Interview with Kenneth Hartman (Prison Radio Long Form Team)”(29.17)
Reem Benhaddouch
Yeah. Okay, so I guess first, can you tell me a little bit about yourself, like your age and your interests and like where you’re from?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Sure. So my name is Kenneth Hartman. I am 64 years old. I’ll be 65 in December. What are my interests? You know, primarily my interests are writing. I’ve done a lot of writing in my life. I’ve published, you know, books and a lot of articles and magazines and newspapers and stuff, and and, you know, sort of corollary to that, you know, my, I guess my prime interest is trying to help reform the prison system in America to something less horrible, and I am originally, I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Had lived in Brooklyn, New York for a period of time, and then grew up in Long Beach, California, and I currently live in Sacramento, California.
Reem Benhaddouch
Hi, so I guess I’m just gonna go through all the questions that I sent you before. No problem. Yeah, um, so, how, what? Like, how long of your, oh, my god, like, how many years of your life have you spent, like, incarcerated?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Well, if I, so I was in prison in California for just short of 38 years, just a few couple of months short of 38 years. And then as a juvenile, I also served about, probably a total of little over two years. So I would say probably 40 years of my life I was incarcerated.
Reem Benhaddouch
Yeah, that sucks.
Kenneth E. Hartman
It really did. Yes and, and sometimes people ask me, like, you know, how long did it feel to be in prison 38 years? And I say it felt like 38 years, like, that’s, you know, that’s how long it felt like 38 years, which is a really long time. So, yeah, yeah.
Reem Benhaddouch
I guess, how would you like, describe, like, the culture within the prison? And guess like, and also how that, how you feel that connects to just general culture in the United States?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think, and I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve written about this too, you know, the culture in prison is really just a reflection of the culture in the United States. I mean, it’s, not like an alien planet or something. So the it’s just everything is sort of magnified and like in concentrated, you know. So, you know, we live in a society that is fundamentally, you know, classist, racist, sexist, you know, in a whole lot of other, xenophobic and a whole lot of other really unpleasant things. And those things are reflected in the way things happen in prison. They just get amplified and, you know, and get often do very extreme levels. I can, I cannot speak to the prison culture of any other state in the United States, and there are some differences. But in California, you know, there’s a there’s a lot of racial, racial problems. There’s a lot of, you know, people who are who, who are not heterosexual, are often treated very poorly. Trans people are treated extremely poorly, you know? And the one thing I would always tell people when I’m asked to talk about this, is like, you find every kind of person in prison in California, except with just a handful of tiny exceptions, people who were wealthy. You know, it’s basically, it’s poor. It’s a place for poor people. And I think it’s like the rest of our culture. The people who run the culture have very effectively convinced us, us poor people, to be fighting with each other when we shouldn’t be. We should be looking at the people who are actually stealing from us, you know, and we would be better working together. So I think that would be, broadly speaking, that would be how I think the culture is inside.
Reem Benhaddouch
Wow, it sounds very community destroying.
Kenneth E. Hartman
Truly. Yeah, it really is.
