39 Lessons Learned in Prison

Dorothy Maraglino, serving a life sentence in California, shares a long list of lessons learned in prison.

1. The people in the position to help the most have the power to hurt the most.
2. “I’m sorry” should not be the intermission between disrespectful acts.
3. Every prisoner represents multiple victims and many represent lives lost.
4. If you think that perfection is impossible, you’ll give yourself permission to be less than you could be.
5. In the moment, no written law, policy, or rules has more power than a CO’s direct order. (CO is Corrections Officer)
6. A couple can be together 15 years in prison and last less than a month on the outside.
7. What adversely affects the staff will eventually adversely affect the inmates.
8. The deep waters observed in some is nothing more than a flash flood. More often than not, the waters recede.
9. Impersonal sex is easy, intimacy is hard.
10. To a L.W.O.P, (Life Without Parole) inmate, freedom is up to the man upstairs — and the man upstate.
11. Some people have a mature persona with pockets of childishness, others are mostly childlike with pockets of maturity.
12. In prison, no one but yourself – or a truly dysfunctional person – will make your needs a priority.
13. Few inmates lose sleep over their crimes.
14. Many prisoners choose existence over living because it takes less effort.
15. Prisoners who dedicate themselves to thriving in prison have a tendency to stay or come back to prison.
16. People who go around pushing buttons will eventually break one.
17. No good deed goes unpunished.
18. Even senseless crimes have a reason behind them.
19. If you don’t know which room is the step-up room, chances are you live in it
20. Just because someone knows your body, doesn’t mean they know you
21. Sometimes there are too many hours in a day
22. You’re a part of the game, even if you do not choose to play
23. In prison, people believe your “labels” before they believe you
24. In prison, as in life, who you know will trump what you know.
25. Rumors are taken as truth and the truth is discounted as rumor.
26. Your quality of life does not just depend on how much you buy, it also depends on how much you can keep
27. Loyalty is fragile and love is an illusion
28. Motives hide behind most acts of generosity
29. Everybody, even the most notorious, can relate to being a “no-body”
30. Easy lessons are learned the hard way
31. Bad things never stop on their own and good things never start on their own
32. “Take the threat out before the threat takes you out” is a true prisoner’s motto
33. The cure is often more destructive than the disease
34. Among infinite hopelessness, you can still find a grain of hope.
35. Predators hide under a cloak of rehabilitation
36. De-evolution is real
37. Those who live by the status-quo, will treat you according to the status-quo
38. Truth will always travel slower than fiction
39. People will treat you not how you say you should be treated, but by how you show them you will allow yourself to be treated.

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