People who got sentenced to jail in the 90’s or 2000’s and got released this year what does it feel like being in todays 2018? What shocked you the most?

I wasn't in during that time, but I met a bunch of people, from all walks of life, that were. I was sentenced for two felonies (non-violent drug trafficking and conspiracy to conceal drug proceeds) and was sent to a minimum security prison. I was 23 at the time and this was 2014 but other people had been in since... I don't know for fucking ever it seems like.

There was this old guy and everyone would call him Chap. He'd been in since the 80's, I think he was in his mid 50s. So it's safe to say he had spent the better part of his adult life in prison. Super nice dude. One day Chap is sitting at the table on the run and I sit down and start chatting. Well the topic of wifi comes up, and wireless routers and hooking up Internet and Netflix and all that crap. He had never heard of it. He was sitting there reading this article in the newspaper and realized he was getting out in about a year and had never even thought of that stuff. I'm no expert by any means but I've helped my parents set up routers and in the briefest of stints at college I had to set my own up in the past. But the conversation grew to a mini convention in 2 minutes flat. It was crazy. I'm there trying to field questions from Chap who's now on the wall phone with his mom while drawing a half-assed diagram for Skipper and Stew about modems and routers vs a wall connection haha.

So much other shit. Redbox was another thing that blew people's minds. But it's funny because that kind of faded IMO even from a couple years ago. It's like the new blockbuster compared to streaming. Anyway.

I was also a tutor in there and it was extremely sad and an eye opener to how fucking awful states regulate education and book programs in prison. What a fucking joke. Your family just can't send you books that they have lying around. No, they have to buy the books from a third party and send them directly to the prison. And they can't be hard cover. For the love of god they can not be hard cover haha. Their only reason? Because we'll use the hard covers as make shift body armor. I swear to god that's what my case manager told me. I get the whole "some ruin it for everyone" argument but that's a pity. Honestly the mail guy got pissed at me because my mom was sending so many cheap used books from "thriftbooks." He had the guards come to cell and make sure my books fit in my locker. (Because it was against the rules to pile books on the floor or table or fucking anywhere other than my 1'x1' box). It was actually hilarious and an ongoing feud between myself and that man. He banned two books my aunt sent me because they had diagrams of the human anatomy, but his reason he said me in front of everyone in the mail window was "it had a painting of a dick in it" hahahah. This guy! But you know how many Encyclopedias have pictures of junk? I don't know off the top of my head but I'm guessing a fucking lot. He won in the end. He banned me from personally getting books so my family had to keep donating them to the library. I left all my books anyway for everyone else. It was truly sad that's honestly one of the few things people in prison get to enjoy. Now there's all types of bans on even sending books in the first place in some places.

Sorry I got off topic. Movies. Especially Marvel movies and any books with movies based off of them. People wanted to hear about everything they grew up with. It was cool to get into an in depth conversation with a complete stranger about the remake of Plant of the Apes and how dope the CGI was. Anything online, I turned a couple people onto Reddit while I was in there, the ones who had smart phones at least hah.. I have a TON of more stories but some are off topic. Personally, I got to hear so many stories of how places used to be before I had visited them. And that was cool.

But really once you're out and you get to see your family and relax for a minute, that's all that matters.

/r/AskReddit Thread