There is something important to me that I want to share with you today. Within prison there is a lot of trauma. My prison isn’t unique in that regard, but I state it as an often overlooked statement of fact.
Over 31 years of uninterrupted incarceration, I’ve learned that the majority of incarcerated people have backgrounds steeped in traumas. Many were abused as children, grew up in broken homes, or experienced the foster care system (don’t get me started on the foster care system. Children in foster care are exposed to all manner of trauma). A high percentage of the men around me tick off more than just those three boxes.
All of this pales in comparison to what I first termed IBPTSD in my 2023 PJP op-ed (What Caused His PTSD? This Prison Right Here) which is Incarceration Borne Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder. Jails and prisons harm mental health by design; they are structured to maximize control and confinement. Little consideration is paid to how this impacts mental health. This is the second often overlooked statement of fact.
For example, community areas in cellblocks and dorms utilize constant on security lighting. At night these lights illuminate sleeping areas and beam through cell windows. Jails and prisons also employ high intensity outside security lighting. These lights pour through outside facing windows compounding the issue.
When I was in the county jail a light in front of the row of cells remained on for the entire 130 days I was there. By the time I left the Stark County Jail I suffered from extreme anxiety and insomnia. It’s worth noting that the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on mental health are well documented.
Another example of how jails impact mental health comes by way of testimony from Erica Rowe. She recounts her experience with lice in jail:
“When the jail gets full the jail issues these plastic boats which are placed on the floor with a mat. I slept on the floor in one of these boats and it was freezing cold all the time. One night I felt something crawling over me. I hop out of the boat freaking out and calling for the officers…”
Erica is taken to the jail nurse:
“It was lice and I knew it was that because as a kid I’d had it. The nurse forces me into allowing her to cut my hair off…She grabs a pair of scissors and hacks my ponytail off ‘to make it easier’ for the NIX treatment.
“I was so attached to beauty and vanity I cried when she did this. I have few memories from the county jail 19 years ago, but this one still stands out.”
Another source of stress for incarcerated people is the loss of personal autonomy. Days are regimented and subdivided by numerous counts of the incarcerated population. Incarcerated people are told when they can eat, use restrooms, shower, visit with family, and recreate amongst a hundred other things. It is well established in studies that loss of personal autonomy negatively impacts mental health.
However, no one seems to meaningfully consider this next statement of fact: In prison thousands of individuals from all walks of life, shouldering all manner of trauma and addiction are thrown in together and expected to normalize. People with violent backgrounds, sexual predators, suffering drug addictions, and gang members who know nothing but life in the streets are all thrown into one place. I ask, What do you think happens? The violence and chaos marking a typical day in prison impacts mental and physical health.
Assaults, robberies, murder, mini riots–I’ve witnessed them all. I know what death and drug overdose looks like. I’ve witnessed suicides and rape. None of this shocks me anymore for the abnormal of the prison experience becomes the new normal.
I wonder sometimes, if when I am free again and alone with time to myself, if these traumas I’ve boxed away in my subconscious will come gibbering back to collect their due. If I were to dwell on what I witness I would end up like so many incarcerated people deeply traumatized. This isn’t to say I don’t cope with my own IBPTSD because I do. I’m luckier than most because I cope out of sheer will. Others aren’t as fortunate.
Being a father or mother in prison exacts a heavy mental toll. Felicia Sullivan, an incarcerated mother in Ohio, shares her experience:
“The arrival of 9PM count brings on the challenge of laying my head down on my pillow, with the hope of falling asleep. Wanting no time to recall the day.
“I struggle with excruciating pain knowing my children are growing up in this cold world without me. To fend for themselves now raised in separate households.
“Having lived a life of feeling only pain, I have to do things to remind myself that I’m still alive. That I still have a piece of my old self even if it’s not a healthy piece. That girl still exists.”
I focus on the impact of IBPTSD to draw awareness. Without recognition hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people will return to communities struggling to pick up their lives.
In the past several years numerous states have instituted the body worn camera (BWC) in prisons and jails without well thought out protocols on how BWCs would impact the mental health and civil rights of incarcerated people.
In Ohio BWCs were implemented without careful consideration for incarcerated people’s civil rights under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). At my facility an officer initially wore BWC while conducting strip searches. The practice ended only after the threat of civil rights lawsuit under the PREA act by the ACLU.
The same thing appears to be playing out in other States. Amber, a friend of mine in Michigan incarcerated at the Women’s Huron Valley (WHV) correctional facility, shared with me her experience with BWC prison borne trauma.
She related that it’s already bad enough that we’re removed from society and thrust into deplorable living conditions which she (and I can attest, that this is true for many others) says is mentally and physically hard as it is. Add to this, for women many of whom are survivors of sexual assault, to be recorded by BWC during a strip search is traumatizing.
