Being Productive in Prison A slow moving game going on, with the Titans and the Chargers, so I will take the time to blog for awhile. I was reading some of my emails on a few places and wanted to see what I can do to make discussion. Before I do, I want to remind you guys to please email me about your questions on my writing. I am thinking of other ways to push my writing and do more stuff, in addition to my books, cards and stuff. It is funny that when I do get a chance to send a package out, I hold my breath because I am kinda nervous that the person I sent the products to won’t like it. I don’t know why I think that way, I am just nervous. So I got a package heading out to a reader in Canada, and another here in the states. I am waiting to hear from them so I can know if they like it. It is also kinda bugging me that I never did hear from that jerk here in my own state of NC who asked for that Christmas package and never paid for it. I even went over the norm and sent her a second package to make up for not sending her the right one, so she got two packages…I hope she chokes on them! (ok that was too harsh, but I am still pissed on that) One of my readers on myspace brought up an interesting idea of doing a subscription-like venture, where readers pay for exclusive posts and blogs. Something worth thinking about. I will likely do more offline writing about other prison subjects, and just make them available on order. We’ll see where that goes. Now, let’s talk about the title of this blog. How can an inmate make the time in prison productive? How can he take advantage of a bad situation to better himself? I mean, in general, this is what EVERYONE would like to know. Every mom with a son or daughter in prison, every wife with a husband in prison, every girlfriend with a boyfriend in prison, every so-and-so with a loved one in prison would like to know the answer to this. Do I have the answer…of course not, I’m just a dude who like to write. But that does not mean I can’t give you some ideas to think about. So let’s do that. The idea here is to figure out what inmates need to help them change their lives. And this actually is multi-dimensional. How many of you remember the Rubix cube? (gosh I hope I spelled that right) The idea of an inmate being productive can be just as complicated, but not impossible to solve. After all, there were people who solved that cube, some at world record times. But when you talk about prison issues and how to change a person, it is a lot more complicated than just matching all the colors on one side. In order to change, I would identify 3 sides: the prison, the inmate, and the immediate society around him. Each of those three has an important part to play if the inmate is really to change. But what has to change in the inmate? I might identify that in three areas as well: his addiction, his lifestyle and his beliefs. See, this is really getting complicated. I wonder if this is gonna take more than 6 pages to blog out…. Let’s start with the inmate, since that is the focus of your concern. Now I don’t claim to have all the answers, I am sure some professor at Syracuse or UCLA or Duke will tell me that I don’t have it right, but I am going on what I have experienced. To me, I think the inmate has to change in the previous 3 areas, and let’s tackle them one at a time. Let’s start with addiction. This one can be an obvious one for someone on drugs or alcohol. In order for the inmate to change, if his charge and incarceration is due to an addiction, then the inmate has to find a way to break that addiction before he returns to society, or else he may well fall right back into that problem. That sounds like an easy premise. If a guy is in prison for breaking into a store to steal money to support his drug habit, then he needs to break that addiction before he gets out. Sounds simple right? Hardly. I cannot know how hard it is for a person to stop smoking because I have never smoked a cigarette or cigar or anything like that in my life. Never. The closest I have come to that is those candy cigars I used to take to school and act like I’m some cool guy puffing on a fake cigar. Or, there used to be those powdered candy cigarettes that I very vaguely remember. Other than that, I have never smoked anything. So to me it would sound easy to tell a person how easy it SHOULD be to just quit smoking. But I have seen guys in prison that had a hard time dealing with that. That is why roll ups were so popular…and cheap. Heck, one camp I was on was so broke they paid their debts in roll ups… Stop laughing! Anyway, I knew a guy that told me how hard it was to quit, until he said that his daughter told him that she didn’t like it when he smoked. He said he quit on the spot, and had not smoked since. That of course is the exception to the rule. But when you are addicted to drugs or alcohol, it can be even harder. Yes, prisons do have the AA program and DART, but many guys just go through the motions because they are getting the rewards for finishing the program, which on many camps can be 30 days merit or gain time, and a transfer to a camp closer to home. To be sure, these are ways the prison can help, but it still comes down to what that inmate REALLY wants. Do they really WANT to stop taking drugs or alcohol or to stop smoking.? That sounds like a no brainer, but sometimes a person on an addiction sees things a little different than you would. In prison, guys would dry out because of the lack of the drugs, but that does not really mean they are cured of the addiction. That is something the inmate has to fight when he is released, and to do that, they would have to enter rehab or find a support group. