Separated by Prison Walls and Thousands of Miles: Interview with Gwen, Wife of an Inmate

Please give us a bio of yourself

My name is Gwen, I'm 37 and work for an education charity as a researcher. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Heritage and Landscape and a year's postgraduate study in Landscape Design. I am English and still live in England at the moment. I have one teenage daughter from a relationship that lasted 17 years, and she will be starting college in September. I love rock & classical music, art, literature, all kinds of handcrafts, movies and nature. I'm pagan; I was brought up this way and simply put, I don't believe in a single deity. It has nothing to do with witchcraft, I am not a witch.

I understand your husband is currently in a Texas Prison. What was he convicted of and how many years did he receive?

My husband Dirk was convicted of first degree murder in September 2004, and received a 40 year sentence. He was 44 at the time.

Will he be eligible for parole soon?

As the law stands right now, he will be eligible for parole in 2024. His is an aggravated crime, and so he must serve half his time before the parole board will consider him.

How does he spend his prison time. Does he work, and if so what kind of work, and does he get paid?

Dirk reads a huge amount, mostly classical works when he can get them but also biographies and philosophical essays. He enjoys doing crosswords, and he is currently studying for the entrance exam to begin an Associates Degree. He writes to me every day, and he also writes to his family and some of our friends. He prefers to spend his time in his cell and not in the day room, and doesn't often go outside for rec because of the procedure for doing so. Dirk works 6 days out of 7 on an 8 hour shift, serving food in the inmate dining hall, and no he does not get paid at all for that.

Where you married to him before he went to prison, or did you meet him while he was in prison, and if so, how?

Ours is an unusual story. We 'met' online 11 weeks before his crime and we 'clicked' straight away. The time difference worked well for us, and we would talk either online or by phone for between 4 and 12 hours every day. We also wrote conventional letters and sent each other packages. It seemed a lot longer than 11 weeks. I know many people find it difficult to understand how friendships or relationships can form at such a distance, but I have met over 100 people face to face that I originally knew online, and I really don't see it as any different to meeting someone in a cafe or park.

Dirk was up-front with me about his situation and problems from the beginning. I knew he was an addict, and that he had been clean for a few months. I knew he had children of a similar age to my daughter who live with their mother, but that he was still very close to them all. I got to know about his family, and he about mine.

We had started to make plans for me to fly over for a visit (I had already been thinking of seeing other friends in America), and we'd talked a lot about how we would just see how things worked out ~ no ultimate plan to do anything except take each day as it came. Then Dirk became very depressed after his children had been to stay for the weekend, and although we continued to talk just as much as before, he also began to self medicate by huffing glue. I knew something was not right, but I ignored it. Three days later Dirk killed someone. When Dirk's brother told me what happened, my world literally stopped. I know that I made phone calls and spoke to a lot of people that night, but I have no recollection of the 2 days that followed hearing the news. My friends were all very supportive, even making me meals and taking me out into the countryside.

All I could think of was how scared Dirk would be, and how, with what he had done, it would be understandable if no one wanted anything more to do with him. I loved him, but at that point he was my friend and I could not turn my back on him. So I began writing.

I have written almost every day since then, at first as friends, but very quickly we regained the closeness that we'd found before. Dirk writes every day but mails his letters to me 3 times a week. TDCJ limits the number of stamps an inmate can have at any time, so that is our agreement. I flew out to visit him for the first time in March 2006, and that was wonderful but so hard to be so close to him but have the glass between us. A little way into the first visit, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, and of course I said yes. We'd talked about it before the visit, even considered getting married before we'd met because that would mean a contact visit, but in the end we decided to wait so that we could be sure of each other.

My daughter and I flew back to Texas in December 2006, I married Dirk by proxy as that is the only way inmates are allowed to marry in that state, and then we had our first contact visit the following weekend. My daughter came in for an hour to meet Dirk and they got on well.

How many times a year do you get to visit with him?

At the moment I can afford to fly over once or twice a year.

It must be hard, married to someone in prison, how do you cope?

Yes it is hard, but in different ways to couples who have been physically together before one is incarcerated. I have lost a few friends because I chose to stay with Dirk; some don't understand how I can be involved with a murderer and others don't understand how I can forgo a physical relationship for so long and still be happy. The only way I explain it is that I feel happier with Dirk than I ever did with my daughter's father. I feel fortunate that we did know each other before his crime, and that most of his family have welcomed me. I cope by doing all the things that I used to when we first started talking, nothing stops just because my husband is in prison. Actually, I live more now, I do more, because I'm living for both of us ~ and I need things to fill my letters with!

What is the hardest thing being separated from your husband?

There are so many things, but the hardest tend to be little things like not being able to call him when I get home from somewhere nice, not being able to watch him open gifts, not being able to cook him a meal, not hearing him sing in the shower, and I miss turning on my computer and seeing an email from him first thing in the morning. Things that most couples take for granted. Part of me is glad that I don't miss waking up next to him too, because we never have. That must be so hard for other couples.