Reem Benhaddouch
A lot of your writing was about like your experiences with solitary confinement. So I kind of like, I kind of want to give you a chance. Do you have any, I guess, stories that you would like to share about solitary confinement, or even just like how solitary confinement, like reflects, or like how it interacts with, like prison as, like this, as, like, a further form of punishment within the prison?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Yeah, you know. I mean, I think, I think the thing that I can say, by way of, sort of, like a story, you know, I that, you know, I went to the hole- In total, I think I went to the whole like 11 times while I was in prison. And I think nine of them were political activities or something in that range. And, you know, I would say, you know, when you go to the hole, which is what we call it in California, call it the hole. And you know, it’s really, you know, it’s not like a like in the movies, you know, like, there’s like this dungeon, and you know, they to walk you down some dark corridor and throw you into a cave. It’s just another prison cell at the end of the day. The difference is, is you have no ability to do anything. You’re basically all of your sort of, you know, ways of passing time are taken away from you, and you are basically sitting in an empty prison cell, and you have no, you know, this is no television, there’s no radio, there’s often nothing to read, you know, and you are, so it’s kind of like this horrific shock of living in, you know, a cell block with, you know, 200 300 400 people around you. There’s always noise, there’s always people talking, there’s interaction, you know, social interactions, good, bad, indifferent. You know, whether you’re part of a, of a kind of a community, and then, you know, like an hour later, you’re in this dark, you know, not dark, but you’re in the cell that has no access to anything, and you can, nobody to talk to. And this is when people kill themselves. You know, this is like the, the first two weeks of a, of a when you put in the hole. This is like when the likelihood of suicide goes up dramatically, you know. And in California has a terrible suicide problem in prisons. And I say problem with, you know, imagine quotes around it, you know. I mean, everybody knows what it is. They just, you know, done anything to fix it. But, you know. And I personally, you know, I would count myself as a fairly resilient human being. I did survive 38 years of prison in California. And I can acknowledge, you know, there were times you know when that that first two weeks, there’s this, this immense. It’s as if you know, if you can imagine, like, all of your social interactions, all of your sort of human things just are gone, like in an instant. And it’s, it is tough. It’s really hard, and it is an extraordinarily depressing, it is a very challenging thing to experience, and particularly people who already have mental health problems. And let’s, you know, be frank, the prison system in America is the mental health system in America. That’s basically what it’s become, you know. So I mean, it’s, it’s very challenging for people and, and I think it is, it interacts perfectly with the idea of, you know, we in this country believe that punishment is the way to fix things. And, of course, every first year of psychology student learns that negative reinforcement doesn’t work. Positive reinforcement does work, and but somehow we just can’t translate that into our prison system. So yeah, there’s a, you know, the threat of that hangs over everyone’s head all the time, and there are rules passed through the courts, and the US Supreme Court that you know going to the hole and being thrown in the hole for no reason at all is, I think it was described in one court ruling as an expected part of the prison experience. So, so, yeah, it’s a it is. It is a terrible thing for for anyone who experiences it. And, you know, I did experience it quite a few times myself, and I know how tough it can be. Oh,
Reem Benhaddouch
my God. Wow. So 11 separate times, and nine of them were for political activism.
Kenneth E. Hartman
Basically, yeah, yeah.
Reem Benhaddouch
So I guess, like amongst those 11 times, is there any like, which, which time was the most impactful? Would you say? And could you possibly, like, I don’t know, like, recount that story?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Yeah, you know, I mean, I would say probably the most impactful in, in from a political sense, you know, I, by this time I’m older. I’ve been in prison a long time. I’ve developed, you know, a lot of connections on the outside, and I was involved in a lot of political activism to try to change the prison system in California. And I wrote a pamphlet called “The Honor Program: the Road to Rehabilitation,” which was based on the idea we had helped create a program at the prison in Lancaster, California that was fundamentally the difference between it and everything else in California was it was based on the idea of positive reinforcement for doing the right thing, which, of course, was just completely crazy for them, but, but it, but it worked really, really well, shockingly and not shockingly, you know, and I helped write the proposal and the in the program, how it would work, and all that. And we were, we were basically trying to get some traction with the rest of the prison system and with, you know, with politicians and, you know, and all that, and the media. And so I wrote this tract, and I, you know, I sent it out to supporters on the outside and in, on, we basically printed up, I don’t know, five, six hundred copies of this, and we had them all delivered to every every politician in the legislature, the governor’s office, all the Supreme Court justices in California, every warden of every prison in California, had about 150 media outlets, and it was delivered to them all on the same day. And it, it, it freaked out the prison system so much that they put me in the hole that day, that night, and and I remember when they brought me up to the captain of the facility where I lived, and he told me, he said, he goes, “You know, I’ve never heard of the Secretary of Corrections ordering anyone placed in the hole before, but that’s what happened. He called here and said, put you in the hole. So we have to put you in the hole.” And, and, but it was like impactful in the sense of it was such a clear you know, and I’ve used it many times in many circumstances to say, “So, In case you don’t know who they really are. Let me tell you who they really are,” because I went to the hole for really just trying to say, hey, here’s a great way to make the prisons better and safer for everybody, and they put me in the hole for that. So I have to say, it was still not pleasant, and I was in the hole for a couple of months before they finally released me after an investigation into how I got this confidential information which was freely available on their website. And, but I was that time, I have to admit, I felt sort of very, what’s the word I want to use, very, sort of justified in, in that and, and I felt good that it was, it was such an obvious example of who they always tell people I said, you know, they they wear suits and they show up at court hearings and seem very reasonable, but you know, they’re not, because they’re in a very unreasonable system. You know, that’s the whole thing. So I guess that would be maybe the most impactful one from a political perspective that I ever experienced.
