Locked up? An inmate from Bridgeport admits regret

Like so many before and after him who have chased euphoria, the drugs were good and the high rapturous — but the fallout costly.

There is right and there is wrong — and then there is something in the middle of the two called an explanation that attempts to explain away the rightness or the wrongness of a particular action.

I think like most people, I really don’t give much thought to criminals sitting behind bars. With the exception of those who are mentally ill, it was their willing and knowing actions that put them on the periphery of society and in many ways, they are forgotten by the public at large.

And I certainly don’t give thought to those who now have nothing but time on their hands and want to expose some wrong-doing by others or offer a mea culpa for the harm they have done and caused others. To put it bluntly, I tend to ignore them just like they ignored the laws that are in place to protect people and keep them and their belongings safe.

But I received a letter from a Bridgeport man incarcerated at a federal correctional facility in Bennettsville, South Carolina, that changed my mind about some of those forgotten voices.

It wasn’t the first letter I have received from a man behind bars, but it was the first commenting on a column I wrote and how it related to his life.

The column, “Addicted? The color of skin matters,” was about how the conversation has changed since drugs infiltrated the suburbs and real access to help — including how addicted people are treated — is now available.

The inmate wrote in his letter, “I wish to say as a person of color (Hispanic) and an addict, I am one of the casualties . ... The only help we received was a severe prison sentence.”

Call it what you want: a reflection of regret made in the solitude of a long prison sentence, or simply a prisoner’s need to connect with someone not known by an inmate number.

What intrigued me to write him back was his request to get complimentary copies of the paper so he could keep up with what was happening in Connecticut — and something else very simple: he had beautiful penmanship, something that was remarked on by other Register staff. His language was concise, educated.

He had not revealed his crimes in his first letter, but since they were committed in the Register’s coverage area, it wasn’t hard to look him up.

And he was no choirboy. He had a nasty habit of pulling a mask over his face and robbing banks at gunpoint.

My readers know from previous columns that I believe in bad guys and I believe they are where they are supposed to be: locked up. But my readers also know that I had a difficult early life and at one time, my footsteps could have led me in the same direction. I know how thin that tripwire can be when you are balancing precariously on it.

The letter writer’s life of crime started at age 14 with “stealing cars and breaking into various establishments.” A year later, he began to use heroin.

Now, at age 60, with five years still to go on an 18-year prison sentence, he corresponded about a life of crime and the drugs that were like a bodyguard shielding him as he committed crime after crime.

“Once I began with that and cocaine, I never used any other drug ...” he wrote.

I have not revealed his name or his inmate number and I won’t since I have no idea how dragging their name back in print would affect the family. But let me give readers a condensed version of him based on his letters.

He grew up on the West Side of Bridgeport in an area he says wasn’t very bad but “just me choosing to make the decisions I did without any consideration to my family or the consequences. As a result, this is my third time in prison and in a federal prison at that.”

“My immediate and extended family were always very supportive but they could never understand why I continued to waste all my talents and skills on drugs, then crime.”

Despite the drug use, he “enjoyed learning” and earned his GED at age 20 while serving his first stint in jail and obtained an associate degree during his second. When he was released, he worked at various jobs in Bridgeport and Westport “but as always, I tried to go it alone and eventually slipped back into relapse.”

“Being a loner in prison is a survival mechanism,” he wrote. “But in the real world, you get lost.”

And 13 years with time still to go on the clock is a long time to sit in a cell and think about yourself and all the things that could have been different.

“Regretfully, heroin has haunted me all these years — or shall I say my addiction,” he wrote. “I always continued to drift back to what I felt comfortable with, and that has kept me constantly incarcerated.”

I don’t think this inmate’s story is different than many others. He was bright, enjoyed learning, and had the support of family. That is a pretty solid foundation.

I was raised with the understanding that if you walk on the opposite side of the law, then you have to expect whatever happens. So, I have always believed when an inmate facing life in prison or a long prison sentence says he or she has regrets, it is because he or she is sitting in a cell watching life go by as the years pile up and their hair is turning grey — not because they regret what they have done.

But Michael Lawlor, the former undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy and Management, strongly disagreed with me during a previous conversation. In his efforts to bring criminal justice reform to Connecticut, he spent time in the prisons and said he knew many men — some who were killers — who sincerely regretted what they did — and not because they were locked up, but because of what it took from their victims.

In five years, the Bridgeport man incarcerated in South Carolina will step outside prison gates a free man again after 18 years. He admits he is not sure what he will do or where he will do it.

“I really like CT, but it could be too much of a trigger for me, especially if I go it alone,” he wrote.

Like so many before and after him who have chased euphoria, the drugs were good and the high rapturous — but the fallout costly.

It is so costly, that I have yet to receive a letter from a prisoner that the ride to the sky was worth it.

Locked up? An inmate from Bridgeport admits regret.