Oh The Possibilities

Once a month out of an estimated prison population in Minnesota of 10,000 (One prisoner for every one of our beautiful lakes), 30 men are given the opportunity to go through the Challenge Incarceration Program in Willow River. Now I have written extensively on my experience before, during, and after, but one thing I never really touched on was how difficult it was to stay eligible for the early release program. There were so many directions I could have gone when I got locked up. But everything I did during my incarceration was very specific to me getting out of those terrible places.


When you think of prison, I would imagine you think of fights. Well, they do happen, but very rarely. I only saw three or four the whole 15 months I was in. Out of the four, three were people beating up child molesters, and one was gang related. They were all broken up quickly, and the participants were taken to segregation, often for less time than I spent there for doing nothing wrong.

Fighting, or breaking any major rule, even just once, would have rendered me ineligible for boot camp. And in a place where people are constantly doing things that make you want to punch them. Right in the tooth.

There are other things, too. I met so many meth users, makers, and dealers in tihere that had plans to come out here and do it all again. In the very beginning, a few ideas sounded pretty good. I've always wanted to make the stuff, and I could have gotten recipes from several people and wasted boot camp to come back on a manufacturing charge: eight years, no doubt. Or the constant offers from the Mexicans, who heard I wouldn't rat-out my co-defendant. Drugs so cheap I would be rich by now. This things wouldn't have kept me from going to CIP, but I have no doubts that I would be on the run by now had I accepted just one of those offers.

And although hard to get, drugs and alcohol made their way through the barbed wire. I don't know how. One time in St. Cloud I walked by a cell and a guy was smoking a Newport. A real cigarette! Not hand rolled in toilet paper and with tobacco from somebody's as hole. How did he get those by the guards that made me spread my cheeks and cough?

Alcohol can be made easily in prison. I heard about a lot of it, but I never saw any, and certainly never partook.

My phone is going crazy. I need a new cord. I can't type anymore so I will continue this babble some other time.