May 20, 1966 THE PRISON MIRROR*, Stillwater, Minnesota
Harley Sorensen, Editor
***
One of the men interviewed on KDWB radio was asked in his taped interview to tell what a typical day in here is like. He replied that a day in prison is much like a day on the outside: You get up, go to work, eat lunch, come home from work, eat, loaf around awhile, then go to bed.
What he said was true, and yet he knows – and we all know – that a day in prison isn’t like a day on the outside. Life in prison isn’t like life on the outside.
What is prison like? It’s not the same for everyone; the prison I know is different than the prison you know.
I have been asked to dip back into my nine years under lock and key and describe the prison I know. I’ll do my best … and hope that I’ll also be able to describe, at least in part, the prison you know.
PRISON IS A PLACE where the first thing you notice is a very shiny spittoon. You wonder who had to polish that spittoon, and you wonder how much of your life in prison will be spent polishing spittoons. (You are later relieved to find out that none of it is.)
PRISON IS A PLACE where the first prisoner you see looks like an All-American college boy, and you’re surprised. Later you’re disgusted because people on the outside still have the same prejudices about prisoners that you used to have.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you write letters and can’t think of anything to say. Where you gradually write fewer and fewer letters and finally stop writing altogether.
PRISON IS A PLACE where hope springs eternal, where each parole board appearance means a chance to to get out, even if the odds are hopelessly against you.
PRISON IS A PLACE where the flame in every man burns low. For some it goes out. For most it flickers weakly, sometimes flashes brightly, but never seems to burn as bright as it once did.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you find gray hairs in your head, or where you find your hair starting to disappear. It’s a place where you get false teeth, stronger glasses, and aches and pains you never felt before. It’s a place where you grow old and worry about it.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you hate through clenched teeth, where you want to beat and choke and kick and scratch. But just as often as not you don’t know who you want to do these things to, and you wonder if the psychologists know what they’re talking about when they say you actually hate yourself.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you learn that nobody needs you, where the outside world goes on without you.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you can go for years without feeling the touch of a human hand, where you can go for months without hearing a kind word. It is a place where your friendships are shallow and you know it.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you hear about a friend’s divorce, and you didn’t even know he was married. It is a place where you hear about your neighbor’s kids graduating from school – and you thought they hadn’t started yet.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you feel sorry for yourself. Then you get disgusted with yourself for feeling sorry for yourself; then you get mad for feeling disgusted, and then try to mentally change the subject.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you lose respect for the law, because you see it raw and naked, twisted and bent and ignored and blown out of proportion to suit the people who enforce it.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you’re smarter than the parole board, because you know which guys will go straight and which ones won’t. You’re wrong just as often as the board members are, but you never admit it and neither do they.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you forget the sound of a baby’s cry. You forget the sound of a dog’s bark or even the sound of the dial tone on the telephone.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you wait for a promised visit. When it doesn’t come, you worry about a car accident. Then, when you find out the reason your visitors didn’t come, you’re glad because it wasn’t serious – and disappointed because such a little thing could keep them from coming to see you.
PRISON IS A PLACE where a letter from home or from a lawyer can be like a telegram from the War Department. When you see it lying on your bed, you’re afraid to open it. But you do anyway, and you usually end up disappointed or angry.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you see men you do not admire and you wonder if you are like them. It is a place where you strive to remain civilized, but where you lose ground and know it.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you forget what put you there, where you have a vague idea you are being punished but you don’t know for what.
PRISON IS A PLACE where, if you’re married, you watch your marriage die. It is a place where you learn that absence does not make the heart grow fonder, and where you stop blaming your wife for wanting a real live man instead of a fading memory of one.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you go to bed before you’re tired, where you pull the blanket over your head when you’re not cold. It is a place where you escape – by reading, by playing games, by dreaming, or by going mad.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you fool yourself, where you promise yourself you’ll live a better life after you leave. Sometimes you do, but more often you don’t.
PRISON IS A PLACE where you get out some day. When you do you wonder how everyone else can be so calm when you’re so excited. When the bus driver goes over 25 miles per hour you want to tell him to slow down, but you don’t because you know it’s foolish.
* This story was published again in The Prison Mirror, April 17, 1970 (Tom Hamilton, editor), with the following [Editor’s Note: “Prison Is A Place” first appeared as a column in The Prison Mirror on May 20, 1966. Later it won an award as the best column appearing in a penal publication in 1966. Since then it has been reprinted in almost every penal publication in the United States and Canada. Often it is printed without a byline, or with a note that the author is “unknown.” To set the record straight, Harley Sorensen, the author of “Prison Is A Place,” is known. He is also alive and well and living a short, happy life as Prison Mirror Intertype operator.]
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The Harley Sorensen Project 
I have always wanted to know who wrote this poem. I was given this poem by a prisoner who had come to my school on some program to educate kids about prison life. That was in 1981 – I was in 7th grade. I still have the original printout. It is quite worn and tattered now. It was a poem that touched me on some deep level that I felt compelled to keep it. I came across it tonight in a zip lock baggie buried in one of my dresser drawers and decided to see if it had ever been published. I am glad to finally put a name and face to the heart that went into these words. They fill me with compassion for those wayward soles in prison and remind me of my many blessings.