I write this article with a bit of trepidation; while I don’t have the biggest following, I still worry about my “Medium image,” or how my followers perceive me and my writing.
Most articles I see on Medium are about self-improvement, wealth-building, or mastering this platform — to name a few of the many angles other writers take.
Very few delve into the personal lives of the writers, articles like the one I’m writing right now.
From November 2021 — January 2022, I spent 67 days incarcerated in the local jail in my county (I’m grateful to say the charges, two misdemeanors, were eventually dropped).
I live in the Chicagoland, about 2.5 hours South of that great city, chalk-full of architecture, good eats, and great comedy. The twin cities I call home are Champaign-Urbana, or Urbana-Champaign, depending on who you ask.
While incarcerated, I learned a lot about myself, my fellow inmates, and the correctional officers responsible for us on a daily basis. Things such as:
1) Too much free time is a bad thing
A lot of my friends — myself included — yearn to live life like the celebrities we idolize. On the surface, it looks as if they have ample free time; they can go where they want, hang out with who they like, and do the things they please at the drop of a hat.
The rest of us? We’re chained to our 9–5 gigs, scrolling Instagram or hopping on Snapchat to get a glimpse of their lifestyles, lifestyles we yearn to emulate.
In reality, those celebrities live very structured lifestyles that require adhering to a stringent schedule and/or utilizing an assistant to make sure they stay on top of everything.
They don’t have that much free time, because too much free time is a bad thing. It makes it more probable that the person with nothing but time on their hands will make poor decisions, decisions that can lead to incarceration.
For instance, while behind automated doors (the jail I was in did not have bars; I was VERY grateful for this), I met an inmate who was both homeless and jobless shortly before he got locked up.
He’d had a job as an Account Executive for a prominent Fortune-500 company selling office supplies. Once he lost that job, his life started to fall apart.
He ended up getting evicted from his apartment…without the luxury of being able to collect his possessions beforehand.
With limited access to homeless resources and bleak finances, he ended up breaking into what used to be his place, to collect anything he could to pawn, just so he could attempt to pay bills, eat, and find somewhere else to stay.
His next door neighbors reported him; police arrived just in time to arrest him before he could depart.
In this instance, homelessness + joblessness = a higher potential for criminal activity, all stemming from too much free time.
2) Boredom can lead to clinical depression
In the jail where I was housed, inmates are subjected to a “23 and 1” schedule. That means they’re in their cells for twenty-three hours out of the day, with only one meager hour of time outside of it. That one hour was devoted to recreational activity — exercising, walking, watching television, etc.
With twenty-three hours inside of a cell, a lot of inmates, myself included, felt as if our lives were devoid of meaning and purpose.
I personally felt incredibly empty. There’s only so much reading a person can do before they don’t want to anymore.
Exercising helps, but even The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) only does so for six hours a day, and he’s considered the golden standard for physical fitness.
Those are the two main options for consciously passing time in one’s cell; if it wasn’t that, then sleeping is another big option. But again, even newborn babies only sleep for 16–18 hours out of the day; no adults I know of can tolerate resting that long, not even the elderly.
All of this made me feel like a loser, leading to depression and weekly check-ins with the mental health department.
3) Treating others how you want to be treated goes a long way
When I first arrived to the jail in Champaign-Urbana, I met a correctional officer named Mr. Wakefield. He’s a conservative, gun-loving Caucasian man; I’m a liberal-minded, independent thinking African-American. It’s safe to say we didn’t get along or see eye to eye when we first met. Whenever I made a request, whether it was for a drink, a blanket, even toilet paper — it was met with a curt “NO!”
I pegged him as an asshole and a racist after a few interactions.
In spite of this, I still believe in treating others how I want to be treated. After all, a wise man once taught me that it’s easier to pull someone off of a chair with one arm than pull them up with one arm.
Translation?
It’s easier to mistreat people or act out negatively than do the harder, heavier lifting required of positivity.
So after two weeks of staying true to my values, I saw a noticeable change in him; he’d finally realized that my kindness wasn’t an angle, but an innate characteristic. From that point forward, he looked out for me in every way imaginable, even giving me double portions of surprisingly tolerable meals during mealtime.
When I was released, he told me I was a great guy and wished me well in all my future endeavors.
