Five Years On The Inside: Life as a Recreation Therapist at Salinas Valley State Prison

Five Years On The Inside is the story of one man's experience of a maxiumum-security California prison as a staff member. Garth Fisher was led by circumstance to accept a position as a recreation therapist Salinas Valley State Prison, a Level-4 penintentiary where the majority of prisoners are serving life without parole (LWOP).

Five Years on the Inside strips away the veneer of rehabilitation in modern prisons and delves into the reality of LWOP and the tenuous constraint that staff and guards - they are not of the same cloth - have over the situation. Five Years On the Inside presents the question, "When nothing worse can happen to a man than what has already happened, what is the incentive to behave in a civilized manner?" Often, the only modicum of control over the prison population is the threat of deadly force.

"There was a period of time," Fisher writes, "during which I woke up each day, walked out to my car, puked, and then drove to work. The anxiety of working at the prison with the smothering and ever-present potential for violence to erupt was really beginning to alter my disposition."

Fisher's degree in anthropology allows him to look at the culture within the walls somewhat dispassionately and ultimately empathetically. His description of the archetypical personalities and social situations of men locked up for life reads somewhat like an ethnography. It is not a pretty picture, but one that we, as a culture, may wish to examine with the thought that it can be changed for the better.