Daniel and the Lions Den: The True Story of an Eight Hour Inmate

By Dan Starrett

Daniel and the Lions Den, the true story of an eight hour inmate is a compelling no holds barred story of humorous and disgusting anecdotes written by the author of The Father The Son and The Railroad Ghost and The Straw Servant. Dan Starrett spent twenty-five years in law enforcement and knows first hand what it is like to be in The Lions Den.

One of the best ways to face the strain and stress of prison life is to have a cynical sense of humor and a desire to come out of The Lions Den Alive when the long shift is done. I worked closely with Dan and he has made my day go by faster with his wit and humor . I can attest to the contents of this story because I am retired from the DOC.

This is life behind bars at its best and worst and can only be described by this man who has been there , done that. Prison violence goes from mild to unbelievable.

The correctional officer does not have the best job in the world and is sometimes caught in the middle of the administration, the inmates and a speculating misinformed public that would keep him/her from doing their job.

This story lends credence to Doing your eight and hittin the gate. If graphic sex and violence offends you, please do not read this story. This is reality.

Ray McGuire, Yanceyville N.C.
N.C. Department of Corrections Ret.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 12, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465314956

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Copyright © 2007 by Dan Starrett.

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Contents

FORWARD

STAUNTON CORRECTIONAL CENTER

BLAND CORRECTIONAL CENTER

ACADEMY FOR STAFF DEVELOPMENT WAYNESBORO, VA.

STAUNTON CORRECTIONAL CENTER

BONFIRE AND OTHER VANITIES

MR. LEE, MR. LEE

A THORN IN THE SIDE

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RAY RODD

DEBTS

CORPORAL

JUDGEMENT DAY

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

ESCAPES AND MANHUNTS

SIGNS AND SEPERATION

POWHATAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER

REUNION

MY NAME IS GARRETT

I GOT MY MO-JO WORKING

PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE COOKIES

HOMECOMING

SEX LIFE OF AN INMATE/OFFICER

MY NAME IS PATTY ANN

THE RESIDENT PROCTOLOGIST

NYMPHO

COULD YOU PLEASE LET ’M FINISH

THE TOWER BUNNY

SEX AND THE CLOTHES HOUSE MAN

TOWER SEX

DROID DRUBECK

NAVAL M. D.

MEET ME AT THE ARMORY HONEY

MOODY WATCHIN’ THE BOOTY

ISO/SEG SEX

TUPAC AND LEROY

GOT MILK

OH BABY I LOVE YOU

TOOT’N THE HORN

THE KING SNAKE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all of the Professional Corrections Officers living and deceased who have sacrificed, endured and lived through this experience. Unlike your standard Cop the Correctional Officer must live with those dangerous people who have been sentenced… eight hours or more a day.

FORWARD

Daniel and the Lions Den is the true story of life behind bars. In order to tell the story honestly the author will not refrain from sugar coating the contents. The language used here is the language used by the inmates and the officers. The men and women who work for the Dept. of Corrections have one of the most stressful and dangerous jobs imaginable. The ever increasing jail/prison population is brought on by the lack of discipline in our homes, the abolishment of the draft, and the all around disrespect for authority. When America as a nation took God out of the classroom we opened up a conundrum of confusion about what is right and wrong as never before and unfortunately will only get worse.

When I went into the prison system of April 1976, the Virginia prison population was less than 10,000 inmates. Today it is bursting at the seams so bad that when a new prison is built, the overflow from the city and county jails is so great that the powers-that-be are looking for another place to build a newer behemoth warehouse for lost arrogant souls. If this seemingly unsolvable problem is allowed to continue at the spiraling rate, our tax dollars will bankrupt the country from having to meet the needs of the ever increasing prison population.

One of the first contacts an inmate has after being introduced to the prison system is a Bible. You cannot take that away from him. Hence if he had been taught the biblical principals in school as set down by the ten commandments, like as not he/she would not be in there in the first place.

When the draft was in effect the young men being introduced to the military were taught a sense of values and discipline that kept our armed forces with a steady supply of able-bodied young men. It in itself was a revolving door that gave young men a chance to make a career or to be taught a valuable lesson in life… respect for authority and discipline. Today in our ever increasing prison population, they are lacking in both ends of the spectrum. Inmates are doing the same thing in prison that they were doing out on the street but just on a smaller scale.

Rehabilitation has failed. A man can only be rehabilitated if he wants to be. Hence an ever increasing revolving door of inmates coming back into the system. The police are doing their job. The judges are doing theirs and the correctional officers are doing theirs. Where did we go wrong?

I will attempt in this book to give my opinions as well as the opinions of other officers who have accepted the calling. It is not a job that everyone can do. It is dangerous, somewhat humorous, boring and at times will bring you to tears. You will not find the word guard in this book while referring to a correctional officer. A guard has four paws and bad breath.

A lot of the incidents described therein are taken from actual D-O-C files and from the memories of the author and other officers described here-in. Some of the names were changed to protect their identities be it inmate or officer. Most of the incidents were of Staunton Correctional Center or Powhatan Correctional Center, with a few un named locations thrown in during my sixteen year tenure with various DOC’s.

A well known news commentator once said If you want to see the scum of the earth, be in the parking lot of a prison at shift change. It is my special desire that this commentator would have to work in a prison for one day in the maximum security or lesser units to see what the average correctional officer has to contend with. Then he would not be so quick to judge the men and women who daily put their lives on the line for a job that must be done twenty four and seven to protect society from such people.

I have worked in ten different institutions from minimum to maximum security for four different states… Virginia, Montana, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Some units are worse than others, some better than others. But one thing is blatantly clear, they are all accidents waiting to happen.

