I've heard it said that jail stinks of despair. What a load. If jail stinks of any emotion, it's fear: fear of the guards, fear of being beaten or gang-raped, fear of being forgotten by those who once loved you and may or may not anymore. But mostly, I think, it's fear of time and of those dark things that dwell in the unexplored corners of the mind. Doing time, they call it - what a joke. I've been around long enough to know the reality: It's the time that does you.

I felt eyes upon me, and they pulled me away. I looked at the gathering of eager cops; some were merely curious, while others, I knew, sought their own secret …

I used to look at homeless peopleand try to imagine what they had once looked like. It's not easy. Beneath the grime and degradation is a face once adored by s…

I thought of my own wife's tears and her limp submission the night before - the bleak satisfaction I took from her smallness as I used her shamelessly. She's c…

The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time.

It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the 'cooler,' and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-s…

A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinemen…