I’m just your average guy who spent most of his life incarcerated. Prison, juvenile hall, and other similar places are the types of places I called home. Most of you don’t understand the full story of prison life, so I’d like to explain how I survived all the violence, horror, and sickness that are associated with that environment. When anyone first enters prison he must go through an intake process lasting from one to eight weeks. He is segregated in a housing unit called intake, or orientation, by the staff, but we called it “fish-row.” Like fresh fish to market, these guys are fresh to prison, so all new inmates are called fish. They are also lost like a fish at sea, causing them to exaggerate their personalities. This is where the self segregation begins. The guys with known street gang affiliations gather together. The races begin to clique up and offer to watch each other’s backs. It is also where the weaker men can become targets. Most, if not all, of new fish do what we call hard time. Once a man allows himself to show weakness, he can become victim to all kinds of strange and terrible experiences.

Let me tell you about T. He has a speech impediment that makes it seem like he is developmentally disabled, and he is a sex offender. These are two issues that make him an easy target. From the moment he entered prison he was told he had to pay a prison gang for protection, or rent. The legal term is extortion. T paid, and he lived day to day with constant fear of being attacked. He was always waiting for someone to beat or stab him. T has since been released from prison, so he survived, by doing hard time. There are countless victims who felt the need to pay this protection. They all suffer from fear and anxiety every day they are inside the institutions. They’re doing hard time but not alone. Several other groups of men, who believe differently, are also doing hard time. How about the people who extorted the weaker inmates? Most of them believe they are doing “easy-time.” They have all the money, all the drugs, and all the sex that they want. That must be pretty easy time, right? Well not exactly. To be involved in this racket a man has to be involved in a clique, better known as the prison gangs. Within this subculture a man has to be willing to give a show of strength at any moment. It’s called flexing, or puffing up, in there. So the weak will play along with their games. They must show how far they are willing to go to force them to do as they are told.

P is a perfect example. As a result of enforcing the tax his gang inflicts on men like T, he spends more time in the hole, disciplinary segregation (DSU), than out. He gets into fights with those who decide to stop paying, sending him to the hole, then does it again within a month of getting out. He may have all the money, drugs, and the respect of the others in his clique, but he was still doing hard time. These guys don’t have to do hard time. They cause their own suffering.

L went to prison in the late eighties for raping and killing a woman in her own home. When he got to prison he was automatically targeted because of his crime. He refused to pay extortion, telling them he would rather fight first. They even tried to get sexual favors from him, which he also refused. Again he was willing to fight, and even die before he would give in. The thing is, he didn’t have to raise a single hand to anyone. He only needed to convince them that he was really willing to go that far, and they left him alone. He discovered a religious belief called Baha’i. Now he encourages new fish to learn from the old cons that are doing easy time. He does easy time.

J’s example is a little different. He’s Latino with what is considered a solid crime, a respectable one. (In there we were all criminals, with a class structure that types of crimes were a part of.) The Latino community in prison is more complex than other groups or races. If a Latino isn’t a member of a gang the Latino gangs target him first. J didn’t get involved in those types of politics. They went after him, yet he still refused. He offered to pray for them whenever they came after him. Instead of getting involved with the gangs, he enrolled in every class that was available. Then when he finished most of them he got a job as a facilitator for those same classes. He helps those who want to learn new ways to stay out of prison and those who want to do easy time like he does.

These are only a few examples. The majority of us fit into these two categories. The hard timers are the most noticed and heard about by society. They are the ones in the news and the ones that are involved in the prison uprisings, or riots. All the movies are made about these types of men. The guys doing easy time tend to fly under the radar. They get involved in the various programs offered in prison like 12-step classes for addiction problems, cognitive classes to learn ways to stop thinking like a criminal, education to further their knowledge or get a high school equivalency degree or college credits. They also do a lot of hobby work to fill their time with productive activities like art, poetry, leatherwork, or beadwork. I did these things at the end of my last stay. I fit into both categories, so I want to tell you a little about some of my own experiences.

I entered prison when I was 17 years old, a cute little boy with blonde hair down to my belt. My first day inside another, older, inmate continually harassed me by telling me how he was going to rape me that night in the shower. I was scared to death, so I threw him off the tier, an upper floor of the cell block, establishing my willingness to fight. The other inmates took notice and left me alone after that. I was no longer an easy target, but I wasn’t happy with just being left alone, so I became an aggressor. I believed that I had to make any sex offender, rapist or child molester do hard time, so I began a career of extortion. Each potential victim I ran into either paid or got a beating. I spent a lot of time in the hole and beat up. Sometimes they fought back. I began to notice just how miserable my life really was. I was still unhappy. I saw all these old cons laughing on the yard, seemingly enjoying life. They didn’t seem to be suffering like I was. I wanted to know how they did it, so I asked. “Learn to do your own time, and then talk to us!” they told me. I had no idea what they meant, so I just started observing them from a distance. They never asked anyone about their crime, got involved with the gangs, or extortion rings. They stayed away from the dope and still had respect from the other cons. That’s what they meant about doing your own time. After I learned to do my own time, I went back to them, and they began to teach me. I made a lot of slips, but they corrected me along the way. Slowly, I became an old con. Prison is in no way a nice place to be, but no one needs to be miserable. Even the staff will get behind the man who knows how to do his own time. They will go out of their way to help open up more privileges for the serious man who is trying to change his life. Hard timers are miserable. I don’t dislike them so much as I pity them. I was one of them at one time, in fact, most of my incarcerated time. A lot of people doing time are hard timers. Very rarely does a new inmate find a way to do easy time. For most it takes years, even decades, to learn, so most of the men doing easy time are the lifers, or men with long sentences. Easy timers aren’t much better off than the hard timers. They’re still in prison, but they aren’t anywhere near as miserable. Those of us that learned to do easy time come out of prison more productive, contributing members of any society willing to accept us. The problem is that most of society only knows us from what they learned on TV. That isn’t the whole picture, just a small snapshot. Some of us have a lot to offer to your society, given the opportunity.

-T.M.

T.M. participated in PHOENIX projects at CRCI and has since been released