OK. Here’s the thing about hanging out in a prison all day, teaching basic skills and computer applications to convicted felons: It’s not that exciting.
I could write about passing through eight locked doors and gates to get to my classroom every day.
I could describe, in detail, the time when I walked out of the education building into the courtyard, alone, heard two objects pelt the ground nearby in quick succession, looked around thinking, “What the hell…?, heard cackling akin to the Wicked Witch of the West, then heard a voice gloating, “Hey, check him out! He lookin’ around like, ‘What the hell?!” I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from, so I went about my business. Only later did I hear that an inmate had broken the glass in his glass-and-bars window and tried to hit anyone he could with whatever projectiles he could find.
Finally, I could describe what it’s like to be mistakenly locked inside one wing of the education building alone and at night, and the panic that ensued when I realized that I didn’t have the right key to let myself out. That panic quickly subsided, though, when I stopped to think and realized that I did have the key to get to a phone. The whole episode lasted less than three minutes.
So there it is. I’ve described everything exciting that’s happened in the past year and a half.
Yet, because so many people are curious about what it’s like to have personal contact, on a daily basis, with a few of the millions presently incarcerated, I’ll give a general overview:
My students have committed murder with a gun, murder with a car, and murder with a hammer. They’ve raped and molested and engaged in unspecified acts of “sexual deviancy”. They’ve sold and consumed massive amounts of mind-altering, personality-changing drugs – meth, ecstasy, crack, heroin – all the bad shit.
But from my perspective – and this may hurt the sensibilities of crime victims everywhere – they’re pretty normal dudes. Pleasant, even. They work hard and pose no behavioral problems; I mean that unequivocally. They have hopes and dreams about their future lives “on the streets,” and I can’t bring myself to tell them just how hard I think it’s going to be.
Who’s going to take a chance on a guy who went to jail when he was 17, learned to make kick-ass Excel spreadsheets at 25, and is released at 29? When he applies for a job as an Office Assistant, he’ll probably be homeless and dirty, and he won’t know how to feed himself, much less take the bus to an interview. If he gets there, he has to explain why he fell off the planet for the last 12 years. I see it all unfolding very clearly. The quick realization of what he’s facing, the crushing disappointment, and the return to jail. How can it be any other way?
In this blog, I’ll relay the news right away if anything exciting happens. More often, I’ll post a profile of a student, leaving out names, of course. It’ll be in my own words and probably sorely incomplete. But the stories are interesting, mostly because of how fucked-up they are.
I’ll start soon with a guy I’ll call Chris….
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