The Big House Read online

  Welcome to Minnesota Correctional Facility–Oak Park Heights, a super-maximum-security prison housing the most violent and dangerous serial killers, murderers, drug dealers, and sex offenders.

  These felons are not incarcerated here for singing too loud in church choir.

  An inmate’s cell measures seven by ten feet. Each contains a bed, table, toilet, and sink within the ambiance of reinforced-cement floors, walls, and ceilings. The bed is a cement slab topped by a thin mattress. The toilet is made of steel so it cannot be broken; it lacks the amenity of a hinged seat or a lid, which could be used as a weapon.

  For inmates, this is home—sometimes for the rest of their lives.

  In prison, nothing is as it seems.

  On the outside, a bar of soap is for washing.

  Inside, it becomes a deadly weapon if hidden in a sock and swung at someone’s head.

  Outside, a toothbrush is for brushing teeth.

  Inside, it can be sharpened into a homemade stiletto for settling disputes—once and for all.

  Outside, a Bible is a holy book.

  Inside, it can be hollowed out and used as a cache for weapons or drugs.

  The

  BIG

  HOUSE

  Life Inside a Supermax

  Security Prison

  Warden James H. Bruton

  Life Inside the Razor Ribbon

  This football game was different from any other ever played.

  The game wasn’t over when the clock ran out or when one team scored in overtime. It didn’t end with a record-setting field goal or a long touchdown pass. This game ended when the quarterback stabbed the running back.

  It was a glorious summer day on the field, the green grass aglow in the sunlight and the crowd cheering on the players. Yet this wasn’t playground or recreation football, nor was it a college or professional game. The players were serial killers and drug dealers, rapists and child molesters, murderers and thieves, convicted felons who had committed atrocious acts against innocent victims. Their field of play was different from the grassy public parks, sandy lots, or stadiums that host most games. The gridiron was in the yard at the super-maximum-security Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights. This was prison, a place that brings together men with histories of settling their differences with violence. The Big House-an environment of myth and mystery behind high walls, a place the outside world tries to ignore yet watches with intrigue.

  On the surface the football field was largely the same as any other, with team benches, yard markers at regulation distances, goalposts, and end zones. But instead of spectators in stands, press boxes, and luxury suites, correctional officers with Colt M15 automatic rifles observed from the rooftop and brick walls were laced with sensor systems, creating an air of foreboding not found at other stadiums.

  The Oak Park Heights complex is made up of eight housing units in a circular pattern surrounding the eight-acre recreation yard: Each unit contains fifty-two of Minnesota’s most aggressive, dangerous, and violent prisoners. As its first warden, Frank Wood, once told me, “These people are not here for singing too loud in church choir.” Each team in this game was the home team and no one left the stadium when the game was over. In fact, some stayed behind for years, some for the rest of their lives.

  It was the prison’s recreation schedule and incentive-based program rewarding good behavior that had brought members of two housing units to the yard to play football on this particular Saturday afternoon. Yet in the Big House, past good behavior doesn’t always dictate future good behavior. This truth would certainly be demonstrated today.

  The offense came out of the huddle and lined up in formation as on any other play. The center snapped the ball and the quarterback turned to hand off to the running back for a rush to the right. But the quarterback did not execute the play as called.

  Outside prison walls, when a quarterback changes the play at the line of scrimmage it’s called an audible. From an inmate’s perspective, changing the play on this day was called taking care of business. Some quarterbacks carry a card with notated plays, others a wristband with their notes. The quarterback in this game carried a piece of non-regulation equipment–a sharpened length of metal known as a “shank,” prison slang for a crude homemade knife. He wasn’t concerned with moving the ball down field or winning the game. His goal was doing in one of his own teammates.

  Instead of handing off the ball, the quarterback plunged the shank into the running back’s chest. No routine handoff, this was a premeditated assault with a deadly weapon. The ball tumbled to the ground and the field of play erupted in chaos.

  This game was over.

  The quarterback was John Albus, a felon with plenty of prison years behind him and a long sentence still ahead. He had been transferred to Oak Park Heights for causing trouble at another prison and was labeled as “high risk.” Yet for some time his behavior had been exemplary, qualifying him to live in the special unit whose inmates had been rewarded with this game. But it was all one big con. Albus had likely planned his attack months in advance. For him, feigning good behavior, getting into the special unit, and playing football were all part of a larger game with deadly intent.

  After the attack, we immediately sounded a Code Three. Over our prison radios, staff was alerted that there was an inmate-on-inmate assault with a weapon. The special Security Squad ran double-time to the yard. Made up of highly trained and experienced officers, the Security Squad is the Big House equivalent of a police SWAT team, adept at managing any kind of disturbance thrown at them. The squad leader first gave orders to clear the yard, sending all the players back to their cells for a lockdown. The Security Squad blitzed the quarterback, sacked and handcuffed him. They then hustled him off to the Segregation Unit–his football career was over. During this action, emergency response personnel attended to the injured running back. The weapon, however, had disappeared.

