In my street life, I’ve always loved watching when my kids played volleyball, soccer, Little League baseball, lacrosse, or football, but I’m not otherwise much of a college or professional sports fan and never go to games or watch them on TV. But here in the prison, I do enjoy sharing in the excitement that these seasonal sports competitions bring to the inmates. On almost a daily basis, I get my ESPN prison sports update report. “Ah, Teach, you should’ve saw Marcus shooting hoops yesterday. He’s a real gangsta on the court!”

Though people living in a prison don’t have to pay rent for their cells or buy the food they are served in the chow hall, I have seen that even in a prison community, work is important. Having a job while doing time can give the daily life of an incarcerated person a greater sense of purpose and order and meaning.

Though wide-ranging research concludes that maintaining family relationships through prison visits is the best way to reduce recidivism rates, it’s rare that prison policies and practices genuinely support family connections. Around the country prison visitation policies vary greatly; some are supportive of families, others are almost punitive.

Prison is a world of bitter loss and irony. Prison is a kind of hell, a place of rage, pain, and despair. Prison is terror, drama, and drudgery. For inmates, prison is isolation and loneliness, camaraderie and competition. Prison is banishment, hunger, shame, embarrassment, wanting, and loss.

It’s not likely that many people would connect the word “cooperative” with their image of the men who live inside a maximum-security prison. More likely, they’d assume that most people living in a prison lean towards being uncooperative. But what I have found to be a surprising irony is that most all the inmates I’ve met in the prison are extremely polite and cooperative.

This week I have been interviewing for two new tutor positions to work as assistants in the classroom. My wonderful dream team of Brett, Rashid, Carlos, and Martin has begun to disperse. Brett is off to a minimum facility, Rashid has accepted a higher paying job in the welding shop, and Martin will be getting out again in December.