Prison Was the Best Year of My Life: Part 2

      I had a routine.  Every morning I woke at 5:30 AM.  Because inmates have so few belongings in prison, morning ablutions take very little time.  Most of the hundred inmates in my unit were sleeping, so I might have the entire row of sinks and showers and toilets to myself.  The bathroom smelled bad and the fixtures in the barracks-style bathroom were all malfunctioning:  clogged toilets, dripping faucets, cold showers, no showers.  Black mold everywhere, except when an outside inspection was due.  Then, inmates were recruited to paint over the mold.  After the inspection, the mold returned quickly.  It was not a wholesome place to breathe.

     I went to breakfast at "Main Line," a giant warehouse-type building on the grounds, open at 6 AM for an hour.   I brought teabags purchased through the commissary.  Breakfast was the only meal where milk was available--nonfat, almost transparent, in baggies, two per inmate. No scissors permitted--you opened them with your teeth.  I drank tea with skim milk, went to my job (it was a work camp), then began my 10-miles-a-day walking routine.  Three times around the track was a mile.  I brought a book and studied Spanish while walking.  I made a "hat" out of a baseball cap and pieces of cardboard retrieved from the trash, covered with reflective candy wrappers, to protect against the blistering sun.  I wore heavy green men's pants and a long-sleeved button-down men's shirt--prison-issued garb.  It might be 100 degrees out, but I kept to the routine.  It kept me sane and I was grateful to be in a prison where we were allowed outside for limited periods each day.  Since COVID, inmates are not permitted outside.  This must be causing a great deal of additional suffering.

     Inmates often joined me for a few laps, sometimes to be friendly, sometimes to ask questions about their health or their legal problems, and sometimes to trade Spanish-practice for English-practice.  A third of the inmates were native Spanish speakers, luckily for me.

     If any aspect of my routine was broken, lots of inmates came looking for me.  "Are you all right?  I didn't see you on the track!"  "Where were you at breakfast?"  "Is something wrong?"  Inmates care about one another.  There is solidarity of a sort I had never known before.  It made me feel loved and cared for.  We were equals, we had to look out for each other, and we did.  Of course, there were risks and hostility and people you might not trust--but not many.  I steered clear of them, as best I could. 

     When had so many people ever seen me, as me, rather than as a commodity or a person playing a fixed role?  When had so many people cared about me?  When had I ever had so many friends?

     How could this not have been the best year of my life? 

Prison Was the Best Year of My Life: Part 1

     This is not a general rule nor should it be taken to mean prison is good or fun or cushy.  It is not.  It is an awful experience and one I would not choose to repeat.  Not one of the 400-plus women where I was housed would have chimed in that their time in prison, too, was the best of their lives.

     But for me, prison afforded a chance to focus on myself for a change.  

     I didn't have full-time responsibility of my 30-year-old son with autism, a person who needs 24-hour care (his brother took over that year, with help from paid, trained caregivers).  

     I didn't have thousands of patients whose needs always came first because they were so pressing and that was my commitment.  I didn't have an office staff to take responsibility for.  Or stacks of paperwork to do past midnight.  

     I didn't have to deal with farm chores, downed tree limbs, broken irrigation pipes, the neighbor's wayward cows, rotted fence posts, alligators in the pond, sick chickens, ants in the bees' sugar, the bush hog needing welding, the mower's belt breaking, a wobbling ceiling fan, mice in the barn, leaves in the gutters, wax myrtle taking over the pasture, crows stealing pears, whiteflies and sooty mold on the citrus.  There were no texts, emails, phone calls, tax returns, or bills to pay.   

     I was liberated from all the things that make life life, the interesting, the annoying, the splendid, the awful, the unforeseen.  I was on an adventure.  It appealed to the part of me that had been an anthropologist before I took up medicine.  How could I know anything about this other culture--now a huge aspect of American life--if I weren't part of it?  Now, I was part of it.

 

Dr. C.: Still Here

     It has been eight years since my clinic, Colasante Clinic, PA, was raided, five since the feds indicted me, four since my trial and sentencing, three since I went to prison, and two since I was released from prison.

     If such a thing should happen to you, I'm here to say:  You can survive it.  

     I've had a lot of time to reflect on what happened to me.  Either I have a serious character disorder, or something went terribly wrong in our justice system, because I am still unable to "accept responsibility" or "feel remorse" for the events that transpired in my life and my family's lives, and which affected my patients' ability to rely on me and the survival of my clinic.  

     Instead, I have been moved to try to understand how the criminal system in this country operates and how it could go so wrong, so often, and in so many people's lives.  

     To that end, I am now in my second year of law school at Stetson College of Law.  

     One of the courses I'm taking this semester is "Criminal Law."  It's no more than a dip-of-the-toe in a river of lawmaking, and it's filled with stories of hardship and sordidness at the human level, and characterized by the valiant attempt by a governing body to uphold and revise methods for controlling a population's passions.  "The Law" is really scads of statutes and regulations--more than any group of people ever needs--and hundreds of years' worth of common-law decisions by courts here and in England.  It's fascinating material, but at this point in my training, it's like scrounging around under ten-foot weeds in my overgrown garden in a rainstorm and coming across a snail or two.  What happened to me in this country, and why?  I did not break the law, but a jury was made to think I did.  My friends in prison may have broken laws, but questions remain in their cases, too:  Should the laws they broke have been enacted in the first place?  Was their punishment in proportion to the harm--if any--they might have done?   What are we doing with so many Americans in prison, anyway?

     I have heard many stories, mainly from people in prison but also from those whose lives have forever been changed by a run-in with the law and a prison sentence--people who come forward with their stories when they know another person has been through a parallel ordeal.  I will tell you about some of them, if they give me permission.

     I'm going to relate, on this blog, what I experienced during my trial, at sentencing, while awaiting imprisonment, in prison, and since prison, as well as some of what I understand from law school.  I still garden, cook, study medicine, listen to politics, read books, raise bees, keep chickens, hang out with friends, and forage for wild food.  

     I hope what I relate might be helpful, or of interest, to someone, somewhere.