Introduction
If you are a first offender bound for prison, you may feel very much like Augustus Hill. You may recognize the name from the HBO drama “Oz,” which is based on what life is like behind bars. The television series, created by Tom Fontana, centered on Emerald City, an experimental unit housed in Oswald State Correctional Facility that was designed to help prisoners rehabilitate themselves in a suitable environment. However, Em City instead became a breeding ground for rape, corruption, gang violence, double-dealing, murder, and drugs. The creators of “Oz” released a book called The Journal of Augustus Hill based on the fictitious narrator of the goings-on inside Em City. Neither the series nor the book paints a pleasant way of life inside prison walls, yet it still manages to capture moments of true caring among inmates and staff members, heroic ideas and deeds, and hope instead of despair.
Maybe it is finally sinking in that you really are headed for prison. There are no “get out of jail free” cards to save you; this is as real as it gets. If you are reading this book, you probably do not know much about the reality of prison life. What you see on television about what it is like to live in prison 24 hours a day may be interesting, and sometimes humorous, but very rarely is it accurate. Hollywood focuses on entertainment; this book is about real life in prison.
According to Michael Santos, a federal inmate who writes books and blogs about prison life and criminology, about 13.5 million Americans do time in some sort of incarceration every year. About 95 percent of these inmates go back to their communities after serving their sentences. Santos is serving a 45-year prison term for drug-related crimes and hopes to be released in 2013. At the time of his arrest, he was 23 years old. You and millions of other Americans are facing what many fear the most: a total lack of freedom.
In prison, you lose everything except some of the basic rights guaranteed to you by the U.S. Constitution. You are told when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to eat, what to wear, what you may possess on your person or in your cell, what you cannot possess, where you must go, and where you cannot go. We do not really appreciate these forms of freedom until we lose them. Comfort, your personal identity, and privacy are practically non-existent in prison. Your basic needs will be met, but your desires most likely will not be met if they pose some kind of security risk. For example, in your home you can go to your kitchen and carve an apple with a paring knife. In prison, possession of a knife is a serious disciplinary offense.
We give up our freedom for many reasons, some ridiculous: A 37-year-old man in St. Paul, Minnesota, was arrested and charged with second-degree burglary for stealing eight piggy banks from a friend’s house that contained only $2,700. At the time, he was on parole for first-degree burglary; his parole will be revoked, and he will return to prison to serve out his first sentence and then serve whatever sentence the court imposes upon him for the piggy bank heist. After escaping two first-degree murder charges a decade ago, O.J. Simpson will spend many years in prison — perhaps the rest of his life — for his part in a 2007 armed robbery in Las Vegas. In court, Simpson cited the reason for the robbery as an attempt get some of his sports memorabilia back from a person he believed to have acquired it. Was either of these crimes worth the consequences? A pervasive belief among criminals is that they will not be caught; if this were true, prison overcrowding in America would not be the serious problem that it is today.
I have worked within the civilian and military criminal justice system in some way for most of my adult life, beginning as a courtroom bailiff in the late 1970s. As a fugitive recovery agent (“bounty hunter”), corrections officer, and then in the U.S. Air Force as a therapist for civilian and military personnel who had committed crimes, my experiences more than convinced me that prison is not a good place to be. I also worked with family members of inmates and saw first-hand how difficult it is to maintain family bonds when a parent, child, or sibling is incarcerated. Now that I have retired to full-time writing, the torch has been passed to my beloved husband, Dr. Tristan Kohut, a physician with the Montana State Prison. It is to him I owe thanks for clarification of the many medical challenges that happen on the inside and the helplessness often felt by family members of ill or injured inmates.
Regardless of the reason for your incarceration, this book is meant to help you more quickly understand what life in prison is like; how to prepare yourself and your family for your time in prison; how to maintain important bonds with your spouse, partner, extended family, and children; and how to serve your time by putting it to good use. Staying out of trouble is a major “plus” when you meet with the parole board; this book will tell you how you can have a clean disciplinary file. If you have questions about how to maintain a close, healthy relationship with your children and/or partner, hopefully your questions will be answered here. Many inmates, family members, and prison staff members were interviewed for this book; it was my intention to speak with as many “real” people as possible rather that merely relying on existing research material. I want you and your family to have the most realistic information possible, and only people who are living or working in prison and their loved ones can truly give you the best, most accurate information about preparing for the prison experience. Many of these people are named and quoted directly; others were combined into a single case study to avoid confusion and conflicting information.
If you come across a term that is not fully explained or that you do not understand, you will find glossaries of legal terms and prison slang in appendices A and B. These terms relate to crimes for which you were convicted and defenses to those crimes that could form a basis for an appeal or a motion for a new trial if you pursue that route. It is most important that you understand these terms not only for yourself, but also so you can explain them to your family members.
By the time you finish this book, you will have gained a great deal of knowledge about preparing yourself and your family for your incarceration and what really happens in prison. Forget the Hollywood images; in this book, you will discover the truth.