I received a letter this week from a young prisoner who I correspond with. As he described how he was doing, he stressed how bored he was in prison. This is the rub of the prison experience for so many. The monotony and the sameness of each day in prison is under-appreciated by the general public. This reality of prison life was first brought home to me in an essay that I read by Etheridge Knight called “Inside These Walls.” In the piece written in 1967, Knight offers a description of a day in the life of a prisoner at the Indiana State Penitentiary. He is writing this from first hand experience having been incarcerated at that same prison.

And what do these men do inside these walls? It’s simple, maddeningly simple: At six o’clock in the morning a whistle blows. They get up and wash their faces. At six-fifteen, a bell rings, and they march off to the prison mess hall and eat a breakfast of, say, oatmeal, prunes, bread and coffee. They leave the mess hall in a line and drop their spoons in a bucket by the door, watched over by a “screw.” They march to their shops — say the Tag Shop, climb upon a stool and dip license plates into a tank of paint until nine-thirty. A bell rings; they smoke. A bell rings; they go back to work.

At eleven-thirty, a bell rings again. They stop work, wash up, march back to their shelters. At twelve o’clock, a bell rings in the cellhouse; they walk to the mess hall where they eat, say, a meal of white beans, frankfurters, and cornbread. They leave the mess hall, drop their spoons into the bucket and, in line, go back to work. The morning performance is repeated. At four-thirty a whistle blows; they march to supper and then into their cellhouse for the night. Maddeningly simple.

Contrast this description of a day in the life of an inmate with a contemporary one offered by a prisoner named ‘Paul’ who I blogged about a few months ago. You will find Knight’s description written in 1967 strikingly similar to Paul’s in 2010. As Paul suggests in prison “every day is the same.”

I encourage anyone who is interested in better understanding prison life to read Knight’s essay in its entirety. In less than 20 pages, Knight paints an invaluable portrait of prison life for readers. He offers details about the physical structure of a cell, about prison guards, about the different departments within the prison, about incidents of physical brutality, etc… Tomorrow, I will feature an excerpt that details life for prisoners once they are released.