The Weight of the Razor Wire

What Prison Leaves with Us

Recently, prison felt especially heavy. 

A guy who had spent more than three decades incarcerated had recently learned that he might finally be going home. After all those years of watching the world change beyond the razor's wire, freedom was no longer just a dream. It was close enough to imagine. 

He didn't live to reach it.

There are details not mine to share. His name and the circumstances belong to those of his family there remained. What I witnessed left me thinking about the weight prison puts on everyone it touches.

Usually when there is an emergency, you look for signs that someone is coming for help. Recently the signs felt different. There would be no trip to the hospital and no return to the hospital and no return to the housing unit. A life ended behind the same razor wires he had expected to leave.

That image will remain with me.

We often talk about incarceration through the lens of sentencing, policies, parole decisions, and public safety. Those things matter. But behind every number are human beings, somebody's loved one living through years that cannot ever be returned. Families grow older. Parents die. Children become adults. Bodies age. Even if hope survives...sometimes freedom arrives a little too late.

Prison changes people. It changes those who live there, those who love them, and those who report there each and every day to work. Some changes are visible. Others are carried in silence. 

No one walks through those gates untouched.

Tonight, I'm thinking about a guy who came close to going home, and about all the people who will carry the weight of knowing that he never made it back beyond the razor wire.