Back in late November a memo was posted in our residential unit that the listing for the next Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) class, which starts January 13th and is scheduled to end September 22nd, would be posted at noon on December 19th. I was like terrific, getting on that list would totally make my Christmas and New Year more exciting. At the time a neighbor told me from his intel that it was likely I would get in. He waited in the RDAP building for over a year to start the class, but wound up getting significant time off from the Second Chance Act due to his long sentence and decided to not take the program. He got a release date around the same time the program class he would have taken ended (Patti edit-at visitation on Monday the guy told us he got a commutation from Biden on the 17th and will be going home ASAP). In early December the BOP announced that six stand alone camps, most of them with RDAP, were closing. There was also talk of the RDAP program being stopped at McKean, another PA camp. This means Lewisburg will be the main active RDAP camp in the area and there would be even more inmates transferring here for RDAP, increasing the waiting list. On December 19th after work, being all nervous, I walked over to the RDAP building to look at the list, but couldn’t find the listing in the typical location. After walking around, I ran into a senior staff member who told me the list would be posted on January 13th. Upon returning to my residential unit, I started asking other inmates questions. Apparently the RDAP staff had a meeting with the inmates on the waiting list and told them that due to the camp closings and at least 3 inmates currently enrolled in RDAP in Morgantown being transferred into our program, they were holding off on finalizing the list until January 13th. So at this point I’m getting very nervous. What if I don’t make the January class, which has around 40 slots? Will inmates get transferred here and cause me to not make the April class with currently only 26 slots and delay me until July? Christmas and New Years come and go. I thought the holidays would be easier with my experience being away now, but it was still very difficult. Finally January 13th arrives and I’m in disbelief. Not only did I make the list, I’m in the middle of the list with other friends behind my date who also make the cutoff. I immediately had a very emotional call with Patti. Patti edit (the 13th was Connor’s 25th birthday and I had been praying hard for Jim to make the class. I had a feeling come over me while I was loading the wood stove in the basement that Jim might call when he got home from work with good news(it was around the time he gets back at) and I walked upstairs and my phone started ringing and as I hit the top step, I could see it was Jim calling. I knew he would only be calling with good news and as soon as I heard his voice he said I have good news and I said really and we both started crying tears of joy). I still continue my current routine for the day which includes running, playing pool & ping pong and reading in a very happy state.
At work Tuesday I’m assigned a large project, so I work a lot Tuesday and Wednesday, which are the last days of my Unicor job. Unicor used to allow the RDAP’ers to work from 10:30-1:30 most of last year, but decided they had enough inmates and stopped the half days. Upon my arrival back to camp from work on Tuesday at 1:30 someone tells me my counselor called me over the loudspeaker. So I meet with him, get my new RDAP bunk assignment and I am told to move by 4pm count. I walk over to find my new home and am excited to not only get the bottom bunk, but I am also paired with a very nice guy I was friendly with, who started the program in October. RDAP housing is a military style setup, where there are 76 bunks in each of two large rooms. There is 4-5′ between bunks, which go around the outside of the room in a circle. The top bunk has a small locker in front of the set of bunks and the bottom bunk has a locker on the back side. You need to keep almost everything off your locker most of the time. Up to five pairs of shoes, two 12 pack soda boxes, a half gallon ice bucket and one box of Gain laundry detergent can be under the bunk. One bag of dirty clothes, one bag of workout clothes, one shower bag, your jacket and a towel can hang and you can purchase clothes hangers to hang your khaki’s on. Each bunk comes with a plastic chair that is used as a step for the top bunk. There are no sides to the bunk on either side, unlike a kids bunk bed, so you need to be careful not to fall off the top bunk! After making several trips, I completely fill my locker to the brim. The bulk of my items besides clothes and food were books, letters, cards, pictures, picture albums, cleats and a spare set of new running shoes. (They ran out of my size running shoe for 7 months, so I purchased an extra set.) By 4pm I was exhausted from the move, but was so glad it was nothing like moving out of an apartment or house! My first order of business was to get rid of some stuff. I threw out almost all of my 100 plus cards and postcards, saving the custom Shutterfly picture cards and some cool breakwater postcards from Clark Little. Then I threw out a few hundred of my extra pictures, extra letters and paperwork. On my to-do list is to go through some sailing books and write down notes, so I can give the books to friends and/or place them in the libraries. Ironically, this sounds a little like book reports, something I avoided in school like the plague. Originally, I planned to save the books as references. There are so many neat details about islands in the Caribbean in the books. Finally, I brought over my newer, more premium mattress and now I have a bunk with springs, which is more comfortable on my old ass.
The lights go out after 9pm count and so by 9:15-30 the room is dark and quiet, much different than my cube in the camp. The TV/RDAP community meeting room has 10 TV’s (5 on each side) along with a projector with probably a 150″ screen and loudspeaker system. The room is used each weekday morning at 7am for the RDAP programming community meeting and is used as a TV room after 3pm and all day on weekends and holidays. They typically play movies on the projector Friday and Saturday nights and apparently have hundreds of DVD’s. The TV’s have the same Service Electric basic cable with Starz as the rest of the camp. There are some break-out rooms for classes and programming. One room has an old Nintendo and a few Cribbage games in it. There is a small library with a fish tank. The hallway connecting the two bunk areas has twelve 4 person tables where inmates play cards, dominoes, chess and cook. The hallway also has a laundry room, an ice machine (much more stocked with ice than the camp machine,) chargers for tablets and a CO station. Outside there is a paved track with a soccer field in the middle with a pull-up bar at each end. It’s just shy of 1/4 mile, so my 3 mile runs are now 13 laps. The gym is conveniently located next door. There is a basketball court and two horseshoe pits adjacent to the gym, reserved only for RDAP.
RDAP is a 36 week modified therapeutic community program consisting of three modules beginning every 12 weeks with a total of 96 inmates that can actively program at a given time. Upon program completion inmates that are close to their out of custody date are released to a halfway house or home confinement. Others who are further away from their date will need to reside at the camp for typically a few extra months. For the two days I’ve been programming we have had large community meetings with all 96 inmates, small meetings with just my class of 42 inmates to watch videos, have been assigned a big brother and drug treatment specialist corrections officer, been given an extensive list of rules, expectations and benchmarks, and learned a little bit about the various committees and requested a committee assignment. I look forward to the program and it helping to make me a better, more responsible person.
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