I sat in a maximum custody jail cell, two weeks after my initial arrest, and read a newspaper article that was about me. It was full of inaccuracies and untruths, but something else bothered me that I was unable to grasp. I read it repeatedly, and each time became more perplexing than the last. I continued to read the first sentence until it finally stood out to me. It read, “A twenty-one-year-old man was arrested.” It would be troubling for most people to read about their own arrest, and it was for me too; however, there was one word used to describe me that was difficult for me to read.
The word man.
I didn’t understand why being called a “man” troubled me so much. Certainly, I considered myself to be a man prior to my arrest. I had a job, a fiancée, and a newborn daughter. My fiancée’s pregnancy had been deemed high risk by her doctor, so she was unable to work. This made me the sole breadwinner. We had our own place, and I paid the rent (mostly) on time. By then, I’d owned and operated my own business for eight months before it failed. Of course I considered myself a man! I would’ve been offended had anybody said differently. So why did it trouble me? I couldn’t figure it out, and I put it out of my mind. Nearly two years later it occurred to me that I’d been deceiving myself for the better part of my life. I’d convinced myself I was several things that in reality I wasn’t. One of those things was a man. I later understood that similar acts of self-deception were but one aspect of a mindset that I call “the imprisoned mind.”
I first noticed the imprisoned mind in my father when I was a child. Both of my parents were incarcerated for separate crimes in the late 1970s. They met in a coed prison where I was conceived and born. My mother was released early for good behavior shortly after my birth and never returned to prison. My father, however, was a habitual recidivist who eventually died in prison of natural causes. I only met him a handful of times throughout my childhood. He spent those times attempting to impress me with stories of his past criminal acts and how “respected” he was in prison. That was confusing for me because all that I cared about was whether he was going to stay out of prison and be my father. Up until that point, the few interactions we did have consisted of him promising me the world, only to never deliver on those promises. I was devastated by his lies, as any child would be. I later understood that he never intended to lie or let me down. He truly believed that he could and would deliver on those promises each time. It was his misfortune that sent him back to prison and that absolved him of any responsibility for breaking his promises. He convinced himself that he never lied to me and couldn’t understand my disappointment. Self-delusion epitomizes the imprisoned mind.
I thought my father was crazy back then. My opinion of him would evolve over time as I encountered and became more familiar with the imprisoned mind. I vowed to never be like my father. And that I would never adopt his mentality or lifestyle. It took a cell door to one day slam behind me to realize that life’s circumstances were such that I’d become him without even realizing it. I learned firsthand that the imprisoned mind causes us to deceive ourselves by rationalizing our illogical behavior. It causes us to convince ourselves that we have life figured out, and anyone who doubts or questions us is intellectually inferior. Unlike most men with the imprisoned mind, my incarceration lifted the fog of deception, allowing me to view reality once again. My newfound clarity brought about the realization that not only had I lost sight of my vows, but my life’s course had been drastically impacted because of it. My cell became tangible evidence that my life had taken an unexpected turn. Visiting my daughter through glass brought back memories of doing the same with my own father. That memory shocked my conscience. I realized that the ripple effect of my decisions impacted more than just myself. The fact that something so obvious had never occurred to me was troubling. The unpleasantness of my newfound reality demanded that I attempt to understand what the mindset was and figure out why I’d unknowingly adopted it. To determine this, I began to look back upon my life in hopes of detecting where it all went wrong. What I discovered was life-altering, but I never imagined where it would lead me.
When I was twenty months old, my sisters, cousins, and I were taken hostage in our home by two crazed drug addicts who’d previously stabbed our neighbor in a drug deal gone wrong. Family members of the neighbor who’d been stabbed pursued his attackers, who then ran to our house, kicked in the front door, and took us hostage. We were eventually rescued by the police, but not before one attacker was killed in front of us. A few months later, I was pushed off a roof, breaking my leg. These two incidents are my earliest memories and continue to affect me today.
