Prison

                Yesterday I went to prison. Not literally, but as a field trip for a class. Now when I started taking field trips in elementary school, I would have never guessed that I would ever go inside a prison let alone being toured by prisoners. However, as bad as it may sound it was actually very interesting.

                It started by just a tour of the Grafton Correctional Institute. It is a medium security prison. It isn’t exactly how it is on T.V. where there are a bunch of very angry people locked up behind a big door for twenty hours of their day.  They are somewhat confined during certain parts of the day, but when we were there, most of the inmates were walking around or not locked up.

                Even though the prison is pretty laid back, it still is prison. Our tour guides made it clear that it isn’t fun and that it straight up sucks. Like a majority of the rest of the country, Grafton is also becoming overcrowded. There were a lot of people in a fairly small space. It creates a very distinct smell when you walk into any of the buildings there.  Not to mention it feels pretty sketchy when you have a bunch of inmates either watching you or walking around you the whole time.

                After the tour ended, three or four of the inmates spoke about making good choices, goals, peer pressure, the things that in a way would be expected from an event like this. However, it wasn’t the same exact speech as it usually is. It seemed to have a different tone to it. I don’t know if it was the way they spoke of it or the fact that they actually didn’t follow what they were talking about when they committed their crime(s). 

                Once they were done speaking, the inmates broke us up into smaller groups and had more than less a one-on-one.  I found this the most interesting part of the whole experience. Like how many people you know can claim they sat in between two convicted murderers?  This is when you could really see who these people are.  They honestly seemed like some of the nicest people I have ever met in my life.  

                In the end I’m really glad I got the chance to do this. I think it was a good experience and a thing not to base what your life on.  I don’t know if I would necessarily call it eye opening because some of what I saw was expected but I think it is what I heard from the inmates is what I took away from it.  It wasn’t so much of what they said, but the way they said it and the way they were able to apply it to real life.  

                The moral of the story is don’t do something really stupid and throw your whole life away (that’s basically what it all comes down to).