Willie: Maximum Freedom in a Maximum-Security Prison

“Tell them kids of Yours about me, so’s they don’t come to this hellhole.”

Willie Stephens, inmate 12674A at the state penitentiary in Boise, Idaho, said these words to me at the last session of the Prison Fellowship seminar. He squeezed my arm before slipping through the crowd of prisoners and volunteers to return to his cell. The day before he had invited me to his “home,” as he calls his eight-by ten-foot cinder-block room in the basement of A Block, an apartment-looking building housing about 90 men. There, for more than an hour, he filled me in on prison life and “his Jesus.” Such an invitation is an honor, I later found out, and if I had refused Willie he would probably have had no more to do with me. But my problem now, as I write, is how to put such a visit in perspective.

How does one summarize a visit to a murderer and rapist? How does one absorb his story with anything like comprehension—and compassion? I mean, it wasn’t a movie. I was there face to face with the real item, our worst night mare as a nation, judging from all the media attention these crimes get.

I wasn’t surprised by Willie’s list of crimes; I suppose I expected them in a maximum security prison and so was numbed to them as I heard them. I was, however, greatly surprised and pleased when I discovered I felt compassion for a man in such darkness. It is this compassion, this love if you will, for the inmates that I would like to untangle from the events of the seminar, and from Willie’s story.

At The Prison

The Idaho State Correctional Institution lies by itself on a high and windy plateau 11 miles from the closest Best Western Motel and is reached on a two-lane highway that twists its way through desolate hills. In May, the snow on a distant line of mountains seems to hang like clouds midway up the pale sky. A silver water tower marks the location of the prison from a couple of miles away. Then the fences and towers and buildings, slung out like those on a college campus, come gradually into view. My wife and I were riding in the back seat of a car driven by Bill Russell, the regional director of Prison Fellowship for Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. Beside him was Art Lindsley, the featured speaker for the seminar. Over three days and seven sessions Art was going to speak to the men on topics ranging from guilt to grace.

After being admitted to the prison grounds through an electrically controlled fence, we went into the administration and control building, then met the prison chaplain and the warden. When we moved to the control room manned by the guards, we lined up single file before a door, ladies first. We were counted by the guard behind the glass, who then pushed a button that unlocked the door with a pop as the bolt slammed open.

We entered another room and passed through a set of double swinging doors, then out onto a walk. It was bordered by a tall cyclone fence topped by coiling razor wire (which looks something like barbed wire but actually has thin razorlike jags of metal coming off the main coil at intervals of an inch or so). Inside this fence, and running parallel to it some 20 feet away, is a second fence equally high. Between the fences the earth is kept plowed so nothing can grow on it and interfere with the view of the guards in the towers. Armed with carbines or M-16s (I was not clear about which or both), the guards need clear fields of fire. From the walk and through the fences one can look at the neat green lawns and well-maintained buildings. The lawns slope down to the main part of the yard, where yet more fences divide the acreage.

Still in single file, we proceeded along the walk, down a few flights of stairs, and to the first fence with its electrically controlled gate. We were admitted, the gate was closed, again we were counted before the second fence, and admitted through its gate onto the main yard. The old volunteers did not seem to realize what we new ones did: there was nothing now between us and the prison population. They chatted breezily, waving occasionally to some inmate, pointed to various buildings as though on tour of a college campus, and in general behaved as though they had nothing to fear. So did I. We sauntered past the dining hall and stopped at the education building next to it where the prison chapel is located and where we were to have our meetings.

There were about 30 inmates seated on hard pews in the small chapel as we filed in and took our seats in the front pews. A mixture of races, hard faces, mustaches, and tattoos—lots of tattoos on lots of arms—were my first impressions. Bill opened the seminar and introduced a gospel quartet, two young men in dark pinstripe suits and two attractive women in lavender dresses.

Here it comes, I thought, they’ll bomb and the men will boo and it will all be downhill from here. But the men didn’t boo. They clapped heartily and broke into wide smiles of delight. I suppose it was this first song and the reaction to it that started breaking apart the notions about prisoners I had learned from Hollywood. There were murderers, thieves, burglars, and dope dealers in that room. But over the next three days they became Tony and Al and Randy and Chip and Raul—human beings in a dark place, but with a radiance of soul that they said came from knowing Jesus Christ. One inmate named Chuck said later that he had “done time, hard time, Quentin time,” and that his first 42 years had gone down the toilet before Christ came into his life. “If there’s anything you like in me, it’s Jesus Christ working through me,” he said.

