When I went back to prison a couple of days after Shalom’s escape, the inmates were taking “bets” on when he’d be caught.
I thought they would all be rooting for him but mostly they just shook their heads telling me what a stupid choice he made escaping on a work-pass.
“Anybody with only a couple of years left on a sentence of five years at the best prison in the country is about as dumb as they come”, says one of the men. “He will get caught and then he'll be sent to solitary and sentenced to life at a high-level maximum-security prison.”
As predicted, a few days later he is arrested at a Taco Bell a couple of hundred miles from the Bay Area. (The irony of Trump’s visit to a different location of what some people refer to as “fake” Mexican food, does not escape me.)
I met Shalom a couple of times but never interviewed him. I wondered how thoroughly he planned his escape, where he was headed, and what was on his mind (a taco?) or as some of the men surmised, a woman. Was there a moment, even with a manhunt after him, that he felt even the slightest bit free?
I don't think I could last one week being incarcerated and I cannot fathom spending a year let alone the next several decades behind bars. Freedom is easily taken for granted and no matter how burned out we may be with the current political climate, we still have the freedom to talk about it.
When I left prison on Friday, for the long New Years weekend, Al asked me what my resolutions were. I told him I never make them. He agreed and said, “Yeah – I get that. You just take each day as it comes.”
But I could come and go as I pleased and was free to make decisions about mundane things that would be a luxury for them. What to wear, where to eat, take a bike ride or hike, and on and on. How to spend New Years Eve? That was easy because I don’t like crowds or loud drunken people or staying up late, so I stay home. If I happen to be awake at midnight, I might watch the madness on TV and the dropping of the ball in Times Square. I imagine a few people will make bad decisions and drink the wrong combination of alcohol or wake up with the wrong person, or...
And someone will get behind the wheel of a car because they think they are sober enough to drive even though they take the side roads in case of a police roadblock. Criminals, after all, are not all that different then you and me; except when they get caught.
The new year ball is suspended in time for these men. The clock is ticking and the end of the road might be a few more years or fifty years away. For those on death row, it's when the ball hits the ground.
In some ways, the men I've met seem more optimistic about the future than most people I know. They talk about getting out and making a positive difference, educating kids and working with people who had the same disadvantages they grew up with.
I was surprised to find that so many of the inmates are not only filled with remorse and accept their punishment; but they also take classes and go to groups and spend more time working on themselves than people on the outside.
As the inmates wait for the possibility of parole or a commuted sentence, I am aware that the resolutions they make carry a different kind of weight than the general population. We have a choice to realize our goals; to get more exercise, get a new job, or quit smoking.
The inmates I've met seem to have resolved that they messed up big time and wonder "What if...", What if their childhood or the culture they grew up in, were different. There was no way to know how their circumstances affected them then, but they do now.
So they take it one day at a time, and have hope that in the not too distant future, they will also have the freedom to make better choices.
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