Since writing me for this post her facility modified BWC policy during strip searches. Protocol now requires officers to turn off BWC video but continue to record audio. This is little comfort to the 900 WHV incarcerated women for compliance rests solely with the officer.
In Ohio, an officer removes a BWC before conducting a strip search. It leaves no room to bend or break policy. Michigan could take a play out of Ohio’s playbook.
There is no official recognition of IBPTSD in psychiatry’s authoritative reference manual the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). The closest recognition exists in what the psychiatric profession calls Post Incarceration Syndrome, where restored citizens struggle to reintegrate.
There needs to be focused studies on how the prison experience itself causes trauma. Once recognized incarcerated people can receive IBPTSD psychiatric help while incarcerated, which at this time does not exist.
*Christopher Monihan is a writer, author, journalist and Stillwater Award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.
To readers that are new welcome! Click on subscribe and you will be notified the moment I publish a new post. Thank you! for following. —Christopher
Category: Rehabilitation
December 03, 2025
Here we are December 2025 and my 31st year of incarceration. Had you asked me when I began my sentence how I’d feel come the year 2025, I might have passed out. Just the thought I could still be incarcerated 31 years later might have sent me seeking a high ledge.
Yet, here I am. You want to know something? I feel optimism and gratitude in this moment. I am grateful because time sanded away all the rough edges of my ignorance and immaturity, leaving a man with direction, understanding, and purpose. My time on the inside has opened my eyes.
I know many of you know this about me having followed my journey for years. I am grateful to all of you, knowing that my life is worthy of interest and inquiry. Because of you I thrive and find meaning and purpose.
To the many new readers who have discovered me, thank you for taking time out of your lives to follow mine and those of other writers here.
2025 has been an amazing year. The universe reflects back upon us that which we send out into it, and I want to share a little with you that has come back to me.
In May and for the third time in as many years, I spoke in front of hundreds of people at Harmony’s annual Sunflower Arts and Music Festival held at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. The festival brings together three prisons — two men’s, one women’s — for a day long event celebrating our shared humanity and common bond. On YouTube visit the channel: HarmonyProjectOnline. There you will find the incarcerated men and women of Harmony, along with the amazing people of Harmony and supporters (free world and within Ohio Corrections). You will also see me in several videos!
The Harmony Project visits my prison once a week and for an hour we sing and share in community. For that hour I literally forget that I am in prison. Harmony’s volunteers are heaven sent and although Harmony is nondenominational I can’t help but think of these words from the Bible:
“Be sure to welcome strangers, for in so doing you may have welcomed Angels unaware.”
If there are Angels among us, I know who some of them are.
This summer I was accepted into Kindway Embark’s highly coveted and respected faith based reentry program (Google: Kindway Embark of Columbus, Ohio). We meet twice a week for fellowship and discipleship. Kindway Embark’s volunteers are amazing, caring human beings that I am grateful are a key part of my life. I look forward to coming back into Ohio’s prisons with Kindway Embark someday as a volunteer. I want to spread the same hope to Ohio’s incarcerated men and women that I receive when these volunteers are here. If you are with Kindway Embark thank you from the bottom of my heart.
My voice continues to thrive and as a writer 2025 was a good year. I saw my work in numerous publications most notable Prison Journalism Project; Inside; Exchange; and publications at Columbia and Cornell universities.
My personal mission to draw awareness to incarceration borne PTSD (ibPTSD) continues to gain traction with new contacts in academia and nonprofits; and I discovered and joined an amazing writers group consisting of some of the most accomplished incarcerated writers in the country. It’s no secret I live to write and write to live.
I have only begun. Upon release I shall go from incarcerated writer to founder and editor of my own organization dedicated to magnifying the journalism, writings, and lives of America’s marginalized incarcerated people. Nobody knows the hidden truths of incarceration — and can shed light on them, for we have lived it first hand — better than current and formerly incarcerated people.
Most importantly an organization founded and staffed by formerly incarcerated people know the Unknowables that free world editors can only dream of knowing. Everyone else is on the outside of the birdcage looking in.
When I read the works of history’s most notable incarcerated people, such as Oscar Wilde or Nelson Mandela to name a couple, I feel a shared bond and understanding for our experience transcends distance and time. I truly know and that is why every incarcerated writer has ever put pen to paper.
I am happy to announce the publication of my newest book, “Reflections From Behind the Wall” (ISBN 979-8262373062). It is now available on Amazon. It contains hundreds of selected essays and posts from May 01, 2021 thru September 2025 written by myself and men and women incarcerated across the country. My first book, “Behind the Wall: A Prisoner’s Journal” (ISBN 9798514441983) is also available on Amazon, first published in 2021. Both books are priced very low so readers may be able to afford more than one copy. Please share them with others and thank you in advance for your support. I am grateful.
