Christy Marie Camp
W-32687
D1-10-02L
VSPW
P.O. Box 92
Chowchilla, CA 93610-0092
Dear Christy,
Thanks for the letter and photo. Thanks also for sending the copy of your book! Your account of life for women in prison is very moving. I see that, as you mentioned, much of it is online on web sites such as Cell Door Magazine. I have printed out a couple of pages from my site so you can see what it looks like. That’s basically what people see, plus copies of your letters, which my printer did not print out for some reason. I am enclosing a copy of an e-mail a friend sent to the governor asking him to grant you clemency. I’m also sending a copy of another prison-related letter I sent out.
After reading your description of prisons and the prison system, I feel that I have a much better idea of what life is like “inside” than before. But it also brings up more questions, which I won’t bombard you with all at once. It is fascinating to get a detailed account of the experience of prison life, along with insightful commentary and conclusions from someone who is going through the experience. You wrote: “A woman doing days count hours, a woman doing months counts days, a woman doing years counts months, a woman doing life counts breaths.”
You talk about the effect of prison on prisoners as well as on those who work in prisons. It reminded me of the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 in which some young men were put into a mock prison situation, some as prisoners and some as guards, randomly, and they took their roles to heart to say the least. Have you heard/read about it?
I would like to send you something to thank you for going to the trouble of mailing me a copy of your book. I am not sure what you would want or need, or what you are allowed to have. The document about mailing things, on the VSPW web site, is more than 20 pages long, so I figured I would just check with you about it before wading through all the rules. Can you receive books if they are mailed from a book store?
In your last letter you asked what a “SAHM” is. It’s a stay-at-home-mom, the latest politically-correct version of what used to be “housewife” and then was “homemaker.”
You mentioned that you have a parole hearing in June. Do you need to prepare for that? What is involved?
Sorry it took me a little while to write back to you. I went on a road trip to visit my parents in Idaho and I wanted to read your book before writing.
Take care.
Truly,
Liz Mann