Life on the inside

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 16th. This is WORLD Radio, and we thank you for listening.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Mryna Brown.

Effective Compassion Season 3 begins in a little more than a month. This year, all 10 episodes focus on prison ministry. While digging into one story, our reporter stumbled upon an unusual museum.

REICHARD: Before Texas established a state prison system in 1848, each of the states’ counties carried out justice in total. From arrest, to imprisonment, to execution.

But inaccurate portrayals of life behind bars in Texas persist today.

BROWN: One Texas museum tries to tell the whole story—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here’s World reporter Bonnie Pritchett.

BONNIE PRITCHETT, CORRESPONDENT: Leather. It’s the first thing you smell then see upon entering this niche museum in Huntsville, Texas. A lighted, glass display case welcomes visitors with hand-tooled wallets, hand bags, cell phone cases and other specialty-crafted items.

It’s all for sale. And it’s all the work of Texas prison inmates.

Also on display here at the Texas Prison Museum is a paradox—mankind’s creative nature used to build up and tear down.

STACKS: Over the last 90 days, we've had people from 17 different countries, come visit us…

Artifacts, photos, letters, and informative panels facilitate self-guided tours. But this morning, museum director David Stacks walks me through the exhibits.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 16th. This is WORLD Radio, and we thank you for listening.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Mryna Brown.

Effective Compassion Season 3 begins in a little more than a month. This year, all 10 episodes focus on prison ministry. While digging into one story, our reporter stumbled upon an unusual museum.

REICHARD: Before Texas established a state prison system in 1848, each of the states’ counties carried out justice in total. From arrest, to imprisonment, to execution.

But inaccurate portrayals of life behind bars in Texas persist today.

BROWN: One Texas museum tries to tell the whole story—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here’s World reporter Bonnie Pritchett.

BONNIE PRITCHETT, CORRESPONDENT: Leather. It’s the first thing you smell then see upon entering this niche museum in Huntsville, Texas. A lighted, glass display case welcomes visitors with hand-tooled wallets, hand bags, cell phone cases and other specialty-crafted items.

It’s all for sale. And it’s all the work of Texas prison inmates.

Also on display here at the Texas Prison Museum is a paradox—mankind’s creative nature used to build up and tear down.

STACKS: Over the last 90 days, we've had people from 17 different countries, come visit us…

Artifacts, photos, letters, and informative panels facilitate self-guided tours. But this morning, museum director David Stacks walks me through the exhibits.

Former prison warden David Stacks is director of the Texas Prison Museum.

Former prison warden David Stacks is director of the Texas Prison Museum.

STACKS: One of the things that we want to make sure here in our museum is that we tell the fact whether it's a good fact or a bad fact, one of the things that we don't want to do is distort history…

Stacks served 19 years as warden for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. His experience and study of history enriches our conversation.

STACKS: We got our first prisoner in 1849. He was a horse thief from Fayette County. And about a year later he got his first cell partner. And he didn't like it. He tried to escape and he was killed in his escape attempt.

STACKS: One of the things that we want to make sure here in our museum is that we tell the fact whether it's a good fact or a bad fact, one of the things that we don't want to do is distort history…

Stacks served 19 years as warden for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. His experience and study of history enriches our conversation.

STACKS: We got our first prisoner in 1849. He was a horse thief from Fayette County. And about a year later he got his first cell partner. And he didn't like it. He tried to escape and he was killed in his escape attempt.

Keeping prisoners shackled kept them from escaping. Old methods were unsafe for the inmates. Prisoners also learned how to free themselves from some. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

Keeping prisoners shackled kept them from escaping. Old methods were unsafe for the inmates. Prisoners also learned how to free themselves from some. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

Escape attempts continued to threaten prison safety. In 1934 outlaws Bonnie and Clyde helped five inmates breakout of an East Texas prison.

STACKS: And what you see here is a model…

Stacks approaches a large, table-top model of the Huntsville Unit, the first state-run prison, and points to a building inside the compound.

STACKS: The Carrasco siege took place in the education building…

In 1974 Fred Carrasco was serving a life sentence for attempting to kill a police officer when he tried to escape.

