119: Best of The Prison Officer - Interview w/Mark Schrieber - Missouri’s Prison Legacy

This is a "Best of" from January 16, 2023, Episode 24 in remembrance of Mark Schieber, who passed away on November 17, 2025.  

We sit with former MSP assistant warden and historian Mark Schreiber to trace Missouri corrections from segregated tiers and whistle calls to cameras, structured movement, and a museum that fights tornadoes and time. Stories of investigations, integration, inmate culture, and saving archives reveal how people, not just buildings, define the work.

• starting at MSP in 1968, early mentorship and undercover work
• major cases, investigations and use of force evolution
• pay, professionalism and building maximum-security capacity
• integrating a segregated prison and managing factions
• “colonist” inmates, reentry fears and modern life gaps
• cameras as deterrence, logistics during riots and moves
• preserving history: ledgers, photos and museum plans
• EF3 tornado damage, tours recovery and future headquarters
• inmate art, tools like line sticks and Oregon boots
• new book Forgotten Shadows and why people matter most

Here is Mark's Obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/mark-schreiber-obituary?id=60095560

Shanks to Shakers: Reflections of the Missouri State Penitentiary

Somewhere in Time (170 Years of Missouri Corrections)

Chapters

• 0:00 Safer Option First: PepperBall Sponsor
• 2:03 Setting The Scene At MSP
• 2:58 Mark’s Start In 1968 And Early Lessons
• 6:37 Springfield Roots And The Young Brothers Case
• 13:14 Learning The Job: Counts, Mentors, Undercover Work
• 17:27 Building Investigations And Major Cases
• 21:28 How Corrections Changed: Pay, Professionalism, Custody
• 24:48 Youth In Uniform And Communication Skills
• 28:46 First Gates, Long Corridors, And Radios To Whistles
• 34:20 Training, Towers, And Weapons Of The Era
• 38:54 The “Colonist” Inmate And Reentry Gaps
• 43:47 Convicts, Culture, And The MSP Move In 2004
• 50:01 Segregation To Integration: Factions And Leadership
• 56:25 Preserving History: Archives, Photos, And Ledgers
• 1:02:58 Art, Line Sticks, And Oregon Boots
• 1:08:20 Tornado Damage, Tours, And MSP’s Future
• 1:14:54 Headquarters Plans And Keeping The Walls
• 1:18:48 Why Forgotten Shadows: People Over Buildings
• 1:24:56 Floods, Inmate Work Crews, And Community Aid

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

In more than 28 years of corrections, I have used or supervised pepperball hundreds of times. Now, as a master instructor for pepperball, I teach others about the versatility and effectiveness of this pepperball system. From cell extractions to disturbances on the rackyard. Pepperball is the first option in my correctional toolbox. One of the most dangerous times for officers is during stealth extractions. Pepperball allows officers to respond with the lowest level of force and still be effective and ready if the situation escalates. The responding officer controls where the projectiles are aimed, how many projectiles are launched, and how rapidly they're deployed. This allows the response to be tailored to the moment. To learn more about Pepperball, go to www.pepperball.com or click the link below in the show's information guide. Pepperball is the safer option first. Well, welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. Today I'm doing a remote interview, and I just happened to be in the old warden's house across from the Missouri State Pen, built in 1888. And have a special guest today. As most of you know, I started at Missouri State Penn. And whenever you talk about Missouri State Pen in Missouri, you can't help but mention Mark Schreiber. He went to work for the Missouri Department of Corrections in the late 70s, held many positions, starting as an officer, and ended his career as an assistant warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary. He's always been an advocate for preserving history of MSP in the Missouri Department of Corrections. He's also an author who's written two books, one of them called Somewhere in Time, and then Thanks to Shaker. And that uh since then he has been uh city councilman. So please welcome one of my former bosses, Mr. Mark Schreiber. Welcome, Mark.

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

Thank you, Mike. I uh I will make one correction off the back deal, but it kind of dates myself. I actually started at the Missouri Pen State Penitentiary in 1968. Oh, wow. As a college student. Okay. I started in 68. And so that kind of predates me a little bit there.

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

What did you do as a college student? Was it an internship or something?

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

No, I actually needed a job. My parents were both educators, and of course, you we know how much money they always made. So they said, well, you you only need to have a job. And so I uh I started here when I went to Lincoln University, and I ended up then going up to uh Central Missouri State University later on. But I uh went to work, I went to work here as a corrections officer, and um, you know, I remember a fellow named Jess Elliott hired me. He was uh the deputy warden at the time. Wow. And um he asked me, he said, uh, well, let me ask you a question. He said, Are you uh afraid of inmates? And I said, I don't know. And he said, What do you mean you don't know? And I said, Well, I've never been around any. Right. And I had an uncle that was that had been a federal prison warden and and retired from the federal system. Uh actually down at Springfield was his last tour of duty. And uh, so I went to work there and I was dumber than a rock. Yeah. So, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 3:48

Well, I was the same way. I had never been to jail, never been to prison. Yeah. This was my first time. So yeah. So you talked a little bit about uh from Springfield. So let's talk about where you grew up and where you're from and a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01: 4:03

I was born in Springfield in 1946 at the old St. John's Hospital, and my my dad was originally from Branson, but grew up in Springfield where his dad was a city engineer back in the 1920s and 1930s, and my mother was from Springfield. I grew up on a farm there. Uh, so I had a lot of family there. But I was born there in 1946 and went to uh Delaware School, grade school, and then also went uh for a little while down at Nixon because my mom taught down in Nixon. And then we moved to Jefferson City in 1954 when my dad took a job, was asked to take a job with the State Department of Health, and he uh he came up here from Springfield, and that's how we relocated here. So um we were actually here, I was in the third grade then, and uh we were here about I think two weeks before the prison riot. And after the prison riot happened, my mom and dad said, Well, maybe we should go back to Springfield. But you know, but we stayed. So I grew up, went to the Jeff City schools, uh, graduated from Jeff City Senior High in 1964.

SPEAKER_04: 5:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 5:12

And uh then, you know, later on went to college and uh eventually got a a degree in in business and um and in criminal justice, and then I got a master's degree later from Columbia College in criminal justice. Wow and and corrections.

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

You mentioned uh uh grandfather that worked in Springfield at the Federal Medical Center.

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

Uh well that was actually my uncle. Uncle, okay, Charlie James, and he had a he also had a pawn shop that his dad started on Commercial Street called Commercial Street Pawn Shop.

SPEAKER_04: 5:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 5:42

And uh my uncle Charlie, who was from Springfield, and he married my my mother's uh my mother's sister, who's still alive, my last remaining aunt, and um uh she lives she now lives down in Lubbock, Texas, where her son's a professor down there. But uh anyway, uh my grandfather, my grandfather striver on my dad's side was the city engineer down there and for a long time. In fact, uh you you've probably heard of the young brother's massacre down there. Yep. Well, a story that my dad told me, uh, and he introduced me to this fella. My dad was a twin, and uh, my uncle Henry, who died at age 101 uh in Springfield. Um uh my dad was a twin, and so they had two friends, and they were Ray and Faye Oliver. And Ray and Faye Oliver were my dad lived over on uh Central at the time. And uh when they lived over there, my dad said that Ray and Faye Oliver's dad was a city detective detective, his name was Tony Oliver. And uh so dad would keep keep up with him even then and later on when I was a you know full-grown adult, and he would go down there and talk to his friend Ray Oliver and all uh uh whenever the Young Brothers massacre happened down there. Uh my dad said that Ray and Faye were over at uh their house on uh my dad's house on Central. And he said, Remember my grandmother, Striver, who was originally from Branson, she came out in the back and they had said they had a barn back behind their house. And she said, Ray and Faye, you need to go home right away. And dad said, you know, us being kids, we just kept on playing in the barn and everything. And finally, my grandmother, he said, my grandmother came out and said, I mean, you need to go home right now. And they got home and they found out that their dad had been killed in the young brother's master, Tony Oliver, who was one of the six officers killed in that event. Of course, those guys had done time up here, you know. Uh the young brothers had done time to keep. Of course, they caught up with them down in Texas and they they never made it back because they took care of them down there in the gun battle. So, but that was uh, you know, that was quite a quite a nationally known event. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 8:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:02

That particular event.

SPEAKER_00: 8:03

So isn't it interesting the way history works in little circles?

SPEAKER_01: 8:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 8:07

Uh I don't know if you ever knew the fellow named Paul Young. Yep. Uh well, Paul, uh, you know, when I was a little kid, before I ever knew him, uh, when later on when Paul worked at MSP and and he was still alive a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_00: 8:22

He still is. I'm looking to interview him, maybe coming up.

