For many Federal inmates, the tail end of your incarceration does not take place in prison.  Instead, in an effort to reintroduce you to society (and to keep overflowing population levels down), you are often directed to spend the last one month to the last six months of your sentence in a Federally-designated Halfway House; some of the rules have changed since I came home, but back then you were only permitted to spend 10% of your sentence in the halfway house (up to a maximum of six months), so if you had been sentenced to 36 months you could expect to spend the last 3 in the halfway house.  There were exceptions to this rule; in fact, if you were a participant in the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program (RDAP) in prison as I had been, it was mandated that you spend as close to six months as possible in the halfway house regardless of how short your sentence originally had been.  So in my case, despite having been sentenced to 46 months, I knew I would be spending my last five or six months in the Dallas-area halfway house.

To some inmates, the idea of a halfway house is a big step up from prison.  While technically still the property of the Bureau of Prisons, you get to move around in society, find a job, plan for your final release, receive visitors on the weekends, and even request full 24 or 48-hour passes to spend at home.  Then, when you were down to only two months left, you could also apply to be switched to home confinement, where you’d be able to sleep at home every night.  To me, that sounded like heaven.

Other inmates, especially some that had been locked up for more than five years, told a different tale.  They described unworkable rules worse than we lived under in prison, a more confused bureaucracy, and a multitude of hassles that simply were not worth the trouble.  The main thrust of their argument seemed to be that it was easier to stay put for a few extra months, survive with the daily routine they’d become completely accustomed to, and then be released directly from prison to home.  These inmates made the halfway house sound more like a teasing taste of freedom, without most of the joys but with nearly all of the headaches.  In prison they had all their meals prepared, clothes provided, a generally consistent living situation (surrounded for the most part by the same neighbors day after day), and only a few hours of work (or pseudo-work).  The last thing they wanted was a new batch of wardens telling them what to do.

For my part, up until a few months before my release I was completely gung-ho about it.  I had a job promised – working for the same transportation company I’d been employed by when I’d first come to prison – a stable living situation, and a woman waiting for me who I knew without question I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  I couldn’t imagine what problems a halfway house could throw in my way.  Besides, the way I figured it, just being able to see Heather again in person - to gaze into her blue eyes and feel the warmth her spirit radiated towards me – was an experience I’d been thinking about day and night for years.  That was worth any level of hassle I could imagine.

My enthusiasm was dampened somewhat when I learned the job I had been counting on for a few years suddenly was no longer available.  As it was explained to me, the company management had changed, and they no longer wanted to hire anyone who had a criminal record.  I did find that a bit funny, since I knew that one of their dispatchers in California had multiple DUI convictions, and some of their drivers had experienced scrapes with the law.  While I understood that this was their policy (and perhaps it had something to do with their insurance rider which covered all the vehicles and drivers, although I’m just guessing) I felt rather blindsided by the news, as I’d checked numerous times during my incarceration to make sure they wanted me back.  If I had known, I could have tried to line something up along the way, which would have been entirely possible.  Instead, there wasn’t time to deal with it anymore from the inside; I would just have to search for a job when I’d arrived in Dallas.  More than anything, this had soured my outlook on going to the halfway house.  All those months when I could have been writing letters, asking people to make contacts, having Heather photocopy and print ideas for me…they’d been lost, because time after time I was reassured not to worry, a position was waiting for me whenever I was ready for it.

It wasn’t just the lack of time left which prevented me from doing any last-minute job hunting.  A new complication had arisen: I had no idea where the Dallas-area halfway house was located.  I’d heard rumors that it was somewhere in south Dallas, but someone had suggested it might actually be south *of* Dallas.  Heather had been searching on the internet for information, and eventually was able to locate a phone number.  But when she called to get an address so she could give me an idea of the location in relation to the Dallas transit system, they wouldn’t tell her…for “security reasons.”  What kind of crap was that?  How is someone supposed to find the place without an address?  Fortunately she was eventually able to find the address on the internet, and print out some maps for me.  My former boss Patty also printed some maps, showing the closest transit location…which wasn’t very close.  As it turned out, the halfway house was located in Hutchins, which is a good ten to fifteen miles south of the southern reaches of Dallas.  Being able to move around was suddenly looking a bit more difficult.  I’d just have to wait and get the lay of the land when I arrived.

First, however, there was the process of actually getting there.  Personally, I hate to fly.  And I think I make everybody else on the plane even more nervous than I might be.  The last second to last time I flew it was suggested that perhaps I should consider not flying anymore; I did wind up taking a trip to Atlanta which I won on the radio in a Strip Trivia contest (photos still available on request), but I haven’t flown since then.  So when presented with the option, I chose to take the bus from Pennsylvania to Dallas.  I would have preferred to take Amtrak, but that was not an option they offered, due to the infrequency of trains.  If something went wrong with the bus, there was always the next one.

