FROM THE PROLOGUE

I was evicted from prison.

Officially, I was released by emergency court order specifying: IMMEDIATE DISCHARGE.

'Immediate' is not a word used in prison. Nothing in prison is ever 'immediate.' Immediate is scary. Attaching 'discharge' to it is like tossing water on a grease fire — it makes whatever it's attached to incrementally worse and much hazier.

Immediate discharges are the stuff of prison lore. They are whispered of over inedible meals with the reverence required of an existential mystery. Every inmate has heard tales of an immediate discharge that happened in the dim past, in another prison, to some guy.

A few inmates, eating meals by themselves for obvious reasons, will, if asked, boldly claim that they 'seen one 'bout eight years ago down Cheshire way.'

No one listens: it's one thing to believe in UFOs, it's another to claim you were kidnapped by one.

. . .

This book is simply a travelogue. A journey by a forty-something attorney up the backstairs of the criminal justice system. A white guy with a particular set of skills acquired over a long career that made me a nightmare for no one but did allow me to survive. Think Liam Neeson in Taken who gets to Paris and . . . sets up an apartment and manages to buy groceries and go for a daily jog without pissing off the French.

Anything else — conclusions about me, the criminal justice system, prisons, inmates, attorneys, judges, monolithic bureaucracies, crime and punishment — I leave to the reader.

You are in a better position than I ever will be to decide who got it right, Dostoevsky or Mike Tyson.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." — Dostoevsky

"When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap — people shouldn't read that." — Tyson

RR Hicks, Prologue  ·  Farmington Valley, CT  ·  Winter 2025