Update

Hello. I'm making progress on the next entry. I'm at a new facility. While waiting for me to finish, please feel free to peruse a letter written by a man I met recently, Steven McCary. It turns out he was also at Bent County for the last few years, but he lived in a different part of the facility, and we never crossed paths.

Incidentally, here is my new address:

Bryan Day #147026 CMC-FMCC E/3U/3

P0 Box 300

Canon City, CO 81215

I am at a Minimum Restricted Facility now. I have a job where I work at a warehouse right next to a highway from 7 AM to 2 PM, Monday through Friday. It's quite a departure from my last facility. While at work there are no fences or barriers of any kind separating me from “freedom” so I find myself inventing all kinds of fantasies for escape. Naturally I'm cataloguing them and will probably turn them into narratives after I get out.

Get out legitimately, I mean.

I consider the work to be a kind of human-rights abuse. It's six hours of work for 60 cents of pay. But actually, I have less of a problem with that than I do with the fact that I have no choice but to do it. I can't "opt out" of the program and choose not to be paid at all, which I would rather do so I can work on my blog instead. If I tried to, I would be "fired" and written up, placed on restricted privileges, be forced to perform menial tasks all day, every day, and risk both the chances of being paroled in 3 years and being sent to another medium facility again. I would actually like to go back to Bent County, but not at the expense of parole.

Of course, that's no guarantee, either. The parole board abuses their discretion often, or used to from what I've heard, so I'm in a sort of limbo.

Anyway, Steven's story is terrible no matter which way you look at it. It has everything a classic drama could ever need. It reminds me of Les Miserables. The stinker in me wants to title it, "Portrait of an American Family," but that would be unduly rude to Steve (not to America).

Steve has an "old number". Usually this means he's either been in prison for a long time, or that he was once arrested a long time ago and did some time, then came back again. DOC keeps the same number for you no matter how often you come back. His nickname is "Irish".

I think his story is worth reading.

It's the next post.