SPEAKER_01: 8:26

Uh I want you to give him my phone number because I want to talk to Paul. Paul was at MSP. Well, Paul showed me a picture one time uh when I was down at Ozark Correctional Center, and I went to it out to his house and for lunch, and he got this picture, and it showed Paul, and he was had been a Springfield motorcycle officer, police officer. And back when I was a little kid, they had some cobras that got out of a pet store, and that was a big deal. Right. These cobras, and Paul had killed one of those cobras, and he was holding it up, and so we got to talking, and he said, Mark, have you ever heard of the young brother's master? And I said, Yes. And he said, Well, let me tell you, and I told him my story that I just told you.

SPEAKER_04: 9:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 9:08

And he said, Well, let me tell you my story. He said, When I applied to be a Springfield police officer, he said, they grilled me upside down and backwards, wanting to know if I was relatable to young brothers. And I kept telling them, no, no. And they said, Well, we'll find out if you are. And he said, of course, they found out I was not. And he said, you know, I said, so I got hired. He said, otherwise, I don't think I'd have got a job.

SPEAKER_00: 9:31

So that's a good story. Paul was a longtime major at the Ozark Correctional Center. Yeah, I worked for him for a little while. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell him you said hi, we'll do that. So um, so you had a little bit of knowledge ahead of time of prison. You had a couple of family members that had worked in it. Did they talk about it, or was it still just brand new to you when you walk through the door?

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

You know, you see something, or back then, of course, they didn't have uh anything much on TV about anything like that or whatever. You you obviously heard of Alcatraz and places like that. Uh my uncle Charlie actually started out as a coach, and that and the first prison he worked uh as an officer was at Leavenworth. And he got it, got it, got a job, you know, at Leavenworth. But uh I my cousins, including my my aunt that I was telling you about, her son that's a professor down at uh Lovick at the University down there, who was from Springfield. Uh my cousins, of course, every time my uncle would get promoted, they'd move, they went to Longquark, California, Ashton, Kentucky, uh, Terre Holy, Indiana. Sure. You know, he made the rounds and he'd keep getting promoted. Well, my cousins would always talk about living on the reservation. And I thought, reservation? Well, you're not Native Americans. You know, and finally I found out that it was uh government housing that they lived in, you can all these different assignments that my uncle had. But, you know, he talked a little bit about it and he talked about some people they had from the RECO Act, and later on he knew Stroud, the birdman at Alcatraz, and he didn't have much good to say about him.

SPEAKER_04: 11:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 11:11

Uh, you know, he said he uh he'd known Machine Gun Kelly and he knew, you know, a lot of a lot of uh underworld figures, you know, that were in the various facilities. Of course, Stroud was down at Springfield. Springfield, you know. And uh, but anyway, I uh when I came to work, if it hadn't been uh I think one of the one of the people that helped me the most, and I've talked about some of these people in my my book that'll come out in the spring, uh called uh my my book, my latest book will be called Forgotten Shadows. Okay. And um, it's due out when the tour season starts, about April. And uh a fellow named Leroy Casey, Captain Casey, he was from down at uh the Branson area, and I didn't know that till years later. Uh, but he helped me more than anybody. And uh I remember one time I tried to count A-HAL, and see back then, we back in the 60s, late 60s, and even in the early 70s, uh, we had inmate clerks, inmate levermen. They we had the inmate levermen until uh Lieutenant Atkinson was killed in 1975. And so I tried to count A-HAL, and I want to tell you I had the biggest mess after about the third time Captain Casey came over, and I thought, well, I'm in trouble now.

SPEAKER_04: 12:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 12:32

But he he actually helped me and he got things squared away, and he told some of the inmate clerks, okay, one of them was named Kluck, was the whole the Kluck family was notorious. The whole family came to prison. They made them a family family union for Klucks.

SPEAKER_04: 12:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 12:49

And uh so, you know, then he he got things squared away, and then I was able to do the counts. But, you know, if it hadn't been for some of those people, and Casey was one of my favorites, uh, you know, I don't know what would happen.

SPEAKER_04: 13:02

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01: 13:03

But but I uh there was something about it that even though, you know, later on I went, I was the first undercover narcotics officer for the sheriff's officer.

SPEAKER_04: 13:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 13:11

And I was an undercover narcotics officer when I was working at the prison, and the warden didn't know it.

SPEAKER_04: 13:17

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 13:17

Gordon Swinson was the warden then. And uh he'd come from the federal system as well. And uh my cover story was I just show them my prison ID, and my cover story was with these people, I was a corrections officer taking narcotics into prison, and they sold to me. And they didn't know until roundup time that I was actually an undercover narcotics officer, and then later I was the chief investigator for the sheriff and the prosecutor here, and that's before we had corrections investigators. I was the first official one in 1983. Well, they hired me in '83 as the first internal affairs officer, the chief investigator for the whole department. And Dale Riley was the deputy director of DAI then, and he's the one that actually got that position through under the merit system. And uh, you know, but before that, then what I did with the sheriff of the prosecutor, they had authority in this county over out uh any crimes that happened at Algoa, MSB, or Church Fox. And so I would work all those crimes. So I got an education real fast in working, you know, I'm in Lieutenant Atkinson's homicide. I worked that along with uh some fellows from the patrol, a couple that are still friends of mine. Um and then of course, uh in 1979, Walter Farrell was killed, and I worked Walter's, I was took pictures of Walter when he died in the prison hospital. Uh then later on in uh in 19 uh let's see, 1983 is when uh let's see, it was in July is when uh July the third is when uh Officer Tom Jackson was killed up at Moberley. And I worked that was members of the Aryan Brotherhood that killed him.

SPEAKER_00: 15:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 15:06

So I mean I I learned pretty fast.

SPEAKER_00: 15:09

Yeah, you know. Some tough cases there.

SPEAKER_01: 15:11

Well, you know, and I and I had a lot we had a lot of good staff that helped, and and the and uh the sheriff basinger was a great sheriff to work for. I loved working for him, and uh but I spent a lot of my time at the prison working, you know, a lot of different cases. That wasn't the only thing I did because I was that with the sheriff's department. Sure. But uh it was you know, I learned I learned a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 15:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:34

I did.

SPEAKER_00: 15:35

So over those years, what do you think one of the biggest changes was that you saw?

SPEAKER_01: 15:44

Well, I guess, you know, I'll probably think of something later on, but I think that uh I think it kind of went from, you know, I didn't really think about this till later. But then you know, what you find out is the more you learn, the more you find out you don't know.

SPEAKER_04: 16:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 16:02

And I guess that's what keeps me even at si I'll be 77 in February, why I'm still so interested, because just like the tours now, I learned something from people that may say, Well, my grandfather worked there way back when, and uh, you know, I've got this picture you might like to see. And I'm like, holy Toledo, you know, that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_04: 16:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 16:23

But I think that uh the some of the biggest changes were the fact that when I came to work, the the people that worked there were dedicated, but there wasn't that degree of professionalism that we tried to establish later on.

SPEAKER_04: 16:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 16:45

And you know, it's always bothered me that when I came to work, corrections staff in Missouri were the lowest paid in the United States and they still are. That still bothers me. And I think that later on, of course, when I came to work, MSP was the only maximum security prison run by the state of Missouri.

SPEAKER_04: 17:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:05

See, then and Mobley was a medium security prison that opened, I think, in the 1960s, 64, 65. So when I came to work, uh we still had the reception diagnostic center was at MSP.

SPEAKER_04: 17:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:20

You know, H Hall. Later on, I was a lieutenant over H Hall in some of those places. So, you know, I think that Missouri, one of the things that Missouri did right is that much later, whenever we started recognizing that we were going to have some overcrowding, Missouri started building all prisons as maximum security prisons. And as you know, and as other corrections professionals know, you can always lower lower the custody level, but you can't, it's damn hard to go back and retrofit something from mix from minimum to maximum.

SPEAKER_04: 17:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

So, you know, Missouri did something right there. One of the things that you know, I might be getting ahead of myself, but I I I'll forget it. If one of the things that does bother me a little bit, I think now they're hiring like 19 year olds.

SPEAKER_04: 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:06

That bothers me a little bit. And it's not it's not because that that young people aren't maybe want maybe that the fact that they uh I hope they're not just taking it as a job as so that they can just move on to something else. Uh totally. Uh but as you know, young males can be very vocal and uh they have the physical capabilities, but I wonder about the psychological capabilities.

SPEAKER_00: 18:38

The communication skills.

SPEAKER_01: 18:40

Communication skills, you know. Uh yeah. They don't know verbal judo.