I thought about the hardships of growing up biracial during the 1980s. I recalled how emotionally overwhelming it was to experience racism from both races. I remember feeling inadequate, as neither of my parents’ families seemed to want anything to do with me. At six years old, I developed separation anxiety and abandonment issues after two of my three sisters ran away from home. At eleven years old, I experienced depression after my third sister left home, leaving me alone. I then convinced myself that smoking marijuana would make me happy. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s when I believe my imprisoned mind started.
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Tracing the development of the imprisoned mind begins with childhood. Stories of childhood abuses and neglect are prevalent throughout “the hood” and prisons. Growing up, I remember listening to “homies” openly talk about their adverse childhood experiences. A homey once told me about watching his mom kill his dad. It was chilling to hear him describe seeing the bullet pierce his father’s chest as if it were a scene from a movie and not his actual life. Another spoke of his backside being beaten by his stepdad in such gory detail that I was reminded of hearing similar stories of slaves being whipped by their masters. I remember feeling uneasy each time I listened to one of these stories. I mean, what’s a kid supposed to say to someone who’s being so open about such horrific personal experiences? All I’d say was, “Damn! That’s messed up,” or, “Man! That ain’t right.” I thought it was a coincidence when I began hearing many of the same stories in prison. Sure, each story is different, but they’re all still painfully similar. It was clear to me that each individual continued to be plagued by their past experiences as if they had only recently happened. Yet each man had no clue how their past continued to affect their present.
It didn’t take long for me to notice how emotionally detached everyone seemed to be while recalling their vividly horrific experiences. Some told their stories as if they were no big deal, casually joking about them. One person laughed about being beaten, at the age of seven, by his mother’s boyfriend. He had a gun put to his head because he’d urinated while asleep on his mom’s couch. “Shit,” the man chuckled as he recalled the story, “it made me stronger, and best believe I didn’t piss myself again after that!” Of everyone who has told me a story of childhood traumas, only one person ever choked up while recalling his traumatic experience. Even then, he continued to tell his story with such numbness that I began to wonder if there was a relationship between childhood trauma and incarceration. By that point, I’d become aware of my own emotional detachment and subsequent imprisoned mindset due to childhood trauma, but I wondered just how common this link was in prison. By undertaking to research and write Imprisoned Minds, I set out to find the answer.
I’ve been interested in human behavior since I can remember. Figuring out why people do the things that they do consumed much of my childhood curiosity. And it continues to this day. I began my informal studies in psychology during middle school. These studies only intensified during my incarceration. I’ve formally taken classes and informally read whatever books I could get my hands on to better understand myself and others. Through my studies, I discovered sociology, and I began research in criminology after taking an InsideOut Prison Exchange Program class in 2016. I’ve taken human subjects and qualitative interviewing training through Arizona State University, and I’ve personally interviewed over 200 prisoners for two groundbreaking Participatory Action Research projects. Together, my studies, my training, and over two decades of experience with prisoners and incarceration make me uniquely qualified to write about the role of trauma in incarceration.
But I struggled with how to best advance the imprisoned mind idea. I wasn’t even sure who, if anyone, would be interested in an argument from someone who is incarcerated and lacks an academic degree. That is, until a wise man told me: “It’s not about the degree. It’s the experience living that life and with being incarcerated, having the access to prisoners who can support the idea that’s unique.” I decided the only way to lend credibility to my claim would be to tell the stories of the men who I’m referring to as having the imprisoned mind: prisoners. I set out to find those on the unit who had the mindset and were willing to share their life story with me and the world. I was surprised and pleased to discover that many prisoners were eager to have their stories told. I sat with each man and took notes by hand, as recording devices are prohibited, while they recounted their life stories to me. I interviewed in our cells. I interviewed in the middle of the prison yard. I interviewed in the Arizona heat. Each meeting had to be broken down into several sessions as time permitted. We had to work around lockdowns and count times. I processed the information acquired from each discussion and wrote each subject’s story in the first person. Imprisoned Minds presents these case studies, detailing how instances of trauma can contribute to a singular, common outcome: prison.
Excerpted from Imprisoned Minds: Lost Boys, Trapped Men, and Solutions from Within the Prison by Erik S. Maloney and Kevin A. Wright. Copyright © 2024 by Rutgers University Press. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.
Image: Jr Korpa/Unsplash
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