A question recently posted to Quora asks, ‘what are some aspects of incarceration that could not possibly be guessed at by someone who hasn’t experienced it?’ Michael Mortan, a Quora participant, gives his answer below. Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
The first thing that surprised me about prison was the monotony. Every weekday is more or less identical -- week after week, month after month, and yes, year after year after year. The routine numbs you. It grinds you down like a persistent, hacking cough. Eventually, it also erases your sense and understanding of time itself.
Everyone’s clothes are the same. The cells are the same. The chow schedule is the same. The food, though, is a rotating variation of the same things, over and over again. You go to work at the same time every day. You go to rec at the same time. You shower at the same time. The TVs come on and are turned off the same times each and every day. For some, it’s comforting, predictable. For others, however, it is maddening.
The monotony erodes your individuality until you no longer exists. You have a number. Some people have similar or identical names, but no one has the same number. Routine…routine...and then some more routine.
The second thing I did not expect turned out to be the people. Yeah, I expected “bad” people. But I didn’t expect so many of them to be of “diminished capacity.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are a lot of folks in prison making very stupid decisions.
I don’t have anything against someone not being the proverbial sharpest knife in the drawer. But when you have make social calculations based on the likelihood of someone doing something monumentally inappropriate or stupid, it makes life more complicated than it has to be.
