Josh Carlson’s
young adult years were fun, but eventually everything comes to and end.
His world changed when he got arrested for
aggravated assault, which is a first degree felony, and found out he would be
going to state prison. He was arrested on March 30, 2010 in Austin, Texas. He
was pulled over while driving and the officer saw that Carlson had a warrant
for his arrest. He was wanted for punching a guy in the face and breaking his
cheekbone because the guy was being rude to Carlson’s girlfriend at the time.
“Before I went to prison I didn’t care about anything. I was partying, being
bad and not smart at all. I was respected, though, because a lot of people were
scared and knew what I was capable of,” Carlson said.
He knew what he was doing was wrong but it didn’t matter to him at the time.
“That was just how I lived my life. Everybody does it differently and that’s
how I chose to,” Carlson said.
His world changed when he got arrested for aggravated assault, which is a first
degree felony, and found out he would be going to state prison.
“I just got my mind right and had to stay focused. The more you think about the
situation, the harder it is to deal with. You just have to be focused,” Carlson
said.
Carlson was closest to his mother, Lori Carlson.
“When I found out he got arrested and would be going to prison, it was like an
indescribable sense of anxiety and fear,” Lori said.
First-degree felony prison terms range from five to 99 years. He was sentenced
to five years in prison, but got out on parole. Parole allows prisoners to
serve at least half of their original sentence. Since Josh got out after three
years, he will serve the rest of sentence, two years, on parole. He meets with
a parole officer once a month and takes a drug test. A person can go up for
parole once they have reached their half way mark of their sentence. Not
everybody is granted parole; some people are denied and have to serve their
whole term in jail.
“I was in prison for like three years,” Josh said.
He arrived at his first prison, the Holliday Unit in Huntsville, Texas, in
August 2011.
“You have to be ready for anything. You never know what’s going to go on and
you hear all these stories about prison so you just have to be prepared for
what goes on,” Josh said.
The Texas Department of Corrections has rules that are made to make inmates not
want to come back, like the limited time allowed to do activities, and
restrictions with visits, telephone calls, showers, and meals.
“The inmates were crazy. It’s a totally different world in there. Nothing in
jail is the same as the outside world,” Josh said.
To be a corrections officer in Texas, only a high school diploma is required.
“Seventy-five percent of the guards were real controlling and acted like they
ran you. They were rude and disrespectful, but some were super nice and
generous and would sneak things in for us from the outside,” Josh said.
Deaths from natural causes accounted for more than half of all deaths in jails.
“The worst thing I saw was this guy that had a heart attack,” Josh said. “An
inmate went and started giving him CPR and it was working, it was bringing him
back, but the guards came and told him to stop and that he wasn’t aloud to
touch him. They said nobody was aloud to touch him, that they had to wait for
medical to come. If they would have let him do the CPR he would be alive but
since he couldn’t touch him, he died.”
Ninety percent of males in prison are in gangs, according to www.ngcrc.com
“Prison is just a different world. It depends who you are and how you handle
it,” Josh said. “For me, it was easy because I knew a lot of people had my back
but I had to have a lot of people’s backs too. If a riot breaks out and your
friends are involved, you have to go in and help, no matter what.”
Everybody learns differently in their life.
“I realized I needed to change when I was in there. I was away from family and
friends and I lost a lot,” Josh said. “Whenever I saw the types of people in
there, it just reminded me to not come back because a lot of them still had
that attitude of not caring.”
Change is crucial for people if they don’t want to return to jail.
“I think he learned from that experience because he knew he couldn’t keep doing
the things he was doing and survive,” Josh’s grandmother, Carolyn Burt, said.
Prison is made to help people, teach them lessons, and show that there are
major consequences for breaking the law.
“Some people learn the easy way and some people learn the hard way,” Josh said.
“I learned the hard way because there was no way that I was going to change if
I didn’t do all this time. Some people have to learn hard the way.”
Each
correction facility has different rules. Josh went to seven different prisons
during his five year sentence. At his sixth stop, the Billy Moore Unit in
Jacksonville, Texas, allowed inmates to be out of their cells from 8:00 a.m. to
10:00 a.m.
“A typical day for me, I would wake up, go out to the yard for rec and play
basketball for a couple hours, come back and watch tv, work out, gamble, and just
chill and talk with friends,” Josh said. “Then at night whenever the shifts for
the guards changed, I would wait for this one guard to come and talk to me and
I would be up all night talking to her. I just had to always keep busy.”
According to Josh, while in prison, the
inmates would gamble for food. Whoever won, got the food that other people put
in. Food is very limited in jail, so if somebody has extra, it’s a big deal.
Prison facilities in Texas give each inmate 50 dollars whenever they’re being
released.
“Getting
released was a wonderful feeling, but I was nervous,” Josh said. “It had been a
while since I had been out and I didn’t want to slip up and do something wrong.
I had to remember everything that I told myself while I was in prison. It was
hard to stay right.”
Everybody that has been incarcerated for a long period of time has to adjust
back to the free world once they are released.
“When I first got out I met my family at the riverwalk in San Antonio,” Josh said. “We went out to eat Mexican food
and while I was eating a group of mariachis came up behind me and starting
playing their music real loud. It was weird because I wasn’t use to anything
like that at all. In prison you don’t just come up behind somebody without
saying something.”
Sixty-seven percent of people go back on repeated charges within the first
three years of being out, according to bls.gov.
“I’m smarter, more wise and think before I act now that I have been out. I just
do what I have to do to not go back,” Josh said.
Prison can be very helpful in the long run.
“He’s different now because he’s more calm, focused, enjoys his job, and makes
new friends,” Burt said.
Being in prison changed Josh for the better.
“My best qualities now are being real, good at basketball and I try to help
people out even if I don’t know them,” Josh said. “I try to help people become
better and give advice whenever somebody has a problem.”
It didn’t take Josh long to get back to the free world once he was released.
“It didn’t take long, I adjusted quick. I just had to think differently,” Josh
said.
Being gone for a while, things tend to change. Nothing stays the same and the
world doesn’t stop for anybody.
“The main thing that I noticed that was different whenever I got out was how
people acted,” Josh said. “Some people act like nothing bad could ever happen
to them and they just don’t know. I try to tell them to stay straight because
not everybody is built for prison.”
