My guest this week had his life irrevocably changed in the early hours of one morning in 2014. While he slept in his bed, a SWAT team descended upon his home and dramatically swept him into custody for what he describes as a “series of comprises: moral compromises”.
While we cannot get into the exact details of his crimes, Mr. Decarceration - whose identity was carefully protected during our chat - acknowledges that he made errors for which he needed to atone. However, he also describes the way in which Federal investigators hit him with a figurative sledgehammer as they presented him with a series of possible charges and potential prison sentences that included decades behind bars.
D, as he kindly allows me to refer to him during our chat, speaks openly about life in prison. He walks us through the process from court to full-time lock up, and shares the circumstances under which inmates are allowed to watch film and TV, a pursuit which helped Mr. Decarceration to manage his eight and half years in custody.
Mr. Decaceration describes using movies as a Trojan Horse for him to more deeply discuss the logistics of our massive prison system via his excellent Substack, From The Yardhouse To The Arthouse. Since his release, he has set to watching as many films from his years of incarceration as he possibly can. By viewing and writing about these films he shares his experiences not only of the cinema itself, but the essay also serves as a window into a portion of life that D may have missed during the time he was behind bars.
The Zimmer Amendment, a 1990s era piece of prison reform legislation is a regular whipping boy for D, and rightly so. The law prohibited inmates from accessing a number of cultural items from the prison library system, including any films rated R. D tells us how the law is never interpreted with consistency from one prison to another, and he talks about the ways in which it prevents inmates from accessing cultural items that might enhance their rehabilitation.
For close to ten years, Mr. Decarceration went from arrest to a series of jails, prisons, and halfway houses to emerge a so-called “free man” with only a love of movies and a felony record to show for it. Now his love of film is chronicling an untold chapter in the lives of the more than 2 million Americans locked within our nation’s prison systems. That number accounts for 25% of the prisoners on the entire planet, despite the fact that the United States makes up just over 4% of the world's total population.
Come join us for a chat about video stores as self-education, the glory of HBO Free weekends as a kid, and seeing the outside world as a separate planet whilst locked away. This is an amazing conversation about movies, humanity, penitence, and purpose. I sure hope you dig it.
Cheers,
Matty C
