could it be you?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the “non-career criminal.”
It’s easy to think from the outside that those in the inside are all hardened, repeat offenders.
But they’re not all in that category.
Some are inside for a one time event. A first offense. They lived an otherwise law abiding life and then circumstances changed in an instant. Of rage. Of inebriation. Of desperation.
And now they are sitting on a life sentence. Some of those individuals, convicted of their crimes later in life. Now serving in an aged body, likely to die while incarcerated.
It makes me think about people in my life. I can see this happening to them.
Maybe they drink too much due to severe depression and they decide to drive and end up with vehicular manslaughter.
Or they can’t control their anger and end up with an assault or murder charge.
Not one of these individuals saw themselves doing anything to land themselves in prison. I can say I don’t see myself doing anything to land me in prison. But how do we know?
It’s just like pitying an unhoused person. But don’t you ever consider that that could be you if circumstances changed drastically?
Have you watched the Netflix Series, ‘Inside Man?‘ “Everyone is a murderer. You just have to meet the right person,” says Jefferson Grieff, one of the characters in the series.
The series is completely about this situation.
And if interested, listen to this episode of Ear Hustle which touches on this too. It’s an episode about aging in prison but some of the women they talk to fell into this category of the “non-career criminal.” First offenders at the age of 70. (And believe me I have one patient who was a first offender late in life, but that was just because it took so long for them to be caught after a long history of serial crimes. So there’s that).
Anyhow, just food for thought. We often want to judge the incarcerated for being incarcerated. But could we be looking in the mirror one day and that person, be looking back?
*just to note, I’ll be leaving out the name of the institution that I work at. It’s a state prison for reference. Images are not from the prison as no devices are allowed in.
Prison PT 
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