Reem Benhaddouch
I guess, sorry. I guess maybe I would like to switch on to like, the mental health impacts of like being in solitary. I guess. Can you describe, like, what it’s like and what, what affected mind?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Yeah, I mean, so what I would say is from, you know, looking at it from that perspective. And again, I have experienced much of the Depression, and, you know, in sense of isolation, and, you know, and just a really, that you have this idea of this, you’ve sort of lost all agency at all. You don’t have a lot of agency in prison, but you have some. And when you go to the hole, you’ve really lost all agency. You basically are locked in a cell, and you may or may not get out of that cell some point along the way. And you don’t really know, and it’s, it is, it is very, very trying. And again, you know, you you go from being in a community, a very raucous, loud, you know, interactive community with a bunch of fellow souls on, you know, on the in the ship of the damned there, but you know, you are able to interact with each other, and then you can’t, so you can interact with anyone sometimes, and it is that it is depressing in a way that’s hard to explain other than you know. Imagine, you know you were walking down the street to your regular life, and again, someone grabbed you off the street and threw you in a white van. Apparently, they are really doing that today, and just took you to some place where you didn’t know anyone and you had no one to talk to, and they just put you in an empty concrete room and said, “We may or may not let you out of here someday,” and walked away, and there’s this tremendous sense of futility and impotence. And, you know, and they’re in the hole there. People will sometimes just yell and scream for hours on end, just banging on the door, because they just, you know, they cannot stand the silence and the sort of the isolation of it. And, you know, and I’ve been in the hole where people have killed themselves, you know, and, and, you know, there’s like, there’s a just a kind of, there’s a kind of, there’s a sense that I’m just going to die here, and I, no one will know where I am. No, I have no way to communicate with anyone, you know, I don’t have a piece of paper and a pencil or a stamp and an envelope to write to someone, you know, I have nothing and and, you know, that’s what it feels like, you know, it’s just like a sense of being sort of at the bottom of a well, you know, and you there’s no way out of the well. And they just come, someone comes over. And puts the lid on the well, and walks away, and you’re just sitting there in the dark, and there’s no way out of it. And that’s what it can feel like, particularly at the beginning of it. You human beings generally, can adapt to most things that. But again, people who struggle with mental health issues to begin with, you know it’s a very tough thing to adjust to. So I hope that helps to sort of, you know, explain it a little
Reem Benhaddouch
Well. Thank you. Thank you. That must have been, like, very difficult to like, remember and everything.
Kenneth E. Hartman
Sometimes it is yes, but I understand that these are things are important.
Reem Benhaddouch
So you’ve mentioned before that the like, the prison system is very much just like, trying to improve the prison system, you get punished. And I guess I kind of want to go into like, do you think the system even gives people released a chance to be a citizen in society? Like, how do you recover from those experiences in solitary, solitary confinement, in the whole and just like, and like the daily, like, abuse and everything.