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. If there was nothing else to do, maybe this is easy. But remember that for many guys who are released, they may be under parole or probation, may have restitution to pay. Many may not have a place to stay or a job, and need one or both, as well as the other necessities of life. Not so easy to go to that AA meeting if it is between that and working to pay your bills. So in no way am I going to say that fighting an addiction is easy, because it isn’t. But it can be done, if the person is willing to give it a fighting chance, and to take it day by day. Now, the second part is the lifestyle, which I could easily put under this, “peer pressure”. How many guys end up in prison doing something that normally, they would NEVER do. A bunch of teens get together and do something they regret, but individually they might not have done that same act. Peer pressure is just part of the lifestyle, but it clearly is something the inmate has to deal with in order to be productive. Now I am not gonna say that this is just as hard as fighting an addiction, because I have never been an a drug or alcohol or tobacco addiction, so it would not be fair for me to compare this to that. But I can say this can be troublesome, because the lifestyle of an inmate AFTER prison can be very tough. In many ways, it is almost like throwing a homeless person out on the streets and expect him to live like a middle class citizen. Think about it, when an inmate is released; after he or she has done their time and served their debt to society, they reenter society with no support to get back on their feet… Well, I take that back. Here in NC if an inmate has been in prison over 3 years, he gets what is called a “gate check” of $40.00 to get his life back together. Good luck with that sucker. But the problem with an inmate trying to be productive with his lifestyle is that there is virtually no help at all for an inmate while he is in prison for when he steps out into society. Yeah there are programs like HRD classes (Human Resource Development), and many prisons offer classes to inmates, but this really isn’t as much of the problem as having a foundation of living when the inmate gets out. For example, when I got out in 2001, I had my mom to go back to, with other family members. If I did not, I would be broke, penniless and on the street, even with a college education. With probation hanging over me like a noose, I guarantee you I would have been back in prison in a year or two, if I didn’t opt to just go back to prison myself. And that sounds insane to some of you. One of the things society never really puts stock in is the lifestyle of a human being trying to get himself back on track. To do that, a man needs the basics of living; a roof over his head, clothes on his back, food to eat and the finances to take care of the bills. If a guy does not have that, then rehabilitation has not worked in the prison system because that felon may not have been properly taught of the BETTER ways of living, rather just survival. Now, I also mentioned peer pressure because this is also a major factor. Lots of guys get out and go back hanging around dudes that got them in trouble to begin with. The great irony here is that a lot of those dudes were cool with the guy until he went to prison, and they forgot all about him until he got out, then its “welcome back buddy”. Yeah right. This is something that has to change, but often times is very hard to do. It is easy to say that your loved one needs to stop hanging around bad influences, but if he is released and comes back home, then what has really changed? Only time. You can’t tell a grown up where he can and can’t go, and who he can or can’t see. And even if he makes the right choices, sometimes trouble comes to him unawares. I am kinda reminded of what happened to NFL player Sean Taylor, who as many of you know, was shot and killed in his home. From what I read, he was a guy that did for a time hang around the wrong crowd, but seemed to be getting his life back together. But sometimes when you try to leave the bad influences, it tries to follow. It is always a sad thing when guy tries to turn his life around and there are people who are not willing to respect that. In a similar way, inmates have to look at these situations too. A guy might have been in a gang, or around a group of “bad influences” and ended up going to prison for 5 or 10 years. When he gets out, he has to change that lifestyle that included those guys, or else he’ll end up back in prison…or dead. This is something