I guess you can say I’m feeling empowered. My time on the inside has challenged me to be the best version of self I can be. I begin each day with my head held high and each night I rest knowing that I have lived.
There’s meaning and purpose in all that we do, but only if we choose to allow it to be. No one can take that from us.
Christopher
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Christopher Monihan is a writer, journalist, and Stillwater award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.
The Three Horsemen by Christopher
Six years ago, I started this blog.
If I could experience the outside world, where through my pen I break free from the bondage of prison, it would all be worth it, I had thought.
For decades, I have trekked through the desert known as American corrections, where justice is mirage and corruption the only oasis.
Truth In Sentencing Laws Harm the Poorest Incarcerated
For the poorest incarcerated people, early release is often out of reach.
By Christopher (MaCI) (Ohio)
& Jennifer (TCI) (Wisconsin)
Forward
There are two types of sentencing laws in this country. The first involve so-called indefinite sentences, for they have a minimum and a maximum possible term. Release consideration is often made by parole board decision. In some states release consideration may also be made by court action. The second involve definite sentences, so called because they stipulate mandatory periods of incarceration and remove the release discretion of parole boards and courts before mandatory period is served.
Truth In Sentencing (TIS) laws are intended to ensure those convicted of crime serve predetermined definitive time. Once sentenced, incarcerated people may, at some point, become eligible for “early” release consideration.
The process to request consideration for early release is often complex. It disproportionately impacts the poorest incarcerated people — those with no financial means or grasp of the law — and we will explain why shortly. This results in longer actual time served for this subgroup within an already vulnerable population.
In Ohio it costs taxpayers $30,558.00 per year to incarcerate one person in the state’s prisons according to the National Institute of Corrections. By way of comparison, 2023 tuition, room and board for one year at the Ohio State University, amounts to $23,549.00. It’s a shocking comparison when we think about it. Ohio taxpayers pay more to incarcerate someone for one year than is paid for a year of higher education. The longer the sentence, the greater the drain on public coffers. Definite sentences ensure longer periods of incarceration.
Hidden within this fact, long sentences create disincentives to using one’s time in prison to rehabilitate — contrary to public opinion. Incarcerated people desiring to use their time to rehabilitate discover that institutional programs, higher education and trade classes are closed off to them due to “time remaining” on their sentence. This creates a vicious feedback loop within this idled, disenfranchised group encouraging reversion to old behavior, and to view the path of change through a jaded lens. These authors have witnessed this first-hand.
Corrections departments wrongly conclude that the bulk of trade, education and rehabilitative programs should be solely focused on the “short time” crowd, those incarcerated people whose release dates are nearest. This crowd mostly consists of nonviolent, nonserious, nonsexual offenses, what the Justice Policy Initiative’s report Defining Violence labels as the “non, non, nons.” Yet, a full 40% of those incarcerated are serving time for a “violent” offense and from 1980 to 2016 there was a near 500% jump in those incarcerated serving lengthy periods for violent crime Bureau of Justice Statistics data show. To exclude this crowd from trade, education, and rehabilitative programs on the auspice of one’s release date is akin to ignoring nearly half of America’s incarcerated people. TIS laws exacerbate this problem for these incarcerated people are the least likely to be considered for early release, and a full 70% hail from poor backgrounds.
It seems to us that the only population satisfied with TIS laws are politicians playing upon the fearful emotions of an uninformed public. It’s a truth reliable enough that politicians fall back upon it every election cycle time and again for easy votes.
TIS birthed in 1984 during the “tough on crime” era. One year after the passing of the federal Crime Act of 1994, 11 states had enacted laws mandating definite terms of punishment.
We’d like to point out that if measured by recidivism rates in states having enacted TIS laws, these policies have failed dismally. Changes in recidivism rates have been minimal as to be statistically non- meaningful. Curiously, the rearrest rate for those convicted of violent crime for committing another violent crime is far below the national recidivism rate (65%) for all reoffending.
Wisconsin’s TIS Failure
Wisconsin is a standard example of how TIS policies have failed to show meaningful results. We’ve chosen Wisconsin to illustrate the complexity incarcerated people face filing for early release, and how this disproportionately impacts the poorest incarcerated people. By no means is Wisconsin unique. Incarcerated people face similar complexities nationwide.
Wisconsin’s TIS laws stipulate definite prison terms. They’re designed to ensure mandatory periods of incarceration before a judge may consider an “early release” petition. TIS removes the release authority of the parole board while also preventing incarcerated people from earning good time credit.
