by Mateo Hoke
IT WAS A GAUNTLET
It was about this time when guns started coming into play a lot more in Chicago. In the late seventies and eighties. One minute we were rumbling, and the next minute there were guns everywhere. I don’t know what happened. Maybe guys returning from Vietnam.
I started holding the guns. At my age—twelve, thirteen—if I got caught, it’d just be a night in the police station or juvenile hall, not prison. So all the older adult guys would say, “Here, hold this gun for me.” I did what they said.
I was maybe five foot two, maybe a hundred pounds. They called me “Mousey” because I was so little, and I was the last person you’d expect to be walking around doing this stuff. The first time I shot a gun I was the little kid sitting in the tree holding the guns in a bag. My job was to drop the guns down from the tree when a certain group came into the neighborhood, and we knew they were coming and expecting ’em. Instead of me dropping the guns down, I took one and just opened up on the car, just shot the car up. I know three people got shot. Nobody died. I was maybe thirteen years old.
It was weird because the girls in the neighborhood were attracted to that stupidity. And then it was really disgusting because it was like you became a hero for this stuff. I look at it now like, Wow, were we idiots . . .
Within a week of the first shooting it got more serious, ’cause one of the older guys was like, “Okay, well, we know he’ll pull the trigger, now send him on a mission.” And they drove me into a certain neighborhood and said, “Hey, walk up there real close and just open up on everybody.” I did not point the gun at the group I was supposed to, I actually shot at the ground. I was thinking, What am I doing? The very next day they took me again and said, “No, no, this time do it right.” And so I did it right the next time. I would’ve been violated if I didn’t. Back then for a violation you walked the line. It was a gauntlet, and everybody beat the crap out of you.
I think I was fourteen the first time the police caught me carrying a gun. They just stopped me and it was like, “What is that?” I had a pistol sticking out my back pocket. Just walking down the street like it was nothing. They arrested me and I had to spend the night in the Audy Home before they cut me loose to my parents.5
Around that time my parents separated. And the weird part is they were separated, but my dad lived upstairs after a while. My mom busted her butt to raise us, and put us all through Catholic schools and did everything. My dad helped as much as he could, but then things changed because he developed really, really bad arthritis and bone problems, had trouble working, and became an alcoholic.
At that point, I was also just not listening. I thought I knew the answers, and I didn’t know shit. Walking around with dumb people just made it dumber for me.
“YOU’RE TOO SMALL FOR GEN POP”
It got real serious after another gang killed our friend, Tommy. We went for revenge. We were jumping on them every time we saw them. We were so mad, and it just escalated from there.
We were all at funerals wearing gang sweaters, gang T-shirts. I know that had to piss off the parents because their son had just died because of our stupidity.
I got picked up by the police all the time, usually for disorderly conduct. There was one time, swear to God, I got picked up like six or seven times in one day. We would get taken to the police station, and then our parents would pick us up and we’d go back out.
Then I ended up going to juvenile hall. The police alleged that I tried to shoot a cop. The facility was St. Charles. It was a very different world than the Audy Home. At the Audy Home, it was more quiet. There’s a dayroom with a TV, everyone out there at the same time. But at St. Charles, it is a big building, with no one really watching over. A lot of chaos, a lot of fights. The “St. Charles Shuffle” is what they used to call it—kids learning how to fight.
Like I mentioned, at fourteen, I was way smaller than other guys my age. So when I was sent to juvenile, one of the first things that happened is that I was put in a cell by myself. For my own protection, the guards said. I felt shocked that they locked me up in solitary, but they’re like, “We can’t let you out. Look how little you are, you’re too small for gen pop.” And I’m like, “So you’re locking me in a room by myself? I didn’t do nothing wrong.” It was a solitary cell—ad seg.
I was in solitary for almost two months. I know I couldn’t see out the window ’cause the window was up way high, so I had to stand on the bed. And I was too little to sit there. There was a window on the door, but all I could see was the bathroom.
I remember scratching my name into a wall, pacing the floor. You remember when you were a kid how you used to fold a piece of paper to make the little triangle football? I remember doing that and flicking that around the room, playing football. And then just doing little things like that to pass the time. At first I didn’t even have a book, and then I finally got one—it was a Louis L’Amour book and I still remember it. Louis L’Amour writes a lot of historical westerns, but the one that I got was a little bit different, it was like a sailor, the guy from England getting in trouble coming over here to America. And I think I read it three times when I was there.
After two months, they released me to my parents. So I got out for a while and I don’t know how long it was, but then I got arrested again, and I ended up eventually at a detention facility called Valley View. That’s where I first had my interactions with big street gangs and the African American street gangs from the South Side of Chicago and all of that.
I was at Valley View on and off, maybe eight, nine months. Every time they turned around I would jump the fence and run away. I’d get all the way back to Chicago, and they’d pick me up in the neighborhood.6 The neighborhood cops knew immediately who I was. They’d see me and just say, “Let’s go.” There was a lot of times my mom and dad didn’t even know I’d escaped and been sent back! But after nine months or so, I was sent home and stayed out for a while.