the inmate has to decide on during his incarceration. And you know what, there are a lot of guys that do, and a lot of guys that could care less. If you are going to change, or make your incarceration productive, there has to be a change in what you want in your lifestyle. It has to start with you while you are in prison, much like the addictions. They have AA and DART, but you have to make it work for you, and believe that it can change your life for the better. And that brings us to the third part…beliefs. This is a deeper area that touches the very fabric of your personal being. It is what makes you different from every other person. We all believe different things, even if under a similar theme. For example, I might believe and support sports, but many people don’t see any value in it. In prison, there were a lot of guys that don’t care for sports, but many that did. So those that liked sports were people I could say that believed in the same things that I did. But under that umbrella, I might believe that UNC Tarheels is the best basketball team in the ACC, but there might be a bunch of guys that might think Duke, Georgia Tech or some other team might be better. Even under the sports genre, we have different beliefs. And we can go even further. Even amongst UNC fans, I might believe Michael Jordan was the best player, while some might argue James Worthy, or Vince Carter. Even though we believe in the same team, we still have differences. Same with beliefs with inmates. The road to recovery and productivity may well begin in what a person, an inmate, believes. Does he really believe he can get his life back? Does he believe his parents still love him? Does he believe his wife will take him back? Does he believe he can still get a good paying job? Does he believe he can really make it back there in “that real world”? Does he believe in God, or in a merciful God? These and infinite other beliefs may well be challenged. And sometimes the hardness of prison can permanently etch those beliefs in a person’s head. Sometimes prison seems to show inmates that life is not always fair and once you make a mistake, you will never live to make up for it. There is an “inferiority complex” that is bestowed on many ex felons, and when they enter the real world, many operate under the idea that maybe they are just on borrowed time, that they can’t succeed like the average person because they have been branded. How do you overcome that? If I was successful and owning my own home, car, and money to take a vacation every summer, I could tell you that it can be done. But even after several years, I am still fighting those very same issues. Those beliefs of how society feels about inmates have in fact been etched in me, because I have seen it and lived it. I have seen how churches treat ex felons, and I have seen how many people who go to prison support groups treat ex felons…and many times it is like ex felons have leprosy. In order for that ex felon to get his life together, he has to establish a new set of beliefs, one that gives him a fighting chance, rather than just treading water. This isn’t easy to do, otherwise I would have already done it. I still believe that unless an ex felon has connections, perhaps the best way for him or her to get back on their feet is to create an online business so he or she can get out there in the business arena without being judged. If I started a small business in my town, it would be easy for people to be prejudiced to me because someone will know that I am an ex felon, and it would be downhill from there. We don’t live in a forgiving world where people would see that I am trying to do good and they all say, “hey, let’s go down to that ex felon’s store and give him some business. He’s trying to make good, and we should support him”. Instead, I’d probably have the police check on me every few hours to see if I did something wrong, or I’d have some self righteous jackasses telling everyone else in town not to go to the store of that “criminal”. We WOULD do that you know. The idea behind what I am saying is that before an inmate leaves the prison, it is a good time for him to check deep inside of him to see what he truly believes. This isn’t just a couple of questions, it could be hundreds of questions that affect everything he does. It affects his religion, it affects whether he can become successful, it affects if he is willing to be productive in society. These are not easy questions, and maybe the time in prison helps that person to think on it longer. But don’t think that just the time in prison will help him “see the light”. Like I said, sometimes prison can make a person bitter, and reinforce negative beliefs. But if he can understand that what he believes can change how he lives, then maybe he has a chance to be productive. Anyway, I could write three times more on this, because this just barely touches the surface of the things an inmate has to think about while in prison, and how he might be able to change. Maybe it’s something I should write more offline, but I wanted to touch some ideas from one of my readers. I hope that helps a bit.
