I find strength and direction in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Oscar Wilde — all of whom were formerly incarcerated people. Their experience is that of every prisoner for the experience of incarnation transcends borders and time.
One of my favorite writings is the Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde. Wilde was imprisoned more than 150 years ago in Europe’s infamous Reading Gaol prison. A former socialite fallen from grace, Wilde is reborn through the trials and tribulations of his time while at Reading Gaol.
(“And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats / None know so well as I” — Oscar Wilde)
Wilde struggled to cope with what he witnessed at Reading Gaol. Fellow prisoners preying upon one another, executions by the Hangman’s nose; and the beating of an imprisoned child younger than 10 years old at the hands of Reading Gaol’s warders. The boy’s crime? Shoplifting bread for nothing more than to stave off Poverty’s cruel hand of starvation.
(“In Reading Gaol by Reading Town / There is a pit of shame.” — Oscar Wilde)
Every prison has its pit of shame, metaphorical for the dark acts kept hidden from the light of day. I am captivated by the words of a prisoner who lived centuries before me, for our experience transcends time. Every incarcerated person can relate. If I slow down but for a moment I can hear the heavy metal clank of Reading Gaol’s cell doors, feel the damp on my skin and taste the mustiness of air, for despite the separation of time some things in prison don’t change.
Early in my sentence the State of Ohio executed its incarcerated people with cyclical rhythm. On those days the gravity of execution weighed heavy on many of us.
Oscar Wilde too struggled with the executions of his time. He understood, as I do too, that we give up a piece of our humanity when society clutches revenge close to it’s heart.
(“To see the universe and all pervading spirit of truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of all creatures as one’s self.” — Mahatma Gandhi)
In the 1990’s I became a certified GED tutor. I tutored the kids that were here, juvenile boys the youngest of whom was 14 years old. Like Wilde, I felt for the kids.
My experience with the juveniles taught me a lot about myself. The boys suffered from childhood traumas with many having been sexually abused; or came from broken homes; or came from the foster care system — many from all three and then some. The more I got to know them the more I realized they were just like other boys. They yearned for acceptance, love, and guidance. They dreamt the same dreams every teen boy dreams, except for them dreams were all they had.
(“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenge.” — Martin Luther King Jr.)
My time tutoring the boys greatly impacted me. As Oscar Wilde did I too witnessed similar things, boys struggling to cope and make sense of their situation; and, boys who were beaten by the very people entrusted with their safety. What is a yong man to make of this? I was still a kid myself back then.
On a balmy afternoon when the sky was blue and unfettered, one of my students was murdered on account of his skin color. I was devastated. The evil that lurks in every prison had struck close to me.
I had poured my heart and soul into that kid and then he was no longer. My mind literally couldn’t process what had happened. I had gotten to know the boy and realized he simply yearned for a guiding figure in his life — it seemed all the boys yearned for that.
I hid my trauma and pain from family. I have always shielded them from unnecessary worry as most incarcerated people do. I’ve only recently begun writing about that long ago event.
In prison we experience things only our nightmares can prepare us for. We hide that which the world makes us hold, while groping through shadows searching for light.
Sometimes the act of breathing is a triumph in itself.
(“The greatest glory in living is(n’t) never failing, but rising every time we fail.” — Nelson Mandela)
After a lifetime on the Inside I have found myself. I know my purpose in this world and I live it each day. The adversities I have faced, the traumas I’ve overcome, and each dream that has crashed and burned has molded me anew. I arise from ash and dust every day.
Nelson Mandela was an angry youth when he was cast away to prison. Over 27 years of imprisonment he arrived at the same conclusions I have: There is no room for anger; only love defeats hatred, and hope illuminates darkness. To adopt these principles is to move the world for when you hate, hate finds you but when you love, love comes to us. Mandela exemplified these truths.
No one is infallible. No matter what a man or woman has done we are still part of the same family the human family. We are redeemable. However, we must first be willing to lower the sword of personal bias and judgement in order to see this.
(“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde)
I never dwell on the past. I choose to pursue a new life, one based on core values of community, faith, family, integrity, honesty, and transparency. I credit the titans — Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Oscar Wilde — for having had courage to write about their experience. Through their works I find strength, purpose and direction.
In prison we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
*Christopher Monihan is a writer, author, journalist, and Stillwater Award Recipient. His newest book ‘Christopher and Friends: Reflections From Behind the Wall’ (ISBN: 979-8262373062) is available on Amazon.
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Tag: prisoner
Nerdgasm By Christopher Monihan
I am a nerd at heart. Science came easy to me growing up and I embraced technology. I am most comfortable surrounded by all things technological.