Anybody who has traveled long-distance on a bus knows that it is not the most comfortable mode of transportation…I had plenty of experience from my days with the transportation company, so at least I knew what to expect.  First of all, the bus is almost always packed tight, which means you’re sitting next to someone.  On occasion there will even be people standing in the aisle, waiting for seats to open up at the next major station.  Most of the passengers on the bus are loud and thoughtless, and a good percentage of them haven’t showered in a while; this isn’t necessarily their fault, as they may be stuck on the bus for two or three days depending on how long the trip is.  Any children on the bus are bound to be loud, or cry, or run around, or kick your seat, or spill things, or drop their empty soda bottle on the floor so it rolls from the front of the bus to the back over and over.  If it’s too hot, the air is stale and thick….if it’s too cold, there is a constant draft as if a window is open.  And, worst of all, too many of the passengers want to pass the time by making “single serving friends” (to steal a line from Fight Club).  In some ways, a cross-country bus ride makes prison seem like a vacation.

Before the trip was to begin, however, there were a few things I needed to do.   Most important among those tasks was the procurement of clothes for the journey.  When I’d come up from Texas on Amtrak to report to prison, I’d taken my blue overnight bag, one change of clothes, some CD’s, a portable CD player, and other items with me.  Then when my father drove me to prison, they gave him my clothes, watch, and driver’s license to take back with him.  If at all possible, the prison system wants you to have some street clothes sent in to wear when you’re released; if not, they provide a pair of jeans, some slip-on sneakers, and a shirt.  So I asked that my clothes be washed and sent in, along with my driver’s license and social security card.  This included my overcoat, since it was generally a balmy 30 degrees or colder in Pennsylvania, and my blue duffel bag which I’d carried with me to New York.  A couple of weeks before my release, I received a notice in the prison mail that my clothes had arrived.  So, I was basically set.  I bought a few travelling supplies at commissary: two big bags of M&M’s (one plain, one peanut) to snack on, a few new pairs of socks, stuff like that.  And I packed up some underclothes which were nearly new, as well as personal hygiene necessities.  I’d already mailed back the letters and books I’d collected over years (that’s an experience in itself – trying to put something like $30 in postage on a box using 30-cent stamps), except for a paperback or two for the bus ride.  Everything else – food, coffee, tea, my heavy landscape pants (a prized possession which while BOP property were passed on within the Landscape Crew from inmate to inmate) – I’d given to a few friends.  I was all set.

I knew the bus trip was going to be a long, tedious, tiring one.  I’d had my friend Patty mail me the itinerary so I could have a general idea of the stops and layovers.  The BOP doesn’t provide you such material, because they don’t want you planning unauthorized rendezvous with anyone along the way.  You’re supposed to travel directly, without deviation, from the pick-up spot to the halfway house.  We were told that the halfway house will expect us at particular times, and if we fail to appear or explain our delay (with proof) we could expect to be sent right back to prison.  I was suspicious about that, as you might expect, especially given the complexity of my bus schedule.  Delays, missed connections, overbooked buses, mechanical failures, and the like are rather common on Greyhound, and adjustments are constantly being made.  The trip I was planning for looked roughly like this:

Location Arrival Departure Layover
WILLIAMSPORT, PA    03:40pm 
LOCK HAVEN, PA  04:10pm 04:10pm 
BELLEFONTE, PA  04:45pm 04:45pm 
STATE COLLEGE, PA  05:05pm 05:09pm :04
PHILIPSBURG, PA  06:00pm 06:00pm 
CLEARFIELD, PA  06:25pm 06:25pm 
DU BOIS, PA  07:05pm   
DU BOIS, PA  Transfer 07:25pm :20
SYKESVILLE, PA  07:35pm 07:35pm 
BIG RUN, PA  07:45pm 07:45pm 
PUNXSUTAWNEY, PA  07:55pm 07:55pm 
INDIANA, PA  08:40pm 08:40pm 
APOLLO, PA  09:20pm 09:20pm 
VANDERGRIFT, PA  09:25pm 09:25pm 
MONROEVILLE, PA  09:50pm 09:50pm 
PITTSBURGH, PA  10:20pm   
PITTSBURGH, PA  Transfer 12:10am 1:50
COLUMBUS, OH  03:35am 04:30am :55
DAYTON, OH  05:50am   
DAYTON, OH  Transfer 09:00am 3:10
CINCINNATI, OH  10:00am 11:00am 1:00
LOUISVILLE, KY  12:45pm 01:25pm :40
ELIZABETHTOWN, KY  02:15pm 02:15pm 
BOWLING GREEN, KY  02:25pm 02:25pm 
NASHVILLE, TN  03:40pm 04:45pm 1:05
JACKSON, TN  06:55pm 07:05pm :10
MEMPHIS, TN  08:40pm 10:10pm 1:30
LITTLE ROCK, AR  12:25am 12:45am :20
SULPHUR SPRINGS, TX  04:30am 04:45am :15
DALLAS, TX  06:15am  

Looking over the ticket, the layovers or transfers in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Dayton were likely to by the worst of the journey.  Late night or early morning transfers suck; the bus stations are dirty, there is nowhere to sit comfortably, and you have to force yourself to stay awake or else you might either miss your connection or find yourself without a seat.  Sometimes you have to switch buses, or disembark only to get on the same bus again, at some of the non-transfer layovers.  I knew the drive from Memphis to Dallas was pretty much a straight shot, as that was a primary Greyhound route.  We’d travel one bus during that portion, and we were only hitting the big stations at that point.  So I should be able to get a few hours sleep the second night.  Other than that, it was all up in the air…things could go smoothly, or they could be a horrendous mess.  I’d just have to wait and see.

