{"id":51918,"date":"2009-11-17T08:19:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T13:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:criminaljustice.change.org:\/\/b3b46813ff3dc7f117dce998b21cfffc"},"modified":"2009-11-17T08:19:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T13:19:00","slug":"a-jail-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/51918","title":{"rendered":"A Jail Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Michigan man who spent five months in the Washtenaw County Jail in 2008 has been posting about his experiences in installments on the Ann Arbor Chronicle site. It’s a moving and detailed account of life on the inside, and well worth a look<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The journal started as a twitter feed, doling out jail experience 140 characters at a time. It grew into well-written chapters, covering day-to-day life in a local jail — the challenges, the characters, the slang, the work-arounds, the danger.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

The holding cell is so crowded now, there is no room for anybody to lay down. Some inmates tuck their arms into their uniforms and curl up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been in a holding cell for about three hours, added to 56 hours in \u201csuicide watch.\u201d Now, I\u2019m waiting for a vacancy in the overcrowded jail.<\/p>\n

At last my name is called. After spending 60 hours in three holding cells a few feet away from the entrance, I am now going to see the jail. As I pass by Bam Bam, Frank smiles and gives me a thumbs-up. It\u2019s an ending, of sorts. Phase I of jail ends.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all really beginning.<\/p>\n

Read his first three chapters at the Ann Arbor Chronicle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

We’ve been seeing more blogging by prisoners these days, yet another way the opening of media channels will impact the criminal justice system. By putting the keys to publishing in everyone’s hands, we get prisoners writing home and family members posting their thoughts. In hearing uncut words from inside our prisons and jails, we move closer to understanding life behind bars, the conditions we force prisoners to endure, and to confront the humanity and intelligence of our fellow Americans locked in cages.<\/p>\n

Here are a few prison bloggers I’ve been reading:<\/p>\n

Michael Santos has written several posts here at change.org<\/a> from inside federal prison and he continues posting at PrisonNewsBlog<\/a>. A California prisoners is blogging on SFBG under the name Just A Guy<\/a>. A teenager in Florida prison writes a personal journal here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you’re reading other prisoner blogs, please post ’em in the comments.<\/p>\n

H\/T Gideon<\/a><\/p>\n

Image via 888bailbond<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Michigan man who spent five months in the Washtenaw County Jail in 2008 has been posting about his experiences in installments on the Ann Arbor Chronicle site. It’s a moving and detailed account of life on the inside, and well worth a look. The journal started as a twitter feed, doling out jail experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}