My name is Sarah, I’m 27 years old and almost every person I consider to be a friend is currently incarcerated, including my boyfriend. Now almost every one of them are enjoying their third or fourth trip to the big house, and for some of them more.

  It seems to me more and more that the longer most of them sit in jail, the more prone to going back they are. You would think it would have the opposite effect. I do not know how many times I’ve heard friends and loved ones say to me, “It’s almost like they want to go back….”, or “I think they were trying to go…”

  My theory is that instead of the effect intended, people dreading imprisonment so much they will strive to do anything and everything to avoid it in the future, they are becoming accustomed to it.

 Think about it, while they’re out, in their minds they can pretty much do whatever they feel like doing, stealing cars, selling drugs what have you to achieve their “thrill” or “rush”. Then inevitably they will be arrested and sent back to their comfortable, protected state of being where they don’t have to work, or worry about bills or careers or anything except what free meal someone else is cooking for them at the end of their day full of watching TV.

 Granted some work for minimal payment while incarcerated, but most do it to get out and about in the real world for a bit or merely to help pass the time. All with the knowledge that they will return to their comfortable “home” where everyone else is responsible for their necessities. And not only the prison system itself, their own families putting money on their “books” to facilitate purchases of anything the prison doesn’t already supply for free.

 Kind of makes sense, does it not? Why wouldn’t they want to not be responsible in any way for themselves for as long as possible? Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this behavior is by any means exercised immediately, I think it’s something that is learned after a certain amount of time.

Even with all the classes offered or compulsory curriculum for release, things like “life skills” or “relapse prevention” classes. I have seen it happen a million times. Ninety percent of the men and women forced to attend such classes are doing anything but paying attention to or planning on trying to exercise these skills. And even if they are, it soon goes right out the window when reintroduced to the environment they remember doing whatever they felt like in.

  My own husband has been in and out of federal prison the last 6 years, my brother state prison for more than 10. And countless more people I care about, are getting sucked into what I call “career imprisonment “, and I fear will continue the same behavior, though ever worsening, for the rest of their lives.

It makes me sad to think about it. It also makes me question the prison system and what it is doing to this population of young Americans. How will it affect us? Their families, children, parents? Are we to give up any hope of keeping our loved ones in our lives for any amount of time? Is it really just all their fault anyway? Is it a subconscious, self-inflicted fate? You tell me…