In My Father's House

by Fox Butterfield

  Keeping that many convicts off the street certainly averts a large number of crimes. But is the experience of being confined in prison for long periods of time achieving anything else, causing any productive change in inmates’ behavior? Or is there something in the convicts themselves so ingrained that prison cannot change them or make them less likely to commit more crime? I was looking for clues from Tracey.

  Tracey had done what he was required to do under Oregon prison regulations to be rehabilitated. He had gone through mandated alcohol and drug treatment classes. He had passed his GED test, earning a high school equivalency degree though he had not gone beyond the seventh grade in school. He had taken the little vocational instruction that was offered, learning to be a janitor. He had also become, outwardly at least, a passionate and vocal Christian, reading the Bible every day and quoting scripture to other inmates when they kidded him about whether his newfound faith was real. Tracey had even applied to Chemeketa Community College in Salem, receiving what he said was a formal acceptance. On closer inspection it was only a form directing him to take reading and math placement tests when he got out before he could be admitted. This was the first of many stories Tracey passed off as true. Convicts live such constrained lives that they learn to manipulate rules and people as a way to get what they want. It is called being institutionalized.

  Despite some seeming progress, there was one troubling issue about Tracey. During his incarceration from 1990 to 2006, he had exhibited symptoms of severe mental illness. His problems first showed up in 1996, when he started telling other inmates and his guards that he was hearing angry voices and seeing demons and angels. Sometimes, with his Bible in hand, Tracey announced to other inmates that he was an angel of God. Other times, if Tracey suspected a fellow inmate was staring at him, Tracey became paranoid and would beat the other man up. Although Tracey, like his brothers, was short, only five feet nine inches tall, he had bulked up from 170 pounds to 240 pounds through a relentless weight-lifting regimen and was a mean fighter. When Tracey assaulted another inmate, he was put in the hole, or solitary confinement. After several of these episodes, Tracey was sent to the mental health staff for diagnosis. But most of the counselors either dismissed Tracey as a faker or gave him a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. It was the default diagnosis for troublesome inmates, and it was a hard label to shed, because it was a mental condition rather than a mental illness, and there was no cure. In fact, it was not really a diagnosis at all but more of a checklist describing the behavior of inmates the staff did not like: they were manipulative, prone to violence and lacked any regard for others.

  Then, in 1997, Tracey saw a new counselor in the Counseling and Treatment Services division of the Oregon Department of Corrections, Ann Heath, a licensed clinical social worker. She was a tall woman in her early sixties with short blond hair and blue eyes that seemed to perpetually smile. After meeting Tracey, she made a quick and important discovery: the other counselors had not spent much time actually listening to Tracey, because they didn’t like him. “It was a rare commodity for Tracey to have anyone listen to him for forty-five minutes,” Heath said, the length of time for a mental health appointment in prison. “It was rare for anyone to listen to him at any time in his life. He didn’t really have a home. His father beat him and was drunk all the time. None of his teachers at school listened to him. No one at MacLaren,” the reform school where he had been sent. But Heath did listen to him. “I think he liked me because I actually listened to him. I became a parent figure.

  “Tracey was very delusional, and I thought he was really sick,” Heath found. “He believed he was on a mission from God, and he could see and hear demons and monsters attacking him. Tracey was always bringing me a Bible and he was rewriting it. His mission was to change the world. I got the sense he had been very abused at home but didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Heath wrote in a report dated January 15, 1997, that Tracey was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. This was a serious diagnosis of a real mental illness and went much further than the other counselors had gone. “Tracey was clearly psychotic, and his delusions were very fixed,” she recalled. “A lot of my work with him was to get him to take his meds,” meaning Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug. “He didn’t like the way it made him feel,” Heath related, “so he tried not to take it. But when he took it, he was able to get along better with people and do his job as a janitor in the main hallway.”

  After four years of working with Tracey, Heath was pleased when the chief psychiatrist for the Oregon Department of Corrections, Dr. Marvin Fickle, examined Tracey and essentially corroborated her diagnosis by saying Tracey had a “psychotic disorder not otherwise specified.” What this meant, Heath said, was that Dr. Fickle found that Tracey was psychotic but believed as a psychiatrist that he did not have enough evidence to conclude whether Tracey was schizophrenic, hearing voices and seeing things, or whether he was bipolar, suffering from alternating bouts of depression and mania, with high energy and rapid speech.

  Looking back, Heath now thinks Tracey may have been bipolar, because he was very grandiose, believing he was an angel of God, and because he often talked very fast for long periods. In truth, she said, it can be difficult to distinguish between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Until the 1990s, Heath said, “American psychiatrists tended to say anyone with psychosis had schizophrenia.”

  Whatever the correct diagnosis, Heath’s weekly sessions with Tracey and getting him to stay on his meds gradually eliminated his visions, and the voices subsided. It was a rare outcome, Heath said, because “usually these disorders last a lifetime. They don’t just go away.”

