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The Economics of Ramen
The most stable currency in American corrections is a packet of noodles.
Mass Incarceration, by the Numbers
What the data actually says about American incarceration — and why Washington isn't the exception it thinks it is.
Recipe
Boiling water from the in cell tap. Tear the seasoning packet halfway open. Crumble the noodles by hand. Wait three minutes. Eat directly fr…
First Coffee
Coffee in prison is not coffee. Coffee in prison is brown water, microwaved, with creamer made from no animal that has ever lived. I had not…
When the Thought Says Always
On catching the word 'always' before it catches you.
What a Call Home Costs
The bill for staying in touch, in numbers.
The First Count
Standing in your slot. Counting heads. Trying not to count days.
What I Brought Out With Me
A small manila envelope of letters. The one mug they let me keep — chipped on the rim. A list of names, in pencil, of men I told myself I wo…
Distress Tolerance When You Have Nowhere to Go
DBT skills, learned in a place with no exits.
The Bus
The bus from county to Shelton intake didn't have windows. Or rather, it had windows that had been painted over from the inside, except for…
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When my mother wrote that she was proud she wrote it in the same hand she had used to write my school excuse notes when I was nine. I had no…
How Many of Us Have GEDs Now
The scale of educational programming inside, by the numbers.
The Economics of the Phone Call
What it costs to say I love you for fifteen minutes.
Programming for Beginners
The first thing she taught us was how to recognize a thought. Until then I had assumed thoughts were a kind of weather — something you stood…
Programming
I signed up for the Thinking for a Change class for the wrong reasons. The right reasons would have been: I wanted to change. The wrong reas…
Mail Call
Mail came at four in the afternoon, after yard, before count. The officer brought it in a plastic crate. He read names. You stepped forward…
The Library
The library at Monroe was smaller than the library at the elementary school I had gone to, but it was open four hours a day, and it had thre…
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