Hey Guys! VII (In the hole – Day 58)
In the hole 58 days. As I start to write this I realize how I’ve been keeping track of time. Today is the last day on the calendar that I found discarded in one of the cells I moved into. This means I will have to make a home-made calendar. With the thought of time on my mind I find it very important to keep track of it when in situations like this. I’m not sure why but without it, days seem to meld into one long blur and for me it makes the time harder not knowing one day from the next. Time is a strange things, don’t you think? I was sentenced to 999 months of time in the Federal system. If you do the math that’s a little over 83 years. Add that to my age of 23 when I was incarcerated and it comes out to 106 years old when I get released from the Feds. Not bad when you consider that other guys out there get 475 years, 560 years, 1,212 years and so on. Really, what’s the point of all this time? Does it make more of a statement by the prosecution to say they sentenced a murderer to prison for “200 years” over saying “Life in prison”? Oh, I have that too. When I finish my 83 years I have to report to the Commonwealth of Kentucky to serve “Life Without Parole” for however many years I have left after my 106th birthday. Is this vindictive justice? I don’t know and its difficult for me to say in my position. I feel I have no right to speak on that subject. I deserve to be punished and willingly accept it. I try to rehabilitate myself because any real useful programming is non-existent in the U.S. prison systems. I wonder why that is. At the same time the government and its people wonder why the recidivism rate is so high. It seems that Americans want to push their problems into the closet and hope they go away. Its only a matter of time that that closet door doesn’t want to shut anymore.
