Category prison
In Prison — Seeing Is Believing
What happens in prison usually stays in prison. Kinda like a bad Las Vegas honeymoon. Nobody wants to know the depths of the debauchery that goes on in either place. When I worked as a department of corrections administrator, we were often burnt at the stake when a criminal decided to do a bad thing. […]
5 Things I Learned in Prison
Time in prison is supposed to “teach” you things, right? That’s why it was originally called the penitentiary — as in penance. A place to reflect on one’s life and the path not taken. Some lessons are learned the hard way. The weak, meek and mild won’t survive in prison. Inmates quickly develop survival mechanisms […]
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Respect, and I’m not talking about the Aretha Franklin classic, but something just as deadly. Outside of drug deals, there are more stabbings in prison over respect, or more precisely the lack of respect, than nearly any other motivation. This very unscientific finding is based upon years of “picking up the pieces” after a stabbing […]
Where Have All The Convicts Gone?
I grew up in a time of convicts. These days, a convict is hard to find. Convicts lived by a code that governed their conduct on the streets and in prison. Not that convicts weren’t dangerous criminals — they were, and their numbers included notorious murders, robbers and thieves. And they played by the rules. Rules? The […]
It’s Just A Word
Remember the old children’s verse; sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Well, I’m calling bullshit on that one. One ill-chosen word has weight and is capable of inflicting a hurtful sting. String a few of these words together and lives are impacted. Last week I posted about a setting […]
The Prison You Don’t See
I’m writing a new story and part of the new piece involves prison — specifically mental health treatment in prison. It’s a strange thing to witness a prison mental health crisis first hand and after working around correctional mental health units and activating one in a maximum security prison, it occurred to me that most readers don’t […]
How Do Drugs Get Into Prison?
Getting prohibited items inside a prison is more than a game, it’s business. Every so often, a naive junior legislator will leave a fundraising lunch long enough to pop their head into a committee hearing and express their handwringing shock and dismay over drugs and other contraband appearing inside prison walls. Contraband is any item prohibited by […]
Prison Lingo
Every culture has a language unto itself, phrases or words that mean something completely different because of where they are spoken. Prison is one of those places. The world on the inside has a culture and language driven by life in confined spaces, honed by decades of control and restricted freedoms. I’ve mentioned before that time […]
Want to Time Travel? Go To Prison
I’ve been playing with an idea for a new book and it involves – wait for it – time travel. Not like the H. G. Wells, Time Machine kind of time travel. There is not fanciful device to dial up the year and zap you to the exact time and place of your choosing. The story I’m noodling […]
50 Shades of Grey Matter
Have you been around that person, the one with the brain that operates on an entirely different level than the rest of us? This guy (or gal) is the one doing their sudoku puzzles in ink along with their morning herbal tea. They are the ones who do math equations for the fun of it and […]
James L'Etoile 