The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any developed nation! That’s not a great statistic. Today we’re going to talk about the prison family journey and in fact, Carolyn Esparza has written a book entitled The Prison Family Journey: 
The Unvarnished Truth about that journey. Carolyn is an expert in this area and is the founder of the Prisoners Family Conference to be held soon:
The 7th Annual Prisoner’s Family Conference
May 6 – 8, 2015 in Dallas, Texas.
To register click here! Now on to the transcription of our interview on Straight Talk Radio.
Tired of traditional talk? People pontificating about this or that? The left or the right? Sometimes the truth is just off lost in the noise. Having learned life lessons the hard way, Chuck Gallagher, international speaker and author, cuts through the noise to share truth through transparency!
Nationally-known guests talk about what’s important to you – your life, your concerns and your success. So tune in, turn on to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher.
Now, here’s your host, Chuck Gallagher.
You can hear the show by clicking on this link: http://www.thedrpatshow.com/shows/gal-140915-esparza.mp3
CHUCK: And it is a great day today on Straight Talk Radio. [chuckles] We tackle a variety of topics. I had a friend of mine the other day ask me the question, “Well, tell me a little bit about what your show is about,” and it really runs the gambit. The whole concept behind Straight Talk Radio is to address those issues that really are a concern to you. Things that sometimes you may not hear on Talk Radio and yet it’s become part of the fabric of our life.
Well, this show’s going to be no different, but I will say it is different from one perspective, in that we’re talking about in this show what I will refer to as the shadow side of life. The conversation is going to be a blunt conversation, an open conversation, and a conversation that relates to something that most everybody on the call will connect with, at one level, not want to connect with on another level, and yet, it is part of the fabric of who we are. Here’s the best way I can put this. I get the opportunity to literally travel all over the country and I have the opportunity to talk about choices, and consequences, and what we do as human beings, and why we do them, what motivates our behavior. In the process of doing that, most of the people who have the opportunity to see that live presentation know I walk in in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, which is a bit of a shock and they wonder what in the world’s going on and I openly admit that in 1995 I took 23 steps from the curb in to federal prison. I am a statistic in this country and the United States, unfortunately, has the highest incarceration rate of any developed country in the world. I am one of those people that, at a point in time because of some terribly bad choices, spent time in federal prison and was incarcerated.
The fascinating fact about that experience was a multitude of things, but one is, is that in every presentation that I have done this far, someone has come up to me afterward and said, “Well, my uncle, my son, my brother, my aunt, my sister is incarcerated and, Gosh, I wish they had the chance to talk with you.”
So, we’re going to go down to that shadow side of life. We’re going to talk about with my guest, who is absolutely an expert in this arena, we’re going to talk about incarceration in this country. We’re going to talk about the prison family journey and in fact, 
Carolyn Esparza has written a book entitled The Prison Family Journey: The Unvarnished Truth about that journey. Carolyn, you and I go back good ways. We had a chance to meet each other many, many years ago. You kind of stumbled upon me, so to speak, so I want to welcome you to the show. Thank you for being with us.
CAROLYN: Thank you for having me.
CHUCK: Carolyn, now I have to tell you the truth. I don’t remember exactly how many years it was, I’m going to say five or six, you put–
CAROLYN: Seven.
CHUCK: Seven?! Oh, my goodness!
CAROLYN: Yeah.
CHUCK: Really?
CAROLYN: Um-hm.
CHUCK: Wow! I have less hair now than I did then.
[Carolyn and Chuck laugh]CHUCK: But seven years ago you stumbled across my site and that might have been the first year you did the Prisoner’s Family Conference. Is that correct?
CAROLYN: That’s correct. Yes.
CHUCK: You were so kind to invite me to have the opportunity to work with you in this conference that you put together. But as we start our conversation for people that are listening, I’d like to kind of throw the ball to you a little bit and let me ask you, what got you motivated to help families who are associated with people who’ve been incarcerated? What was the motivation behind that?
