The Reality Of Prison

How do you imagine the reality of prison? Imagine that you have spent the last ten or so years behind bars. What do you imagine you would feel? What is your life really like? What is it that you miss the most? What is it that you hate the most about being in prison? What is the emotional impact of the experience as a whole?

Most people can not imagine the reality of being in prison. The thought of being in prison never crosses their mind, and, likely, never will. Of course, people believe that they have an “idea’ of what it might be like. This “idea” is built from a mix of Hollywood portrayals and reality television. However, Hollywood strips the experience of most of the truth and fabricates action and plots that make it more exciting than it really is. Reality television or documentaries cover only the real action, exaggerating it to seem like riots and stabbings occur on a daily basis. I have yet to watch anything on television or read anything in a book or magazine that accurately depicts the prison experience on a real and personal basis.

So what is it really like? The answer depends on whether you are a true criminal; a person who exhibits anti-social behavior in every aspect of their lives and a thought pattern that leads to negative actions and consequences without any real caring, exhibiting a maturity level comparable to that of a young child; or a “normal” person; one who values family and freedom, has a care for the rights and feelings of others, respects the manners and morals possessed by most of society, and grasps the concept of rules and why they are important.

For a true criminal, the lack of guilt and the inability to sympathize and empathize with others prohibits them from understanding the effect their actions have on others, Their narcissism prevents them from caring. They are able to accept prison as part of their normal life because they are able to see it as an inevitable result of their conduct. While they are in prison, they spend the majority of their time playing card games, laughing and joking with other like-minded individuals. They tell their “war stories” and take pride in their criminality. The reality of prison for them is just a continuation of the life that they lived outside of prison, without the “perks.”

True criminals believe that the world is centered around them. Their family and friends are believed to be obligated to take care of them while they are incarcerated. The have no care for rehabilitation in any sense of the term and put on a show when it is time to show they are a changed man. They constantly complain about “the system” because they feel they are being treated unjustly and unfairly when they are not being catered to. It is the ultimate “me against the world” mentality. Prison is just another place to them, holding no special meaning.

I know. I used to fit right in with them.

For a normal person, prison is very different. It is not the loss of freedom that affects a normal person. It is all of the little things that are experienced because of a lengthy prison sentence that hold meaning. It is all of these small things that are never thought of by anyone until they are pit in the situation to experience it. It is all of the things that are taken for granted outside of the cage.

In the beginning, the emotions are a gamut of negativity. Guilt, heartache, anger, sadness and fear overwhelm you to the point of agony. The sum of these emotions is so great it totally consumes you. However, these emotions are only the beginning of the hell that you are about to face. They barely scratch the surface and are the product of the shock of what led you to the situation in which you find yourself.

When you first come to prison, you find that it is not at all what you thought it would be. After the shock wears off, you fall into the typical routine: eat, sleep, and recreate. You will find that you do not really “fit in” with those around you. You begin to shun the normal activities everyone else participates in, avoiding conversation and contact with other inmates. Being around most other inmates makes you feel uncomfortable. You start looking down on the people around you because you disagree with the lifestyle they lead and feel as if you are a better person than they are.

Yet even this is tolerable.

What makes being in prison hard to cope with for a normal person are the moods that you find yourself in due to the things outside of prison that affect your emotions. A year or two into your sentence, your friends start to disappear. At first, you received mail every day from everybody. Now, however, you do not get as much mails as you used to. You start to feel as if time has stopped for you when you were sent to prison, but has continued on for those on the outside—a feeling that never leaves. You tire of the routine and look for something constructive to fill your time with be it work-related or education; anything that keeps your mind from getting dull and takes it off the fact that you are in prison.

After about five years, you find out who your friends really are. Maybe one or two still write or visit, everyone else has moved on in their lives without you. Even the majority of your family no longer writes on a consistent basis, if at all. You immerse yourself in school or work to keep from sinking into a depression. You feel forgotten and forsaken. The loneliness of not being able to have physical contact with those you love is all but unbearable.

This is also about the time you realize that you do need to change some of your ways after seeing yourself reflected in your peers. You go to the rehabilitative programs, which rarely teach you anything or show you something about yourself that you don’t already know. You figure out that that these programs do not have much to offer you and you are on your own when it comes to fixing the problems that you see in yourself. This is a long road, but it is the necessity of it that drives you to take it.

