Stop Owning Things in Prison
Why detachment from your prison environment is necessary
If I told you I was willing to die for something, you would imagine that something meant everything to me, right? Even if it just meant a Hell of a lot to me, it might as well mean everything because it will cost me everything if I were to die for it.
Many people are willing to die for things like their loved ones, their country, their beliefs, or even just their fellow man. Dying for any of these things is seen as honorable. In prison, however, people frequently die over the TV of all things (something they don’t even own).
Dying over a disagreement about which channel everyone in the dayroom is going to watch is not honorable. The problem with going to prison is that being forced to live somewhere for a long time makes you more and more accustomed to it as time passes. This is an inevitable effect of incarceration.
Human beings adapt to their environments even when they have no say in them. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be there — you’re there. So you adapt. When a person winds up in prison and begins turning that prison into a home, it’s not uncommon for him to start owning things like the TV as if it actually belongs to him.
Just like other peoples’ hearts can be found in the things they are willing to die for, his heart can be found in the most insignificant of things that make up his prison world. He disperses so many pieces of his heart into the prison around him, there’s none left for the outside world. Because his heart is so invested into these things, he better be prepared to lose it all for every last one of them.
He doesn’t even acknowledge that he loves prison, through his actions and behaviors, far more than he loves the world.
If the average man were placed in a prison for a week, he would not be getting into lethal arguments over the TV or his radio or a fan or anything like that. He probably wouldn’t even be very concerned about forfeiting his meals on the last few days since he knew he would be going back home soon to reclaim all of his luxuries.
He wouldn’t be inclined to risk it all over such trivial matters because his decisions would be directed by the inevitable effect that being fresh-from-the-free-world has on a person.
In that situation, your real home is still fresh on your mind and knowing that you will be returning home soon keeps it fresh on your mind so you act accordingly — like someone who actually wants to make it back home.
This is why murders are not nearly as common in the county jail, because most people in jail will only be there for days, weeks, or months. Every aspect of the world is still fresh on their minds so that, occasionally, they still feel an imaginary buzzing on their upper leg where their phone used to rest in their pocket. They wake up expecting to see the interior of their bedroom instead of the interior of a cell . They still have something to lose and they know it, so they act accordingly.
But years of being in a real prison make it to where the free world is anything but fresh on your mind. The whole world becomes a distant memory that grows more distant by the day. You’ve forgotten important details about your old life and your mind has involuntarily blurred many aspects of your past. Now the only world that feels real to you is your prison world. This is the state of existence that causes people to act according to a sensation that there is nothing left to lose.
Institutionalization — a term used by prisoners to refer to when an inmate has grown so comfortable with prison he now sees it as his home — is hugely influenced by time. Some say that if you do 20 years, you will most certainly be institutionalized when you get out. Some say even 1 year will do it. Either way, being institutionalized when you get out makes staying out almost impossible.
This is why it is so important to begin detaching yourself from the prison environment you’ve grown accustomed to before it’s too late.
There was a superstitious saying I heard that said if you wrote your name on the wall of a prison, then you would end up coming back there in the future. Well, something that is far less superstitious (to such an extent that one might even consider betting on it), would be to say that if one invests his emotions into his surrounding prison by psychologically writing his name all over it, then he is more likely to come back than the man whose wildest desires are invested in the free world.
It’s like they say, “Home is where the heart is.” And for some, that’s an 8-by-10 foot brick bathroom that you share with another man. Yes, I know. It is a horrific thought.
The person behind bars must truly know himself in order to know how he will behave in the free world. He has to know what he is willing to fight for. It can no longer be something he doesn’t own. It can no longer be something he uses to make a status statement to others. It can no longer be something that jeopardizes everything he used to love before the world slowly faded away from him. He has to fight for things that are actually worth fighting for.
He has to redistribute the pieces of his heart. When he removes his heart from all that is a dishonorable investment, he needs to invest his heart in all that is honorable on the other side of those walls. Those walls were used to define his rightful place in this world. They caged him in like a trapped animal with no understanding of the world still moving right along without him, but what was on the other side should’ve been no secret.
What’s on the other side of those walls is whatever in the world you want for yourself so long as you have the courage to take it and the wisdom to keep it.
Home is where we build a future. It is where we feel most comfortable; most at ease.
If you don’t want prison to become your permanent residence, stop treating it like it is. It might be a little hard at first, but it really is that simple.