Being Productive in Prison
A slow moving game going on, with the Titans and the Chargers, so I will take the time to blog for awhile. I was reading some of my emails on a few places and wanted to see what I can do to make discussion.
Before I do, I want to remind you guys to please email me about your questions on my writing. I am thinking of other ways to push my writing and do more stuff, in addition to my books, cards and stuff. It is funny that when I do get a chance to send a package out, I hold my breath because I am kinda nervous that the person I sent the products to won’t like it.
I don’t know why I think that way, I am just nervous.
So I got a package heading out to a reader in Canada, and another here in the states. I am waiting to hear from them so I can know if they like it. It is also kinda bugging me that I never did hear from that jerk here in my own state of NC who asked for that Christmas package and never paid for it.
I even went over the norm and sent her a second package to make up for not sending her the right one, so she got two packages…I hope she chokes on them!
(ok that was too harsh, but I am still pissed on that)
One of my readers on myspace brought up an interesting idea of doing a subscription-like venture, where readers pay for exclusive posts and blogs. Something worth thinking about.
I will likely do more offline writing about other prison subjects, and just make them available on order. We’ll see where that goes.
Now, let’s talk about the title of this blog. How can an inmate make the time in prison productive? How can he take advantage of a bad situation to better himself? I mean, in general, this is what EVERYONE would like to know. Every mom with a son or daughter in prison, every wife with a husband in prison, every girlfriend with a boyfriend in prison, every so-and-so with a loved one in prison would like to know the answer to this.
Do I have the answer…of course not, I’m just a dude who like to write. But that does not mean I can’t give you some ideas to think about. So let’s do that.
The idea here is to figure out what inmates need to help them change their lives. And this actually is multi-dimensional. How many of you remember the Rubix cube?
(gosh I hope I spelled that right)
The idea of an inmate being productive can be just as complicated, but not impossible to solve. After all, there were people who solved that cube, some at world record times. But when you talk about prison issues and how to change a person, it is a lot more complicated than just matching all the colors on one side.
In order to change, I would identify 3 sides: the prison, the inmate, and the immediate society around him. Each of those three has an important part to play if the inmate is really to change.
But what has to change in the inmate? I might identify that in three areas as well: his addiction, his lifestyle and his beliefs.
See, this is really getting complicated. I wonder if this is gonna take more than 6 pages to blog out….
Let’s start with the inmate, since that is the focus of your concern. Now I don’t claim to have all the answers, I am sure some professor at Syracuse or UCLA or Duke will tell me that I don’t have it right, but I am going on what I have experienced. To me, I think the inmate has to change in the previous 3 areas, and let’s tackle them one at a time. Let’s start with addiction.
This one can be an obvious one for someone on drugs or alcohol. In order for the inmate to change, if his charge and incarceration is due to an addiction, then the inmate has to find a way to break that addiction before he returns to society, or else he may well fall right back into that problem. That sounds like an easy premise. If a guy is in prison for breaking into a store to steal money to support his drug habit, then he needs to break that addiction before he gets out.
Sounds simple right? Hardly.
I cannot know how hard it is for a person to stop smoking because I have never smoked a cigarette or cigar or anything like that in my life. Never. The closest I have come to that is those candy cigars I used to take to school and act like I’m some cool guy puffing on a fake cigar. Or, there used to be those powdered candy cigarettes that I very vaguely remember. Other than that, I have never smoked anything.
So to me it would sound easy to tell a person how easy it SHOULD be to just quit smoking. But I have seen guys in prison that had a hard time dealing with that. That is why roll ups were so popular…and cheap. Heck, one camp I was on was so broke they paid their debts in roll ups…
Stop laughing!
Anyway, I knew a guy that told me how hard it was to quit, until he said that his daughter told him that she didn’t like it when he smoked. He said he quit on the spot, and had not smoked since. That of course is the exception to the rule.
But when you are addicted to drugs or alcohol, it can be even harder. Yes, prisons do have the AA program and DART, but many guys just go through the motions because they are getting the rewards for finishing the program, which on many camps can be 30 days merit or gain time, and a transfer to a camp closer to home.