Kenneth E. Hartman
Yeah, it’s, again, you know, it’s, it’s, it is not an easy thing. It is a really, really hard thing. And I, you know, I, when I got I did a lot of time, and I was, you know, I obviously was impacted very profoundly by the experience, but I was very lucky in many ways, compared to many of the people that I serve time with. In that when I got out of prison, I had a very marketable skill. I’m a writer, and I got out and I became a grant proposal writer for nonprofits. And, you know, now, seven and a half years later, I’m the executive director of a nonprofit in California that represents organizations that work inside the prisons. And I’ve, and I’m, I’ve been quite successful and, you know, but, but I still have moments where, you know, I, where I just my reactions to things can be, you know, I don’t want to say inappropriate, but can be disproportionate. You know, there’s, there are times when you know, if I’m in a room or there’s too many people, it feels too crowded, and it can be [?] complicated. I have to remind myself, like, okay, these are all nice people. Nobody here is going to try to stab anybody. It’s not going to be a riot kick off, you know? I mean, these things are fleeting, less and less as my as I’ve been out, you know, but they passed through my head. I do know many people who, who, you know, didn’t get out with a marketable skill, or who got out and have been again, have, you know, would appear to be profound PTSD. I don’t think I have PTSD. I mean, by of course, I probably wouldn’t know, but, but I, but I definitely have lingering impact and bruises and, you know, dents and stuff. But I know many people who’ve got it, who get out and who just have, obviously, they are so traumatized by what happened to them that, you know, they have the extraordinarily difficult time. You know, the first day I got out, I went into a Walmart, and I remember looking to buy ibuprofen, and went to the aisle in the Walmart where the ibuprofen was, and there were, like, I don’t know, 30 different kinds of ibuprofen. And I remember, like I started reading everything, like trying to figure out which and I and luckily for me, there was this voice in my head said, “You cannot, like, get trapped in this, or it’s going to, like, just destroy you,” and and I just, you know, grabbed one and just took it and moved on. But I know a lot of people get trapped in those kind of things. I’ve, I’ve had dinner with people who did a lot of time and they can’t order from the menu until they’ve read every single thing, because they don’t know what’s there, and I’ve had to say, you know, you have to just sort of make a decision, because if you don’t, you’ll be stuck looking at that for an hour and and I think these are the kind, these are like little examples of, you know, that kind of the lingering impact of being in a place where you had no control over your life, and then you get out and people are expecting you to, like, make decisions, and you feel so incompetent to make decisions that you have to, you feel like you have to, like, overthink everything. And that’s just like one very small, not of the worst, you know, kind of thing. I mean, there are people who literally can’t walk into Walmart. It’s too much for them. You know, there are people who can’t, there are people who can’t learn to drive because they’re just afraid. You know, they’re just they, they’re afraid of being in a car. You know, I know people who experience these things. It’s hard.
Reem Benhaddouch
It sounds. It, yeah, sounds incredibly difficult. Wow, I guess so we’ve gone through all the questions that I had written up beforehand, so I want to give you a chance if there’s any, anything that you would like to say before we can transition into like, the closing question, which is just like, what are various ways people can support you or those currently incarcerated? So I guess, do you have like a story? Do you have like a message or that, or would you just like to, like shout out, anything that you’re currently working on, or how people can support you?
Kenneth E. Hartman
Yeah, I mean, I think we can get to that. I mean, but I think, you know, I I, before the pandemic, I started going around speaking at colleges, and I in that, I kind of, at some one point, I thought that was what I was going to do, is going to be a guy who goes around speaking at colleges, which was, I really enjoyed it. It was lots of fun. Yeah, I like being around young people. You know, I went to prison when I was 19, and my, my, I have a daughter who, from a conjugal visit in prison, and she likes to say, I’m the oldest teenager in the world. But, you know, so, I mean, there’s a kind of emotional there’s a stunted growth of emotional development, because when you’re in prison, you know, there’s a lot of the normal experiences people go through to maturity. You don’t really have them when you’re in prison, you know. But, but when I would go to the colleges, you know, I would I would say to people, you know, the students and faculty and stuff, I would say, the first thing you need to know about people in prison, is they’re human beings just like you and and, and people would clap. And at first I thought it was because I was a great speaker, and I was, you know, profound and all that, but, but I also these came to the like, sort of, I said myself, why? And I would ask people, “Why are you clapping right now,” you know, and people kind of have this look on their face, and I’d say that, I think the problem is, is that we’ve all been convinced and conned into believing that people who go to prison are not the same as the rest of us, like that we are somehow different than you. You know, we’re like a kind of a sub species or something. And, you know, I just think, for anyone who’s thinking about this, it’s like to me, the simplest way to find a way to have empathy with people in prison is to just remember that they are exactly the same as you. They are not different in any way. They’re just fellow human beings. They’re not evil. They are primarily people who made very bad decisions. Often were in very bad situations that didn’t give them an opportunity to make good decisions. But, you know, they did make bad choices and bad decisions, but they are not fundamentally different than anyone else. And you know, the last thing I would say to that is it just to sort of paraphrase, you know, Brian Stevenson, you know, it’s like everybody is capable of being better than their worst moments. Everyone is. And I think the prison system as it’s currently designed doesn’t believe that, you know. And I think that if there’s one thing that I hope to help make some change to in my life before I, you know, move on. You know, is, is is that in, get that more accepted broadly in culture, is that everybody is capable of being better than their worst moments, and even if their worst moments were really bad. You know, I killed a man when I was 19 years old in a fist fight. His name was Thomas Allen Fellows. I will forever feel bad about that and regret those terrible decisions that I made, but I believe I am a better human being now, and I believe that it’s because I put in the work to become a better human being, and almost everyone I knew in prison is trying to become a better human being. And so I believe that that’s something we should all remember when we’re thinking about people who are inside prison. So I just really want to say that I think it’s that really important.