Under this design incarcerated people serve 75-85% of one’s sentence before being able to petition the sentencing court for early release, which is a form of sentence adjustment. Not everyone is eligible. The class of felony determines eligibility and nearly all of Wisconsin’s crimes classed as “violent” disqualify outright.
When seeking early release the incarcerated person must file a separate petition for each count of conviction. It does not matter if these counts were imposed consecutively (one after the other) or concurrently (together).
If released “early” the remainder of one’s sentence is added to their extended supervision time, which is, in essence the equivalent of parole. The individual has a probation officer, rules to follow or face returning to prison.
We’ve found that the process to file a petition for early release is arduous. Wisconsin’s incarcerated must file a petition in the county they were sentenced in and along with the petition, have the prison send a Verification of Time Served and — at the incarcerated person’s expense — a copy of their Behavioral Conduct Report. The incarcerated person is allowed to include a letter to the judge along with copies of supporting documents. Finally, included is a copy of the incarcerated person’s Judgement of Conviction or (JOC).
Wisconsin allows a handful of valid reasons for early release:
*Health concerns
*Commitment in another state
*Facing deportation
*Changes in law or parole
or, as most filers tend to do, check the box that they have worked toward rehabilitation
Once gathered together the petition and supporting documents are sent to the Clerk of Courts. The judge and District Attorney (DA) are notified, and for certain crimes the victim is then notified of the petitioner’s intent. The DA files an opinion brief with the Clerk of Courts, and a judge renders decision to grant or deny the petition.
We found that common reasons for denial are chosen from a standard form:
*Having previously filed
*Not in the public interest
*Written reasons attached
*Other (Which often entails boilerplate response like:) “After considering any relevant factors including the nature of the crime, the character of the inmate, the protection of the public, the position of the state and the victim and the inmate’s institutional conduct including the inmate’s effort at the progress of rehabilitation, or lack thereof, or the inmate’s participation and progress, or lack thereof in education, treatment and corrections programs”
An author of this essay was sentenced 11 years ago. The sentencing judge reviewed her petition and supporting documents. This was a person who had never heard of her prior to her conviction and who saw her once thereafter in an unrelated hearing after she was sentenced. And like all other incarcerated people who file early release petitions, knew nothing of her character or efforts over the past decade.
The DA that reviewed her petition and supporting documents, an individual that was not in office at the time of her conviction, knew nothing about her, but would have a meaningful say in her life. People who don’t known petitioners or the effort incarcerated people put into rehabilitation decide their lives. What happens when incarcerated people petition only to discover that a new judge or DA is in office? How is it possible to meaningfully decide upon the merits of a petition if you know nothing about the individual save for legal proceedings and boxes checked on standard forms by prison officials? With a parole board we are afforded the opportunity to state facts in person and answer questions directly. It is a meaningful personal experience. In Wisconsin, with the parole board victim(s) have opportunity to be present.
The poor and least educated are harmed the most.
In this new format it’s about one’s ability to convey in writing to a judge why an early release should be considered. We ask two questions to readers here, How good are you at expressing yourself in writing? What if your formal education does not include completion of high school? This is the reality for more than half of America’s incarcerated.
Add to this most incarcerated people have no money save for what is “earned” at a prison job. According to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative, monthly average earnings by incarcerated people nationwide amount to $20.16. A handful of States pay zero dollars monthly to incarcerated people for prison jobs. In Wisconsin, as in most states, incarcerated people are expected to pay for forms, photocopies, postage and related expenses when filing a petition for early release. An author of this essay paid $3.42 for postage and $7.20 for copies of supporting documents. These figures don’t account for other expenses involved. Since multiple copies of the petition were needed, her total expenditures were $21.60 which she was able to pay on her own. Because of her financial ability to file she will always have the possibility of release.
What happens when incarcerated people don’t have the financial means to file? It’s difficult enough that incarcerated people are at the mercy of elected officials that don’t even know them. The poorest among us bear the heaviest burden and serve the most time.
*Jennifer is incarcerated in Wisconsin at Taycheedah Correctional Institution.
*Christopher is incarcerated in Ohio at Madison Correctional Institution.
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I Went To A Women’s Prison and Found Harmony by Christopher
“Get ready,” said the big guard. “You’ll be leaving soon.” I jerked awake at the guard’s voice. The orange glow from the clock beside the steel bunk illuminated 3:15AM.
I had planned to stay awake all night and chided myself for falling asleep. I grabbed toothbrush, paste and mouthwash and made for the bathroom. I didn’t know where I was going only that I’d be speaking at a large event somewhere later that day.
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