Prisons are volatile powder kegs that can go from tense filled to and out and out riot. The administrative powers-that-be must use every management tool available to keep the lid on this spontaneous combustion.

In the majority of prisons the ratio of inmate to officer are a hundred to one. Read how some officers come to work just to harass inmates. Some like to deal with inmates for their own personal gain. Others are there because they need to feed their families and hopefully doing their eight hours and hitting the gate… Alive.

Let the reader be warned. If you are offended by prison/street language and graphic sex and violence, please do not read this book.

This is Reality!!!

If you look like lunch, you’re going to be eaten.

MONTANA STATE PRISON

STAUNTON CORRECTIONAL CENTER

The blocked add in the Staunton News Leader read as follows:

Wanted, Correctional Officers/Correctional Officer Trainees to man a new prison facility currently at the sight of the old Western State Hospital. Applications will be available at the Virginia Employment Commission’s New Street Office March l, and 2 at 8:00am. The Virginia Department of Corrections personnel will be available to assist if any questions. The Virginia Dept. of Corrections Division of Adult Services is an equal opportunity employer.

I was working for Wackenhut Security as an officer for the newly established Wintergreen Resort in neighboring Nelson County. There wasn’t a building other than a maintenance shed on the mountain ski resort. As in most private security jobs, the pay was low and the benefits were nil to nothing. I could not buy a real police job since my returning from sewing wild oats in my back slidden condition in Montana.

At four dollars per hour with police experience and being in the National Guard MP’S I figured it was worth a stab. The least they could do was tell me No and my wife had that word down pat. One more NO wouldn’t make that much difference, the benefit package didn’t look bad either.

My wife and I had just purchased a new home under the G.I. Bill. My wife Faye was working at Smith’s Transfer in Verona and that job was virtually rock solid. She had already been there for eleven years and she was making more money than what I was. But I would soon catch her if I was successful.

I got up bright and early on March 1, 1976 not knowing what I was getting myself into. As I rounded the turn on Augusta St. in Staunton on to Churchville Ave. to New St., people were lined up two deep almost up to the next block. I had to park three blocks away before I found space available. The line looked like the Saturday morning kiddies show at the Strand Theatre. Parents would send their kids there so they could have a few hours of PIECE AND QUIET so they could try and become parents again. Only these were adults, younger people in their early twenties and some in their fifties from all walks of life. Some black, mostly white and a pretty Indian girl with a big nose. All were vying for a bite out of the State Pie. The line moved very slow at first but as the time wore on which seemed like an eternity, it was my turn to go through the double doors. A sharp looking young man in a police type uniform with captain bars was passing out applications and was directing the hopefuls to a nearby desk to fill out the state application.

It took all of twenty minutes to complete the application and I was interviewed on the spot as to my past experiences. Had the interviewer, G.T. Landes been alerted to my qualifications and my selling points fine-tuned, I could have been hired as a corporal. I found out later that most of my counterparts had been hired in at that rank because they had left a police job. Most of the people who leave police work to come into corrections have had trouble with raging hormones or other iniquities against them that needed hidden under a bushel. The interviewer advised me to go home and wait until such time that the interviews, the qualifications, etc. could be weighed that could deem me fit to be part of a proud tradition… A professional correctional officer. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

I didn’t have to wait too long as the prison called me sometime shortly after our anniversary of April 11. The ghost of Walter B. Starrett must have had something to do with the hiring because they called me on April 17 and wanted me to come to work on April 19, if I accepted the position. I didn’t want to leave my present job without giving a notice so D-Day would be established as April 26, 1976. The first phase of hiring had already begun and the officers and corporals hired in the first phase would be first to attend the five week training course at the Academy for Staff Development in Waynesboro, Va. I had no idea I would ever go back to the town I was once a policeman in. Oh well, maybe they would forget about me.

While the first class was still in session, the upcoming second class would have completed a week of institutional training mandated by the Dept. of Corrections at an assigned major institution. In this case it was Bland Correctional Center. The proud home of the infamous Botetourt Scours. But that’s another story at another time. The first day of reporting for work at Staunton Correctional Center Was like a family reunion of sorts because I kept running into my old police counterparts in the form of C. K. Lawhorne and John Arkward and other ill-disciplined ex-dignitaries of the law enforcement profession or mildly put, the last of the rouge cops. Not only was the Waynesboro P.D. represented by ex-cops but the Staunton P.D. Had given up their share of hormonal deficiencies to the tune of J.D. Spitler and Bill Jack with a Yul Brynner hair cut. All of these guys were hired at the rank of Corporal with the exception of Bill Jack who was hired as a Sergerant.

There was particularly one ex-cop/ex-car salesman by the name of Clyde. Clyde used to provide me with used cars that I was not readily reorganized in when my hormones were running amuck before I was a ex-Waynesboro city policeman.

BLAND CORRECTIONAL CENTER

After the family reunion a hurry up and wait syndrome transpired before being sworn in. Clyde Reid, Gary Nelson, John Cursey, and an ex-truck driver by the name of Mullins who had that far ahead look in his eyes after coming down off of a West Coast Turn-around. We departed in Mullins Cadillac with 165K miles on it and a vinyl top on it that looked like it had the shingles. Happy Faces Going Places as we left Staunton, Va. bound for Bland Correctional Center via I-81S. It would be a three hour trip of getting acquainted and reminiscing of days gone by.

We made a pit stop at a small diner just north of Roanoke, Va. We all ordered burgers and fries and were treated to a nice looking lady in the adjacent booth who kept smiling at the ex-truck driver and the forever young Mr. Cursey. She had on a medium blue low cut dress with no brassiere to hold up her puppies which she proudly displayed them to anyone who would look. I figured if I looked the Lord would strike me blind so I closed one eye and sat there with that Baptist