Prison Time

Most inmates will tell you time just passes by when you’re “doin’ your bid.” Each day, a repeat of the prior one. You get up the same time, eat the same time, get rec the same time. Life, you will hear, “just is”. But, there is so much that actually does go on each day in here. Men’s lives are altered dramatically.



Wednesday afternoon Woo was called to the counselor’s office and told to “call home”. His elderly mother has been battling breast cancer for years. As I’ve gotten to know this fierce looking yet gentle man, I knew the prognosis for his mom wasn’t good. He has fourteen months remaining on his sentence. “I just want to get out and sit with her before she passes”, he told me.


His call home was brief. I could tell the news wasn’t good. “They’ve put her in hospice”, he told me with tears in his eyes. All I could say was “I’m sorry” and “I’m here to listen”. I gave him his space. Later, I went back to see him. I told him if he needed to miss English that evening I’d explain to the Professor. “I’m going. Mom’s proud of me for doing this. I can’t miss this class.”


E is still in the hole. They didn’t let him out Tuesday. The earliest he’ll be released is this coming Tuesday, after his hearing. That would be ten days in the hole.


He won’t come back to this building. He’s been thrown out of the college/IT program, suspended from college for ninety days, fired from his job and removed from his HVAC apprenticeship program. He won’t be able to finish his Associates Degree before he goes home. And going home? He’ll probably have some of his good time taken away.


Was it worth the back tattoo of a Chinese dragon in bamboo and orchids? “It would’ve cost me $3000 on the street,” he told one of the housemen who works over by the hole. “So instead you tossed away $20,000 in education? You’re a dumbass.” I love the way guys “keep it real” in here.


E didn’t deserve all the consequences he’s been handed. He’s been made a scapegoat by the prison administration to show they don’t want the college program to succeed (a number of officers have told me that). Why would E deserve a ten day term in the hole, but the tattoo artist, caught with the tattoo gun and ink, only gets a 200 level charge and $10.00 fine? Life isn’t fair and sometimes – as I have personally discovered - the consequences we suffer are significantly worse than the wrongdoing we commit. That becomes clearer every day in here.


Then there was the conversation I overheard by Will and my new bunkmate – IG. IG is a Crips leader. He took E’s bunk the other day; he’s a polite, young black kid working toward his associate’s degree.


Will – early 20’s black kid – was folding his laundry around 11:00 the other night and was talking to IG. I was having a tough time falling asleep and couldn’t help but focus in on what Will said.


“I talked to him tonight. He said ‘hi da da.’ She said she’s happy, but no other guy can love my boy like me.” I heard him choke up as he continued. “I want to be there. I want to raise my son. She doesn’t get the whole reason he’s acting like he likes my boy is to sleep with her.”


I felt for Will. I know what he’s going through. The same thoughts ran through my mind before as I’ve thought about the “boyfriend”; impress my son, score points with mom, make yourself at home.


Will dealt drugs, lots of drugs. He sold drugs to make money to give his high school sweetheart, his wife, a comfortable lifestyle. He bought a house; bought her a car, paid for her college and they had a baby. She told him she loved him. Then, he was arrested and sentenced to prison: three years. In less than a year, the woman who claimed she loved him “in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, forsaking all others” had divorced him. Apparently, those words were just something to say to get the gifts and the cake.


As I said, I felt for Will; as a father, as a husband, as a man. He’s trying to get his life straight, trying to do his sentence, get his education, and go home and make something of himself for his wife and his child. Problem is, his wife gave up on him. He’s trying. He’s working. He’s suffering. He’s praying.


The other day Opie came up to my cut with his CD player. “Listen to this,” he said and handed me his headphones. It was rapper Jim Jones singing “I Know”. It’s a song about guys doing time. Over and over Jones tells about the struggles in the street; the drugs, broken homes, broken dreams, and he says “I know, I know.” Then, real men come on speaking “I gave the penitentiary ten years of my life…and for what?” or “they locked me up in ’89 and I didn’t go home ‘til ’04. I didn’t recognize nothin.”


I understood the song. I understood the pain. I understood the time.