This past week marks one year and a half of being incarcerated. Eighteen months ago, I wouldn’t have imagined being at this point within a prison sentence. Per the law, I am evaluated every six months for how well I am adapting and the programming that I participate in. Thus, to mark my 18th month, I just had my fourth evaluation meeting (the first one happened when I first arrived). These evaluation meetings are officially known as “team meetings”, since the counselor, case manager, job supervisor, and education specialist are supposed to contribute (but they don’t). Despite the 48-hour scheduling rule to give sufficient, I was summoned to my case manager’s office for the one-on-one “team” meeting. It began with the case manager asking when I would be in the recidivism program, and my reply was simply “that is the only question I have for you.” He didn’t have an answer. As I have previously posted, the conundrum of deciding who enters the program has been a shroud of mystery.
“You are doing too much,” he remarked as he handed me the updated Individualized Needs Plan, which is a summary of feedback since my incarceration. “I stay active to demonstrate my seriousness of this rehabilitative journey and acknowledge on a daily basis the wrongs that I have done,” I justified. “We are human and people make mistakes,” he encouraged, which was reassuring to me that this would be a good meeting. With regard to me “doing too much,” the case manager isn’t completely wrong: I teach classes, take classes, play in bands, coordinate music for church, participate in a full-time apprenticeship program, and try to dominate on the pickleball court (the latter is not on my official sheet). The average guy might take one class and spend the rest of the day cooking food, working out, and sleeping. Thankfully, my schedule is routine and time consuming, which hopefully demonstrates that I am doing too much – it’s actually a compliment. He continued showing me where my at-risk recidivism score was -6 and my violence score was -3. These score are actually quite impressive since negatives are difficult to achieve. A typical recidivism score for a person in a federal prison camp is approximately 12 and violence scores are about 8. These are the scores that determine what type of federal holding facility you should be placed in: camp, low, medium, penitentiary/maximum security. For the next few months, I anticipate continuing this trend, but I do not believe that my score will be able to go much lower.
Nonetheless, the past 18 months have been an extremely difficult time with emphasis on the righting the wrongs that I have caused in the past. Despite the situations that I may encounter daily, I approach them as positively as possible – these are moments of personal growth. As I have berated in so many other posts, I am truly sorry for the negative effects that my selfish actions had on others and continue to fully accept that I alone broke laws for which I am accountable. Time and time again, I try to help others understand the wrongful mindset that I had in the past and how irrational I was under extreme anxiety and stress. These are never excuses or justifiable reasons to commit crimes! Overall, having the support of my family and friends has been instrumental and the only aspect that has made this entire experience tolerable. To commemorate my year and half anniversary, my parents made their 14th visit (actually 15 for my mom), but I couldn’t believe that it had been so many. I am very blessed to have so much love and support throughout this journey, and I am beyond grateful to each of you. Thank you for making these past 18 months the best they could be and for trying to understand how I put myself in this situation! I hope you have a wonderful week and continue to look for any little miracle that may occur in your life this week! 😀