The night before my departure I did not sleep as much as usual, but I did manage a decent number of hours overall.  I’d taken my “vacation” from Landscape duty starting a few days beforehand, so really I was quite bored and counting the hours until I could leave.  About 70% of the RDAP classmates left before me (your date of departure was generally in order of how much time was left in your sentence; those who had less time left would leave first, with some exceptions because of space limitations at halfway houses, outstanding state charges, and things of that nature), and my routine – which I’d used to survive prison all this time - was completely out of whack.  Plus my mouth was in decent pain because of the ½ of a tooth the dentist had taken out a week earlier (and the ½ a tooth he’d left in).  So on the big day I woke up, ate breakfast, said a few final goodbyes, and sat in my cube reading a paperback and twiddling my thumbs until I was finally paged to the front office.  It was, at last, time to leave.

I made my way to the front office, with my box of belongings in hand.  Everything else had been turned in.  I was ready.  A few handshakes with buddies here and there first, and into the R&D room I went.  Here they gave me my street clothes, coat, and travel bag.  I changed, and for the first time in years I looked like a normal person instead of an inmate.  But, as usual, a few problems surfaced.  The biggest was that nobody could find my driver’s license and my Social Security Card.  They’d been received and signed for weeks earlier, but now….nothing, no sign of them.  This meant I was about to embark on a cross-country journey, as property of the BOP and effectively still a prison inmate, with no identification whatsoever.  I figured that they’d let me keep my prison ID at least, as apparently this is a form of legal identification.  Nope, no such luck.  The R&D officer told me that I should just use my one-page paper form with my reporting instructions as ID if an emergency came up.  “Or have whoever it is call us, we can verify who you are.”  Wonderful.

Then there was the issue of money.  I’d saved up about $400 in my inmate account through work, a bonus for completing my RDAP program, and trying not to spend 100% of what was sent in by my VERY generous family who’d been sending me $60 to $80 a month for some time now.  This was going to be the money I used to live on until I found myself a job, and to buy any new clothes or other personal items.  I could only assume that I’d be paying for public transportation, which isn’t cheap either.  But this was the moment when the R&D officer informed me that they were going to give me $150 in cash.  The rest would follow “at a later date” to the halfway house, in the form of a check made out to me.  I wasn’t thrilled about this development either, especially since I knew it was going to cost $50 or $60 to catch a cab from the Dallas Greyhound station to the halfway house (assuming I could find a cab willing to take me out there).  “Oh don’t worry about that, just ask at the Halfway House, they’re supposed to cover the cab fare.”  The R&D office *did* provide me with some sort of Federal requisition form which I was supposed to be able to use to buy the bus ticket without cost to myself.  And I had confidence in that part of the process, if only because inmates left the facility a few times a week and they MUST have worked the kinks out of the system by now.

So I was on my way.  I didn’t have any identification; I was low on cash; I was worried about the trip, my job prospects, my aching tooth, and fitting into society as a human being; and I was anxious about the slightest misstep sending me straight back to prison.  But I was on my way.  I caught a ride with the work van to the Front Circle, my old stomping grounds with the Landscape crew.  I went inside, signed a few more forms, and was told to wait in a holding area with two inmates from the Medium Security prison who were also being released that day.  I guess we waited an hour - but it felt like three – before the “town driver” van came to drive us to the local bus station.  Bernie, an inmate I knew, was the driver that day, and he took us out onto public land, driving the local roads like regular people, until we came to a gas station/convenience store where the bus stop was located.  Bernie helped all three of us to make sure our vouchers were processed in exchange for the bus tickets, wished me luck, and headed back to the prison.  The other two inmates talked, and enjoyed the first cigarettes they’d had in months.  I just stood outside in the cold, waiting and feeling nervous.  I really had no idea what the Halfway House would be like, or what would be waiting for me when I got to Dallas.

All I did know was that I was headed back.  And back home Heather was waiting for me…and even my cat Tigger, who was now nearly 20 years old, and who I had assumed would have died long before I walked into our apartment again.  So as anxious as I was about the future, I was also psyched about it.  I wasn’t a free man, not yet, but I was going home.  Or, at least, to the Halfway House.  And that was a lot closer than I’d been in a long time.

(Stay Tuned for Part 2 Coming Soon)