CRONKITE: In the state penitentiary in Huntsville Texas, armed convicts have seized 11 hostages…

STACKS: But Carrasco, he was able to orchestrate his escape attempt by paying an outside trustee money to smuggle in some weapons and some Bandoleros and live weapons and ammunition…

After an 11-day standoff, Carrasco and his two fellow convicts tried to make their way to freedom by using rolling chalkboards and four hostages as shields. During the ensuing shoot-out with authorities, Carrasco and another escapee shot and killed two prison employee hostages. Authorities killed one of those convicts. Carrasco took his own life.

More evidence of mankind’s creativity—for good or ill—fills the museum.

STACKS: They are very ingenious…

Escape attempts continued to threaten prison safety. In 1934 outlaws Bonnie and Clyde helped five inmates breakout of an East Texas prison.

STACKS: And what you see here is a model…

Stacks approaches a large, table-top model of the Huntsville Unit, the first state-run prison, and points to a building inside the compound.

STACKS: The Carrasco siege took place in the education building…

In 1974 Fred Carrasco was serving a life sentence for attempting to kill a police officer when he tried to escape.

CRONKITE: In the state penitentiary in Huntsville Texas, armed convicts have seized 11 hostages…

STACKS: But Carrasco, he was able to orchestrate his escape attempt by paying an outside trustee money to smuggle in some weapons and some Bandoleros and live weapons and ammunition…

After an 11-day standoff, Carrasco and his two fellow convicts tried to make their way to freedom by using rolling chalkboards and four hostages as shields. During the ensuing shoot-out with authorities, Carrasco and another escapee shot and killed two prison employee hostages. Authorities killed one of those convicts. Carrasco took his own life.

More evidence of mankind’s creativity—for good or ill—fills the museum.

STACKS: They are very ingenious…

Using their imagination and what is at their disposal, inmates make works of art like the toilet paper rose bouquet, wooden domino set, or a matchstick ship inside an empty Tabasco bottle. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

Using their imagination and what is at their disposal, inmates make works of art like the toilet paper rose bouquet, wooden domino set, or a matchstick ship inside an empty Tabasco bottle. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

Remarkable works of art are all made from the resources at the inmates’ disposal— soap, matchsticks, cigarette packages, coffee grounds and toilet paper.

Remarkable works of art are all made from the resources at the inmates’ disposal— soap, matchsticks, cigarette packages, coffee grounds and toilet paper.

An inmate used only coffee grounds to reproduce a famous image of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde photograph. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

An inmate used only coffee grounds to reproduce a famous image of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde photograph. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

Scores of homemade knives and assorted weapons reveal darker intentions.

Scores of homemade knives and assorted weapons reveal darker intentions.

This display of handmade weapons, contraband caches, and other banned objects were made by inmates and confiscated by prison authorities. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

This display of handmade weapons, contraband caches, and other banned objects were made by inmates and confiscated by prison authorities. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

Moving on, Stacks says it wasn’t just the inmates behaving cruelly.

STACKS: So that to me is a very dark way to treat anybody…

Photos of squalid living conditions tell the tale of the inmate leasing system. In 1871 the cash-strapped State of Texas leased prisoners to land owners. Some of them saw the inmates as a cheap, renewable resource.

STACKS: If one died, they’d say, ‘Well, I had this one, I need another one.’ There was no reason for them in their mind to treat them humanely…

Revelations of inhumane treatment brought the system to an end in 1912.

But inmates still work. Stacks moves to a display that appears more suited for an agricultural museum.

STACKS: We do everything from raising our own cotton, our own maize or corn, our own vegetables. We have our own canning plant…

From fields to cattle barns to metal fabrication shops, Texas inmates produce much of what they eat, wear, sleep on and, um, sit on. Stacks describes the toilet-sink combo gracing a replica cell.

STACKS: Our prison systems our metal fab division makes these. So, the top has a sink. The top also has a fountain where you can drink water out the top of the fountain. And then down below is the bowl for using the restroom…

Clyde Barrows once lived in a cell like this… until he escaped and took up his murderous crime spree with partner Bonnie Parker. Stacks takes me to an artifact taken from the couple’s “death car.”

NEWS REEL: Four of the six officers who brought down Bonnie and Clyde…

Moving on, Stacks says it wasn’t just the inmates behaving cruelly.

