Precarious

Some names in this piece have been changed to protect privacy.

— Ed.

I had come to visit my sister at the South Boise Women’s Correctional Center, a compound of dun-colored buildings surrounded by concertina wire and sagebrush. It was August 2018. I’d been coming regularly for three months, and Joan was scheduled to be released soon after having served a two-year fixed sentence. I did not enjoy these visits, but because I was my sister’s only visitor, guilt and something akin to duty prodded me to come. My sister had been incarcerated at least eight times and behind bars or on parole for nearly twenty years. The first time I’d visited Joan in prison, I was twenty-four, and she was twenty-five. Now I was fifty-two.

Correspondence

S.B. Rowe’s essay “Precarious” [March 2021] nearly moved me to tears. For the last three decades my family has supported my brother-in-law, who has been in and out of prison. We’ve witnessed the injustice of incarcerating — instead of giving medical attention to — the mentally ill.

Our brother-in-law was maliciously beaten by his father his entire childhood. To get him away from the beatings, his oldest brother often took him along everywhere he went. His intentions were admirable, but many of the situations (parties, etc.) were not in his younger sibling’s best interest.

My brother-in-law began drinking at a young age and has been an alcoholic and drug abuser for most of his life. He would call us, crying and drunk, to rehash his childhood trauma. While incarcerated, he was beaten, stabbed, and sexually abused. We’ve supported him as best we can.

Recently he called to say he is terminally ill. If he had gotten the help he needed many years ago, perhaps he could have been saved from so much torment.

Name Withheld

More Letters

Also In This Issue

March 2021