One of my favorite characters on Star Trek the Next Generation is “Data”. A humanoid android perfect in his ability to solve the complex but flawed in his humanity. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) that made him was brilliant, yet flawed.
I marvel at how AI is sweeping the world. For all of the anxiety AI conjures in the public psyche its promise outweighs everything. We have taken a step closer to becoming the gods ourselves.
From my caged perch in prison I observe with yearning eyes the world’s astounding technologies that were all but science fiction the last time I was in the free world. For me AI’s coming of age is the ultimate nerdgasm.
I recently experienced AI in a way that left me nearly speechless. I am a choir singer in the Harmony Project, a nonprofit out of Columbus, Ohio that comes into my prison once a week. We learn popular contemporary songs and for an hour sing together in community and shared humanity. Harmony’s message to the incarcerated is “Where you are does not define who you are”. For the past three years Harmony has brought joy to my life.
Two of the songs we are learning are all originals. When the 75 men of Harmony at my facility first heard each song, we thought they were songs from a popular artist. So when David Brown, who leads Harmony, revealed that the songs were created by Harmony using an AI application my jaw fell open. The music is indistinguishable from a top 40 hit. But none of it is real.
As I have learned both songs over the past several weeks, dozens of AI themed writing ideas sparked in my mind.
Knowing that I can literally create whatever my mind comes up with — because rest assured, AI is filling that role — fills me with an excitement unlike any I’ve ever had. The fact that I can unleash AI to compute and sort through reams of data and create accordingly per my parameters, opens doors that would otherwise have remained closed to me once I am home again. AI can become a formerly incarcerated person’s great ally and I know exactly how I would use it to help myself. I also know how I would apply it as a resource for the one million returning citizens releasing from our jails and prisons every year, both through nonprofit and for profit efforts.
I have closely followed the public release of AI and have watched as it sparks excitement and fear in people. Fear of the unknown and what people don’t understand, and excitement for AI’s promise to lift humanity.
I am old enough to remember the public’s dismay and fear over the first implanted artificial heart into a human patient. People screamed, We’re playing God! Today artificial hearts are common place. Where have all the naysayers gone?
I remember the public uproar and fear when scientists cloned ‘Dolly’ the sheep. It would only be a matter of time before people are cloned! Screamed the doomsayers. Nowadays we clone everything from plants to our own house pets. No one seems too worried about cloning anymore.
Today the naysayers are running around with their arms flailing over AI. I suspect 10 years from now we will look back upon this moment in time and shake our heads. Fast forward 50 years and I cannot begin to fathom how far society will have advanced due to AI. The scientific puzzles we’ll have solved; the drugs we’ll have created that will save millions of people, and the societal advancement that will ensue. AI is the breakthrough equivalent of the transistor or dare I say, electricity.
Focusing on the here and now AI is a blessing to the men and women who have spent decades living in cages and are now regurgitated back into a society alien from the one they remember. I can frame whatever questions I have into popular AI models and literally catch up. I can fill the knowledge void that all returning citizens have, and I can do it without shame or embarrassment. For us, everything in society is new and nothing is of old.
I have spent decades thinking about society and the broader world. I’ve spent so much time thinking and pondering that I have discovered, learned, and become –that which I have, and that which I am — brand new with eyes wide open to truths I would never have found. To say I am aware is an understatement.
Some people will refuse to accept AI no matter what. Some will fear AI for fear’s sake. Those that do will be left behind. I, on the other hand, will embrace AI at every turn.
In prison where one’s existence is measured by the passing of meal times, count times, and pages torn from calendars the promise of AI in a new life is the equivalent of leaving purgatory and stepping one foot into Heaven.
*Christopher Monihan is a writer, author, journalist and Stillwater Award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.
Thank you! for following. Click on subscribe and you will be notified the moment I publish a new post. Also, my newest book, ‘Christopher And Friends: Reflections From Behind The Wall’ (ISBN: 979-8262373062) is now available on Amazon.
Prison Trauma
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
Living In A Purgatory World
By Christopher
*A version of this essay first appeared in Minutes Before Six
I grumbled to myself as my eyes panned the cellblock.
All around me chaos reigned. Dominoes clacked against steel tabletops and conversations competed for supremacy as each man shouted over the next.
After three decades in prison I have grown numb on the inside. I’ve witnessed men swan dive from high railings head first to the concrete below. Anything than to have served a life sentence in this Purgatory World. Tragic? I suppose, but I can’t change it. Eventually the madness takes on the form of background static and the conscious mind washes its hands of it all.
So on a sweltering day back when American troops hunted Weapons of Mass Destruction, I’d had enough. I needed a break.
