This is an excerpt from High Price: The Luke Scarmazzo Story. Click here to purchase the Paperback of eBook.

Even though I had made up my mind not to be discouraged or defeated by such a lengthy sentence, that didn’t make my time in prison any less challenging. The economy was still bad, and my folks were not doing well financially, so with DeVina gone, I no longer had much financial support. I had to find a hustle in prison, and what better than to go with what I’m good at—selling weed.

I had a female friend come to the visiting room one Saturday afternoon and bring me twenty-five one-gram balloons of Grandaddy Purple. I was about to show this prison what some fire-ass weed from Northern California looked like. I won’t name my companion’s name nor how she did it, but it was a smooth pass-off, and I was able to bring them back with me after the visit was over. The only problem was these twenty-five balloons were in my stomach, and I didn’t know how to get them out. I went back to my cell on the third tier and told my neighbor, Aaron Brown, a guy in his mid-30s from a small town in Oregon, to keep watch while I went into my room and put a makeshift curtain up to block any nosey onlookers. I decided to make a concoction of water and shampoo and drink about twelve ounces. It worked instantly, and within seconds, I was vomiting the entire contents of my stomach. Each one of these grams was worth several hundred dollars in prison. After puking, I was sitting on a good little chunk of bread. But now I needed some help moving some of this GDP. 

I enlisted the help of what was unofficially called the “Dub & Up Club.” This club had an exclusive membership of four people, including myself. To gain membership in this club, you had to meet two strict criteria: have a sentence of twenty or more years in prison and not have told or snitched on anyone. The first member was Benjamin Meneses, a grinding street hustler from Anchorage, Alaska who was doing twenty-five years for selling crack. Next was Josh Shulkin, a savvy but overly polite guy who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and was doing twenty-five years for a methamphetamines case. And last but not least, my neighbor Aaron Brown, who was serving twenty years for bank robbery. We added another young brother from LA named Solo, an Inglewood Crip who was also serving forty-five years for bank robbery.

We moved all the weed within a couple weeks, and the whole prison was going crazy about the quality, which most had never seen. I had my commissary account full and was even able to start sending money home. I was so happy that the entire play had been a success that Solo and I decided to celebrate and smoke a fatty in the bathrooms by the vent late one night before the count. We lit it up and puffed on that thing for twenty minutes. I went back to my cell and drifted off to sleep.

I awoke at 530 a.m. to the sound of keys jingling outside my cell. Just as I opened my eyes, I saw several officers with flashlights burst into my cell. 

“Hands up! Hands up!” They were screaming.

I complied and put my hands in the air. They searched my cell for the next couple of hours but found nothing illegal. Then the lieutenant walked in, looked at me, and asked, “When’s the last time you smoked weed?” Someone must have seen Solo and me smoking and told on us. Damn It.

“I don’t smoke weed, sir,” I lied.

“Okay, we’ll see. Let’s go!” He called to the other officers. “Take him to my office. We’ll piss-test him.” He turned to me. “You gonna pass?”

“Of course,” I lied again. The truth of the matter was as soon as I urinated in the cup, I was going to solitary confinement. And that was exactly what happened.

Solitary confinement, or what is officially called the Segregated Housing Unit, or SHU, is a prison within a prison. The SHU is usually located in the deepest bowels of the facility. There is little natural light and very minimal human interaction. It’s also commonly referred to as “twenty-three and one” because you are only allowed out of your cell for one hour a day. The catch is you are not really let “out” of anywhere. Your one-hour recreation time is in a medium-sized dog kennel right down the hall from your cell. Your meals are pushed through a metal slot in your door three times a day, starting with breakfast at 5:30 a.m. Lunch is usually a bologna sandwich, sometimes rotten, sometimes not, and dinner—if you could call it that—could be any leftover slop from the kitchen. Your only lifeline in the SHU is reading. But the guards rarely provide books, so they have to be mailed in from the outside. If you don’t have any books, magazines, or something to read, then you’re left on your own to stare at the ceiling, and the four walls begin to close in awfully fast.

I was sentenced to seventy-five days in the SHU for my positive THC test. This was my first taste of solitary, and I was in disbelief that we legally and actually treat human beings this poorly.

I was finally let out of the SHU in April. My hair and beard were overgrown, and it looked like I had just filmed an episode of “Naked and Afraid.”

I had hoped that was my first and only experience going to solitary, but of course, those are the thoughts of a man who is young and naïve. Later that year, I was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Mendota. This was a medium security joint in a small farm town west of Fresno. 

The silver lining was that the prison was located in the Central Valley, so I was close to home and bound to run into some guys I knew from Modesto or the surrounding cities. The unfortunate part was the one who ended up knowing me was the Special Investigative Services (SIS) lieutenant. SIS is the investigative wing of a prison. Basically, they are like the secret police or Gestapo. They run informants, tap phone calls, and get people to snitch on each other for violating prison rules. 

