Free The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley Page B

and it was destined to grow even larger. Because of tougher federal sentencing guidelines taking shape in Congress, more money for law enforcement, and the booming drug-trafficking business, the bureau expected the number of inmates to increase to at least 85,000—possibly as many as 125,000—by 1995. To meet this need, the bureau estimated it would have to construct at least seventeen new prisons,and budget analysts were predicting the new director would have to send Congress a $1.4 billion budget request for fiscal 1988—the biggest ever, more than double the previous year’s.
    “The fact that Mike was a lawyer was a factor in my choice,” said Carlson, who did not have a legal degree. “I had learned early on that being a lawyer means something in the Justice Department because lawyers like to talk to other lawyers.”
    When Quinlan took charge on July 1, 1987, the bureau had completely reversed its philosophy. Six decades had passed since James Bennett had stood in the Leavenworth yard, stared at the giant dome, and decided that the purpose of federal prisons was to rehabilitate inmates. Now the word
rehabilitation
was considered passé, replaced by a new buzz word:
expansion
.
    All of this growth, of course, meant that Quinlan would have to hire more employees, who, in turn, would require more managers. He would need a larger executive staff to oversee his mushrooming empire, and this made the spotlight on Warden Robert Matthews burn even brighter.
    Matthews did not wish to be left behind or see his soaring career stall. He intended to prove himself by becoming the master of the Hot House.
    When it was announced that Matthews was coming to Leavenworth, guards began calling friends who had worked for him in other prisons to learn what he was like. What they heard made them nervous. Matthews was described as a perfectionist, a physical-fitness zealot, and a stickler for rules and procedure. The new warden emphasized appearances. He wanted his institutions to sparkle and he expected guards to keep their shirts tucked in, shoes shined, to answer with snappy “Yes sirs.” Matthews himself wore tailored suits and crisply ironed shirts, and whenever his wing-tips got dirty, he immediately cleaned them, with his handkerchief if necessary. According to those who had worked with him atother prisons, Matthews was such a stickler for neatness that he never left anything on his desk. If papers needed to be signed, he signed them and put them out of sight. If reports needed to be read, he read them and gave them to his secretary to file. He didn’t even keep his phone on his desk at one prison. He put it in a drawer.
    It was the stories about Matthews’s note-taking, however, that most upset the Hot House guards. Within the bureau, Matthews was something of a legend for being the warden who always carried a small notepad in his coat pocket so he could jot down inmate complaints as he walked through a prison. It didn’t matter how minor the gripe, how trivial it might seem to the guards. Matthews investigated every complaint. “Inmates are really our customers,” he had been fond of saying in his previous posts as a warden, “and it is our job to respond to their needs. They aren’t always right, but they still are our customers.”
    The staff at Leavenworth had never looked upon inmates as customers, nor were the guards there eager to have a warden question them about some picayune incident. “The rap about Matthews was that he cared more about clean floors and inmate gripes than he did about the staff,” one guard recalled. “Believe me, everyone was watching when Matthews came up those front steps that first day as warden. We all wanted to see what he was made of.”
    No one had to wait long.

Chapter 6
THOMAS LITTLE
    The 727 jetliner taxied to an out-of-the-way runway near the cargo buildings at Kansas City International Airport and stopped near a waiting passenger bus and a white van parked on the concrete