SPEAKER_04: 18:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 18:45

And so, you know, somebody gets in your face and they call you no good this and a no good SOB and everything, instead of you letting it roll off off you like water off a duck's back and saying, Have a good day, I'll see you later. Right, you know, they'll get up in somebody's face, and the next thing you know, they have to call a white shirt, and the white shirt has to come and can intervene. And by that time you've got this big crowd gathered around and problems start. Right. I'm not saying in every instance, but I that worries me a little bit from that standpoint.

SPEAKER_00: 19:16

You know, I can't even at 22 or just turn 22, and in many ways I wasn't ready. I wasn't matured yet. I was 20. Yeah. So 19 years old, I was my brain wasn't even anywhere towards being a professional or, you know, and you walk in here and you handled when I walked in here, there were guys who had been prison longer than I've been alive.

SPEAKER_01: 19:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 19:40

You know, so to stand up and and give them commands or instructions, that that was a tough thing to do. Um what do you rem and I ask everybody this do you remember the first time that gate shut behind you?

SPEAKER_01: 19:54

I do. Um and I think I probably thought, what am I doing here? You know, and and I I knew several people that were later became police officers that worked there for a little while, and they absolutely could never get used to the gates when they were behind them. And they were good people.

SPEAKER_04: 20:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 20:12

But they just couldn't. But you know, um I guess the thing that when I shut my eyes and think about it, I think the thing that really made me realize exactly where I was is back when I started, we didn't initially have horrible radios. Right. We had that whistle. Hard to blow a whistle if you're trying to keep anybody to knocking you down.

SPEAKER_04: 20:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 20:36

And that long corridor that went all the way down to uh J and K Hall and the other way to F and G Hall.

SPEAKER_04: 20:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 20:46

That long corridor. And you know, you were assigned, if you were assigned to be down at the end down there, and you had to stand up on that little piece of metal that they had, of course, tell everybody I was six foot four and got compacted down to five foot seven, you know, or whatever. But you know, you had to stand and you'd see several hundred inmates coming down there after after mainline or whatever. And the next thing you know, something breaks out. Somebody's getting stabbed or whatever. And that drives at home the reality of where the heck you are.

SPEAKER_00: 21:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 21:19

It really does.

SPEAKER_00: 21:20

That was a thing when I was, of course it was several years later, but that was kind of the thing they did when you'd had enough time in, but they wanted to see if you had what it took. And you'd go stand down there at the end of that long hallway there. And um yeah when you're standing there and it's a sea of men between you and help.

SPEAKER_01: 21:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 21:39

It puts it in perspective. It absolutely does.

SPEAKER_01: 21:42

Yeah see when I when I went to the training academy it was over there where the old women's prison was and of course the women had been up in H Hall when it was built about the H Hall was built or House Unit One was built at the time of uh about the 1904 World's Fair. And that is the female unit up there. And then in 1926 Warden Leslie Rudolph moved all the females out of MSP over to the what they call the old Minor Mansion and General James Minor was one of the first adjutant generals of Missouri and his house stood right over there with the Department of Natural Resources building. They put the women there and then in the 30s when they did this big building program when they built F and G and J and K and you know a lot of those structures the hospital and the admin building and everything well the women they built a a uh two story building over there and they attached it to that old mansion. And and the women were there. Well that's where we had our first training academy and our firing range was down over the hill and actually I'm telling you it was like a swamp.

SPEAKER_00: 22:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

And uh you know next to the river. It was off next to the river and I mean it was anything but a it would never pass anybody's muster for firing range today.

SPEAKER_04: 23:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

And we used uh we had a uh we had a an M1 carbine which I wish I had one of those round I believe was a tracer we had a a shotgun pump pump shotgun and we had a revolver. And that's what we those were the firearms that we actually had. And uh you know of course years ago that whistle where the whistle came about be way before my time but on the towers you know we have 16 towers as you know and uh and that that that was the 16th one was the extra one up on top of the admin building. Well they used to the officers used to have to come out on the catwalk and blow the whistle every 15 minutes. And that's before they had the intercom system. And that's how they kept track of everything that you know that Yeah everybody was awake and not under duress and of course when later on when I was there they'd come around with the the shift captain or the zone lieutenant and it would here again it would depend on the uh the degree of uh desire I guess that you know if it was a real cold day like today you know the lieutenants that you really know you could depend on that would come around and put the flashlight on you. Fortunately I didn't have to work very many towers.

SPEAKER_04: 24:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 24:27

I do remember one on Thanksgiving about 1969 or 70. My wife and I were going to go to Gaelsitburg, Illinois for Thanksgiving. And Captain Casey said Sriber I hate to put you on a tower but we're short we've had too many callings. So he put me down on 10 towers. And of course during holiday nothing's going on all the factories are closed down there. Even the pigeons took a vacation and no cats nothing so then they called at the end of the shift and said we're really sorry but you're gonna need to stay over an extra eight hours so I worked on that tower 16 hours and I actually got up and I'd go stand on the cat walk to stay awake because it was so that little heater would burn you up on the backside and the front side and the freezing and uh so I worked in 16 hours on that tower and then I got off of course being only you know 20 21 then we drove to Galesburg Illinois in a snowstorm. Wow you know yeah but I remember you know the towers and of course the the lieutenant came around Lieutenant Tandy Williams came around and he shine the spotlight and I flashed him back and though I was in an alert state shall we say absolutely absolutely yeah I remember those days.

SPEAKER_00: 25:49

So um well let me ask you a question before I ask the next question. So one of the things that really put me in perspective when I came to work here was down in the training room I think it was I think it was down below one building um there was uh pictures of an inmate that we had taken every 10 years. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01: 26:12

Downstairs yeah and you remember who that inventory okay he died up there in the hospital I think while I was working here but that really put perspective to because he'd spent his whole life here hadn't he Jay Thurman when I when I taught later on after when I retired I taught for about four years as an adjunct professor at Columbia College in criminal justice and collectionist and one of the one of the things that when you categorize various types of offenders uh J Bird is what you would call a colonist inmate and a colonist inmate is an is an inmate that actually likes being incarcerated because they have that structure and they have that certain sense of security because J Bird I've got a picture of J Bird uh that was taken in the 70s maybe maybe a little bit later maybe it was in the early 80s and he is with all the with Slick Stedham and who was who did time and Alcatraz and Slick was one of the ringleaders of the 54 Riot uh with Raymond and a lot of those guys and they're all gathered around him and he's down in front and they're they're gathered around James Burton well that was like his family. And actually the first picture I think was taken in the 1920s.

SPEAKER_04: 27:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 27:32

And when he first came to prison he looked like a pretty tough guy back then. But then you've got this progression and he would get out come back come back get out come back. Well I think the last time that he got out he was sent to some kind of an assisted living facility and uh the story that I was told and I I I don't know for sure if it's accurate or not but I I've been told this by several people that he he actually stole the Mercer's purse made sure that it was done where somebody would know that he did it didn't take anything from the purse right got violated sent back to MSP because he knew that he was secure there and all of his friends were there and he got along with all the staff he knew he got three huts and a cot that's what you call a colonist inmate. And his series of pictures is down here in a museum.

SPEAKER_00: 28:25

Oh is it really awesome okay yeah and and I'd never heard of that as a colonist inmate uh the Federal Medical Center there in Springfield has a lot of mental health that I would call colonist inmates. They're very comfortable where they're at and watching them over the years I don't know that they could have lived as good a life on the outside. Well they could you know because I would see them yeah I'd see them sit at uh picnic tables and have conversations and neither one of them talking the same language you know but uh they were comfortable in there.

SPEAKER_01: 28:57

I knew offenders like and some of them that one that got out Joe Leedy and I keep in touch with Joe and I've known Joe for like 40 45 years now. And uh you know Joe Joe made it on the outside but I knew several guys that would sit down and say well tell me what's it what's it like to what's it really like to drive a car uh now and and what what what how do you how do you do this? And you stop and think about it.

SPEAKER_04: 29:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:25

And I think maybe that's that's a an area where we're a little bit lacking in in in trying to help some of these people that do go through the revolving door and maybe do stay out because they really they they're scared to death. Yes they don't know how to fill out a job application. They don't know how to open a checking account. And you know uh sometimes it worries me about some all the electronic devices and you know my my kids can do it but I'm kind of trapped in the old world myself to some degree.

SPEAKER_00: 29:57

If you've been in prison 10 years you've missed a lot of stuff lately.

SPEAKER_01: 30:00

Just just in my adult life look how fast things have progressed in the electronic age. I mean it's unbelievable. Absolutely you know so so that's very true.