  Heath did not know that Tracey’s oldest brother, Tony, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, or that his half brother, Tim, and half sister, Debbie, had both been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. If she had known all this, Heath said, she might have concluded that mental illness was being passed on in the Bogle family, because bipolar disorder has been found to be highly heritable.

  * * *

  —

  When I picked up Tracey at the front gate of the Oregon State Correctional Institution on his release, he was smiling broadly. “I want to do good, but I get the jitters,” he said to begin our conversation. “I don’t remember what freedom feels like. It feels like I’m on Mars. I can’t believe I’m not in prison.”

  Tracey had heard about all the things he now had to do and about all the restrictions he faced both because he was on parole and because he was a sex offender, even though Tracey still vehemently insisted that what he had done was not sodomy. The restrictions started with the place he had to live, until he proved he was capable of staying out of trouble. It was a halfway house approved by the Department of Corrections for newly released sex offenders called Stepping Out Ministries, and by coincidence it was run by one of Tracey’s cousins, Tammie Bogle Silver. Her father, Babe Bogle, was one of Rooster’s older brothers. It was a Christian-based religious program with regular prayer services, a strict curfew and a no-alcohol policy. Unlike prison, which is the ultimate welfare state, where food, housing and medical care are free, Tracey would have to pay $300 a month for a bed, and the residents had to buy and cook their own meals.

  On our drive from the prison to check in at his new housing, Tracey spotted a McDonald’s in a strip mall and asked to stop so he could get his first Big Mac in sixteen years. Then Tracey saw a Domino’s Pizza next door and changed his mind. In prison he had never had the luxury of choice. It was only as we came outside after lunch that Tracey saw there was a children’s day-care center on the other side of the Domino’s. Tracey had just violated one of the primary terms of his release as a sex offender: he was not allowed to be at a property next door to a school, children’s day-care center, park or playground or any place where people under the age of eighteen regularly met. “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” Tracey said ruefully. “But how can I anticipate all th
e places I’m not supposed to go?”

  When Tracey arrived at the quarters of Stepping Out Ministries, in a hulking former Catholic nuns’ home, his cousin Tammie greeted him and assured him his first day out of prison would be the most difficult because the changes are so overwhelming. “Tomorrow when you wake up it will be real different,” Tammie said. “You will not hear the doors slam or the guards yelling. But you will have to make your own breakfast.”

  Because Tracey would be on parole for three years, the next step for him was to meet his parole officer near the Marion County jail. The parole officer spelled out more rules for Tracey. Since Tracey had been drunk when he attacked Dave Fijalka and Sandra Jackson, he could not go to any bar, tavern or liquor store. He could not have any contact with his brother Bobby, with whom he had committed the crime. (Bobby was still incarcerated in the Oregon State Penitentiary.) Tracey was also not to drive a car alone. In addition, he would be subject to a curfew imposed by his parole officer, who could make Tracey wear an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements if Tracey’s conduct aroused his suspicion. And because he was a sex offender, Tracey was not supposed to use the Internet without prior approval by his parole officer, to avoid pornography.

  After hearing all these terms, Tracey grew tense. “It seems they don’t want me to do good,” he said. “The parole board is attaching so many conditions that they will make me fail.”

  The next step was to go to the Oregon Department of Human Services to pick up Tracey’s food stamps. They came in the form of an “Oregon Trail” debit card emblazoned with a picture of a covered wagon. It was loaded with $200 a month, the allotment for a newly released inmate. The state’s assumption was that within the first month out Tracey would find a job and thereafter be able to pay for his own groceries, so after that first month his food stamps would be terminated.

  The following day Tracey had to go to the Oregon State Police office in Salem to register as a sex offender. A female clerk took his photograph and advised Tracey that he would have to reregister every year within ten days of his birthday, and any time he moved, or he would be in violation of his parole. This condition would last for the rest of his life.

  Tracey was becoming agitated with all these terms. He was clenching his jaw and fists, and his speech sped up. “Anyone who has sex with his wife is a sex offender,” Tracey said to the female clerk, who ignored his outburst. “You are all hypocrites, labeling me as a sex offender. These were people I knew who stole a business from me. They were not innocent. You’ve got this all wrong. I am not a sexual predator. I shouldn’t have to register. I am going to a judge to get my convictions reversed,” Tracey said with confidence. He was thinking of Judge Norblad, the Bogle family’s own judge, as they had come to see him.

  Back at Stepping Out Ministries, Tracey told his day’s story to another resident who had been in prison with Tracey and was also a sex offender. “You need to slow down, brother,” the other resident said. “You don’t want to dwell in the past and carry all that anger. Good luck with trying to fight being registered as a sex offender. You need to get on with the rest of your life.”

  On his third day out, Tammie told Tracey he needed to start looking for a job, and she gave him a list of possibilities. He could cook at a senior center; he could work in a woodworking shop; he could get a maintenance job; he could work as a porter in a property management company; or he could be a stocking clerk at one of the Plaid Pantry chain of convenience stores in Salem. “Your main job now is to get a job,” Tammie said. “You need to start earning money to pay for your rent and your food. The important thing is to get on a set schedule.”

