What would prison be like?

On very rare occasions, I wonder that.

See a documentary on TV or read a story about it, but never before have I really FELT a bit nervous about that question.

No, I’m not going to prison and, fortunately, I don’t know too many people who have, but finished a FANTASTIC book called The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison.

Now, the book is almost 20 years old, but the tension is real.

You wonder how you would react to the intimidation, the extortion, the sexual predators and it’s daunting, a whole other side of society that you almost never think about.

There are the larger issues that we face:

• can criminals be rehabilitated?
• are some people just inherently evil?
• is someone’s life still worth equal to that of others even after that person has taken another’s?

The book doesn’t pass these types of judgments, but the author who had “brass balls” (they say you need “brass balls to work at Leavenworth”) raises them in a very fair way.

Reading books about people on the edge definitely takes you out of the comfort zone.

Prison, they say, helps a man (or woman) get down to the core of who he is.

Reading this book helps you think about the question of how you might react…and what kind of person you are.

I love books that blow your perspective on the world wide open and this one did.