SPEAKER_00: 30:12

I think one thing that I saw that was unique about Missouri State Plan and you mentioned it was this is where all the maximum security in Missouri were for a very long time. You know I went later on to the federal system well inmates would get bounced around from institution to institution. You had guys here that have been here for years and years totally and so that was very unique to um uh we we called them convicts you know there was a difference between convicts and inmates from the old guys wanted to be called a convict yeah and you truly had some of those there they were just the dangerous criminally educated convicts of the time and uh a little piece of criminal history there but at the same time you looked in their eyes and you knew they were dangerous.

SPEAKER_01: 31:00

Right. You know so and you know one of the things when we talk about transition and how times change when I came to work in corrections of course I knew a lot of guys that were there at the time riot. So there's not that much time between 54 and 68. Right you know um and the system was still trying to get recover from that um but you know I also knew a lot of guys that that had been in World War II and been in the Korean War. And the offenders back then were pretty much squared away I mean you know they wore their green uniform with the black stripe down the lake they were pretty pretty neat they their their uniforms a lot were pressed right a lot of them wore uh flat tops and true cuts you didn't see back when I initially started they didn't have the long hair and everything first of all it wasn't allowed but they still weren't that way they were pretty much squared away and I think a lot of those fellas uh that did fine in the military didn't do so well in society and so but they did do okay in the prison system they had a job they they always went to that job they knew they had their little group of friends they had their various activities child three days times a day you know and so I think that made a uh a pretty much of a big difference and see until 1989 1989 is when we got our second maximum security prison by the way after the 54 riot the governor's commission that governor Donnelly appointed to investigate the causes of the 54 riot they actually recommended MSP be closed then.

SPEAKER_04: 32:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 32:39

Well I was in the third grade and guess what? It went from the time I was in third grade until the time I was a deputy warden before we closed MSP in September of uh 2004. But in 89 was when we built the second maximum security prison and that was down at Potosic and Paul D Lo who was a lieutenant with me at MSP became the first war. In fact I just got a Christmas card from his widow the other day and Sharon D Lo and I are still very good friends. Excellent communication. But you know that actually uh that's that's kind of how it was you know and uh you know those MSP inmates they uh when we moved from the old prison to the new prison in in uh 2004 I gotta tell you the the you know we had no real problem with moving the offenders they everything went real smooth and I'll tell you that was because of the dedication of the staff and how much everything was worked out everything's in logistics as you know right that was all worked out other e-squads emergency squads came in everybody worked together you know there was there were no harsh words with anybody took 5,000 boxes to move the inmate property you know and everybody you know we worked with everybody and and but you know once we got moved to the new place guess what the old guys didn't like it at all because you'd think that because of the fact that MSP was the oldest continuously operating prison west of the Mississippi River antiquated in every way 19th century or 20th century facility you'd think that they would be tickled to death to move to the new institution not so because too much structure uh all the all the housings were separate pods with a separate little enclosed area it was built for a lot more security that's right and they did not like the new facility at all interesting they liked the old they wanted to go back to the old place.

SPEAKER_00: 34:40

Yeah and they they said as much what's the highest population you know of inside the walls here I mean I think we were over 3,000 when I was here.

SPEAKER_01: 34:50

There was there was there's some discrepancy over that okay one time I heard that in the 1930s in the 1930s it got close to 5,000 but um you know I think that I think that when I was there it was like 2600 2700 right something like that. Now see I was there when we integrated prison too it was segregated when I started. Oh I didn't know that oh yeah wow yeah see AHAL was all uh uh was all uh African American uh and it it was it was segregated and see we integrated that prison in about I think about 1974 Don Warwick who's best man at my wedding my wife and I have been doing 45 years and I did the eulogy at Don's funeral when he died Don Warwick was hired by Warden Swinson and Don was the chief of custody down at Ozrock Correction Center. Yep well Don and he was he was a captain well well Swinson brought him up here to Jeff City and then Don got promoted to the uh deputy warden's position well during that time they had a lot of uh there was a lot of talk and discussion about uh the integration of prison and I I didn't know much about it because I was too far down total but anyway they had a lot of violence and uh you know there was there was the Aryan Brotherhood but it was more on the lines of Ku Klux Klan than the Aryan Brotherhood Bank. You had uh the the Black Panthers some of those groups uh the Maury Science Temple uh you know Maury Science Temple number one which is kind of the outlaw temple so segregated yard also uh not so much on the yard but how's it people pretty well say to themselves groups there was a little bit of transition and you know mixing there. But what happened was finally Don Warwick got everybody together and he got these various inmate factions together and he said look guys if we don't integrate this prison the federal government's going to come in and do it. Now we've got to get it done and so by golly got it done. Now it didn't just happen overnight but it did get done.

SPEAKER_04: 37:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 37:11

And then things gradually got better and better and there was there were times when we had some pretty bad events that happened in various factions but you know then you also had like people from different motorcycle groups and you know the St. Louis faction versus Kansas City faction they never got along and but that kind of smoothed out over time.

SPEAKER_00: 37:34

Yeah. Wow yeah Warwick was uh for for me in my generation here um I guess he was kind of like a legend there were a ton of stories and I don't know how many are true but he was he was one heck of a warden here for a long time.

SPEAKER_01: 37:48

See Don lived the the warden's house you know I don't want to bore you with this but anyway the warden's the warden's house uh was down here at 722 which is just a couple of doors down so back at back in the time when I was here this became this was actually then the the central office for correction here for a period of time. Well back at the time of the prison riot and slightly before the warden at the time of the prison riot was a fellow named Ralph Edson.

SPEAKER_04: 38:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 38:23

Warden Edson was a lieutenant on the Highway Patrol and he actually I think was in charge of their criminal uh their uh logistics uh criminalistics laboratory right okay well well uh Governor Donnelly asked Ralph to be the warden and and and Ralph said no and I know this because Ralph's son John he's still alive talked to him last night John's in his 80s he was in my way and uh we were we're still friends to this day well John was about when the riot happened I think he was 16 or 70 I've got a picture of him somewhere in time right um but anyway Ralph Edson John's dad did not want to be the warm and the governor said look Ralph if you take it for one year I will find somebody to replace you that was in 1949 and the Edsons Ralph agreed he didn't want to upset the governor so they moved in right down here at 722. I got a picture of him at Christmas time down there. And so in fact John had a brother John had one brother his brother ended up getting killed in a car accident down Springfield. But anyway so they moved in well guess what poor old Ralph ended up staying from 1949 till 1956 and had to go through the riot and all that which really wasn't his fault he said I didn't he didn't know anything about being a warden and I interviewed him when he was 92 and he was involved he executed Hetty and Hall when they were giving these kidnappers and you know was involved in a whole lot of different things. But you know that was that was uh uh a a big a big thing for them and so then when when Don Warwick came then Don lived down there and I can't tell you how many how many hours I spent at Don Warwick's house. Even when I was with the sheriff's office and everything talking about problems and potential problems and escape attempts and and you know all the things that we dealt with. Sure uh and I go over to Don's house and I man I was there More in my at my own house. That's no kidding. But uh yeah, he was you know, a lot of those guys, you you ask yourself, well, would they have made it today? And the answer is probably they would not have.

SPEAKER_04: 40:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 40:49

They had good common sense, they had good people skills.

SPEAKER_04: 40:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 40:53

And uh, you know, they knew how to how to deal with that that special factor. And Don Warwick, there's no doubt about it, whether people like him or dislike him, whatever. Don Warwick was 200% corrections.

SPEAKER_00: 41:06

Oh, yeah. I think people don't uh realize sometimes that inmates have changed also. I mean administrations had to change because society changed, because inmates changed. Those guys were dealing with uh uh a level of criminals that we don't deal with right now. Uh so um yeah, I don't think people take that into account sometimes.

SPEAKER_01: 41:32

You know, I actually had some re I'll I'll try to be quick about this, but I actually had I had some of the uh older, more established offenders that came to me when I was a lieutenant and they said, you know, Mr. Schriber, we want to tell you something. Uh you know such and such, this person that uh that had just come in. And uh they said, you know, these younger people have no respect for anybody and they have no respect for even themselves. And they said, uh, we're just gonna we're just gonna tell you, we're not really snitching on anybody as such, but if this person isn't removed from this unit or whatever, that person's gonna end up dead because we're tired of them stealing from other offenders. And as you know, that was a no-no.

SPEAKER_04: 42:23

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 42:23

And so, you know, so I would go to Don or somebody and say, you know, well, here's what we need to do, and he'd say, Well, get them moved then.

SPEAKER_04: 42:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 42:31

You know, because that was, you know, it's there was there was those there are there are those regulations among the the inmate uh groups that you just don't break some of.

