I took a 10 year plea on my 19th birthday. That's when I started thinking I was special. I've never been superstitious,for a long time I didn't even believe in God, but the events in my life have led me to the conclusion that I'm here for a reason. I've spent years stumbling through crime and incarceration looking for that purpose. I'm still stumbling, once again incarcerated, trying to figure it out.
   There was a time when the future looked like it held alot of promise but fucked up choices and drug addled thinking derailed my life at an early age. On April 25th 2002 I was arrested for drug related kidnapping and armed robbery. I spent the next seven and a half years in the foulest prisons in Georgia, literally coming of age in the penitentiary.
   There's alot of misconceptions about the prison system and from what I've seen on TV, alot of public interest in it too. I don't know a whole lot about anything but when it comes to understanding life behind bars inside Georgias level 5 chaingangs, it's not stretching the truth to say that I'm an expert. This is my blog with my observations, advice, and experiences as they pertain to doing time in the pen.
   It's hard to believe I'm locked up again but the time has come to BELIEVE IT. Luckily I've only got 10 months left until I "max out" in November. 2 days inside jail or prison is too long for sure, but in the grand scheme of things this little 10 months is a trifling irritation. I'm tired of wasting time of course and part of doing time is knowing how to make the most of it, take it as a given that I'll be doing that for this last mild stretch.
   I'd be disturbed to think that anyone (particularly the Cobb County parole officer who gloated in my face when he told me I was going back) believes I'm in here with my spirit broken, this is just the final chapter in my journey through "corrections". To repeat an overused phrase, I could do this 10 months standing on my head. Ain't nothin to it but to do it.
   The real damage is to my family and friends, people who'll be missing me. My thoughts are constantly with my mother, who has stood by me unwaiveringly through it all. God bless her and God bless all my family. To everyone I let down, please forgive me. I love y'all.
   I'm convinced that our justice system is broken. There's so many gifted, good hearted people trapped inside here, victims of circumstance, poverty stricken, drug addicted, lost but full of potential. To be fair, prison is also full of the most ignorant, depraved, and sexually deviant scum to ever crawl the earth. Its been my dubious honor to have had many a misadventures with this vermin over the years. I'll spend time later revisiting these events in this blog.
   In practice, jail and prison serve to house the poorer segments of society. The best justice is reserved for the rich. Right now, if I had a thousand dollars, I'd almost certainly be out in April. Instead, I'm gone until November. That's a difference of 7 months. Now think about how small a thousand dollars is. This cruel twist of fate is the result of misfiled paperwork. Talk about feeling like a number. Over half a year of my life, and it's all down to how a judge wrote " credit for time served". Kinda makes you feel insignificant and maybe a little bitter. The violin is playing my song.
   So now I'm sitting in Cobb County jail, waiting for the gears of justice to turn and a bed to become available in prison. This usually takes a month or two. The first waystation on my journey will be the Georgia Diagnostics & Classification Prison at Jackson. They'll shave my head, keep me locked in a cellhouse 23 hours a day, and do a battery of tests, intelligence, a physical, take my DNA, etc. Based on the seriousness of my crime and criminal history, I'll be classified as either close, medium, or minimum and shipped to a prison according to that classification level.
   It will be interesting to see how I'm classified this time. I'm back on a parole violation, only have 10 months left, but my convictions were for robbery, a violent charge, and my previous behavior in prison was checkered at best. They've never cut me a break before so I'm guessing that I'll be close security again. We'll see within 90 days.
   Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying. The treatment, the circumstances,the conditions, the lifestyle inside of jail and prison, it's fucking outrageous. We as convicted felons are villanized  to such a ludicrous extent, it's comical. It's as if we've got a super human power to do heinous shit, like because someone's in prison they're snarling through a mouthful of fangs, spitting venom, counting down the days until they're released to rape and pillage the elderly. Haha. Bitch please. The reality is far removed from that popular fantasy.
    Here's my humble approximation. Of all inmates in prison, 10% are seriously twisted, mentally deranged, evil motherfuckers. In an ideal world, this is who belongs in prison alongside the next 10%, sexual deviants. That leaves 80%, the overwhelming majority of us, who are incarcerated for drugs, directly or indirectly. From robberies to assaults to sales cases, follow the trail from the crime and you can believe you'll arrive at a big pile of drugs. The great myth of the superpredator criminal really translates to the drug dealer and drug user that made poor choices. Prison is home to the addict. The gangster. the killer, the pimp, the dope dealer, the thief, the liar, the con artist, all these versions of criminal, and the common denominator is drugs one way or another. That's real talk y'all.