101: Mr. Williamson, I know that this is a very hard question for you to answer right off the bat - but our readers might not have the faintest idea of what life is like in prison. Please give me through your eyes a picture of what it is like to be sent to prison and what someone in that situation has to put up with in order to survive in an environment like that.
Mr. Williamson: The only way that I could paint a picture of what prison is like is - first of all, you would have to do away with the normal color palate and reduce everything to black and white and gray; then shrink your geographical boundaries of your comfort zone - the place that you may live - shrink all of that into a five-feet-long, nine-feet-wide concrete and steel cage; then put another body in that same space - and that's your cell partner, whoever that is. Forty-five square feet - the kitchen that we're in right now [in this house] would house no less than sixteen full-grown men in a prison in the same square footage...and [then] make them live in an environment like that.
Geographical boundaries aside, the next thing you must get used to is the absolute loss of any and all types of freedoms to go for a walk, to look at the sunset, to get a drink of water. You no longer have any control over your daily activities except the normal brushing of teeth and shaving - you still have control over that. Just the freedom to listen to the radio is gone, the freedom to write a letter and say what you really want to say is gone because all of your mail is read and sometimes reread before it actually get into the postal system.
Once your body and mind become adjusted to those things, then you deal with attitudes of not only the inmates who live with you who come from a wide variety of backgrounds, races, creeds, and cultures and who are in prisons for various asundry crimes for various and sundry sentences - but you also deal with guards who work those jobs for the money because it's the best job that they can find in the area - that's one category of guard. Another category would be a particular type of person who really enjoys inflicting pain and punishment on other people. They prefer to do this in a legal environment and in an environment where it is actually approved to inflict pain and punishment on other people. Prison is black and white and various shades of gray. You can see a crime committed by an inmate upon another inmate - and if you interfere, you're immediately labeled as a snitch, as a troublemaker, as a meddler - and in prison, there's an unwritten code of conduct for both inmates and guards.