  This was not the message Tracey wanted to hear, and none of the job choices were glamorous or promised good pay or career opportunities, in Tracey’s mind. At least in prison, Tracey said, housing and food were free and you didn’t have to worry about finding a job. Tammie had told him that he needed to fill out four job applications that day. Tracey filled out only one, for a job at the convenience store.

  That evening, after returning to Stepping Out, Tracey said he had a plan for where he wanted to live. He would buy twenty acres of land and build his dream house there, a house big enough to accommodate all his brothers and sisters, the whole Bogle clan. It would be built in what Tracey termed “Mexican colonial” style, with five bedrooms and a guest house. There would be fields planted with corn, a vegetable garden, an orchard with apple, pear and cherry trees, a pond stocked with goldfish and a stream with trout that ran down a hill. “The house and fields and fish would be a refuge for my entire family, who are vagabonds,” Tracey said. He announced with confidence that he would design and build the house himself. “I am very good in construction.”

  Tracey’s dream house was grandiose, reflecting the kind of grandiosity that Ann Heath had observed in Tracey while he was in prison. Tracey now took this grandiosity a step further. He said he had a lot of experience as a lawyer, working on appeals of his case while incarcerated. “I am now going to represent myself to get this sodomy conviction overturned and get the governor of Arizona to pardon my brother Tony.” Tony was serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in Arizona, and there was no chance for a pardon.

  If he didn’t get his sodomy conviction overturned, Tracey said, he would get a gun and go after the judge who sentenced him.

  “Someone needs to send these people a message,” Tracey said, meaning the judges, district attorneys and lawyers who put him and his brothers in prison.

  Another of the residents at Stepping Out overheard Tracey’s comments and passed them on to Tammie, and she said, “That thing about getting a gun is a real red flag. The early signs from Tracey are bad.”

  Based on her experience with thousands of released inmates, and members of her own family, Tammie said that “Tracey is stunted emotionally. He seems like a child because he’s stuck at the age he went in,” fifteen, when he was first sent to MacLaren. “He will have trouble learning because he doesn’t trust other people; convicts don’t even trust themselves,” Tammie said.

  “Tracey’s grandiosity in part is to compensate for his lack of self-confidence, like many convicts,” Tammie explained. “He will need to stay here at Stepping Out for at least a year to catch up emotionally. He needs to avoid a relationship with a woman till then too. But the first thing a newly released inmate wants is a woman. Tracey is still reading his Bible a lot,” she added. “But what is missing is the change of heart, his personal relationship with God. He is so full of anger that this is setting him up for failure.”

  * * *

  —

  On Tracey’s fifth day out, he went to Chemeketa Community College in Salem to take his required placement tests, in reading, writing and math. When I picked him up after he finished the tests, Tracey was giddy. “They were very easy. I did really well. I passed them all.” This was another flash of Tracey’s grandiosity, or bloated self-confidence to compensate for his spotty education. In fact, he had flunked one of the tests and had to retake it.

  “You should have seen the girls; they were really looking at me,” Tracey said. “I think they wanted me.” It was true that Tracey cut an unusual figure on campus. He was at least ten years older than most of the students, and he was wearing black shorts and a tight black T-shirt designed to highlight his muscular biceps and his manifold tattoos.

  Tracey found out from college guidance counselors that he would be eligible for federal student loans under the Stafford and Perkins programs. Each loan paid up to $5,500 a year, a total of $11,000 annually. This was like learning you had just won the lottery to Tracey. “Can you believe it?” he said to me. “They will pay me to go to college.” Tracey had found what he thought was his dream job. He could go to college and get paid a princely sum to do it. Tracey did not seem to realize that these were loans, not grants, and that legally he would be required to repay them.

  Confide
nt that he now had a real paying job, Tracey dipped into his savings from prison, $1,700 he had earned as a janitor over his sixteen years of incarceration. He had entrusted it to his legal-aid lawyer for safekeeping. Tracey bought a new watch, new gray pants for going to class, a green parka for the winter and his first cell phone. He also bought a car, for $900, a ten-year-old Dodge Neon that had been rebuilt by another ex-con Tracey knew, who had turned it into a drag-racing car. Tracey had neither a driver’s license nor insurance, so he used his mother Kathy’s expired license and her canceled insurance for the purchase. In buying the car, Tracey would be violating both his parole, which prohibited him from driving alone, and the rules of Stepping Out Ministries, which forbade its residents from having a car. Tracey was showing his old convict side: impulsive, manipulative and with a penchant for rule-breaking. When faced with a choice, Tracey seemed to have a compulsion to take the easy way out and make the wrong decision.

  Watching Tracey’s actions since his release, Tammie recognized something else. Inside prison Tracey had a well-established identity. In the outside world he had none. So he was moving quickly to build a new identity. He was a new man with a cell phone, car, good clothes and what he regarded as a well-paying job going to college. Tammie saw buying the car as another step toward failure. “He should be focusing everything on finding a real job and then going to college,” she said.