Long story short, the law librarian put it in the hands of Colette Peters, the Director of the Oregon Department of Corrections. After reading Falling, she told the law librarian that she wanted the book in every library in the Oregon Prison system.

My partner, Tom, (yes, another Tom, which makes it easier for my Senior moments), packed up 70 books and we went North to Coffee Creek. I was thrilled and nervous. As we approached the Grahams Ferry Road exit, I might have requested four pit stops. Alas, the mind paroles on but the crushing misery of prison lingers in the body.

We pulled into a space near the front of the visiting center. The door opened, and out came the Law Librarian with an assistant and a cart. She was smiling. It was happening. The book would be on the library shelf.

I wrote the book for the staff of DOC as well: Chappie, the prison chaplain, Tammy, Instructor of the Hair Design Program and Good Cop who was kind to my children. But there was one person who I wished to read the book, more than any other. It was Big Buck. If I could somehow get it into his hands he would learn what a difference he made!

Big Buck was my Maintenance Supervisor. During the winter months, the crew cleaned tools and propagated seeds around the table. Big Buck peered over his glasses listening to our chatter, and once in a while, he tossed out a question for the table: “Who has a bank account? Who has been saving money?” There was dead silence around the table. “Who has a place to live? “Who has a substance abuse problem?

He simply asked a question and let us work things out. The questions lingered in our heads and we began to talk about it among ourselves, eventually with our family and friends. NO ONE else from the Department of Corrections had done that.

It falls on each parolee to educate herself and prepare to follow through with the simple skills of living in the community. But let’s face it, the women I was incarcerated with lacked the upbringing that included those skills. On parole day, we were given our medical records, a box for any prison possessions worth keeping, and three condoms. If you did not have friends or family waiting for you, you were issued a gray sweat suit and a bus pass so you would be driven off of the property. At least those of us who worked with Big Buck had done some thinking that could lead to some solid planning. Could I ask the law librarian to give him a copy?

I looked around the parking lot, the set of Minimum Custody buildings, and the seven lines of barbwire fencing surrounding the Medium/Maximum cell block that housed Sinful and Angel. Wait a minute. Who is that by the flagpole? It couldn’t be! Is it Big Buck? I turned to Tom, my eyes swimming with tears.

“I think that’s him! It can’t be, could it?” Tom’s green eyes were shiny. “I have to go see!” The tall man fixing the flagpole kept working but swiveled his head and peered over his glasses. I wept and stumbled over.

“It’s really you.” I blubbered.

“I read your book, he said, still twisting the rope on the flagpole. Then he turned to me, “I read your book twice.”

“Then you know,” I managed. He was nodding, misty.

“For all of us, Kalik, Tizzy, Blondie, Hippie Chick. What would we have done without you?” The big man shook his head.

“Do you know now, what a difference you made for all of us? Your work mattered to all of us. You changed our lives.” I was a puddle.

“I do,” He nodded, lost in his own emotions. Perhaps he lived through years of doubt and futility, but now he knew. And he believed it.

“Thank you,” I said. He nodded and went back to his work, doing the right thing. The book was in the right hands. I could take a day off.

by Karen Campbell