I sometimes have dreams about going to jail. They usually start with me walking to my car, finding a pile of parking tickets, and burning the lot of them in a burst of satisfying insanity. Next, I'm deciding whether it'd be more career damaging to not show up for work, or to use my one phone call to tell my boss I might be unstable. That's as close as I've gotten to being incarcerated, as the actual physical and psychological predicament of being locked up is more than even my nightmares can handle.

That said, I was at a conference the other day that addressed what incarcerated people deal with when having served their time, they reenter society--which the keynote speaker, Luis J. Rodriguez described as going "from hell on earth to earth"--and the fact that 7 out of 10 end up back in jail within 3 years. I'm not sure what being in jail does to a person, or what it's supposed to accomplish, but the speakers at the conference seemed to agree that providing certain services and opportunities to formerly incarcerated people might help them find a better alternative than returning to prison.