Last night, I discovered that an acquaintance of mine (friend of a friend) is serving nearly 2 years in the penitentiary at Fort Dix. I’ve been researching both the pen and prison life in general.
Here’s the website of a prisoner named Michael Santos, who’s serving 26 years (he’s supposed to finish his sentence in 2013). He educated himself in prison and writes pretty well (prosaically, actually) about the day-to-day ugliness of prison life. Santos was a prisoner at Fort Dix, and wrote about it pretty extensively.
During my researches, I also discovered that the Bureau of Prisons has a federal inmate locator, and that some of the forums at Prisontalk.com are monstrously depressing.
I’ve also discovered that I will, for the rest of my life, do my utmost NEVER to get sent to prison.
As a guy who allegedly writes for a living, and one who tends to go for humor, I’m finding it awfully difficult to write to a friend-of-a-friend who’s in prison. But he oughtta know that people on the outside are thinking of him. I mean, life on the outside can be pretty lonely.