CAROLYN: Well, for many years I actually worked as a social worker with juvenile offenders in a juvenile facility in Texas. What we always talked about was all the counseling, all the efforts that we put into those youth were really to no avail, theoretically speaking because no one ever talked to their families. So, while they made some radical changes while they were in the facility, nothing happened different with the families and they would have to go back to those families and [06:04] right back in to where they left. So, essentially we thought we really need to reach out to the whole family because incarceration affects the entire family. It’s not just the person who’s locked up and away from us, but there are many people. Someone just recently gave me a statistic that a minimum of 38 people are affected by each person who’s incarcerated.
CHUCK: Wow.
CAROLYN: That’s family, the extended family, friends, work, school, etc. So we wanted to reach out to the larger population that’s affected by incarceration. That’s why we started the Prisoner’s Family Conference. And that was set up years ago. [chuckles]
CHUCK: Yep. Now, it’s interesting the start of this conversation because obviously I have been the prisoner.
CAROLYN: Right.
CHUCK: And you say 38 people are affected and I have to tell you, I know without any question that people were impacted one, by my choices that ultimately led me to prison, but also were impacted by the fact that I sure enough was incarcerated. But I have to tell you, I never really kind of connected the dots that it would be so many people impacted in so many ways.
The other part to that really strikes me as kind of interesting is, above and beyond the fact that, okay, well, 38 on average people would be impacted by one individual’s incarceration, and by the way, if we have the highest incarceration rate of any developed country in the world, that means a lot of people in this country are impacted somehow by people’s choices, of course. But the other thing, and I think you hit something that’s kind of one of those what I call “edgy type things”, and that is, okay, so, I go away and I have a different experience. Part of it is punishment, maybe, maybe, maybe there’s a little bit rehabilitation, although I’m not a big proponent of believing that’s the truth, but you come along and you look at that and yeah, you’re right, when people leave and they come back into society as such, well, they’re coming back into exactly the same environment that they left from. So how does that chance take place? And I think that’s critically important with the conference that you put on.
CAROLYN: Well, those people that are affected by such things as the Conference, by reading books about incarceration, actually have an opportunity to learn what the offender’s going through while they’re incarcerated, how they can build even a better relationship, maybe stop enabling some inappropriate behaviors. They have the opportunity to do that if they will take advantage of these opportunities like the conference and the books that are written for this population. They can really improve on how things were. People always say, “I want to go back to, I want to go back to where I was. I want to start all over again,” but in their mind they’re thinking they want the same life they had before that led to the problem. They’re not thinking about investing themselves in some change and change is never easy. It’s a challenge for all of us to even make moderate changes, let alone a radical change like adjusting to a prisoner’s incarceration, and their absence in our lives, and adjusting to them returning, which is returning is as hard as going in, the adjustments that people have to make when people come back from prison.
CHUCK: Carolyn, this show, by the way, is certainly not about me and I want you to be able to share with our listeners stories and experiences that you have had because I think this will bring it home and make it real, but I will say to you, when I first came home back in 1990, it’s been decades ago at this point, but when I first came home and had to admit that I was a liar and a thief, it was devastating for my wife. My children were very young, so fortunately they didn’t completely connect all the dots. What they did know was immediately following that, our life dramatically changed. Houses were gone, possessions were gone, we moved in with my mother-in-law. There were lots of tears, there was lots of anger that took place. I’ll never forget that my wife at the time, now ex-wife, because our marriage failed, which is not an uncommon experience for people who’ve been incarcerated, but my wife at the time was just beside herself with concern over what will people think? How will we be looked at? With all of this change, the person and the persona of who I was and who we were as a couple was shattered. It was just like taking a beautiful bowl, that she could be so proud of, and just completely obliterating it on a concrete floor. It’s hard sometimes, before the incarceration, to just even know where do we go and how do we pick up those pieces.
With saying that, now I hear the music that says we finished the first segment, which I’m blown away by. It goes so fast, but for those that are listening, The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey. If you know someone that’s been in prison, that is going to prison, or you’re a family member that’s been touched by this, you won’t want to skip this show. My guest is Carolyn Esparza. She is with the Prisoner’s Family Conference and this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. We will be right back after these messages. Stick with us.