To be sure, these are ways the prison can help, but it still comes down to what that inmate REALLY wants. Do they really WANT to stop taking drugs or alcohol or to stop smoking.? That sounds like a no brainer, but sometimes a person on an addiction sees things a little different than you would.
In prison, guys would dry out because of the lack of the drugs, but that does not really mean they are cured of the addiction. That is something the inmate has to fight when he is released, and to do that, they would have to enter rehab or find a support group. Sounds easy, right?
Wrong.
If there was nothing else to do, maybe this is easy. But remember that for many guys who are released, they may be under parole or probation, may have restitution to pay. Many may not have a place to stay or a job, and need one or both, as well as the other necessities of life. Not so easy to go to that AA meeting if it is between that and working to pay your bills.
So in no way am I going to say that fighting an addiction is easy, because it isn’t. But it can be done, if the person is willing to give it a fighting chance, and to take it day by day.
Now, the second part is the lifestyle, which I could easily put under this, “peer pressure”. How many guys end up in prison doing something that normally, they would NEVER do. A bunch of teens get together and do something they regret, but individually they might not have done that same act. Peer pressure is just part of the lifestyle, but it clearly is something the inmate has to deal with in order to be productive.
Now I am not gonna say that this is just as hard as fighting an addiction, because I have never been an a drug or alcohol or tobacco addiction, so it would not be fair for me to compare this to that. But I can say this can be troublesome, because the lifestyle of an inmate AFTER prison can be very tough.
In many ways, it is almost like throwing a homeless person out on the streets and expect him to live like a middle class citizen. Think about it, when an inmate is released; after he or she has done their time and served their debt to society, they reenter society with no support to get back on their feet…
Well, I take that back. Here in NC if an inmate has been in prison over 3 years, he gets what is called a “gate check” of $40.00 to get his life back together. Good luck with that sucker.
But the problem with an inmate trying to be productive with his lifestyle is that there is virtually no help at all for an inmate while he is in prison for when he steps out into society. Yeah there are programs like HRD classes (Human Resource Development), and many prisons offer classes to inmates, but this really isn’t as much of the problem as having a foundation of living when the inmate gets out.
For example, when I got out in 2001, I had my mom to go back to, with other family members. If I did not, I would be broke, penniless and on the street, even with a college education. With probation hanging over me like a noose, I guarantee you I would have been back in prison in a year or two, if I didn’t opt to just go back to prison myself.
And that sounds insane to some of you.
One of the things society never really puts stock in is the lifestyle of a human being trying to get himself back on track. To do that, a man needs the basics of living; a roof over his head, clothes on his back, food to eat and the finances to take care of the bills. If a guy does not have that, then rehabilitation has not worked in the prison system because that felon may not have been properly taught of the BETTER ways of living, rather just survival.
Now, I also mentioned peer pressure because this is also a major factor. Lots of guys get out and go back hanging around dudes that got them in trouble to begin with. The great irony here is that a lot of those dudes were cool with the guy until he went to prison, and they forgot all about him until he got out, then its “welcome back buddy”.
Yeah right.
This is something that has to change, but often times is very hard to do. It is easy to say that your loved one needs to stop hanging around bad influences, but if he is released and comes back home, then what has really changed? Only time.
You can’t tell a grown up where he can and can’t go, and who he can or can’t see. And even if he makes the right choices, sometimes trouble comes to him unawares. I am kinda reminded of what happened to NFL player Sean Taylor, who as many of you know, was shot and killed in his home. From what I read, he was a guy that did for a time hang around the wrong crowd, but seemed to be getting his life back together. But sometimes when you try to leave the bad influences, it tries to follow.
It is always a sad thing when guy tries to turn his life around and there are people who are not willing to respect that. In a similar way, inmates have to look at these situations too. A guy might have been in a gang, or around a group of “bad influences” and ended up going to prison for 5 or 10 years. When he gets out, he has to change that lifestyle that included those guys, or else he’ll end up back in prison…or dead.