STACKS: So that to me is a very dark way to treat anybody…

Photos of squalid living conditions tell the tale of the inmate leasing system. In 1871 the cash-strapped State of Texas leased prisoners to land owners. Some of them saw the inmates as a cheap, renewable resource.

STACKS: If one died, they’d say, ‘Well, I had this one, I need another one.’ There was no reason for them in their mind to treat them humanely…

Revelations of inhumane treatment brought the system to an end in 1912.

But inmates still work. Stacks moves to a display that appears more suited for an agricultural museum.

STACKS: We do everything from raising our own cotton, our own maize or corn, our own vegetables. We have our own canning plant…

From fields to cattle barns to metal fabrication shops, Texas inmates produce much of what they eat, wear, sleep on and, um, sit on. Stacks describes the toilet-sink combo gracing a replica cell.

STACKS: Our prison systems our metal fab division makes these. So, the top has a sink. The top also has a fountain where you can drink water out the top of the fountain. And then down below is the bowl for using the restroom…

Clyde Barrows once lived in a cell like this… until he escaped and took up his murderous crime spree with partner Bonnie Parker. Stacks takes me to an artifact taken from the couple’s “death car.”

NEWS REEL: Four of the six officers who brought down Bonnie and Clyde…

This handgun was in Bonnie Parker’s possession as she died in the shoot out with Texas law enforcement. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

This handgun was in Bonnie Parker’s possession as she died in the shoot out with Texas law enforcement. Photo/Bonnie Pritchett

A tall, plexiglass case holds one item on loan to the museum – a polished, silvery pistol.

STACKS: Bonnie and Clyde broke into a military installment and broke into their armory. And that gun was taken out of the armory. But it was it was taken off of her in the death car. And here's a picture of Clyde in the in the death car here…

Most criminals don’t meet their fate in a shootout. Actually, the vast majority of convicts are released after serving their time.

For those condemned to die—there’s another exhibit. Stacks said it’s the most popular one in the museum. The sturdy wooden chair with leather straps at the feet, arms, chest and head has a morbid nickname—Old Sparky.

Stacks has witnessed his share of executions, none by electrocution. That ended in 1964 after 40 years. In that time 361 men died in this chair.

Since 1982 Texas has used lethal injection for executions.

STACKS: And we try to give them all the dignity and respect that we believe any human being should have, even though they're being condemned to an execution death...

Even the vilest offender bears God’s image. Stacks recognizes that and his own state of grace.

STACKS: Yeah, most most people that are, when they get to this point in their life, they've done some pretty horrendous things. You know, the greatest thing I can say is that the people that I've witnessed, have confessed their sins. Accepted their fate. Believe in Christ. And I hope to see them in heaven. I mean, why would we not want to. Who wants to wish anybody go to hell? I know I don't…

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett in Huntsville, Texas.

A tall, plexiglass case holds one item on loan to the museum – a polished, silvery pistol.

STACKS: Bonnie and Clyde broke into a military installment and broke into their armory. And that gun was taken out of the armory. But it was it was taken off of her in the death car. And here's a picture of Clyde in the in the death car here…

Most criminals don’t meet their fate in a shootout. Actually, the vast majority of convicts are released after serving their time.

For those condemned to die—there’s another exhibit. Stacks said it’s the most popular one in the museum. The sturdy wooden chair with leather straps at the feet, arms, chest and head has a morbid nickname—Old Sparky.

Stacks has witnessed his share of executions, none by electrocution. That ended in 1964 after 40 years. In that time 361 men died in this chair.

Since 1982 Texas has used lethal injection for executions.

STACKS: And we try to give them all the dignity and respect that we believe any human being should have, even though they're being condemned to an execution death...

Even the vilest offender bears God’s image. Stacks recognizes that and his own state of grace.

STACKS: Yeah, most most people that are, when they get to this point in their life, they've done some pretty horrendous things. You know, the greatest thing I can say is that the people that I've witnessed, have confessed their sins. Accepted their fate. Believe in Christ. And I hope to see them in heaven. I mean, why would we not want to. Who wants to wish anybody go to hell? I know I don't…

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett in Huntsville, Texas.

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