[Commercial break]CHUCK: Well, this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and welcome back. We are going into the shadow side of life, at least some people would say it’s the shadow side of life, but I will say to you as you listen to this show, somewhere in your life you will be touched by this. The United States happens to have the highest incarceration rate of any developed nation in the world. I don’t think that’s something that we as Americans want to be proud of, but it is the truth. My guest is Carolyn Esparza. She is the author of The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey.
Carolyn, before we went to the break, I was saying that even before prison it is a challenge for families to know what do we do when life changes because of the action of a loved one, in that case that was me. I know that you have seen experiences with people who have broken the law and are set to be incarcerated. What do you see the biggest challenges for families in that [13:13]?
CAROLYN: Well, I think you started to describe it when you talked about your former wife’s reaction to your own incarceration, is that families tend to withdraw and isolate in their own shame and embarrassment of the situation. When they isolate, especially for children, when people isolate, socially they, emotionally actually, they have no one to share those experiences with. Somebody said to me that I said, I don’t recall saying it, but it’s not a casserole moment where the neighbors are going to come over and say, “Oh, dear, poor thing. Your husband’s been incarcerated.”
So they have to weather the storm alone, unless they will allow themselves to connect with a support group, to attend something like our Conference. That is another reason why we have the Conference. So many people have come to that conference, that never before in 15 years, in 3 years, whatever length of time their loved one has been incarcerated, never talked about it to anyone. I think of a lady who called– People will call and they can’t even say the word “prison”, even when it relates to the Prisoner’s Family Conference, to a conference. They just stutter over themselves, “I, I, I saw something in the paper. I saw something,” and I have to vocalize this for them. “Oh, the Prisoner’s Family Conference you saw in the paper.” Huh, and you hear the relief in their voice, they’re, “Oh, yes.” Then they come to the conference, sit silently in the background, and soon they’re embraced by other people who’ve had loved ones incarcerated, or people like yourself who’ve been incarcerated, and they see that you’re okay now, that it all ended up well for you. There’s still pain, I’m sure. Family members still feel discomfort, but you now have people, because you’ve opened up about it, you have people to talk to about this and to deal with those issues.
So, it’s about embracing one another and supporting each other, educating each other, developing awareness, preparing for what you’re going to experience when you come back home from prison, whoever’s in prison. It’s not an easy road and for years I’m sure it’s been many years for you, Chuck, and there’s still probably moments that you have flashbacks to that experience that you have to deal with. You’ve done that well with you, but not everybody has the support you’ve had or experiences that you’ve had to be able to do that. Through the Conference we help to provide that for many, many families.
CHUCK: Carolyn, I’m sorry, let me say that, though. I’ve been at the Conference several times at this point and I am kind of taken back by, well, number one, the number of people that are choosing to attend and the expansion of the program. It is interesting just to look at some statistics. For people that are on the radio, that are listening to the show, kind of connect with me on some of these. Now, these are numbers and sometimes it’s hard to communicate numbers just via radio show, but the average prisoner, state prisoner, has a 10th grade education and 70% have not completed high school. So, the first thing, I don’t know how to put this, I guess I’m in avolition because I had a master’s degree and still ended up in prison. Some might say, “Boy, you are a real dummy.” I can think of other words, but we’re on the radio and I won’t do that, but the average person that’s incarcerated in this country is undereducated, which would say to us if as adult human beings we believe that we want to change the experience of having this designation of the highest incarceration rate of any nation, we really need to focus on how do we help people become better educated, because it’s obvious that better educated people tend to make better decisions.
CAROLYN: Right. When we talk about that, then we get into some legislation. Most of our states spend far, far more on incarceration than they spend on education.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: So, before they even go to prison, they’re already at a loss with regard to education. Once they get into prison, most prisons are required that provide classes up through a GED. After that you’re on your own. People who don’t go to prison and they go to college and they have all his free. That’s not true.
CHUCK: Oh, no.
