Prison Radio
Kenneth Zamarron

So this is Kenneth Zamarron from Indiana at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. The short piece is entitled “Four Days on Lockdown.”

We were placed on lockdown for four days. That’s 96 hours, 5,760 minutes, 345,600 seconds. I will spare you the milliseconds, yet I can tell you on lockdown, we feel each millisecond. Why? Why? You asked why we injected into our small prison cells for four days, hours, seconds to suffer.

I can tell you it’s not what you think. It was not for violence, not for an escape, nor for a COVID outbreak. I can tell you we were placed in our undersized cells so that correctional officers could have four days of what they call officer appreciation day where they played sports and ate humane food on facility grounds.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you: they bring their families in to stare at us prisoners in our undersized cells as if they are at a new enclosure at a zoo, as if we prisoners lost the characteristics of human beings and feelings—as if we abandoned our feelings with the title “prisoner.” This is a punch to our soul. It is a stab to our morale, a smack to the word “appreciation.”

I wonder if doctors and nurses would ever be permitted to have four days where they lavished themselves in good food and sports while they abandoned those patients at their small hospital beds, willfully ignoring the fact that their condition and state deteriorated and worsened.

Nevertheless, here I sit abandoned, stressde for days, hours, seconds, to feel every millisecond. However, I am lucky to self-medicate for my comrades with this pen and the power of words to express through Prison Radio.

These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.