I WENT TO JAIL FOR MYKID
After her daughter was arrested for armed robbery, this mother voluntarily went behind bars so she could experience it for herself
The A&E reality series “60 Days In” follows eight innocent civilians as they pose as inmates at the Clark County Jail in Jeffersonville, Ind., in order to expose corruption inside the system. Ahead of the show’s Season 2 premiere Thursday at 9 p.m., participant Monalisa Johnson, a 48-year-old TV producer from Queens, tells The Post’s ANDREA
MORABITO how she went to jail in order to reconnect with her incarcerated 23-year-old daughter.
I’VE been around the party scene in my life — I went to college, and my ex-husband was a radio personality. But I’d never seen heroin until I got to jail. I was in the bathroom when I saw the three women: One tied up the other’s arm while a third tapped the veins and pierced the skin with a needle. I tried to keep my cool, as if I’d seen this before, but I was thinking, “Is this really happening right in front of my own eyes?”
The next thing that went through my mind was, “Has my daughter done this?”
My daughter, Sierra, was arrested for armed robbery in 2012 and is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Georgia. It was never the future I imagined for my only child, whom I nicknamed “Mother Teresa,” since she was always caring for others. She was a good student, never got in trouble at school, and was active in softball, volleyball, cheerleading, drama club and Girl Scouts.
When she reached high school, I noticed a change. Sierra started to worry more about what her friends thought, wearing short skirts and listening to different music to be seen as “cool.” That would drive me insane. During her second year of college at the Art Institute of Atlanta, when she was 19, I discovered she was using the party drug Molly. Two weeks later, she called to tell me she’d been arrested. At first she wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but I learned about the armed robbery from the district attorney and the detective who arrested Sierra. There were two codefendants: Sierra’s friend and the girl’s boyfriend, a 29-year-old out on parole who, from my understanding, had done this before — latched onto an unsuspecting girl and used her. Sierra was just trying to fit in.
I spent my life savings of $37,000 to hire an attorney and flew to Atlanta. Due to Georgia law, Sierra was given a mandatory 10-year sentence with no option for parole. When the decision came down, all I
“It became very difficult to relate to my daughter because some of the things she told me seemed so far-fetched.” — Monalisa Johnson
could think was, “How will we survive this?” I was out of money to try to appeal the sentence. I was so depressed; I felt like my only child was gone and there was nothing I could do.
At the same time, I love my daughter unconditionally, and I knew that she needed me. It was difficult for us to communicate — each 15-minute call to the prison cost $25, and I would spend $1,000 each time I flew from New York to Georgia to visit her. In the beginning I went twice a month; I eventually had to cut it to every other month because of the financial strain.
Some of our visits ended in heated arguments, like whether Sierra would continue her education — she’s now taking classes through the mail — and when she got a tattoo in prison. I’ve also had to watch her go through bouts of depression; she would come through those doors to the visitors’ room and try to convince me that everything was OK, but I could look at her and tell it was not. I knew she was holding back the truth so I wouldn’t worry. As time passed, it became very difficult to relate to my daughter because some of the things she told me seemed so farfetched and so unreal that at times I almost did not believe her. I just could not imagine that some of the things she told me were really happening.
When the producers approached me in the fall of 2015 about participating in “60 Days In,” I realized that this would help me understand what was going on with my daughter and her world. I wanted to know for myself what was going on in those cells and how inmates like Sierra are being treated. In 2014 I founded Parents With Incarcerated Children — an online guide that helps families locate resources like legal aid, emotional assistance and education for their child — and I was accused of not knowing what this life is like, having never been to jail myself. I figured, well, let me go.
During my time in jail, I saw inmates doing heroin and other drugs. I suffered severe sleep deprivation from the constant noise and paranoia, and I even caught a staph infection and had to endure a homemade enema for severe constipation.
Being in jail did change my perception of the system. There were a lot of people in there that, despite committing a crime, were good people at heart who were driven by drug addiction or were raised in a bad lifestyle.
More importantly, it brought Sierra and me closer together. She’s so much more open with me now — for the first five visits after I got out, six hours apiece, all we talked about was our war stories.
But it’s when she calls me crying because she can’t get her teeth taken care of that I regret knowing as much as I do about the system, because I now know its pitfalls and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I saw with my own two eyes that human rights are being violated every day in jail, so I know it’s happening to her. That was very devastating to come to that realization.
Now, Sierra tells me all the time how much she loves me, and how she’ll never forget my sacrifice. She has six years left on her sentence, and I dream about the day she gets released. I imagine that I will feel so relieved and so free, as I have felt symbolically incarcerated myself. I hope that she will fulfill her goal of owning a bakery, and I pray that she will be stronger than ever, ready to face the world and live a righteous life.