Scales Mound, IL

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Looks like it's just inside Jo Daviess county, itself named in honor of Gen. Joseph Hamilton Daviess. He was killed in the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Talking Rock, GA

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Inkster, ND

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A friend writes

Dear Thane & Family

Well hope this finds you in good health. Is Palo Alto north or south CA?

I do not miss living in [the] LA area. The traffic, real crime, & lack of seasons wore on a person.

I ended up getting nine years. I will have to do seven of them the way the law is now. This was from a case where they had no drugs, no controlled buys, but four people already convicted of conspiracy & doing time in federal prisons testified. They took my house because witnesses said they saw drugs stored there. I got lucky that I qualified for a safety valve. Otherwise I would have gotten 15 years or more. There is a lot of legislation in the works. I can only hope something changes so I can be out by my 30th class reunion.

I am in Horticulture. I work outside 4-7 hours a day and take a college class on turf management. I can get an associates degree in horticulture & an apprenticeship while I am here (oh boy). None of the time I was on pretrial release is counted against my time even though I was under community confinement and completed a 30 day inpatient drug program.

It is safe where I'm at. It's an old college campus (oldest in South Dakota). [It was] converted to a federal camp in the 1990s. So that part is good. I can go anywhere on [the] grounds from 7am to 9pm, about 28 acres total. We have a large gym & softball field so I am lifting a lot of weights, playing raquetball, basketball & softball. So healthwise this is not a bad thing for me.

I could have gotten out in 18 months to 48 months if I told on people, but where I am at spiritually and my beliefs in general I could not do that to another person [...]

There is an organization called FAMM (Families Against Minimum Mandatory) that is trying to get things changed. All I can do is encourage people to get involved & help get laws changed.

What kind of work are you doing? Software? Are you still running? Tennis? Basketball?

There are good church things here, so I am trying to change from inside on how I react to people & the law, etc [...]

I'll write again near the holidays. Not much changes in here. Kind of the same day after day. Food—cafeteria. Out of 780 of us 500 are in here for drugs & 400 of those not bad people & weren't committing other crimes. I am also fortunate because this is probably the only prison in the US where whites are a majority—25% black, 10%-20% hispanic. In Illinois, that prison was 75% black, 15% hispanic, and 10% white. That place sucked compared to here. I am enclosing some photos of the area. Not what you would think of a prison, more like a human-warehouse-park.

Take care

From the archives (Oct 2003): another letter