  We quickly made several important discoveries. The game had been videotaped by an inmate so it could be played on closed-circuit TV for the rest of the prisoners. While recording the play-by-play action, the inmate also captured the deadly final play. As soon as the camera operator realized he had recorded an assault, he immediately tried to destroy the tape. No self-respecting inmate would ever assist the staff in anything–especially providing evidence in an attack. The staff members, however, were quicker on their feet. We intercepted the tape intact, and it became key evidence during the quarterback’s ensuing criminal trial.

  The clarity of the game tape would have done Monday Night Football proud, and the bright sunlight proved critical in providing a piece of evidence. Without the actual weapon, we could not produce physical evidence linking the perpetrator to the assault. All we had was a victim who had been stabbed in the gut with something–and that something definitely wasn’t a football. But the videotape clearly showed that as the quarterback turned to hand off what appeared to be the ball to the running back, a sudden flash appeared on the tape. Reviewing the play, we determined that flash to be the sun glinting off metal. The videotape and that brief, shining flash proved to the court the precise time of the stabbing and that a weapon had been used.

  Weapons are made in prison with mind-boggling imagination. A scrap of metal, a piece of hard plastic, a chair leg, a broken wastebasket, a sliver of wood–all are raw material for prisoners to form into dangerous weapons. Plastic and wood are ideal because they won’t be picked up by a metal detector. Small objects are coveted as they can be easily hidden in the mouth to be carried about within prison. Serious assaults have been made with just a bar of soap held in a sock and swung with powerful force. Pencils or toothbrushes rubbed to razor-sharp points become stilettos. Ingenuity is the key ingredient, revenge the mother of inven
tion. It’s an art, in a strange sort of way, and inmates are masters.

  It would have been tough to smuggle the weapon out of the unit hidden in clothing, as officers always search inmates before they enter the yard. That yard is also searched by staff after its use, so hiding an object outside would require cunning. The problem is that cunning is part of the inmate mindset–the tougher the challenge and the tighter the security, the better they become at ways to defeat it. Inmates carry weapons if they can-they believe they may need them for their own protection or to do someone in. Hiding a weapon inside the rectum is a common way to move contraband inside a prison; keeping drugs or other secret items on a temporary basis in this personal hiding place may not be comfortable, but inmates consider it a necessary evil. It’s also almost impossible to detect. A seasoned con has nothing but time on his hands to deceive, manipulate, and orchestrate underhanded activity with the precision of a brain surgeon.

  I never found out how the shank got onto the football field and into the quarterback’s possession. It may have been smuggled into prison specifically for this assault. The quarterback might have made the weapon in the industry shops, brought it to the living unit, and eventually into the yard secreted on his person or in his clothes. Or another inmate may have smuggled it in for him. The weapon may have been hidden in a secure spot in the yard for some time. There could have been several others involved in shifting the contraband from person to person prior to the assault.

  The weapon was never found. The attacker and his likely accomplices had prepared for hiding and disposing of it before prison screws–inmate slang for correctional officers–got their hands on it.

  I also didn’t have a clue what might have been the motive for the stabbing. Was it a gambling debt, or perceived disrespect? Was it a dispute over drugs? Was it over now, or would there be repercussions?

  I struggled to answer the question of how long in advance the stabbing had been planned. The setting in the recreation yard was the perfect playing field for the attack, as the cons were grouped close together making it difficult to identify participants. How many knew what was going to occur? If the players know the play is to be a stabbing, do the ends complete their routes, do the tackles block? Does the defense try to sack the quarterback if they know he has a weapon he’s ready to use? There’s an unwritten code that prisoners provide no credible information to officers. Even though the stabbing threatened his life, the running back kept mum. Whatever the reason for the attack, he got the message loud and clear.

  I’ve been around college and professional football myself, but nothing could prepare me for the Big House. Before choosing corrections as a career, I played Big Ten football with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers and practiced in pro training camps with the 1968 Dallas Cowboys and 1967 and 1971 Minnesota Vikings. By the time I became Oak Park Heights warden in 1996, I thought I knew football and prisons. I’ve seen the biggest, toughest pro athletes imaginable, but I had never seen football played Big House style.

  When you walk inside the walls of a supermax prison, you are entering a bizarre new world. There are many incidents so foreign to the outside they almost seem make-believe. It’s a fantasy world rife with drama and deception, unlike anywhere else on earth.

  I often wonder what the average citizen would say about this world if he or she were exposed to it for a lengthy period of time–or even for just one night in a cell. Prison tours bring you inside where you can observe security procedures and inmates at work or study. Even a morning tour can be an education for those that have never been inside the walls. A short visit, however, is only a snapshot of what really goes on in this world.

  What’s missing from this small glimpse is the prison culture and all of the mystery that goes with it. A tour would likely never come upon a stabbing in the yard or ever really understand the industry of smuggling drugs. Illicit tattooing, gangs, inmate hierarchy, contraband weapons–you’ll see none of these.

