There’s a long tradition of people writing poetry behind bars. Besides letters, poems are the written communication used most by prisoners to reach out to others or to communicate with deeper parts of oneself. Some of my favorite prison poets include Ethridge Knight and Jimmy Santiago Baca. But imagine my surprise when my niece who spent not quite a year in a Texas jail sent me three poems from her time behind bars. And she sent them as they were written in a notebook.

It’s touching to see how she felt like she had a “scarlet letter” even after a year, how she knew what lay ahead was terrifying, and how there was nothing but warehousing going on for her drug habit.

While she’s in her 20’s, she has the wisdom to see how she’s been silenced and has had rights taken away. But what I find profound, is that she also is aware how easy it is to lose hope and motivation–even with a first offense.

But perhaps my favorite of her poems is this one. She realizes what heroin has done to her young life. “I’ve been locked behind bars and time has been murdered.”

This is not a new story but it is one we need to pay attention to. Yes, she needed treatment, but jail gave her a kind of death. Now, out in the world, she pays a few hundred dollars a month for probation, drug testing, and the “privilege” of wearing an ankle bracelet.She writes that the costs are broken down like so:

“$65/month for probation fees
$182/month for ankle monitor
$10 per drug test at random
$1400 for SMART residential “treatment” program (jail rehab)
$260 for aftercare
And there’s probably some other court costs and what not
that I can’t even remember at the moment.”

She must take a long bus ride for testing several times a week, and she stays home nights. She still has no real treatment follow-up program to what she went through in jail. Luckily, she has some family standing behind her and has found a place to live, and a few friends to share her world with. But she has no job.

This is reentry in the United States.