Creative Writing: Rosewood Penitentiary

Prior to visiting the prison, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was nervous but also excited to see how everything operated. I had never been to a jail or a prison prior to this field trip. I was expecting to see one big building surrounded by high fences and coiled barbed wire. Once inside, I was expecting to see people dressed in orange doing various activities, much like in movies and television shows, even though I knew these weren’t true.

Andersonville was a Confederate prison built in 1864 at Andersonville, Georgia. It was designed to hold Union prisoners of war during the Civil War. It was official named was Camp Sumter, however it’s better known as Andersonville. It was built from the ground up by local slave labor. At the time it was 10 ½ acres long and designed to hold about 10,000 men. The camp was enclosed out of 15 to 17 inch hewed pine logs. Along the walls were guard towers (referred to as pigeon roosts by the inmates) placed every 90 feet around the stockade walls.

In America, everyone seems to have a different idea about what goes on behind the grey, dismal walls of prison. For many of us, the idea itself conjures images of coiled barbed wire fences, chains dragging across the ground, somber faces behind rusting bars and those bright orange jumpsuits. These visions come from a variety of sources-- movies we’ve seen, the stories that we’ve been told and our own imagination that is constantly at work. However, the reality of prison life in America can only come from those who have stepped foot inside. Through memoirs written by Danner Darcleight and Ted Conover, I’ve had to reconsider some of these previously held visions of prison life. While Conover writes about the abusive relationship between the correctional officers and the prisons, through Darcleight’s writing we see the rewarding powers of having social life and the hopeful possibility for anyone to attain redemption. The first chapter of Concrete Carnival, by Danner Darcleight, as well as Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover has led me to re-evaluate these previously held visions of prison life, including the relationship between guards and inmates, social systems, and redemption.

Hassine begins his narrative as he is entering prison but this time as an inmate. Prior to his incarceration, Hassine was an attorney (Hassine, 2011). Even then as an attorney, the high walls of prison intimated Hassine (Hassine, 2011). As Hassine was being processed into the system, he expressed how he systematically became hopeless from the very prison structure itself as well as because of the intimidation he felt by uniforms. Prisons of the past actually had a goal to aid individuals through rehabilitation by instilling new values in order to correct the wrongs that one may have committed during their lifetime but today this is no longer true. . Hassine draws colorful depictions of how dim and unfamiliar a prison can be in which instills fear in an individual soon as he or she

"Count!" The prison guard yelled on a brisk Saturday in Maidens, Virginia. I watched as the prisoners lined the walls of the James River Correctional Facility. While the majority of my friends spent their Saturdays enjoying pizza and ice cream with their family, my Saturdays consisted of being in a prison visitation room. My father was serving a thirty year sentence for distributing crack cocaine. As the years went on, I began to look forward to seeing the barbed wire and prison guards. I knew that in the midst of the penitentiary environment, I would at least be able to see a father figure for a few hours.

“ Jimmy and I met at a dinner about twenty one years ago today.” stated Bob

What is prison really like in America? Prison is not just

A prison is a place of confinement for lawbreakers of convicting serious crimes. Our world is surround by many violence, threats, harassment, crimes. In where many individuals commit horrible decisions leading to serious consequences. As a result, inmates are sentenced a period of time in which they live in a horrible place where their rights and liberty is taken away. It was actually like living a life dead.

Gawin startle her, when placing his hand on her shoulder. “Your voice is fill with anger and pain,” he says softly. Her expression is one of a frighten child, lost in her torment and grief. “If it’s not too difficult to speak of, can you tell me how mother, father, and you died?”

The lifestyle of a prisoner consists of a lot of personal touching and taking orders from the officers. When someone is first taken to jail, they are stripped, disinfected, and subjected to a very thorough inspection. The cells are 8 foot by 6 foot and contain a metal bed, sink, and a toilet. Prisoners are woken up at 4:55 AM every single morning to eat a poor quality breakfast. In jail, you

Most of us won’t really live for a minute behind the walls in order to be empathetic with the prisoners and that’s probably the reason we normally don’t feel a thing even if we read the inner life of the American prison (Gopnik, 2012). Adam Gopnik (2012) describes the life as “ not that of lock and key but that of the lock and clock.” Time frozen behind the walls and electronic securities with panic, paranoia and

It’s on the hill by the seaside, the clinic. The place that stole my freedom, my sanity.

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

Ever wondered what it's like to be a prisoner? He may have done something wrong to end up there, but ever wondered how someone's life is, once they get put behind the bars?

With this experience and adding to my original knowledge of prisoners being bad people I thought that I knew exactly the type of person that was in prison and I had a very good understanding of the type of people that made up the prison system. When it comes to the prison itself my original knowledge came from my one interaction in Belize and a television show. Growing up I had little interaction with the prison system at all. The only memories of prison was in a television show I watched and that was called, Psych. During this show they would make little humorous remarks about prison being not as bad as people say. For example the main characters in this show would say, “We are talking about the Santa Barbara jail not San Quinton, people compare it to a mid-range sandals resort.” This show made it seem as if jail really wasn’t that bad of a place to be. Unfortunately I took this to heart and had the opinion that prisons in America must not be that bad. With this being my only exposure to the prison system I knew that I did not have a good understanding of the system but thought it wasn’t as bad as people made it out to