Do you correspond by mail and phone also?

We make do with letters as Texas inmates rarely get to make phone calls.

How is your stay here, and how are you treated by the guards at his unit?

I stay with my mother-in-law when I fly over, although she is not in good health so I don't know for how long that arrangement will last. I don't drive, and I know that's going to be a problem eventually. We travel for about an hour to get to Dirk's unit, and then we stay overnight at a hospitality house nearby so that my mother-in-law doesn't have to drive so much. I have visited Dirk in 2 units: the first was an intake facility and the warden and staff there were very polite and helpful. Sometimes it helps to be foreign! The unit that Dirk is in now is a much older complex and the staff are not all as polite as those at the intake unit. The guards, on average, are younger at this unit and do not appear to enjoy or even take pride in their work, with a few exceptions. The warden does not respond to questions and does not appear at visitation.

What are some of his complaints about prison?

In general, he doesn't complain. He knows why he has to be there (we've never disputed that, he is guilty and must submit to the punishment his peers decide, we just wish that it wasn't so long before a chance at parole) and being older with nothing to prove, he keeps away from situations that could give rise to complaints. He doesn't like the restrictions on the things he can buy from commissary, particularly on stamps, and he doesn't like it that, because he is not paid to work, his mother and I have to send him money to keep him in a small amount of comfort.

We both don't like the very tight restrictions we have to abide by for contact visits. It would be nice to sit next to each other instead of across a table, and it would be nice if he could get up and come with me to the vending machines, or even go by himself and get me something for a change.

Dirk had a hernia operation last October, and the procedure itself was carried out without incident, but the bureaucracy surrounding his transfer to the medical facility and the difficult time we had keeping track of where he was and whether he had actually had the operation or not was very stressful for us all. The Chaplains were little help.

Do you feel our prison system needs to be reformed, and if so how?

Yes! There are some very good prisons in parts of America that treat inmates with more respect and expectation, and also pay their staff a much better wage than TDCJ do, but there are also some appalling prison systems in some states that actively and persistently persecute and humiliate inmates. Personally, I see the 'punishment' as being removed from society for a period of time, and I do not see any justification for making inmates wear pink underwear, or making them work until they drop in temperatures of over 100 degrees with the threat of being shot if they stop. Most inmates rejoin society at some point, and I feel that much more could be done, in Texas at least, to educate and prepare inmates to be more productive and responsible citizens. I also dislike the notion that someone who commits a violent crime is automatically seen as a violent person. The two don't always go together. I am in favour of retaining the death penalty in a very small number of cases, but certainly not as it is administered today in America. It didn't take my dog 8 minutes to die when she was put to sleep, I don't see why it should take a person that long. There are so many things in the Texas system that just make no sense to me, it would take another interview to list them all.

Is there much difference from the prisons here and in the UK?

There are some big differences, not least that in the UK, inmates are generally placed as near as possible to their families. The conditions are not as strict, inmates have more access to recreational pursuits and comforts depending on their classification, but we are far from perfect. I think Scandinavian countries have an enviable prison system.

What are your plans for the future? Will you live here, or will your husband be allowed to move to the UK?

Once my daughter has finished college, I intend to try and move to Texas. There is no guarantee that America will let me in, it is hard enough to get through immigration on a visit at the moment! It is highly unlikely that Dirk will be allowed out of Texas once he gets parole, so I need to have a home ready for him there. We would both prefer to settle in the UK; he visited Europe when he was a child and would love to return one day, but realistically, our future is in Texas now. My parents are both dead and I only have a brother here, so even now I have more family in America than in England.

Thank you for this interview, and at this time if there is anything you would like to add, please do so.

There are 2 things I would like to add. First is to ask that people stop seeing inmate families as just as bad as the inmates themselves. When I visit Dirk, I see mothers dressed in their Sunday best clothes visiting their sons, small children visiting their fathers, as well as other family members. Sometimes a whole family is 'bad', but less often than the stereotype suggests. If you are treated with politeness by a guard, you are more likely to respond in the same way.

Secondly, particularly in reference to Texas; making things a little easier on the families of inmates is not necessarily "giving in" to inmates. I understand security is paramount, and I do not object to being searched when I enter a facility at all (I would willingly accept being strip searched if it meant we could have more intimate visits), but to tell me what I can or cannot wear at visits, or how I can or cannot touch my husband, I feel, is overstepping the mark by a long way. I am not allowed to wear sleeveless tops or open-toe shoes, and we are not allowed to touch each other's forearms while sitting at the table. We are permitted one hug and kiss at the start and end of each visit, which for us is 4 hours long. Can you imagine sitting so close to your husband and not being allowed to kiss him, particularly when you know you wont see him again for another 6 months? How can anyone hope to produce 'normal' citizens with a system that treats people so abnormally?

The prisoners who are abused, and who do not receive the rehabilitation and education while in prison, will some day be out neighbors. Abuse breeds hatred and anger and It will one day be everyone's problem.