Personal Narrative: Prison

Many people look at convicts as just stupid people that just made all the wrong decisions in life, and for the majority of my life I looked at them in the same way. My father has been a police officer for years, well before I was even born. About 30 years to be exact and whenever you ask him what he does , he’ll tell you “get them bad guys”. So when I was about 10 or so years old and was forced by my mother to visit a “correctional facility” aka prison with my youth group, I was terrified. I badgered my mother for a whole week leading up to the tour. All with the same response of “you’re still going”.

My mother drove my brother, sister and I, the about 40 minute ride all the way out to the prison. We arrived at around midday on a bright Saturday

It’s a color that makes people feel calm and okay, but I didn’t get that feeling in the slightest bit. There was a long hall and on the sides were large cells filled with black and brown faces. All staring at us. We walked further down the loud hall, avoiding eye contact with any inmate until we were in a large white room surrounded by cells on all sides. The cells were different in here, the cells didn’t have bars like the ones in the hall. They had actual doors with tiny windows to peer into. When I was able to peer into the small windows, I could see inmates laying in their beds, reading magazines and whatever else they could do. It amazed me at the amount of privacy they had. The small toilet they had to use was out in the open, anyone could see you. At this time a tall, light brown man accompanied us. He was wearing a black, pants,shoes and a black beret. We were told that he was an officer there and that he would be giving us our tour. He introduced us to a few of the inmates, both male and female. One was a tall man, around 30 who was in for armed robbery. He told us about his story and how he had been to prison before his present sentence for murder. He had gotten into a fight with someone and accidentally killed them. He said that was about 6 months before had went in for the sentence he was serving. By the way he talked to us, you would’ve never guessed that he would’ve committed the crimes. He was extremely