I just finished an interview with my caseworker. It was an hour long and consisted of structured questions about my history and time in prison, as well as open dialog about my opinions.I don’t think I can overemphasize how out of the norm this experience was.I just told another prisoner about ...

I just took the midterm exam for my final semester of Building Trades and can say, barring some unforeseen event, I will finish the program in about a month.The class consists of many different subjects, and it would be impossible to delve very deeply into all of them. Because I went in knowing ...

A friend sent me a picture of a homeless man on a bench with dialogue below it. The homeless man said last week he had a job, food, clean clothes and medical care.The question, “What happened?” was posed to him. He responded, “I was paroled.” In the Utah system it doesn’t quite work ...

Before my personal experience with the justice system, like many people, I had no idea how the system worked.I didn’t know just how different sentences could be between two people charged with the same crime. It’s not at all unrealistic to say the difference could be probation versus a ...

Before I came to prison, I was given the opportunity to participate in <a href="http://www.daviscountyutah.gov/attorney/programs" target="_blank">Davis County’s drug court program</a>. The deal was, if I successfully completed the program, I would walk away without ...

In the outside world, people’s socioeconomic standing is always on display, from the communities they live in and the way they dress to the vehicles they drive.In here, no matter the means of each prisoner, we live in the same community, we dress alike, and when we’re riding down the ...