I SAW MORE DRUGS IN STATESVILLE
THAN I EVER IMAGINED I’D SEE
I finally went to adult prison when I’d just turned seventeen. A fence got shot after he ripped off some guys who brought him some stolen goods. He got murdered, and it was alleged that me and another guy went in and executed him. I got twenty-six years.
The first prison I went to was Statesville in 1982, ’83, right around the new year. So, I’m on the bus and I’m feeling shock. I’m thinking, What is this gonna be like? Where am I going? What am I gonna face?
When I walked in it was a shock. I mean a shock like you could not imagine. There was no whites, anywhere, except the guards with the guns. It was mostly African American, maybe some Latinos. The first people I met, one was named Bo Diddley and the other one’s name was Skull. Both of them had to be six-four to six-six, 250 pounds pure muscle, like, “What you be, white boy?” I’m like, Oh my god, what did I do?
The way Statesville is organized, it’s a big, round house. There is a single tower in the middle of the cell house. And everybody’s out of their cells walking around. The only guard I saw was at the front door and in the tower. And they assigned me to my cell. I was put up in cell 452.
The whole cell house was like the Muslim gangs and the large African American gangs. And, Statesville at the time, everybody said it was run by the gangs. Really the administration used the gangs to run the prison.
There was a guy there, in 1983 or ’84, he got caught with nine guns in his cell. This is in prison. Inside the prison. And one of them was a shotgun! The administration basically allowed it. And I’m like, What the fuck did I do to get put in here? I saw more drugs in Statesville than I ever imagined I’d see in my life. And I had never been exposed to heroin, cocaine, or any of that kind of hard stuff. It was all over Statesville.
I got a job assignment working in an M&M shop, the mechanical and maintenance shop. While I was working there, two guys got in a fight, and they stabbed each other. We
were there when the fight happened and all got put in controlled seg, which is solitary. It was a special unit above the hospital. When a serious stabbing or something happens, or a murder, that’s where they put the guys while the investigation goes on.
The cells there were crazy. They’re roughly twenty feet high, maybe about eight feet across, made of old limestone with a huge steel door. And it’s like a soundproof box. They call it “controlled seg” because they control everything about you.
We didn’t even have our property. Only thing we had was a bar of soap and toothpaste. At one point I had memorized every ingredient on a tube of toothpaste. I just paced back and forth in my cell. All day. No showers, no yard, we were just literally forgotten. We were fed, but there was no paperwork, so there were no rules saying when we’d get out to the yard, when we’d get moved to regular segregation or anything. We were just left there. So all we could do was just pace or sleep. We were in our cells twenty-four hours a day. Never got out.
Finally, the assistant warden came through, going cell to cell, talking to each person in seg about, “Why are you here?” We’re like, “We don’t know.”
“How long have you been here?”
We said, “Almost two months.” And we got out within like ten minutes. He’s like, “What the fuck?” It turns out that the two guys who got in a fight came back from the hospital and admitted we weren’t involved. Somebody never did any paperwork on me and the two other guys, and we were just forgotten for about forty-five days. The administration had just forgotten about us, and we were left in a cell.
July Fourth weekend, 1984—I’d been out of solitary for a while by this time—I escaped from Statesville. Me and two other guys built a ladder with scraps from the M&M shop, climbed over the wall, got away, then got caught. And I was again placed in solitary confinement for a brief period of time.
This segregation was nothing compared to controlled seg. You had your TVs, your books, your radio. You talked to the guys in the cell next to you, you went to the yard together. The prison had some guys work the seg units as workers who were not in seg—cleaning the gallery, serving food, what have you. And the guys who worked the gallery sat in front of your cell, and they played chess with you right through the door, the open bars. So it was like, This is not too bad.
I did maybe nine months in Statesville seg and then they shipped me to Pontiac, in the middle part of the state. I was immediately put in solitary confinement because I was an escape risk. In Pontiac at the time, solitary confinement was with death row. I was put with guys who all had death sentences. It was very hard ’cause they didn’t want to talk to me—I wasn’t one of them. They didn’t know if I was a stool pigeon or what. It was just a whole different world.
At this point I was pacing a lot. Getting depressed and anxious all the time. Just trying so hard to keep track of time. When you lose track of time it gets harder. I don’t know how to explain it.
A SORT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
After four months in solitary at Pontiac I got released into general population. And I was the only white guy in the entire general population—four thousand inmates and I’m the only one in pop. Again, mostly African American, but more Latinos than Statesville.
In general pop, I got caught carrying two homemade shanks. They brought a new criminal case against me for that, for having weapons. My defense was, “I was the only white inmate.” At the time, the gangs were trying to extort me because I wasn’t associated with the big street gangs. And the jury found me not guilty, basically because they believed that I needed the shanks for self-defense. I mean, even all the guards were like, “Hey, we carry a knife, Nelson’s the only white kid in there, he should have one too.” After I beat the case, and after they immediately transferred me out of Pontiac back to Statesville for about ten months or so in general pop, they sent me to Menard for the first time.7 This would have been around 1987.