I wove my way through the throngs of convicts and the incessant percussion of steel and flesh. I jerked open the heavy door to cell 168, tugged off my T-shirt and threw myself onto my bunk.
The small floor fan rattled within the heat. I had saved for a month scrubbing food trays in the kitchen to earn 17 dollars for that damned fan. At 12 inches in height, all it did was convert my tiny concrete tomb into a convection oven. I laid staring at the dusty ceiling.
My eyes finally closed. I had all but forgotten about the heat when something thumped. Prison has a heartbeat of sounds and like a beating heart anything out of rhythm stands out.
I sat up. I rubbed at my eyes and the world splintered back into focus.
Another thump. Except this time I was sure I had actually heard it. Something thumped against the wall as if someone in the cell beside mine had shoved a heavy slab of meat. “What the hell is going on?” I said aloud.
I clicked open the cell door muttering to myself. Whatever was going on in the cell next door, I had thought, better be good.
I peered through the slit window and what I witnessed stopped me in my tracks.
Two burly men punched at my 18 year old neighbor, kicked him in the groin, and threw him up against the wall. His nose gushed red.
“Shit,” I said. “They’re robbing him.”
In the free world, home invasion, when caught in progress, brings the cavalry. Police screech to a halt guns drawn and the perp gets arrested if not shot. In prison, there is no cavalry.
I lingered outside the door for what felt like an eternity. Someone inside the cell screamed. I wanted to intervene but it wasn’t my place to do so. I have learned it is wise to honor prison’s unwritten commandments. Thou shalt not stick thy nose into other people’s business.
More screaming. Something bashed into the door. I dared another glance through the window.
I noticed one of the men now laid unconscious on the floor. The other assailant’s chest heaved and his foot stumbled. Our eyes met, the kid and I, and he gave me a nod. I felt a grin crack across my face.
I went back to my cell.
I repositioned the floor fan in hopes of cool air before cursing its existence. Eventually the thumps ceased. I wondered who won the fight but realized it didn’t matter — nothing here matters. My eyes finally closed.
Alone in my cell I slept.
*Writing from prison is a difficult endeavor and it isn’t always possible to get a post up in a timely manner. For those who haven’t already subscribed, click on subscribe and whenever I post something new you’ll receive an email notice. I will soon return to a more regular posting schedule. Thank you so much for your devoted readership! I write for you. —Christopher
Valhalla! by Christopher
Today I had an aha moment.
No, not the type of aha moment free world people experience when encountering something truly eye opening, but the type only incarcerated people know and experience after decades of living in a cage.
Every one of Ohio’s 50,000 prison incarcerated people are issued a Samsung 10″ tablet — it’s not that glamorous, these are refurbished 5th and 6th generation monstrosities in a world of 20th generation magic — and we have access to numerous free, but mostly pay-to-use services. Prison is big business. There’s money to be made from the backs of America’s most vulnerable population, their friends, and families.
I was swiping through he GTL Library app of offerings. Think of the app like an online library of sorts where there’s magazines, books, and ebooks. It’s nothing like the limitless content of the internet, everything is censored and specially curated. Anyhow, I stumbled upon the audio book, “Who Moved My Cheese?”.
I tapped the Who Moved My Cheese? icon and an audio book reader launched.
I suppose out there something as mundane as an audio book reader wouldn’t warrant mention let alone a blog post — but in my world this is discovery on scale similar to teenagers stumbling upon online porn.
I glanced around casual so not to draw attention. Content my discovery went unnoticed by the men around me, I focused on the reader’s unknown icons before settling upon the safe familiarity of the play button.
I hurriedly plugged in my ear buds and tapped play. For the next 5 minutes a man’s voice droned on and on about how he had come up with the idea for Who Ate My Cheese?. My excitement quickly drained away. This guy was kinda boring.
I decided to venture deeper. The way I saw it I could do no harm, besides I had already made up my mind I couldn’t possibly sit through two hours of this man’s mind numbing voice. That is until I discovered Valhalla.
In the corner of the app I spotted a discreet double “§” looking icon. I tapped it. A new screen appeared. Bulleted percentages of 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200% trailed from top to bottom. Highlighted by default was 100%.
I tapped 125%.
The mans voice returned except this time he seemed somehow cheerier. I tapped 150%. Now he babbled on like a gaggle of teenage girls. 175% and he spoke as if hopped up on lines of crystal meth.
I eyed 200%. My heart pounded and my palms grew moist. I cast a furtive glance around me and thumbed 200%.
The man’s voice raced back like a used car auctioneer. Holy shit, I thought. I CAN listen to this book!
*Christopher Monihan is a journalist, writer, and 2024 Stillwater Award recipient. His newest book “Reflections From Behind the Wall” is now available on Amazon.