Each session of the seminar was run the same way. Art Lindsley would make a 45-minute presentation on self-image or anger or discouragement and then the inmates and volunteers would be divided into small groups for discussion. Art is one of the main instructors on the national level for Prison Fellowship, the organization started by Charles Colson when he left prison a born-again believer. The organization exists, according to its literature, “to assist and exhort the church in its ministry to inmates, ex-offenders and their families, and to work for a just and effective criminal justice system.”

Willie’S Story

It was after one of the first day’s sessions that Willie “adopted” me. At least that is how I felt after he gave me an invitation to see his house. The next day between the noon and night meetings I stayed on the yard after the other volunteers had left, and with Willard Chapman, a volunteer chaplain and himself a former prisoner, went to see Willie.

“A” House is laid out like a dorm at any college. The inmates have single rooms, and each has a key to lock his door. There are no bars. The Boise pen is a modern one. “A” House is the honor block, and to qualify for residence inmates must have served at least two years without any write-ups for disciplinary infractions. Willie’s room is on the bottom floor, or tier, as the levels are called. His room feels cramped. It is filled with a hard bunk made up military style, taut and crisp, a steel cabinet for clothes, doodads, and Willie’s sleeping and tension medications. The cement floor is painted dark brown, as is the steel door. The walls are beige-painted cinder blocks. Willie has a calendar mounted near his bed and it has a picture of a lake about which he fantasizes. (“I go fishin’ right there,” and he points.) There are pictures of Jesus spread here and there across all of his walls like meadow flowers, and he has about 50 books neatly filed in a row on the floor. All are about Jesus.

When Willard and I entered, Willie shut the door to cut out the sound of the television mounted outside in the “living room” where several inmates lounged on couches and chairs. The soothing hum and hiss of air from the air-conditioning duct helped further drown out the prison. Willard talked for awhile as Willie busied himself getting coffee and rolling a cigarette on orange paper. Then he began. His story floated out on a soft, barely southern drawl, a Louisiana cotton-chopping drawl, punctuated now and again by his long bony arms slicing or jabbing the air as he kept repeating after each statement he felt I would not accept, “You can believe it or leave it lie.”

He remembers the cotton and the blacks who apparently worked for him and who would say at break time, “Don’t want no RC, boss, want Royal Crown instead.” Willie smiles at this recollection, at least as much as he ever smiles. His taut mouth barely breaks its line at the edges, flickers slightly like a glint of sun across a wave, and disappears. Mostly he is withdrawn, and his long, pale, almost cadaverous face, with its long nose and tight mustache, seldom expresses anything but great distance and tension. He does have a sense of humor, as I found out. In the hallway of the chapel after one of the sessions, I suddenly felt a breath on the back of my neck and turned to find Willie with his flickering smile. He said, “I could’ve had you if I wanted.”

Like so many other inmates, Willie had a bad home life. His dad said Willie would never amount to anything and would no doubt end up in prison. His dad was a con and knew. Crime is sometimes a family affair, with generation after generation entering it. Willie did.

When Willie married and had daughters, he apparently had relations with one of them, or perhaps it was with his step-daughter—I couldn’t get this part straight. Willard concurred, saying this kind of crime was much more common than I thought. (I had heard of it now and then at the high school where I teach, but I didn’t comment.) Willie went on to mention briefly his murder, and Willard again added what he knew, which was that while not excusing the crime at all, the guy deserved what he got.

Willie has tried suicide five or six times. Once he pointed a gun at his temple and three times clicked the trigger on cylinders that wouldn’t fire. And then, on the fourth, he pointed it at the floor. It fired. Another time he tried to run his car off a cliff, but even with the accelerator pressed to the floor and the motor howling, the car refused to budge. (“Tell me there ain’t a God after that, buddy,” he said after each of these stories.)

