An Insight Into Life Inside A Prison For First Time Offenders
Anxiety and fear can become growing demons within any one of us. The lack of knowledge about any subject or the absence of information pertaining to any specific subject can cause one to conjure up some wild ideas in our minds on what we believe that subject’s reality is, especially when the subject matter pertains to life during incarceration.
My 8 months under “House Arrest” coincided with the outbreak of Covid-19. The main impact that it had on my case was that I was not required to attend any in court hearings. Instead, video conferences became the norm for most hearings. The video conferences during my case included the Crown, the presiding Judge, and my Lawyer. Any new developments coming from these regarding my case would be relayed to me through a series of phone calls from my lawyer. With each subsequent call that I received; I was led to believe that my time remaining within mainstream society was running out quickly. My definition of quickly did not include anything that spanned an 8-month period. So, this situation that I had no control over, along with my fabricated ideas of what incarcerated life might be like created a whirlwind of negative emotions of frustration and fear in my mind. The fact that I was also not present for any of the court proceedings or decisions that were being made during the court proceedings regarding my case created a constant tenseness throughout my body as well.
My anxieties and fears would have been greatly reduced had I been able to access any information regarding incarceration from “first-time offenders” describing their own experiences. This lack of information pertaining to incarceration motivated me to compile all my own daily journal writings into an informative article aimed towards enlightening “first-time offenders”.
I hope that this article will inspire other “first-time offenders” to write informative articles about their own journey, detailing their experiences during incarceration. These additional writings will help increase the ease in which “first-timers” will be able to find this much-needed information. It will also give “first-time offenders” many different perspectives regarding incarceration, and how everyone might react differently to any given situation during their time.
My intention s to give you as much helpful information as possible, to the new environment(prison), so you will be better prepared. You will gain some insight on day-to-day life and the many rules and regulations you will be dealing with. This will help you navigate your way through the system without experiencing much of the serious altercations new comers face.
Being able to control your anger and frustration over situations will be paramount during incarceration, especially if either of these have been an issue for you on the outside.
Individual experiences in incarceration will vary, perhaps greatly depending on the severity of your charges, the length of your sentence and how you conduct yourself with other inmates and “C.O.’s”. In my case, I was sentenced to 3 years with the possibility of full parole after serving one-third (1 Year). My incarceration happened to coincide during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak. This greatly affected every aspect of all normal procedures that were to be followed within all institutions. One such negative effect it had on the inmates was having to remain in quarantine over the 14- day requirement this was due to frequent new Covid-19 outbreaks happening within the institution or the neighboring community. There were also constant delays or postponements by many of the institutions departments. These included medical appointment requests, scheduled program start dates, as well as when funds coming from the outside would be processed by the finance department, to have funds in your “Canteen” account to enable you to purchase items. All these delays and postponements were ongoing and could be the catalyst that could put your frustrations and anger out of control. If you allow these situations to get the better of you, you will find yourself in a lot of trouble within any institution.

Trish & Don
First time inmates.
2018