After about ten years, there is nothing left to focus on but prison. The routine is set and even transferring to another prison doesn’t change it. There aren’t any more educational opportunities to take advantage of. You really loathe the people you are forced to be around 24 hours a day. Your focus shifts to internal thoughts.

The internal thoughts dictate the emotions and moods so deep into a lengthy sentence. All memories, good or bad, do nothing but bring pain. Writing to the one or two people that you are still in contact with becomes an arduous task because you have nothing to say that isn’t related to the negativity of your experience. Thinking about getting out scares you. Thinking what your life will be like when you get out seems like nothing more than a fantasy. Thinking about what your life could have been makes you cry. Thinking about your life as it is makes you depressed and angry.

For a normal person, it impossible to avoid depression in prison. Ever day becomes misery, and is reflected in everything you say and do. You feel totally empty and unfulfilled. There is nothing to fill that void except hope and even that is weak. You seem emptiness of mind and escape from your prison outside and in. For a normal person, prison is the embodiment of misery on a level that can not be described, only experienced.

This is what makes prison life hard to cope with for a non-criminal. This is the true penalty for losing control and committing a violent crime. This is the justice of the justice system. The loss of individual freedom is small in comparison.

As for me, I fight the depression and loneliness on a daily basis. I struggle to mate the “What could have been” with the “What could be” and the “What I want,” every day--for that is the source of the strength I need to cope with my life as it is.

Imagine that.

The Power of Choice

With my potential release from prison looming on the horizon, I am struggling to prepare myself to face the many challenges such a transition will undoubtedly present. One of those challenges has been foremost in my thoughts recently and has elicited a fear response from my psyche because it is something that I am unable to prepare for. Overcoming this challenge is probably the most detrimental part of my success in the transition from prison to life.
For my entire thirty years my life has been dictated by others and lived within the bounds of a tight structure. The few instances that I have deviated from the structure in my life and made my own choices didn’t turn out so well. I am accustomed to being told what I can and cannot do, what to wear, what to eat, and how to spend my time.
We all experience limited control over our lives as children. Our parents dress us. Our parents feed us. Our parents tell us when it’s time to go to sleep. From the age of five until we graduate, we go to school, which has its own set of rules, its own dictates and runs on a tight schedule. There is surprisingly little freedom of choice as a child, and in that respect, prison life is similar to life as a child.
I went directly from childhood, albeit a troubled one resembling more a life of abusive servitude than that of a child, to prison. I have spent nearly half my life in prison where I have absolutely no real freedom of choice. I do as I’m told, eat as I’m told, wear what I’m told, and even wake when I am told.
My entire day is rigidly structured around four head counts and three meals. The time in between them is spent working as I’m told, where I’m told, and when I’m told; in recreation which is limited by certain guidelines; or in educational or rehabilitative programming. I have been doing the exact same things, in the exact same way, at the exact same times, for years on end. My life can be lived mechanically.
There is a certain comfort to be found in all of this. When decisions about how to live your life are not yours to make, the responsibilities tied to them are also out of your hands. Worry and stress all but disappear. I know exactly what the next day, or week, or month is going to bring. This is how my life is different from yours.
I’m not naïve enough to believe that people get to dictate their own lives. I know that life dictates itself but that as it plays out, circumstances present themselves that require choices to be made, and that people are free to make choices that determine the outcome of the circumstances.
What triggers my fear is how foreign that concept is for me. My choices have been limited by both the rigid structure of my life and limited to those not already made for me. The only important choice I have had to make in my life is the one that led me to prison.
What is going to happen when I am free to make the choices that determine the path my life takes? What is going to happen when I find that I enjoy something, but that something is counterproductive to the goals I have set for myself? What is going to happen if the road I’ve taken begins to get a bit rough and I have the option to continue on or take the easy way out? What am I going to do when I don’t know what tomorrow will bring?
The truth is I don’t know. I can’t even imagine it. Of course I know already what the right choices are for almost every decision I will ever face in life, but I don’t know if I will be able or willing to make the right decisions. There is no way to prepare for that.
Hopefully, I will find it to be easier than I think it will be and I’m making much ado about nothing. If not, I hope my fears about failure push me always in the right direction.