SPEAKER_00: 42:42

Absolutely. You know, I think starting here was part of what made my career because you learn really quick here. Um being around like we talked about, those old convicts. The there were guards that were here that had been here for 30 years, you know. And if you kept your ears open, you could learn a ton from those guys. And I was only here for two years at the Missouri State Found before I moved on, but uh I really think a ton of what I learned in corrections happened in those two years. So talking to you here, I can already tell you have this great memory, and that's probably uh what's led you into being such a historian. But do you remember becoming the historian, or is it just something that just piecemeal together? Um, how did you get so interested in salvaging all this?

SPEAKER_01: 43:31

Yes, my dad was actually a history teacher. Um was with the Department of Education, but he was a history teacher. Uh taught down at Pipkin in Springfield, and he taught at Stratford, down at Stratford, Missouri as well. Uh but I actually became a historian by accident. And what I found was, and I didn't get much support when I when I went to central office as uh director of lombarding's assistant there, and then as the internal affairs officer, uh I found that corrections being next to the organization of our state government itself, like the General Assembly and the Governor's Office and all that, we're the oldest State Department. Are the oldest.

SPEAKER_04: 44:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 44:22

You know, patrol didn't come on until the 1930s. Well, corrections, you know, for example, MSP over here, MSP was a hundred years old when Alcatraz opened as a prison. You know, now Alcatraz existed, but it wasn't a prison, you know. But but the deal I found was is that that too much was being thrown away. So I approached, I approached one of our public information officers, the central office, Laura Moore. Laura Moore Adams. We're good friends. He was down in the area of Herman, Missouri, at Martha'sville. And I said, Laura, we need to uh, you know, we need to do uh something with corrections history. And there was another young lady named Lori Stout, S O U T, and Lori was a public information officer, and she was on board. Now other people there said, Oh, it can't be done. You can't do it. You know, and so we said, Yeah, we can. So I started working on the side and compiling this information. And I tell young people today, everybody's part of history. Whether we know it or not, we don't think of ourselves as being part of history, but we are. Yeah, you know, and so, you know, and I was guilty of this. I didn't keep a diary or a log or anything. Now, I still have a lot of my reports and things like that from various criminal cases and testifying and things like that. But, you know, how wonderful it would be if, and I don't think see Corrections doesn't even have anybody now in the Missouri DLC that followed what I tried to get started, and the others try to get started. Well, I was hoping that somebody would come along and show an interest. So when we came out with the Somewhere in Time Book, that Somewhere in Time Book is outdated now because we've added new institutions like Licking and Charleston and some of those facilities. They weren't, they didn't exist when we first wrote the Somewhere in Time Book. And so then when I did the Shanks to Shakers book, I wanted to talk about a few more different things, you know, the some of the artwork and the contraband and some of those things. And the Forgotten Shadows book. Now I'm kind of concentrating it on some of the staff people that I worked with. You know, you can't get everybody, and you're all you always feel bad that you left somebody out, but I'm I'm trying to deal with some of those issues. Um I guess you probably knew Mike Payne, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00: 46:52

I know the name. I never met him.

SPEAKER_01: 46:53

Well Mike became uh he became a he took over internal affairs after I left. Mike had originally been with Calgary County, and then later on he became the deputy warden up at Fulton Reception Diagnostic Center. Mike Payne called me when I was out at the new institution. He called me up one day. In fact, I I actually hired Mike at the central office. And Mike called me and he said, uh, Mark, he said, over here at the Fulton Reception Diagnostic Center, he said, I found all these records and they've got them stored in a terrible place. He said the mice have been eaten on them and everything else. And he said, some of them are old ledgers from MSB. Oh wow. Well, I remember back when I was a CO, well, they threw glass plate negatives away, old glass plate negatives for the 20s, and they dumped them in a trash barrel and they would take it to the dump.

SPEAKER_04: 47:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 47:48

Well, Mike said, and I he said, and I have all of these inmate photos, ID photos. And he said, he said, they're getting ready to pitch this stuff. And I said, don't pitch it. Wow. So I got Marvin Cundus, who's our inmate activities coordinator. Marvin's been on the seas. And I said, Mars, we're going to Fulton. And we got a van.

SPEAKER_04: 48:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

We went up to Fulton. We had to make two trips. We got 74 boxes of inmate photos that I stacked in my office out there at the new facility. I got all the ledgers that, see, years ago, the record was a ledger. Yeah. And they wrote it in a long hand where you were from, what, what you fell for, what your crime was, how much time you get. And then they might have a note out here at the side died in prison hospital. Or, you know, who knows, died of cholera.

SPEAKER_03: 48:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 48:39

You know, right. That that was the record. Wow. You know, it wasn't like what we have to do now. It looks like the Encyclopedia Britannica when you have everything on a computer or whatever. So I got all that stuff and I took it and I took it all to the state archives and gave it to them. And I said, you know, this is stuff that we need to. So and another thing I tried doing the Somewhere in Time book, we didn't thank God for some of the secretarial staff over there. My secretary, Jan Elliott, and a bunch of other ladies over there, they went through and we took all of the employee records out of the blue book.

SPEAKER_04: 49:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 49:21

Going back as far as we could go. And we got like 30-something names, and I'm sure we missed 15,000.

SPEAKER_04: 49:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 49:30

But we and they and they put those in alphabetical order. And those ladies did that to help Laura and I. And they put them in alphabetical order. Well, we also had, and I turned this over to the state archives, we didn't have enough room this somewhere in Time Book, and I wish I could have, to put what their title was, their job title. We didn't have enough room, so we just had to list the employees. But all that exists at the state archives that we turned over to them. And I turned over all the original documents from that I put together. And I actually went went to microfilm and uh at the archives, and microfilmed at the news tribune here and at the Ellis Library in Columbia. And you, you know, as much microfilm as I could, and I read that, sure, and that's when I had to start using glasses. Uh, and the old script and all from newspaper articles and everything, and that's how we got a lot of our material. But it's but it's just too bad that there isn't somebody that's still around that they can actually have have one of the public information officers take that on as a project or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 50:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 50:38

You know?

SPEAKER_00: 50:39

Just to save that stuff. Yeah. Because it's good, like you said, it's going to be history someday. It is history.

SPEAKER_01: 50:44

History's being made every single day.

SPEAKER_00: 50:46

So is that what they call the Mark Schreiber collection over at the state archives?

SPEAKER_01: 50:50

A lot of it. And what I did is a lot, and I bought a lot of stuff on eBay. I bought hundreds of pictures. People gave me photographs, and old employees gave me photographs for Warden Swinson when he was alive. Don Warwick and those guys gave me stuff. So what I did, I gave all that information, all that material to the state archives, and I've got a little bit more as soon as the book's finished that I'm going to give to them.

SPEAKER_04: 51:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 51:14

Because I don't want it to go on a dumpster or whatever. And the reason I gave all the stuff to the museum, and none of the stuff down here was actually used in any crime because you couldn't do that.

SPEAKER_04: 51:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 51:24

But all that stuff that I've collected over the years, I wanted that, I didn't want that stuff to be going out on eBay. I wanted it to stay where it should be. Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_00: 51:35

So let me ask you this. Um, and you've seen thousands of pieces, so this may be a hard question. What was your favorite piece that you found over the years? Do you have one that's a favorite or one that stands out more than the others?

SPEAKER_01: 51:47

Well, there's a couple of things. Uh, I collected quite a few uh uh what they call line sticks or the the the canes that the officers carried, the high-ranking officers carried in back when we had the lockstep years ago in the striped uniforms.

SPEAKER_04: 52:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 52:02

And we operated under the Alburn system where they had the silent system, and they would the officers would carry these line sticks that were flexible metal rods with the leather on them. They looked like canes, but they were all made in the Sullivan's fattery factory at the prison. And uh and those were they were not only a defensive device because they were flexible, but they were carried kind of like a military person might carry a swagger stick. And then the other thing, uh I think one of them uh I I love the I love some of the artwork that the offenders did. And uh there was an inmate named Gary Reynolds, and Gary died of leukemia. Um Gary was not a violent inmate at all. He made a bad mistake when he was younger, but he was uh he started out as a leather worker, and he beat he advanced. You'll see some of the things that I donated downstairs that I actually had to purchase through MVE, but I had him do. He would take a postcard and he would do in leather a hawk.

SPEAKER_04: 53:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 53:07

In leather. Uh he also, you'll see a downstairs uh uh state seal that I paid$375 for, but it's the only one like it in Missouri. He carved the state seal out of oak.

SPEAKER_04: 53:19

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01: 53:20

And the bears of the seal were out of walnuts standing out of the seal. Wow. It's I mean, it the talent was absolutely tremendous. And to me, it was worth paying$375 to get him to do that. You know, through the I don't mean you have to do it legally through that.