This is something the inmate has to decide on during his incarceration. And you know what, there are a lot of guys that do, and a lot of guys that could care less. If you are going to change, or make your incarceration productive, there has to be a change in what you want in your lifestyle. It has to start with you while you are in prison, much like the addictions. They have AA and DART, but you have to make it work for you, and believe that it can change your life for the better.
And that brings us to the third part…beliefs.
This is a deeper area that touches the very fabric of your personal being. It is what makes you different from every other person. We all believe different things, even if under a similar theme.
For example, I might believe and support sports, but many people don’t see any value in it. In prison, there were a lot of guys that don’t care for sports, but many that did. So those that liked sports were people I could say that believed in the same things that I did.
But under that umbrella, I might believe that UNC Tarheels is the best basketball team in the ACC, but there might be a bunch of guys that might think Duke, Georgia Tech or some other team might be better. Even under the sports genre, we have different beliefs.
And we can go even further. Even amongst UNC fans, I might believe Michael Jordan was the best player, while some might argue James Worthy, or Vince Carter. Even though we believe in the same team, we still have differences.
Same with beliefs with inmates.
The road to recovery and productivity may well begin in what a person, an inmate, believes. Does he really believe he can get his life back? Does he believe his parents still love him? Does he believe his wife will take him back? Does he believe he can still get a good paying job? Does he believe he can really make it back there in “that real world”? Does he believe in God, or in a merciful God?
These and infinite other beliefs may well be challenged. And sometimes the hardness of prison can permanently etch those beliefs in a person’s head. Sometimes prison seems to show inmates that life is not always fair and once you make a mistake, you will never live to make up for it.
There is an “inferiority complex” that is bestowed on many ex felons, and when they enter the real world, many operate under the idea that maybe they are just on borrowed time, that they can’t succeed like the average person because they have been branded.
How do you overcome that?
If I was successful and owning my own home, car, and money to take a vacation every summer, I could tell you that it can be done. But even after several years, I am still fighting those very same issues. Those beliefs of how society feels about inmates have in fact been etched in me, because I have seen it and lived it.
I have seen how churches treat ex felons, and I have seen how many people who go to prison support groups treat ex felons…and many times it is like ex felons have leprosy.
In order for that ex felon to get his life together, he has to establish a new set of beliefs, one that gives him a fighting chance, rather than just treading water. This isn’t easy to do, otherwise I would have already done it. I still believe that unless an ex felon has connections, perhaps the best way for him or her to get back on their feet is to create an online business so he or she can get out there in the business arena without being judged.
If I started a small business in my town, it would be easy for people to be prejudiced to me because someone will know that I am an ex felon, and it would be downhill from there. We don’t live in a forgiving world where people would see that I am trying to do good and they all say, “hey, let’s go down to that ex felon’s store and give him some business. He’s trying to make good, and we should support him”.
Instead, I’d probably have the police check on me every few hours to see if I did something wrong, or I’d have some self righteous jackasses telling everyone else in town not to go to the store of that “criminal”.
We WOULD do that you know.
The idea behind what I am saying is that before an inmate leaves the prison, it is a good time for him to check deep inside of him to see what he truly believes. This isn’t just a couple of questions, it could be hundreds of questions that affect everything he does. It affects his religion, it affects whether he can become successful, it affects if he is willing to be productive in society. These are not easy questions, and maybe the time in prison helps that person to think on it longer.
But don’t think that just the time in prison will help him “see the light”. Like I said, sometimes prison can make a person bitter, and reinforce negative beliefs. But if he can understand that what he believes can change how he lives, then maybe he has a chance to be productive.
Anyway, I could write three times more on this, because this just barely touches the surface of the things an inmate has to think about while in prison, and how he might be able to change. Maybe it’s something I should write more offline, but I wanted to touch some ideas from one of my readers. I hope that helps a bit.