Officer Lazano was tall, had a thick neck, dark hair, and a knack for being a real asshole. He immediately didn’t like me and wasn’t shy about showing it. Apparently, we had played high school football against each other, and maybe he didn’t like that I had outplayed him. I don’t know, to tell you the truth. I just know that within a year, he began putting me into solitary once every couple of months for whatever reason he saw fit. Thirty days for being caught with a Playboy, two months for having too many postal stamps in my cell, and two weeks for accidentally ripping a basketball jersey during a game, which turned into a charge of destroying government property.

I was sitting in the SHU one day and running out of reading material, so I started brainstorming ways to occupy my time when I ran out of books. Then, a great idea hit me: I wanted to write a book. I had wanted to write down my story since my incarceration began, but the task seemed too daunting when I thought about it. I had never written a book before and had no training on how to be an author. Hell, I got frustrated when I had to write ten pages for a college class. But as I ran out of things to read, I needed something else to do, so I made a deal with myself to write four pages a day and just see what happened.

This worked out great for about a week, and then I ran out of writing paper and ink. This was a big problem because we were only allotted four pieces of paper, two envelopes, and one mini flex pen a week. I had to find a way to get more. I asked the inmate orderly who passed out the writing material and laundry if he would be willing to bring me extra writing material in exchange for two lunch trays and one dinner tray per week. Food in solitary is like gold, and although I would be extremely hungry on the days I had to trade my trays for writing paper and flex pens, at least I would be well-supplied to accomplish my mission.

But now I had a new problem: I had to devise ways to hide all of this paper and send it out in the mail a handful of pages at a time. Technically, it was a rule violation to have “excessive” paper in your cell at one time, and if you thought I was going to get some leeway from an understanding officer in the SHU, think again. Oftentimes, officers are looking for a reason to punish you or make your time more difficult. They are trained to look at the inmate as subhuman. The “us versus them” mindset makes it easier for them to mistreat you or be unjust. Prisoners are not worthy of compassion or empathy. In a prison environment, it’s necessary for the jailors to maintain control, and this is one of the ways they do that.  

Prison officials’ disdain for prisoners doesn’t stop at the inmates themselves; it extends to their families. This is evident and on display every weekend in prison visiting rooms nationwide. I got my first real taste of just how far someone would go to make my day miserable during a visit from my daughter in Lompoc.

In the Lompoc visiting room, an officer’s station sits elevated several feet above four rows of twenty white plastic chairs facing each other with knee-high tables separating the visitors on one side and the inmates on the other. No touching is permitted except for a hug and kiss when visitors arrive and leave. It was a Sunday, and the officer working in the visiting room was named Officer Hara. She was a tall, heavy-set Indian woman with straight jet-black hair who didn’t hide the fact that she hated all inmates. Why work at a prison if you hate prisoners so much, you ask? Good question, but I’m not sure there’s an answer to it.

Once called for a visit, prisoners line up in the order they are called outside the visiting room door. There’s usually not more than ten waiting at a time. When it’s your turn, you step through the door three at a time and are led to a small room with several waist-high stalls. Prisoners are ordered to strip naked and hand the officer their clothes one article at a time. Then, they are ordered to open their mouth for inspection first, hold up their arms, squat, and cough. This process is repeated after the visit, too.

After this exceptionally degrading process, I was shown into the visiting room where my daughter and DeVina were waiting. When I would get about fifteen feet from where they were sitting, Jasmine’s patience would burst, and she would come charging into my arms. I’d pick her up and squeeze her so hard that I was afraid I would hurt her. She was eight years old now, and those moments were the only thing that got me through some of my most trying times. 

I set Jasmine down, grabbed her hand, walked over to her mother, and gave her a deep hug and kiss. Our visit was going well, and Jasmine was sitting on my lap, being goofy, when Officer Hara yelled my name across the visiting room. I looked up to see her summoning me to the officer’s station.

When I arrived, Officer Hara asked me how old my daughter was. I told her she just turned eight. She smiled and said, “Once an inmate’s child is seven or older, they can no longer sit on the inmate’s lap.” I pleaded with her, but she held firm. I walked back to my family and told my daughter that she couldn’t sit on my lap anymore. Jasmine started apologizing because she thought she was in trouble and had done something wrong. I assured her she was not in trouble. They just had a stupid rule we had to follow today. 

When the visit ended that day, the visitors were given a few minutes to hug and say goodbye as usual. I looked forward to this part because my family had to drive five to six hours each way just to come and see me, so our hugs and kisses were few and far between. I’d always say bye to DeVina first and then save my longest goodbye for Jaz. I picked Jasmine up, hugged her, and held her for several seconds, telling her how much I loved her and needed her to take care of her mama for me. Just as she was telling me she would be a soldier for me, Officer Hara yelled at the top of her lungs, “Scarmazzo!” 

Jasmine literally jumped in my arms. I set her down carefully and told her everything was fine and that I loved her.

This was a clear abuse of authority, and when I walked back to Officer Hara, it took everything I had in me not to tell her what I thought of her mistreatment of my family. I did not control myself completely and said some things I probably shouldn’t have, which resulted in another trip to the SHU. These were my only interactions with my daughter from ages six to sixteen. A few months before she got her driver’s license, the Bureau of Prisons transferred me to Pollock, Louisiana, 1,800 miles from home. After that, I saw her only once more during her childhood.