SPEAKER_00: 53:36

That's where I got my first duty belt and everything. The inmates they'd size you would make one and then it went through the process and you'd go up front and pick it up.

SPEAKER_01: 53:49

You'll see a little bit of it downstairs, but there was an inmate that had been professionally trained as an artist, and he uh he was such a good artist that he painted one of the Missouri Supreme Court justices official portrait, and it was fabulous.

SPEAKER_04: 54:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 54:06

Um and and I had him paint his own self-portrait and some of the portraits of some of the other inmates like Gary Reynolds and some of those because I didn't want them to be forgotten. And I've got we'll have those in the later coming out, and you'll see the originals downstairs.

SPEAKER_00: 54:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:25

But he was that good. I mean, it was as good as a photograph. Wow. What he did.

SPEAKER_00: 54:29

That's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:31

Oregon boots, another thing that I had, uh, went around the inmate's leg, and Warden Swinson had been used as a door stop, and Warden Swinson had got it from another officer who had it at his house and had been given had been giving me the sauce for years ago, and Warden Swinson gave it to me. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00: 54:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:49

And uh I I have that downstairs. Two pieces, and they went around. There was a there was a metal piece like a leg like a leg brace and then attached to the heel of your shoe. And then this heavy piece went around like a collar, and then you tightened them down, and then took the ratchet tighteners out off, and then you had to swing your leg. Oh, okay. And you certainly weren't gonna run. No. Mark it over a wall or but you're not gonna run.

SPEAKER_00: 55:20

Absolutely. So I know that you were instrumental. Missouri State Pens closed in 2004. Okay. September 15th. Yeah. I know that you were a big advocate of keeping it open and making it a museum, which I think's been successful. I know everybody I've talked to in Missouri has been up here at least once. I know me and my friends have made a few trips. What's the future with the Missouri State Pen? Do you know, or are we still gonna be able to keep it as a museum?

SPEAKER_01: 55:50

I know a little bit. Uh of course, you know, I I go off the city council in April, I turn one of it out. Because you can I you can only serve eight years. We'll serve by eight years. Um I'm I'm disappointed in one way because I I think that things should have moved faster. And it's a cooperative, it's a cooperative endeavor between the city, the state, and and uh, you know, and the county. So there are plans, you know, for it. Uh 31 acres of the prison down where the lower yard was and all that, and where the industries were located, that is now city property.

SPEAKER_04: 56:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 56:30

And it was turned over by the state to the city. Of course, the museums in this building, and this building's privately owned.

unknown: 56:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 56:41

But um the museum would be great over at the prison, say in A-Hall or whatever. However, uh, and you'll see a lot of this in my book, I've got a whole section called EF3 and Beyond. And the EF3 is referring to the 2019 tornado that came through here and just decimated a lot of prison.

SPEAKER_04: 57:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 57:03

Uh Housing Unit 2 is structurally unsound. It actually ripped some of the steel frames out of the windows.

SPEAKER_04: 57:10

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 57:11

Took the uh the caps on top of the roof, the big huge limestone caps, and threw them up against housing unit three. It took the roof completely off AHOL. And AHAL's the oldest building north. Thanks to the convention and lizard bureau, they spent about 800,000 putting the roof back on AHO. So we had the 2019, Tornado, then we had COVID, and that shut down the tours and everything. So we were two years behind. The highest year we had on attendance was 2018. 33,000. This year, we got back up to a little over 30,000. So we're on the way back up, and we're able to take people back into AHOL, but there's still a lot of cleanup that needs to be done in A-Hall. It could not have gone another year of freezing and thawing and rain. Right. It would have destroyed it. Yeah. And uh that would have been a tragedy. So there are plans for MSP. I know Corrections is talking about maybe if you look across the street where the old gym was, they're tearing that down, the state is, which needed to go because the tornado just demolished it too.

SPEAKER_04: 58:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 58:24

Uh, but Corrections is talking about building the corrections headquarters over there. And I'm not against that. I I always I was always against us being at on Plaza Drive for so long and leased property. We didn't have enough room. Uh probation parole is, you know, scattered out all over. Everybody needs to be. Corrections is the second biggest state agency. We need to be all in one nice big house. So that's a good thing. Uh they're building two new labs down on Chestnut Street, and then we'll be an MSP parkway that'll go down off the end of Lafayette down through where Supermax was.

SPEAKER_04: 59:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 59:00

And it will go on and connect down on Chestnut, and then it'll all be redone. And they're going to be spending about$200 million down on Chestnut. The money's already been approved.

SPEAKER_04: 59:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 59:10

They're building a new crime lab for the patrol down there and a new lab for some other state agencies.

SPEAKER_04: 59:16

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 59:17

So they're going to do some nice things. It's just a matter of us catching up and being able to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 59:23

Yeah. I'd like to see the headquarters come over here. I think it would be nice to have that reminder of the history and where we came from.

SPEAKER_01: 59:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:32

Right there.

SPEAKER_01: 59:33

And there needs to be a combination. You know, if you go down, you know where nine and ten tower were down there by the railroad.

SPEAKER_04: 59:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 59:39

It took the tornado took the wall out there.

SPEAKER_04: 59:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 59:42

It went through and took the wall, flattened it. Well, what we need to do is right here where two tower is on the corner. We need to, if they want to step down the wall a little bit, we still need to keep the corners so everybody knows where the parameters of the institution were located.

SPEAKER_04: 59:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 59:58

And they will keep housing in a one, age hall, they will keep housing in four, they will keep housing at three. Those will be kept. And uh I think even the uh uh State Parks is kind of looking at those a little bit. So those three, if nothing else, definitely need to be kept.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:16

Right, right. You've written the or been part of and written the shakers, and you said the new one's coming out, which is Forgotten Shadows. So tell me a little bit about what uh and you mentioned it a little bit, but what got you to write Forgotten Shadows and what are you gonna can you give me Taste of what's going to be in there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:36

Since I'll be 77 in February, I've I finally came to grips with my mortality.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:44

Lack of immortality, at least in this one. And so I wanted to do one last thing, and I wanted to I wanted to include a lot of the things that that have transpired with the demolition of the buildings over there. I took a lot of photos of the demolition when the inf when the here's what happens. You know, after we passed like my generation, I I was looking at an E Squad picture the other day of some of the guys on ESquad that I was on ESquad with. And every one of the guys in that in this particular picture are dead. Right. And Don Beckley, Major Beckley, was the last one that died. He just died a few months back. Every one of them's dead. Well, I can look at every person, and you know, memories are made because of the people that we've known.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:37

You know, a building's a building. It's what happened in that building, and the people that made it happen that we remember. That's the history. That's where history is important, just like in our family. So when you have some written documentation and you try to be as accurate as possible, then if if people still want to read a book, and I'm not sure in some ways how long books will be around, I hope I still I'm off her the computer and the iPad and all, but it's a wonderful thing to still be able to have a book. That if some young person goes to the library or goes to the archives or State Historical Society, they pick up that book or maybe find that book that their grandfather had and he worked at the prison or whatever, then they can look at that book and say, Oh, that's really interesting. You know?

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:42

I mean, that's that's that's my hope. And so what I wanted to do is to kind of kind of memorialize, and I I think I've used that term in there, I kind of want to memorialize some of these individuals that I knew that I worked with.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:58

Now I'm not saying they were saints. None of us were. Oh, but I want to tell you, they they they did a great, made a great contribution to the citizen of the state of Missouri as far as protecting them. And corrections, as far as I'm concerned, corrections nationally, it's the forgotten profession.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:17

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:18

It's the forgotten profession and the scale of the criminal justices. And when I had students that one of the things that I did at Columbia College, most of my students were young people, young adults that were a lot of them were already working in some phase of criminal justice. But what I did, I would bring them over to the old prison, and then I took them to the new prison. And then I would have them write a paper. What did you see as far as a comparison? Because that was a great classroom for them to see what a 19th century, early 20th century facility looked like that was antiquated, sure, and then go to a brand new facility with 21st century technology and to see, okay, what you know, this isn't just a uh let's get away from the classroom sightseeing tour. What do you actually see? What did you see? What did you learn by observing you know, these various stages of correctional development?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:14

You know, and so I I think that that's where the the the that is that was the reason why I wanted to do the book and by showing the buildings being torn down, because later on, you know, what people get in an argument and they'll say, Well, no, that building didn't sit there. Well, yeah, I did, because here it shows it right in the picture.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:32

And what I also have in this book, I took I got some lessons myself because I had a couple people that came on the tours that were people maybe my age, maybe a little bit older. And uh one of them had a a great uncle that was uh one of the deputy wards back when it was all political appointment. And by golly, she brought me some photographs that said I could use in the book that I had no idea. Wow. And I saw buildings that I had no idea ever existed, and they were three and four-story buildings.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:07

