Damaged Goods

Anyone who serves a substantial amount of time in prison, let's say four or more years, in some sense also will serve a life sentence. Permanent changes set in and prison within is built, caging the mind and the soul for years after the prisoner has been physically released. Inevitably during the time that one spends in prison, new thresholds will be crossed, old principles will be abandoned, and old truths will be seen for what they are, illusions and delusions, and subsequently discarded.

They say that old convicts just want to do their time in peace. For "cell soldiers," those who survive by voluntarily staying within their cells a majority of the time, the notion of "doing cell time" becomes automatic. The ex-con may not want to leave his apartment, unless there is some specific reason to do so such as a meeting with his parole officer, a job, medical appointments, or grocery shopping. The ex-con will often ignore much of the new "freedom" he's granted, choosing instead to enjoy an opportunity to follow the prison creed of "do my own time and mind my own business" as never before. It is also nearly inevitable that one will lose much of the ability to feel anything at all at times, as the ability to numb out and dissociate from one's peers and environment are invaluable on the inside. The prisoner may long for a lover (most people actually do not have sex in prison) but when they find one, they find their ability to tolerate long periods of intimacy strangely impaired.

Some prisoners allow themselves to be tortured by their own minds, worrying about what their wives, children, lovers, friends and family are doing. Others choose the view that the world outside exists only as a concept to them, and will keep on going without them, without regard to their opinions about it. The prisoner looks back on the passions of life, the struggles that seemed to be of nearly cosmic importance, "matters of life and death," and realizes within the prison cell that none of it meant anything. In prison, at any given time one's cell may be torn apart from by the guards and property is confiscated without explanation. At any given time, without warning or reason, one may be transferred to another cell, or another facility within the system. To avoid being driven to dementia by anger and anxiety, one develops a passive and fatalistic view of things, in which everything may be summed up by the terms "Well...sh*t!" and "Oh well."

Younger men ( I do not use gender-neutral terms, as I cannot write about the experience of the female prisoner, having never been one) dream of "the lanes," the streets from which they were removed, filled with opportunities, drugs, sex, money and power. Older men, who try to return to "the lanes" after their release in most cases are shown what they are by the results, too old, too weak, and too burned out to be anything but a slow moving "bottom feeder" (there have been numerous exceptions to this throughout history, but in my own experience, the above scenario is most common).

A majority of prisoners are addicts and alcoholics. While some take the opportunity in prison to make the break with their former dependencies, most will still get high on anything that happens to be around, any time they get the chance to. Urine testing has had but limited impact on prison drug use. When one is already in prison, threats of more prison time or harsher conditions often carry too little emotional weight to be effective. Although drugs are available most of the time in prison, the opportunities to use aren't as omnipresent as they are on the outside. One must either be wealthy, or know the right people to maintain any kind of habit within the walls. For these reasons, parole time is often very hard time, because there are no physical barriers between the prisoner and "the lanes," and "getting caught," does not seem real until it actually happens. Some ex-cons, especially those with well educated and well intentioned parole officers find that they are living a "decent life" in spite of themselves, but for a majority, the call of "the lanes" is too strong.