Prisoners Are Human Beings Too

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Sometimes I forget I was in prison, even though I spent nearly a quarter century there. Maybe, I just get caught up in the day-to-day concerns of my life out here in the “free world.”

I am a student in a fast-paced master’s program, so I am studying, reading, writing and attending 13 hours of class every other weekend. I write for two websites. I have an internship. When I can fit it in, I have the rest of my life to focus on, with a girlfriend, a house, pets, cooking and the other details of living an ordinary life. Maybe it’s not these things that cause me to forget my past though.

All That is Wrong With Private Prisons

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A friend of mine called me last week from prison. We hadn’t spoken in a few months, so we did a lot of catching up, mostly talking about how things were at the prison, friends, and the many turns my own life has taken. I told him that a mutual friend of ours was at the new private prison in Milledgeville, Ga., a place called Riverbend Correctional Facility. He groaned and told me he had heard only bad things about the place. Dozens of the most troublesome inmates at his prison had been sent to Milledgeville to populate the 1,500-bed facility run by the GEO group.