And nobody would remember those, but there's the proof right there that they did exist.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:12

You know?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:12

That that whole 47 acres over there has been built on top of over and over.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:17

Over and over and over again. Of course, the prison you know altogether is over 140 acres. It goes all the way out uh almost to Ellis Porter Park.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:26

Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:27

Wow. So all that area where the DNR building is over there, and then all the way out, uh, it's it goes, it goes like my gosh, half a mile, a mile beyond the prison. And see where the where the women's prison, where the women's prison was after they moved out of MSP, that was called State Farm Number One. And I remember as a little kid, whenever we moved here from Springfield, uh driving by up there, and you could see the women out there, and they had a huge vegetable garden, and they'd be out there hoeing and trimming and doing all this stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:01

And that's another example of history going by is Rince Farden. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:05

You can look at Rennes Farm.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:06

93 floods.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:09

And I turned over, I took uh, I think in the 93 flood, I took 800 and some pictures of Rennes, uh, Jefferson City. I was a friend of mine was heading Capital Police, and he let me get up on top of the Truman building. And I I'm those are the only photographs I know of that were shot from the Truman Building. I show a boat going up to the front of the Capitol Plaza Hotel. The high street vidock was the only way you could get into town. Uh uptown, everything else was underwater.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:41

Another friend of mine got me up in the Capitol Dome, and I shot all down through Millbottom and all of that. Yeah and uh, you know, took a lot a lot of photos of the inmates cleaned up in North Jeff City. They were the ones that cleaned up the airport. It was all our offenders, and they saved the city thousands of dollars.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:58

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:59

All the inmates got, the inmates got they paid them$7.50 a day instead of their seven dollars and fifty cents a month. And we had guys that could use loaders and everything else, and they got them at Hardy's or McDonald's every day on those guys. We have no problem what's going on.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:14

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:15

We had one, we had some inmates that came to me one day, and uh myself and uh and a couple other guys were working over there, kind of supervising from central office, and they said uh, of course they weren't they weren't guys from MSP, some of them were LTA guys outside, but they they uh they came and they said one day, they said, you know, Mr. Schreiber, we've got a fellow that if you just walk around there just about 10 or 15 minutes when it's lunchtime, you'll see this guy and he never wants to work. And uh we happened to know that he's made some contact with his girlfriend to pick him up. And by golly, all I did was I went around there and I saw who the guy was. I got his name, and what I just did the next day, he didn't come out on that count. And that took care of the problem.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:07

Because those guys, I had guys that found firearms and they'd come and say, You need to come and look at this. And they'd say, you know, yeah, uh, hey, thanks for telling us. But they they they uh they were tremendous contributors, not only in the sandbagging early on, but in the cleanup aftermath of the Jeff City Airport and North Jeff City, and I think they were they did a tremendous floating propane tanks over there, it was crazy. They did they were great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:35

The water, I remember the water was up over the railroad tracks, and we were kind of worried about the back wall, you know, whether that'd get undercut.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:43

Well, if you ask well, listen, why would the one out there to Aldoa?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:47

It got all across there and they sandbagged as long as they could, and then it finally became an exercise in futility. You know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:55

Biggest memory I have, I was running an inmate crew inside uh MSP there, and I'm leaning on a rail watching the inmates mop up the hallways because there was water everywhere, and lightning struck outside, and I felt it go through me, and I was like, well, we're done. We're we're up here in the dry.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:13

Well, you know, the night that the the night that the Missouri River came over uh and got into Rinz farm, I was over there with uh with Butch Goodman. And Butch Goodman was the fire safety officer over there, and Butch had retired from the Navy. In fact, my dad hasn't had him as a student at Jeff City High School. And uh Butch came to my dad and said, Mr. Schreiber, what do you think I'll do? And my dad said, Butch wasn't Butch was not noted for being a scholar.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:42

And my dad said, Well now, Butch, if you could just get a sea in this class, he said, I've got just the place for you. You need to join the Navy. And Butch did, and he stayed 20 years. But I'm gonna tell you what, we bought we bought a uh a boat at Central Office through Don Durley, and it was a big 60-inch wide boat and an inboard-outboard, and we used it during the flood. Butch Goodman operated that boat, and that man, I of course we had on life jackets, but I've never felt safer in a boat. That guy could handle a boat like you would not believe it. And and when the water came over, it came over from up around 63 and then came in kind of like from the back side and then swung around. And boy, it when it came, it came.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:29

And of course it just wiped Rensfall back.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:32

Yeah, you know. Actually, I have a little story from then uh, and it's when at one time you were in charge of all of our special teams.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:40

Uh eSquad and C Star. I think that's when we first met. I was on C Star. But uh after Rens Farm flooded uh the next few years, they allowed us to go over there and train inside that building. It was. And we trained over there like once a month, and we run our radios on uh uh mutual aid. And so one training we decide uh me and a buddy and we go up through the control center because there was a hatch went to the roof. So we go up there, and one of the other guys are looking for us, and so we plan to pull him up on the roof. We're like, hey, we got a guy hostage up here, now figure out what to do. And so we're talking all this stuff. Do you remember the and uh so we're talking all this stuff on the radio, and we've been doing this for months, but it all went inside the building. And uh sitting out there on top of the building, and I see this car just come flying down the dirt road, and it was mute. And you're like, stop the exercise, stop the exercise. And people had been picking it up on mutual aid.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:43

And he said he was okay. Mr. Moore was yeah, he was a good guy. Mr. Moore died, he was deceased.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:50

We were embarrassed as it could be, but uh yeah, I didn't.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:52

Well, I wasn't mad, I just didn't want it. I didn't want I didn't want everybody descending on it. Oh no. Yeah, you know, the the exercise. And I thought we should have probably told them we were gonna do it. I didn't think about it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:05

No, and we had done it for months.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:08

We had, we'd done several of them. So you know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:11

Good times. Good times. Good times, good brave people.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:14

Yes. We had some great people. And you know, when you when you look back, go back to what happened in 1983 on July 3rd when the Aryan Brotherhood got out of control up at Mobile, you know, they only had my invet when I did the investigation on that, they only had 17 officers on duty for that institution.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:33

When that happened. You know, and close to 2,000 inmates. Right. 17 officers. And uh it's a wonder that that whole facility wasn't lost. You know, it really was.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:46

But that's what built the relationships, and I still have relationships from people that worked at MSP. And well, even beyond that, if I just see somebody these days that worked at MSP, we automatically have that bond. And it's because of some of those dangerous times. You know, there was nobody else to depend on. It's only you inside that wall and and the the people that you work with. And uh I think that works for all of corrections, not just here, but here there was enough going on that you built that rapport very quickly and that trust very quickly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:19

You know, we're in the process now at the police department here of uh, and they're they're very well equipped, but we're in the process of getting body cams. And of course, the you know, it's not we've had people from the public saying, well, why don't they already have them? Well, you know, that you've been saying you're gonna get them, and we we get the city council, we appropriate the money and everything, but it's not the cameras so much, it's the issue of the storage. You have to have an employee that's trained that can take care of all of that and keep it and be ready to go to court and all that. So we're working all that out. But I remember whenever we first got video cameras. And at first it was like, get that video camera out of here. Well, then later on, guess what? It became where's the video camera?

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:07

Because everybody found it on use of force, and if you were trying to get somebody to throw a knife out of his cell, and you're getting ready to have to send a movement team in to get him out, and then you, you know, we got it well organized to where you said, okay, I'm the I'm the team leader, and you know, this is officer so-and-so, he'll take the right arm, this officer's gonna take the left arm, and on down the line, so on and so forth. And it got to where that I can't tell you how much that saved us going to court to show what the inmate was doing, how they failed to obey lawful commands, and you know, it's it's just like the use of force reports themselves. I used to tell I had to review all those at the central office, and I would say, you know, folks, look, a use of force report can't be a mirror image. If you and I are on the same group of people, the time might be the same, but every everything's gonna be a little different. You know, I'm not looking for somebody, and I had one captain, uh I won't mention his name, but he was a good captain, he's now deceased. And Mr. Moore called me in one time, the director, and he wanted this captain. At first, he wanted him fired. And I said, Well, Mr. Moore, I said, but Mr. Armitrout and I can tell you that this fellow's a good captain. And he said, Yeah, but he's involved, but too many serious, he's the force, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we said, Well, I want you to look at it this way. Here's what my investigation shows. That's true, he is. But guess what? He's assigned to Supermax. 104 single man cells, the worst of the worst, that have molecular personality, right? The guys that none of the other inmates want to be around.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:50

