Beyond Prison: Part Two

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2. SHIPPED TO LACONIA

When James Gilbert first arrived in Laconia he caught the eye of Corrections Officer Justin Gardin.

:00 I was working in the Lakes Region facility when I met him. I remember him being a big tall kid, angry kid.

GAR. T.2
1:44 ...there's 85 guys in a dorm room and you always look at who is the biggest guy...So you look for the tall guys, big muscle head guys, and you kind of keep an eye on those guys extra...

GAR. T.2
2:40 ...I talked to him...and he was never openly disrespectful towards me, but there was a hostility that you could sense that he didn't want to follow the rules that he had to follow.

J.3 T.14
2:24 when I first got to Laconia, my objective was to get out. I wasn't looking to make any trouble. I had the opportunity to do an 11 month sentence not 2-4, which I look back at it now, isn't a huge amount of time, but 11 months is a lot better than 2-4 years. So my position was do what I need to do to get out and not make any waves.

GAR. T.13
:01...the program he had to complete, the First Step, was very much a boot camp scenario. Where there was someone in your face, screaming at you, getting spit on you, and you had to stand at attenteion and take it.

J.3 T.14
7:12 ... I fought it tooth and nail...in my head it was hard for me to sit there and have some a**hole in my face....spitting in my face, telling me how I am doing this, telling me how my girl is screwing this guy, or that guy, and these are things they would say to you.

GAR. T.13
:01....they have to ask permission to go to the bathroom, they have to use one paper towel to dry off, they have 30 seconds to go to the bathroom...and to relinquish that much control for a younger guy who doesn't want to listen to anybody...I am a teenager, and I know how the rest of my life is going to go...not only is it stressful, but it tends to break people. And I'm not saying he was broken by it, but that he couldn't deal with that type of environment.

J.3 T.14
9:02 it made me start to lose my mind...it wasn't like it broke me to the point where it helped me. It broke me to the point where I did not care anymore. It broke me to the point where I started to lose hope. I didn't care what happened to me. I really started to feel that before I left there.

GAR. T.20
:18 when he left Laconia it was that attitude, I'll see him again...he's not going to be the guy who gets out and stays out...b/c of the I don't care attitude. It seems like he gave up on himself. I have to go to Concord, do 3-4 years down there, I don't care. That's a genuine sentiment.

GLADIATOR SCHOOL

Gardin felt that the worst thing for someone who didn't care was to go to a place where there are 1400 other people who didn't care.

James may have hated Laconia, but Gardin was certain that what he would find in Concord would be uglier.

GAR. T.17
2:10 at some point, everybody is tested...whether it's hey, give me your brownie at the chow hall, if it's three guys coming to your room, hey give me your sneakers. And it comes down to how you react to determine what kind of vulnerability you have at a later date.

J.3 T.18
2:30 the unit on I was on when I was first there, it's 8-man cells. You have four bunk beds in this small cell. There is common space. It's packed. The place is always dark. They used to call that Gladiator School. You get a lot of young kids, really rambunctious people...I remember a few times, people going whacko. Throwing chairs around. And to the point where they lock up the entire pod. It was like a free-for-all.

James responded in kind.

He got into fights.

He taunted the guards.

J.1 T.17
:08 you are angry, after 11 months...friends stop coming, the only people that may straggle along is some family members. But you are by yourself. The world seems crazy around you. And there doesn't seem like a lot of hope...you get into a situation where you don't see a future. And you are surrounded by anger. By depression, by filth.

After 8 months, the prison moved James off the Gladiator School tier.

He was no longer being housed with what James calls the reckless and the unresolved, he was now living on A Pod.

BEGINS TAKING CLASSES

J.3 T.20
1:09 ...A pod was a little more laid back population and I was able to focus a little more and I signed up for classes there.

J.3 T.20
1:38 it was the most productive thing I could do with my time...Play cards. Shoot pool. Makes it sound like a day camp. I thought it would be cool to start working on a free college education. Why wouldn't I take advantage of that? And I didn't have to pay anything for it. Kinda a no-brainer for me.

J.3 T.20
2:18 my first semester I took statistics and intro to Psychology. That Psych class changed my perspective on how I viewed people.

J.3 T.20
3:25 it started to make me understand, to look back on where I came from, my parents, and I did get a lot of resolve from that one college class. And understanding human behaviors, why they do the things they do. And it made me for the first time, look at why my parents did the thigns they did, rather than blaming them, trying to understand them. Instead of blaming myself, trying to understand the way I was acting. Trying to make sense of the whole situation, b/c it never made sense.

That first glimmer of understanding was tenuous at best when James was transferred yet again.

But on this new unit, he was about to meet a prisoner who would change his life.

J.C. T.45
:00 you see this guy, covered in tattoos, never wearing a shirt...Carrying books swaggering back and forth like he's untouchable, and I'm like, 'huh, who's this guy?'