A guy in a wheelchair that walks, a blind man who reads, a woman born male, and an inmate who works for the feds. Welcome to The Program where nothing is as it seems.

I joined this community thinking prison would be getting much more serious. I should’ve realized from my prison experience that everything the Bureau of Prisons puts in place is actually a joke.

Here we are, four days into a “sit down” over three tiny plastic phones. Phones so outdated, poorly constructed, and dumb that no one outside of prison even knows these things exist. Grown men who’ve committed all types of crimes deemed serious by society are arguing and pointing fingers because someone wanted to talk to their family more than 500 minutes a month. I am in no way exempt. I stood there and passionately called a man a liar knowing damn well I was the same. I’ve ruined multiple women’s lives by standing on my lies, yet here I am talking crazy because a man wants to talk to his kids.

This program has all this fancy artwork with fancy words painted on the pillars that most men here have never used. Guys stand up and say things like “active listening,” “smoke screens,” and “deflection” while the people supposedly in charge sit and listen, demanding honesty.

Then there’s the truth. Psychologists getting murdered by their spouses, doctors engaging in sexual relations with inmates, and informants being placed in a program that demands full disclosure and promises protection for such. Men trying to get home to dying family members, destitute friends, and children missing their dads while the people in charge brag about being able to get home to theirs.

For what? Something handed to people on welfare, something now considered a basic life necessity on the other side of a razor wire fence. Being held to a standard no one lives up to on the outside.

I thought I’d be learning tools to take with me, but all I’m really learning is that the BOP RDAP program is a lie.