The young boy talks too loudly into the telephone, his mouth too close.
”Hello Daddy,” he says. ”It is nice outside here. My birthday is soon. I will be 6. When will you come home? I love you.”
He is not sure his father is listening, but he can be fairly certain that thousands of other people are. This is ”The Prison Program,” a weekly radio show that allows relatives of inmates to telephone station KPFT-FM and have their words broadcast to fathers, brothers, husbands or sons. (There are no women`s prisons within the 80-mile reach of the station`s signal.)
The inmates cannot answer. ”They can`t exactly run out to the nearest pay phone,” said Ray Hill, the show`s host, a former inmate himself. His voice was sardonic. Sardonic is one of several tones Hill does well. Compassionate is another. Stern is a third. He uses them each Sunday afternoon, lecturing his audience of murderers, rapists and thieves, then shifting gears and describing them as victims of a hostile system.
People who are neither prison inmates nor relatives of inmates can listen to the one-way conversations on Hill`s program, too, although Hill does not know how many do.
”The Prison Program” is probably the only one of its type in the country, according to Geoffrey Knox of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, a nonprofit organization concerned with the criminal justice system. And it is one of a handful of projects that focus on the needs of inmates`
families rather than on the inmates.
”The families are doing time as well,” said Ray Simmons, founder of Operation Prison Gap in New York, which provides low-cost bus transportation to prisons for family members who could not otherwise afford to visit.
”Nobody really cares about the families. Nobody understands.”
Hill says he understands. He spent four years in Texas prisons after a burglary conviction. When he was released in 1975, Hill, who had been in broadcasting before his conviction, persuaded friends who ran KPFT-FM, the public station here, to allow him to broadcast a program about prison life.
At first the program consisted of Hill interviewing an expert on the prison system for an hour. But mail to the station showed that while the program was directed at the outside world, its audience was largely in the prisons: friends of Hill`s who passed the word from cell to cell.
One day about four years ago Hill received a phone call during a break in the program. The caller, with traffic rumbling in the background, said she was on the way to visit her son in Huntsville, but her car had stalled and she would not make it. Her son always listened to the program. Would Hill please tell him she had tried?
He did one better. He let her tell her son herself. And now dozens of callers jam the lines from 4 to 5 p.m. each Sunday hoping to do the same. This second hour of Hill`s program belongs to the families.
Hill, a garrulous man, has become a cult hero to prisoners, many of whom volunteer to work for the program after they are released. But he is nearly silent during the call-in part of his show, and callers seem to forget there is an audience. It is the caller, the telephone and a mental picture of a listening loved one. ”They don`t need me,” Hill said.
”Bernard, hi. We really enjoyed our visit yesterday. Linda still remembers you. We tell her, `Where`s your uncle Bernard?` And she goes, `Ba?
Ba?` like she`s looking for you and she can`t find you. I really did enjoy seeing you, baby. You look real, real good. I want to say hi to all your buddies there, all your friends that stay in the same cellblock with you. Tell them all hi from all of us.”
”Hi, Beau. This is Mom, Beau. I just had a hamburger or two. Wish you`d been here to have one with us. … If Pat didn`t go see you the other day it was because she had to work, but she didn`t give us a call to let us know she wouldn`t be there. … All Mother`s going to say is I didn`t understand whether my visit is the second or the fifth of next month. Write back and let me know.”
What is most striking about the conversations is how unstriking they are, how full of everyday, ordinary chatter. The weather is a major topic, because ”contact visits”-in which inmates and their guests are allowed to touch-are held outdoors and are allowed only when the weather permits.
”I wish I visited today instead of yesterday because it`s beautiful today. The weatherman said it would be nice yesterday, but it wasn`t. I will listen to another weatherman for next week.”
There is a lot of talk about letters sent, letters received or letters that callers promise to write as soon as they hang up the phone. ”I just wrote you this in a letter last night, but I wanted you to know right away,” one daughter tells her father, then goes on to describe a recent family get-together.
Many calls are about visits that ended only 24 hours earlier. This is a chance to tell of the traffic jam faced on the way home or the piece of news that didn`t fit into the allotted visiting hour. Every other call seems to begin, ”We made it home safe.”
”Other families take that for granted, calling to say: `We made it. Don`t worry,”` Hill said. ”This way these callers can, too.”
”Hello Bob. I just wanted you to know that we enjoyed our visit up there, Son. … Your Aunt Sis called about an hour ago, and we had an hour`s talk with her. Sis is definitely not in physical condition to make the trip to Huntsville to see you. I don`t know if she ever will be able to make the trip again. … I`d like to encourage you to lose a little weight. You know I`m down to 182 now. My waist is just about as big as my chest.”
Hill recognizes many of the voices that come over his speaker phone, and he shares their stories with his listeners. There is Bob, who was a prisoner of war and whose son is now a prisoner of another kind. There is Barbara, a wealthy woman from Greenwich, Conn., who married a Texas inmate and who has called the show from Europe and the Caribbean. There is Bill, recently released from prison, who calls to say hello ”to all my buddies back there.” In fact, a network of ex-convicts is involved with the program. Danny Mahn appeared at the station one Sunday to help, two weeks after he was released after serving 9 years, 9 months and 17 days for murder. ”When you`re in there, it means something,” he said of the program. ”The guys all listen.”
Todd Berzett called the station days after his release last September. He had served 2 1/2 years for burglary. ”I asked Ray for help,” he said. ”I needed help getting things together.” Now he has a job, an apartment and a used car. He came into the station last month and announced over the air that he would drive families to the prison on visiting days.
”This is for my husband, James. I want to congratulate him . . . well, us. We have a new baby boy. I want to tell him it was a lot easier this time. My mom took a whole lot of pictures. She was in the birthing room. She said it was the most wonderful experience.”
”The Prison Program” has critics. Prisoners say some wardens have tried to stop inmates from listening, a charge the Corrections Department denies.
”We don`t go around turning radios off,” said Charles Brown, a department spokesman. ”We just don`t do that.”
In fact, department psychologists say the program is beneficial to prisoners. ”Any communication that the inmate has with his family, whether it is one-way or two-way, is important,” said Yates Morgan, a psychologist in the Ellis Unit in Huntsville.
”This is to say hello to my husband, Thomas, in Ramsey 3. Hello, precious. We made it home safe and sound. We`re all fine. We`re all here at Sandra`s house for dinner. We love you, baby, and we miss you. We had a wonderful time. I`m going to get a letter in the mail to you tonight. Just wanted you to know we made it home safe. I love you. We made it home safe. I love you. Goodbye.”