And he said, Oh, I never looked at it that way. And so he said, Okay, what are you gonna do? And I said, Well, I'll tell you what we're gonna do. That guy's probably been there too long, and we transferred him out to Algoa. He was madder than a hornet that he had to go to Algoa. But then you know what? About a year later, he came, we were out there, and he said, I just want to tell you guys, I never knew what his wife thanked you for transferring me. First he was mad, and it was like, Thank you so much for transferring me. Yeah, you know, because he was he was caught in that, and that was our fault. That was the fault of his supervisors. I didn't central office at the time, but that should have been recognized. Yeah, you know, and then when the director realized what the real reason was, it's because this is the guy that had to take care of the problems.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:40

Right, you know. Right. You talked about video cameras. I'm gonna tell you this story too, real quick. Missouri State Penn, it had to have been like May of '93. We had a disturbance over here, probably one of the bigger ones I've been in. Uh lost three building for a little bit, and I was staying on the lower yard uh keeping inmates that uh on the yard from getting back up there with the others. But it was kind of built out into the in front of the captain's back and stuff. And the deputy warden at that time, I can't remember his name, but he said, go get video cameras, go get all the video cameras. And they they started putting them up uh on the top floor so everybody could get this video camera and the inmates could see them with the video cameras. Um that worked. I mean, they didn't want to get on that video camera at all, but they were disappearing left and right. But after it was done, uh the guys told me that either the video cameras that had tape in them didn't have a battery, or the ones that had a battery didn't have tape in them, but nobody knew. It didn't matter, everybody thought they did. Yeah, and so yeah, it stopped the uh it stopped the problem we were having, and we went and took those back.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:45

One time when we had I can't remember the exact year, it was in the 80s sometime, and we had a work strike over there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:52

And the inmates broke into the lower yard uh down there where they had a bunch of tools to cut weeds and all that. And they got all these tools, rakes and shovels, and they came up and they were they were right at the door on the upper upper yard, up there right at the two house door.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:12

And they were all ganged up and everything. Well, uh the warden at the time, he told me, he said, Mark, would you get your candle? I had a 35 millimeter candle, which is what I use for you know crime scenes and stuff. And he said, Would you get up on the towel and photograph those guys? Well, the deal was, and this is a typical offender trick that they did. The old guys were the ones that were egging everybody off. They were standing in the back. Sure. They put the hothead young guys, just like what we were talking about with some of the staff, they were up in the front. So, you know, so when I did the photography, I got a lot of the old guys that were here standing back in the back talking, and we were able to identify them. And so what we did, then uh violations were written on them, and guess what? We took a bunch of them and we shipped them all over everywhere.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:05

You know.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:06

Uh they some of them we even sent out of state on Interstate Compact, you know, because they were the ones that were stirring the pot, so to speak.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:14

Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:15

It's about like people asked about Interstate Compact, and I said, Well, yeah, well, let me tell you something, how that works.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:22

You send somebody somebody that you want out of the system because they're a real pain. But I can say you could bet that if you get somebody from them, they're gonna be a real pain.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:31

Yeah, it's a trade. Yeah, it's a trade. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:35

Well, Mark, um if people want to get a hold of your books, where where can they get those at?

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:41

Well, the existing uh both those books now are sold out. Uh the the last bunch of books sold out early in the tour season this year.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:51

Uh, you know, they can probably find them in libraries. Occasionally you'll find a somewhere in time book on eBay or something like that. But like I said, the uh the Forgotten Shadows book with uh documentation, and I age I think I've got eight or nine chapters in the new book. There's they're not real long chapters, but each one has an introduction leading into the chapter, what it's about, why it's significant, and everything like that. So uh, and then I've got some some poems that have been written. I've got uh some really nice artwork and some prison cartoons uh that some of the inmates did. Uh, one of the first fellows that I ran into, I uh actually at one time was an artist. Major and a speech major until I switched over to criminal justice. And so I had a a student at MSP back in uh back in the early 1970s when I was an officer. I uh taught in classroom number five in uh in housing unit five, and that that's where the school was. The school wasn't where it was later built in 1980.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:58

Well, uh I had an inmate named Sammy Reese, and Sammy came from St. Louis. He came in very, very young as a teenager, and um originally he they were trying to get the death penalty. Well, Sammy was one heck of an artist, and he was good at doing prison cartoons, and he did a bunch of them for the Jeff Town Journal, prison newspaper. Right, right. Well, we didn't uh I had to change out of my uh pickle green uniform, so ugly, with my bus driver cut out, and I had to put on civilian clothes to go teach because they didn't want me teaching any uniform.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:35

Well, the inmates for a long time thought I had a twin brother telling me to get out of the same guy. Well, anyway, so Sammy was there, and uh I would go up to Bartlett's store up on which is a was across from the courthouse. It's nothing but a vacant lot now because it burned later on. And that's where I would buy the art supplies. Well, about the only thing that we could afford was we'd get India Ink and the pens and all that, and I'd get paper for them, get pretty good quality paper. And Sammy would draw these cartoons about prison life, and he had it down, and he would take toilet paper and roll it across them to blot them. Well, uh, I've got some of his cartoons in my book because I I ended up buying them, and I ended up buying some of them because, and he did hundreds of them at one time. Warden Swinson called me up to his office one day. He said, Mr. Schreiber, yes, sir, Warden. Sammy Reese is a pretty good artist, didn't he? And I said, Yes, sir, he's a very good artist. I'll tell you how good he was. Life magazine did a story on it. Oh, okay. And that's back when Life magazine was the magazine. Right. Well, anyway, so he said, he said, yeah, Schreiber, that's a trouble. He's too damn good. And I said, Warden, what what what's the problem? He said, Well, some of these cartoons that are up there on the novelty stand, uh, I don't want those sold. He said, uh, I said, well, why not? And he said, well, because they're a little bit too uh little bit too strong in the message they're sending. Well, what it was, like one of them would say, uh, show somebody being led to the gas chamber, and the officer would, the inmate said, and now at the hour of our death, cha-cha-cha. Another one said, uh uh asked his inmate, you got a quarter for a yellow jacket, mister, of course, which was narcotic, you know. Yeah. And uh so Sammy had this rather sarcastic approach, and it wasn't necessarily aimed at the staff, it was aimed at he was making fun of the inmates too. Well, the warden didn't like it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:37

So I ended up buying the ones that I still got them. I'll eventually give them to here in the museum.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:44

But uh, so that that was that was done, you know, of course, from Sammy Sammy Reese.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:50

So interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:51

But and Sammy got out and ended up dying a natural causal, but he was one heck of an arm. Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:56

Yeah, yeah. Is Forgotten Shadows up for uh uh pre-sale or anything?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:01

No, no pre-sales, but uh what what people can do later on uh in April and all when it's announced and when it comes out, I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:10

And uh and then it'll be sold through the convention visible bureau here. Okay. And I think the price is probably gonna ru remain about the same. Uh I think it'll probably be about 160 pages.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:21

And uh it'll be professionally done by Waldsworth uh printing up in Marceline, Missouri, which is one of the best printing companies anywhere in the United States. They do stuff for the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy and all kinds of things. So I always wanted the books to be high quality, high rate. So I think it'll be probably in the around a$20 range, which most people can afford. Sure. You know, so uh Yeah, let me know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:46

I'll add a link uh to the show notes here. Do you want to leave any contact information if somebody wanted to contact you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:53

If somebody wants to contact me directly, um they can they can reach me at uh if they want at M S M S and Inscriber, S-C-H-R-E-I-B-E-R 46 and gmail.com. Okay. They can get a hold of me that way, and uh if they would like to, and they and and I ask them to do one thing, leave me your phone number.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:20

So if I want to call you and talk to you, I still do it the old-fashioned way, and I would be glad to call. And if they've got uh issues or questions, they can send me the question on email and I will call them or contact them back. But please send me their phone number.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:36

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:38

I can't thank you enough for agreeing to do this. I've been looking forward to it for a long time. Um, and you're just a wealth of information, and I appreciate you sharing it with the listeners.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:47

Well, I I'm I appreciate what you're doing, and I apologize that it's taken me so long. Uh, you know, it's like back and forth, back and forth, my fault. Uh, but we finally got to do it. We got it. We're gonna do it before something else comes up, and then I can't do it. So, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:02

Well, thank you, Mark.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:04

Thank you, and thank you for your service to uh the corrections. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:08

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:09

All our people are important, every single corrections staff person, and and I I hope they're not forgotten, and I I hope that they continue to uh to put uh the profession forward and to try to try to raise it up on the spectrum in the criminal justice.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:25

Absolutely. Thank you for that. Good words, yes, thank you.