Yesterday I spoke with Carlos, a prisoner who sleeps in a cubicle adjacent to mine at Taft Camp. He is tall and clean cut. Prior to his imprisonment, he worked as a truck driver. Carlos told me that he served two prison terms before; the first term was for one year and the second term was for 30 months. He’s been incarcerated on this offense for four years, and he has four more years to serve.
When I asked him what it was like to get out of prison, Carlos told me it disconcerted him. While in prison, he said that he fell into the habit of the slow, easy pace. He ate meals when the prison scheduled them, he played cards and dominos, watched television addictively. The schedule he created didn’t prepare him well for the challenges he would face upon release.
During his first weeks of freedom, Carlos said he spent time indoors. He didn’t like the visual of traffic or the fast pace of society. After each release, he said that he needed a month to decompress.
Stories like Carlos’ abound in prison, and I learn from them. When people disconnect from society and vegetate through a prison term, they set themselves up for the kind of failure that Carlos experienced on two previous releases from prison. The sad thing is that Carlos isn’t doing anything different with his life now. He continues to watch television, play table games and live in tempo with the prison beat. I try to motivate him, to express the importance of preparing for release, but he can’t muster the energy to think about what challenges he will face after release. All he thinks about is how much more time he has to serve.
Those readers who have loved ones in prison might want to share Carlos’ story. It’s not an unusual one, though it is one with a predictable ending – bringing the offender back to prison. I consider it my responsibility to prepare for a different outcome. Through every day of my journey-longer than 22 years already-I’ve made efforts to prepare for release. I’ve documented most of my activities through this website and through my books. The message I hope readers will find is that success after confinement doesn’t come by accident. We must prepare for success.
I began working at 1:45 this morning. I edited chapter four and typed a lengthy letter for the legal team working on my behalf. I ran 10 miles in the morning, increasing my tally to 2,533 miles over the past 285 days.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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