Well I finally made it to the Montgomery County Pre-Release Center and… it doesn’t feel all that profound. While stuck in Medical at the Clarksburg County Jail I got exactly zero fresh air for three months, and I honestly forgot to take note of the first gasp of the outside I got as we left the sally point to load into the passenger van that brought me, the two sixty-plus year old ladies (or at least they looked that old, the streets can be hard), and the nine minority kids who made the trip. They weren’t actually kids I suppose, and supposedly one of them was 23, but for all the world it was like being in a pack of middle school boys headed out to a field trip at the nudie beach.
Maybe the best illustration of how absurd the criminal justice system is happened on Labor Day, when I walked up to the front desk to ask a question about what my parents could drop-off clothes and got asked if I knew how to mow grass. I replied that of course I do, and was offered four hours of community service to help mow the compound.
So there I was – one day removed from being followed around by COs, never leaving their sight even for a moment, as I mopped the jail medical ward which was: four massive locked metal doors, two electronically secured sally ports, and a huge barb-wired fence away from freedom – out on the PRC‘s lawn which is literally one stroll across the street from North Bethesda without even a knee-high rope barricade like you’d find at a park holding me back. The system went from deciding I needed constant 24-hour observation if I was out of my air-tight cell despite still being as architecturally restrained as any human being on earth can be, to letting me roam around outside fully able to walk across the street out into society, not even in view of a security camera. All of that in just over a single day. Hooray for rehabilitation?
In the next day or so I should get my sweet T9Word cell-phone, so perhaps being able to be a little more connected to everyone will make the relative freedom here feel a little more real or tangible or meaningful… but for now it just feels like a different sort of prison. Mostly since I’m still predominately surrounded by unnecessarily loud dick-heads, but once I get a job I’ll be moved into a different housing wing so maybe that’ll change too.
Anywho, feel free to holler back and update me on where you’re at and how you’re doing, and PLEASE feel free to offer any advice or articles to read or anything at all you think might even just maybe be helpful – I’m very open to advice. Aight I just got called to the frontdesk, talk to y’all motherfuckers soon!!