  Life as a warden or prison officer is different from most any other job in any other workplace. Every morning, I would meet with my staff to review the reports from each post on all three shifts, documenting the previous day’s activities. This gave us an opportunity to appraise problems–and it was rare that there wasn’t a problem. On any given morning we might discuss separating two inmates so they wouldn’t slit each other’s throats, searching food carts for contraband drugs, or locking down cells as a precaution to prevent a riot. One day, I decided we must bolt together the prison chapel’s chairs and benches. That Sunday morning a fight had erupted during church services, and inmates had used their chairs as weapons. Bolting the chairs together was a simple solution to stop them from being thrown during chapel brawls, although determining why the incident happened and how to prevent it from occurring again was more difficult. I teased our chaplain that he presided over the only church where the pews were bolted together so the congregation couldn’t throw them at each other. He didn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humor.

  Inmates incarcerated at Oak Park Heights have dangerous pasts-pasts that usually follow them into prison. The lessons they’ve learned in life on the outside are just transferred to the inside. The majority of prisoners are murderers or have committed other violent crimes, and violence is usually the only way they know how to deal with issues. I’m always bewildered and alarmed by the willingness of many inmates to hurt or kill someone over something as trivial as a gambling debt or a minor misunderstanding. Their reasoning and logic are often distorted–even perverse–making each day a challenge.

  Sometimes it is difficult to determine what is real in this world and what isn’t. A fight between two inmates may be exactly what it seems-or it may be something else altogether. The fight might have been staged to divert the prison staff’s attention from what’s happening elsewhere. Contraband found in one unit may have been planned to be found so inmates could secure their concealment of something else.

  I often wondered if anything was real.

  Being in control of a supermax prison is like playing football on a grand scale, but instead of playing for champagne and a Super Bowl ring, you’re playing for lives. Every day you try to stay one step ahead of your opponent. The mentality of us versus them exists at every moment, underlying every activity. I once overheard an inmate telling other cons it was his job to do what he could to break the rules and it was our job to catch him-if we could. This is the reality of prison. It’s a game of its own, inmates versus officers, and we’re all playing for keeps.

  One of the realities of running a prison is taking calculated risks. I once took a risk with an inmate that could have cost people their lives. Charlie Vaughan was a triple murderer; the third victim had been his girlfriend. He was a large man, standing six feet eight inches tall, weighing 260 pounds, and was serving a sentence of life without parole. And we took him home on a Friday night.

  You read right: We took him out of one of the most secure prisons in the world and brought him home.

  Minnesota’s Department of Corrections has a long–standing policy allowing for deathbed and funeral visits. Thus, depending on an inmate’s behavior, we may allow a three-time killer to go to the deathbed of an immediate family member or attend a funeral. Vaughan’s father was dying at home and the inmate had requested to see him. We had a tough decision to make.

  On the face of it, the decision may seem an easy one. Take a triple-murderer out of a supermax prison to visit home? The very idea was ridiculous. Yet the more I thought about it, the more it seemed the humane thing to do-even though Vaughn’s own history proved he had no deep-seated love for humanity.

  To minimize the risk, we began thorough planning and preparation. When we were ready-and without telling the inmate any details so he couldn’t make escape plans-we brought Vaughan to our holding room in the prison intake area. He was handcuffed and shackled with chains that were locked together at his waist; we then transferred him to a prison security vehicle and set out. With the assist
ance of the Correction Department’s Special Investigation Unit and local law enforcement, we took him home guarded by twelve staff members in eight vehicles.

  The inmate’s trip home went smoothly. After a brief visit, Vaughan was brought back to prison. His father died the next morning.

  The deathbed visit meant a lot to Vaughan, his parents, and even to neighbors, who remarked on the compassion shown the family. And although it was not part of our motive, that deathbed visit may pay for itself in other ways. Someday there may be an incident, and hopefully, this offender will remember the compassion shown him in a time of need. Down the road, that deathbed visit could save the life of an officer.

  It was a calculated risk with grave consequences, and I’m still haunted by visions of what could have gone wrong. I’ll never forget that, and I think the inmate will always remember what the staff did for him and his family. These kinds of decisions don’t exist in the business community outside the walls of supermax prisons. For a warden, a decision like this comes with the job. Sometimes you make the right one. Next time, maybe not.

  My daily interactions with inmates run the gamut from the simply strange to the truly terrifying. These interactions are skewed from the start because on most days in most situations, inmates lie. It’s a generalization, a stereotype-but it’s been proven over and over again. Lies, misrepresentations, distortions, and half truths are the norm. Little an inmate says is ever believed without full verification. It’s unfortunate, but true. It’s also unfair to those few offenders who do tell the truth. When you are responsible for a prison, you soon realize this may be the sole profession where you start off every conversation with your “client” assuming they are not going to tell you the truth.

  I was superintendant of another correctional facility when inmate Ellis Wayne broke down in tears as he told me he’d just learned his sister had been gunned down, the innocent victim of a grocery-store robbery. He was distraught, and for the next two days, the staff counseled him and handled him with compassion as he grieved his loss. I have always been proud of my officers’ humaneness when an inmate has a crisis in his family. Our chaplain, watch commander, caseworker, and others assisted this inmate through a tough time while we also made arrangements for him to attend the funeral.