Update (#48)

I haven't had a chance to update Jeff's blog recently. He did send me a quarterly update, which is now about 2 months old. I'm going to add some things that have changed for Jeff over the past couple of months.

First, Jeff left his out crew. The out crew served its purpose of allowing Jeff to apply for and receive a furlough. He gets to leave the camp for 48 hours on Dec. 20. He will spend the two days with his wife and kids. He is really looking forward to that. His new job is back at the camp. He has described it as a clerical job and he monitors safety at the camp. I'm not exactly sure what he does, except that he has to inspect doors, fire extinguishers, etc. to make sure that they are working and not a fire hazard for the inmates. He says that the prison guards are pretty disorganized, and he ends up repeating inspections and wasting a lot of time. I've found this to be a regular grip from him about the prison. It seems that efficiency and common sense disappear there. In my opinion, from reading my brother's letters and some other books written by prisoner and ex-prisoners, it seems that some guards use their positions of authority to belittle and condescend to the prisoners, even when the prisoners make good sense. But, that happens at my job at times, except the guards are middle level managers.

Jeff is also taking some computer courses in excel and word. I would have thought these would be a waste of time for him, but he says it's amazing what you forget when you haven't used excel in over a year. He's learning to use the keyboard again as well. He really enjoys working on the computer. It makes him feel like he's in the 21st century. If you recall, the prisoners aren't able to access email, and the Internet So, just getting to use a computer is a nice bonus for Jeff.

In other news, Jeff was assigned to his pre-release halfway house in Salinas. He won't be able to report to the house until July 21, 2009, but this was an answer to prayer because the other options were Oakland and San Fran. Salinas is a small halfway house, but its close to his home and he can begin to find work right away and we hope get on home confinement after a month or so for the duration of his sentence (which ends next Nov. 21).

That's the last news, Jeff is in his final year. He endured his last Thanksgiving on the inside, and this will be the last year that he misses his son's birthday and Christmas. So, I was thankful for that this Thanksgiving.

Scott