The same can be said of inmate interactions.
Don’t believe everything you see on TV about race relations or unnecessary violence (more on that later).
An alleged murderer went out of his way to provide me with commissary, which is food ordered through the jail system to supplement what inmates are provided — where I was housed, that was a breakfast bag and two hot meals for lunch and dinner, all because:
- I couldn’t afford it and
- I treated him like a human being in spite of the alleged crime he committed.
I went from going to bed hangry to having chips and Ramen noodles readily at my disposal all because of him.
Another inmate, one assumed to be a racist Caucasian, and I bonded with after we learned we were both intellectuals.
We’d have conversations during each other’s recreation time about life, love, relationships, politics, the economy, and other intellectually stimulating topics.
I learned why he was a perceived racist to other inmates and realized he just loathed basic conversations.
We also talked about our love of comedic sitcoms and even loosely developed one I plan to write once I start attending film school either this fall or next.
Who knew jail could yield such positive results? I didn’t, but I treated everyone how I wanted to be treated, and it made a major difference.
4) Hygiene is EVERYTHING
Life in jail is VERY sedentary, especially in Champaign-Urbana. There isn’t a lot of activity because there isn’t a lot to do. When you live with a 23 and 1 schedule, more often than not, all you want to do is sleep.
I was no exception to this.
You go from having a regimented routine outside of jail as a free person, to throwing in the towel. It doesn’t happen all at once; but bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, caring about things such as brushing your teeth goes out the window.
Moral of the story? You HAVE to stay on top of taking care of yourself, no matter how boring and rudimentary time behind bars, is.
5) TV sensationalizes how excitable, scary, and violent life behind bars is
Hit TV shows like “Prison Break” do not accurately portray the incarcerated life. Neither do “Orange is the New Black,” “Mr. Robot,” or “Scared Straight.” In reality, virtually no shows portray what life as an incarcerated individual is like, and for good reason.
If they showed how sedentary this lifestyle is, I’m willing to bet there’d be a handful of people who commit crime just to take advantage of having free accommodation.
Again, where I was incarcerated, the 23 and 1 standard makes it hard for any sort of excitement. And that’s only one version of general population.
On another side of the building, inmates were allowed to be out of their cells from 8am until 10pm. I was briefly housed there before being moved to the 23 and 1 block due to housing capacity issues.
In the most liberal gen pop block, inmates are more inclined to doing things such as crossword puzzles, word searches, or playing chess or card games.
If that wasn’t the case, then reading or working out, ran supreme. In short, the desire for social interaction and brain stimulation trumped any desire for violence.
You wouldn’t believe that watching TV, but remember, what you see on TV is about what sells, not necessarily what’s believable. The end goal is to emotionally hook you into continuous viewership, not tell you the truth. That’s for documentaries. Trust me, I’m a screenwriter-in-the-making.
6) The importance of comfortable clothes and your OWN underwear
Nothing prepares you to leave jail quicker and NEVER return than seeing what the scrubs look like in person. On TV, they look ugly but somewhat respectable. What most people don’t think about is how dismal and abysmal the USED scrubs are.
Jails and prisons have a tight budget they need to adhere to. Part of that budget includes how much money can be allocated to buying new scrubs for inmates. There isn’t a lot of money going toward this.
The end result is orange scrubs (some locations use yellow, navy, etc.) that look more faded than anything else. Some are stretched out from being worn by heavyset inmates, while others have been around for years without replacement.
It doesn’t help that we were allowed a changeout, or change of clothes, only on a weekly basis, or once a week.
Factor in the same underwear that was worn by approximately one hundred men remaining in circulation, and you have a recipe for disaster in the eyes of a young man who cares a lot about presentation.
Orange scrubs are dreadfully uncomfortable and have forever altered how I feel about that color. As comical as it may sound, NEVER take being able to wear your own clothes for granted.
Conclusion
Now that I have “street cred,” I know my life will no longer be the same. But seriously, those sixty-seven days were highly transformative and introduced me to a lifestyle that I know for certain isn’t for me.
Luckily, I was able to get my misdemeanor charges dropped on account of having a spotless record beforehand.
It’s my sincerest hope that this article helped you glean some insights that, when applied to your life, can help you appreciate the lessons I learned and make a difference in your own life.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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