Being a Prisoner is Like Being a Ghost

Being a Prisoner is Like Being a Ghost
Marshall Project - Life inside by Fernando Rivas
10-24-2019

I still remember that moment six years ago when I became a ward of the state—a federal inmate. Shackled hand and foot, I arrived by bus at the penitentiary and was ordered to send my clothing and other personal effects home in a cardboard box. I had to fill out a form telling my jailers whether I wished to be resuscitated and what to do with my body and whom to notify in the event of my death. It was one of the first shocks of being in prison, the first loss of self.

​My wife told me she felt weird receiving and opening the box and seeing my street clothing as if I was already dead, as if I'd been killed in action in some foreign war, blown up by an IED so that nothing remained, not even ashes. Years before, she’d given me a good luck charm to wear on a tiny gold chain around my neck. I'd had to give that up as well. What would protect me from bad things now? From the evil eye? I was allowed to keep my wedding ring as consolation so that if I died I'd still belong somewhere else, even if only in spirit.

In spirit. Not in the flesh. To put it in vulgar terms: From that point on my ass belonged to the BOP.

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