Reem Benhaddouch
Would you say that, like, the prison is like, against people bettering themselves? Like, I guess, [?].
Kenneth E. Hartman
no, I would say, I would say this. So I would say, we should, we should all look at our fellow human beings and hope that they can be better and do better. And that includes people who work in prisons too, you know? And it’s like, I think the system, as it is set up, is set up for failure, you know, I’m and I don’t know, we don’t know how we ended up in this place. I mean, there’s a lot of roots of where it comes from, and it was very, comes from some pretty dark places, how the prison, current prison system was set up. But I think the outcome at this point is, is that there is this expectation that people in prison are not capable of becoming better. And I think it harms everyone, including the people who work in prison. People who work in prison have, like, greatly reduced lifespans. They actually have terrible outcomes in their own lives. The system itself is wrong and needs to be like really dramatically changed. And the fundamental thing that needs to change is that the the assumption of the people who are inside prison is that their fellow human beings whose lives matter, and that changes everything if we can get that shift. To me, that’s the fundamental shift.
Reem Benhaddouch
Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, for indulging all these questions. Especially, yeah, so I know you said that we have a hard cut off at 1:45 but honestly, I think I’ve kind of mostly run out of questions.
So I guess you can come up with your own, like, send off of just, like, how can people reach you? How can people contact you? What have you been working on? Everything that.
Kenneth E. Hartman
And I used to contribute to Prison Radio from inside prison, quite many, many times, actually. So, yeah. I mean, I would say, so I am the executive director of an organization called Transformative Programming Works based in California. We represent 106 community based organizations that all do in-prison programming collectively, in every prison, every facility in California. In, in- our work is to help advance the ability of people to, you know, to have opportunities to participate in programs that help them become better than their worst moments. Those programs helped me. I’m really honored and privileged to say that I now represent some organizations that helped me become a better human being, and I’ve helped them get more funding and more respect and more ability to get their programs inside the prisons. So that’s what I do. That’s my life’s work, you know. And you know, Transformative Programming Works is not hard to find. And anyone who wants to, you know, look at- look look it up, and interested in, you know, in supporting what we do, happy to reach out to anybody. And if you go to our website, which is thetpw.org you’ll reach out and send us a message. We have- You can contact us there. And beyond that, I, you know, I’m living a good life. I did serve 40 years of my life incarcerated, but I’ve been out now about seven and a half years. I’m very happy I have a good life, and I’m very glad to be, you know, part of the real world. We used to say from the inside we got to get out to the real world. You know, the world inside doesn’t seem real sometimes. So very happy to be a part of the real world.
Reem Benhaddouch
Well, I guess that’s all I have for you. Kenneth, thank you so so so much for giving me your time today. And honestly, I’ll be in touch with, like, all of the editing and like the final draft of, like the documentary. So I guess just thank you so so much.
Kenneth E. Hartman
Well, thank you Reem. I appreciate you, and thank you for reaching out and asking me, and again, as a longtime contributor to Prison Radio, I have great respect for Prison Radio. I know they do really good work, and happy to happy to be contributing to Prison Radio from this side of the fences. So I appreciate it. Thank you for asking.
Reem Benhaddouch
Well, I hope you have a good rest of your day. I guess it’s still 10 o’clock for you, so, yes, yeah.
Kenneth E. Hartman
Well, I have meetings. I’m the executive director of a nonprofit. I spent a lot of time in meetings, but it’s okay. I don’t mind. Good thing. Well, I guess See you around.