Willie says he came to prison 14 years ago with 23 personalities but that now he’s down to 3 because of Jesus. Willard said I would be amazed at some of the early prison photos taken of Willie, especially about some quality in his eyes. As I’ve said, all of these things are so far from my own experience that I cannot truly comprehend them. But through them all I sensed Willie’s pain and intense loneliness, and I felt compassion for the man behind and apart from his deeds.

Shortly after Willard and I first entered Willie’s room he asked us if we’d done our assignment We stared blankly until he reminded us that Art, when he’d finished speaking on self-image, had said to try an experiment for ourselves:

List the five most significant things other people have said to you in praise; then list the five most significant criticisms.

Willie didn’t wait for us to speak but quickly ripped a page from his small spiral memorandum book and handed it to me. As I read the list, the powerful elements in their starkness and simplicity moved me deeply. They moved me because there was so little to praise and so much to blame, and because I knew I could never make such a straightforward list of my own sins. Willie did not offer much comment other than that I was free to show it to my students if I thought it would help keep them from his path of life. Here it is, headed neatly as he wrote it:

Compliments

1. Work

2. Patience

3. Manner of Dress

4. School

5. Studies of Bible

Criticism

1. Just Like Dad

2. Murderer/Anti-Social

3. Liar & Adulterer

4. Child Molester

5. Quitter/Institutionalized

Why Compassion?

So why the compassion? Why did I go away from those three days feeling so strangely free and content? Why did I suddenly feel that this sort of prison ministry was for me?

I’ve sifted out a few of the answers. I knew compassion because I saw God’s grace covering all kinds of sin. Not one of us deserves salvation through Jesus Christ, so no matter who we are, murderer, thief—even schoolteacher—we are all equally distant from God, equally lost. Since this is so, all can be equally saved, and though I knew this absolutely and believed it firmly before I went to Boise, to see it in action made me feel God’s compassion and the freedom one can only know in Christ. Rob, Reilly, Randy, Rory, and the others were transformed and radiantly free of their sins, and they knew it and rejoiced in it.

I knew compassion because even in the darkest places there is light. It is dark there in southern Idaho, but how brightly shines the Light!

I knew compassion because I saw in these men a closeness and love that I desired. John 13:35 says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Willie and the others look eagerly for one another in brotherly expectation, and, if I might say it, with relief to see a fellow light bearer in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

Finally, I was attracted by their zeal and commitment. They spend about two hours daily reading their Bibles and praying. One inmate hit it on the head when he wrote my wife from the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, Washington, about our trip: “I’ll bet you found out that the guys are more solid, more serious, more interested in learning, and a whole lot more courteous and appreciative than 99 percent of the people on the outside.” That is sadly true, I’m afraid. Even if we make allowances for the uniqueness of their situation and say things such as, “They have more time than I do to study since they’re locked up with nothing else to do,” or “Don’t worry, their love for one another and their zeal for the Bible will fade away when they get out with the rest of us,” we cannot get away from the indictment—we simply are not committed. In our prosperity we too often forget our Lord.

Graduation for the inmates came at the seventh session of the seminar. Willie was there in the chapel, seated beside my wife, and I was further up with Tony and Raul. Art spoke on the topic of discouragement and explained the symbol of the bruised reed used by Prison Fellowship on all correspondence and on the certificates the inmates were to receive. All of us in the chapel were bruised reeds, said Art, all of us are discouraged and ready to give up at times; but Christ holds us and will not allow us to break. Many of the men in that room knew how close they had come to breaking. I had heard at least two others besides Willie say they had come to the end, that suicide was the only way left since life held nothing more that they wished to see.

The ceremony was short. Each man went forward when his name was called, shook hands with Art, then Bill, then with the prison chaplain, and returned to his seat with his name on a white certificate. Simple, but how electric! Tony couldn’t believe he’d done it, that he’d actually and finally graduated from something. Raul later prayed in closing and said what I’ve never said at any of my graduations, from grade school through college: “Lord, I’m so deeply touched and grateful.” Willie couldn’t say it out loud, so he wrote on his little memorandum book for my wife to see: “God loves Larry and Mary and all the volunteers. Willie.”

Tim Stafford is a free-lance writer living in Santa Rosa, California. He is a distinguished contributor to several magazines. His latest book is Do You Sometimes Feel Like a Nobody? (Zondervan, 1980).

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