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Alabama Prison Life

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Russ Ford is a gentleman. His description of Alabama prison life withholds the graphic details that most shock the gentle visitor. But Carl Monroe, one of Russ’ godsons, has given us a graphic description. Carl was and is a legend in all of Alabama’s eighteen prisons for the ferocity of the crime he committed back in 1970. He is a big man, powerfully built, who will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Russ finally got to him in 1995. Today he is a gentle catechist who teaches other convicts to love God and love one another. He wrote a letter to the editor in This Rock, July-August ’99. Here are three paragraphs from that letter:

”When I came to prison in 1970, there were 1,250 inmates living in a concrete building designed to house 650. They slept on the floor or in the bathroom or anywhere they could. The mattress was an armful of cotton in a sack that had been urinated on many times. There was no hot water in the winter, no panes on the windows, no blankets. Rats and mice were unafraid of humans. Cockroaches were everywhere -- the beds, the clothes, the food. There were no lights, only bare wires.

We cut cane or picked cotton from 6 a.m. until 4 p.m. For lunch we had greens that were brought straight from the garden into the pot and cooked until they were mushy. Each serving held a spoonful of mud and bugs. Hogshead stew was common -- made with real hogs’ heads, beaten with a hammer, put into a pot, and served. If you like hog snout, and ears with hair still attached, then an Alabama prison is where you should be. Our favorite was the fish on Fridays, until we learned that the Oriental characters on the box it came in said, “Not fit for human consumption.”

The beds were (and still are) twelve to fifteen inches apart, and since we have no say in who sleeps next to us, we get used to the smell of the ones who do. Radios went full blast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, each on a different station. Now it’s TV, which is paid for by the inmates. Hollering and horseplay have taken the place of the stabbings and rapes and killings. But robberies, fighting, homosexual acts, and masturbation are rampant.”

This is the environment in which Russ Ford, always with the help of the Blessed Virgin, has been bringing people into the Catholic faith!

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