That year, there was a riot between the Black and white gangs. Big riot. Approximately two weeks later, the warden called me to the office and told me they wanted me to find out what the issues were. They’re like, “Both sides. We want you to talk to them to find out what’s going on.” I’m like, “Ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna do that.” That makes me a stool pigeon and puts my life in danger. I refused to do it.
Because I wouldn’t be their informant or mediate a gang war, they put me on “the circuit.” I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it was sort of a psychological experiment. Being on the circuit meant I was constantly being transferred. I would eat one meal in one facility, the next in a different prison, and the third in a whole new facility. I was being driven around the state every day, and after every meal I just got in the car and they took me somewhere else. I was moving three times a day! Every time I got done eating, I’d get right back in a car and keep going. That went on for three months.
After that, it changed, I’d be moved like once a week, every couple of days, every two weeks. For the first four or five years, I never stayed longer than thirty days in any prison. At any time day or night they’d say, “Let’s go,” and put you in a car and you’re gone. My family rarely knew where I was. I was let out of my cell maybe an hour a week.
Part of what I came to understand later was that they were moving us to different prisons so that the tactical teams could practice on us. They were using “circuit riders” to train these new teams that they were creating as they were opening up all these new prisons because “truth in sentencing” was filling up the prisons.8 We were their guinea pigs.
Here’s one of the games they would play. You’d come in new to a prison, and they’d give you a strip search in the shower. Toward the end of the strip search, one of the correctional officers would make a disrespectful comment like, “Turn around and show me that cute little ass on you, boy.” I’d say, “What?” But it was all a setup. The cell right across from the shower had like eight officers in riot gear waiting for this. As soon as I said, “What?” the officer pulls the shower door open, and these guys run in and beat me up because I was “refusing to follow a direct order.” I was beaten so bad. I was beaten, wow, maybe sixteen different times while I was handcuffed and with leg irons on. One time I was beaten and woke up in an outside hospital three days later. Yeah, I deteriorated. I became, at times, violently insane. When does this stop? When does this stop? And nobody ever had an answer for me.
I got out of my cell one hour a week. That was it. There was no “twenty-three and one.” There was six days of complete lockup and I got one hour out a week and that was for my yard and shower. It all had to be done within an hour, and then I’m locked back up. I wouldn’t have had access to books if it wasn’t for my mom sending them to me, and sometimes I got them, sometimes I didn’t. But she was always sending me packages of books. There’s books I’ve read thirty, forty times, just because I needed something to keep my brain active. There were a lot of times, my mom and sister would drive to a prison to visit me and I just wasn’t there no more by the time they got there.
There were COs who showed me humanity and disapproved of the way I was being treated. There’s a few of them like, “Man you need to sue and find out why they’re doing this.” I started doing the hunger strikes to demand a copy of the rules for the program I was in. And officers would tell me, “There are no rules for this program. This program doesn’t exist. You’re not here.” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” They would tell me point-blank I was not allowed to be in their prisons because I’m a high-escape risk. I was a maximum-security prisoner. I was not supposed to ever be in a minimum-security prison.
In Danville Correctional Center they built a solid steel box. And I mean solid steel, the entire cell. So cold in the wintertime, if your skin touched it, it was like being burnt. And that’s where they kept me for like a month at a time. When I went to Danville this was the special cell for me. And those other guys on the circuit would
be put in there too. Every prison was different. There were no rules for this kind of solitary confinement at all. Every one was different. Some places called it “the circuit,” some places called it “solitary,” some called it “maximum-security detention,” some called it “temporary disciplinary rooms.”
During that whole time I was probably transferred like thirty times a year, all over the state—East Moline, Dixon, Hill, Danville, Lincoln, Logan, Taylorville, Graham, Centralia, Illinois River, Big Muddy, Shawnee, maybe some that I missed. I would file grievances, hundreds of them, and not one of them would ever call it the circuit or anything. That’s why I was shocked that they finally answered the grievance saying I was part of a psychological experiment for more than seven years. That was at Shawnee Correctional Center. I think somebody just screwed up in putting it in black and white.
I started reading The Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual. To me that’s one of the best books, next to the Bible, that’s ever been written. It taught me so much. I think I’ve read it, cover to cover, maybe ten times and looked at it fifty or more. Over and over I read that book. Started taking paralegal courses, started filing lawsuits to find out what this circuit program was. All these people say I’m a circuit rider. But there’s no rules or programs for the circuit program. I only got off it because of a lawsuit settlement. I filed that case myself, and then they appointed a lawyer to represent me and joined it with a case from another guy, Anthony Wilson.
Eventually we went through three days of full trial in Chicago. I’m on the stand and allegedly everyone is all done asking me questions, and I turned to the judge, Judge Zagel, and I said, “Judge, how come no one is asking me about the circuit?” And then we ended up talking, just me and the judge, for like two hours about what they were doing to me on the circuit. It was like I was the court’s witness. And he was appalled! Everyone, even our lawyers, thought we were making it up, but we didn’t have to make it up. It was just that evil, what they were doing.