[Carolyn laughs]CHUCK: Oh, no. [chuckles]
CAROLYN: Yes. If they want college classes, some prisons provide for that, but the family is the one who pays for that or the prisoners. Some of the prisoners do have some income and some sources of funds. But education, there are so few resources once you’re in prison that to change a person’s life, to uplift them, to elevate them to a higher level. Everything’s intended to drag someone down, to make them a failure.
CHUCK: That’s a true statement and I think there’s two things, and I don’t want to forget these. I’m 57 years old, I have these moments when I think of something and then it, pop, out the head, who knows what it’ll be like when I’m 80, but nonetheless, the thing that strikes me, there’s two things. Number one, Carolyn, you said something that’s absolutely true and I want to say this and I can say it from a personal experience; prison is not about rehabilitation.
CAROLYN: Right.
CHUCK: If people would like to believe that because it makes folks feel good, I understand. We really do want to try to feel better about what happens and that, Gosh, somebody’s going to go in and get rehabilitated. Prison is a business. Let me just call it straight and dimple, and I’m not saying this in a negative way, but prison is a business. It is a government-organized business and any business has to have inventory. If you don’t have inventory, the business can’t continue. An inmate, that would be me, is inventory.
CAROLYN: Yes.
CHUCK: So, let me ask you the question, this is a rhetorical question, but if you’re running a business, would you rather have experienced inventory coming in or would you rather have inexperienced? And most anybody in a business would say, “Well, I’d like an experienced workforce.
CAROLYN: Right.
CHUCK: “And experienced inventory.” So, why is there a 70% recidivism rate? The answer is simple, I don’t want to rehabilitate you because if I do you won’t come back. And if you don’t come back, we won’t have a business and if we don’t have business, we won’t be able to employ people and the government, by nature, is not inclined to reduce its workforce.
CAROLYN: Absolutely, and many of the prison towns, the towns where the prisons are located, depend totally on those prisons. I’m hearing Texas and in Gatesville, Texas, has at least six prison units. That’s all that is in that community. Huntsville, Texas, is dependent on all the maybe 10, 12 units that are there. If they reduce those units, they reduce their employment rate and the town dies. So this is a huge industrial complex run by our government and they want it to grow. That’s the reason recidivism has hovered at least an average of 65% for decades. They want people, like you said, to come back time and time again and yes, they’re seasoned, they don’t have to break in again. Isn’t that wonderful? Is that what we really want as citizens? Is that how we want to spend our tax dollars, is incarcerating and re-incarcerating people time and time again? Personally, I’d rather my money be spent on education and rehabilitation. People get involved in drugs and other different kinds of lifestyles that get them in trouble. Why aren’t we providing treatment? Why is there not treatment in prison? That baffles my mind. We talk about if we believe there’s rehabilitation, we should have it there.
CHUCK: Right. Well, Carolyn, and this is the other part that really strikes me, as we talk about education. Okay, so let me put this in my head. So, 70% of the incarcerated adults have not had a high school education, okay? So perhaps, perhaps in prison they could get a GED. But here’s the thing that’s, I think, really connects with the program that you have, the conference that will be taking place, I believe it’s May of 2015.
CAROLYN: Right.
CHUCK: But that is, if we’re talking about the family of the inmate, perhaps maybe there should be some extra focus on educating the inmate’s children because if I can take that child and I can educate that child and make sure that, I say make sure that, that’s pretty tough, but help that child desire to get past high school, desire to go to college, I might be able to help break the cycle in that family that incarceration is normal and acceptable.
CAROLYN: And I kind of have a different look at that; 70% of children of prisoners are at great risk of going to prison themselves.
CHUCK: Yes.
CAROLYN: But it’s not because of the role modeling of their parents indeed.
CHUCK: Okay.
CAROLYN: It is because those children have no outlet for their emotions. When that family isolates, withdraws from the mainstream community, they have no one to talk to about the pain of losing a loved one, be it a parent, a brother, a cousin, someone that we’re close to. They start acting out their pain and that’s what gets them in trouble. The kids that we’ve worked with in our program have all been raised to say “please” and “thank you”, never to take something from someone else, don’t even cut in front of somebody in line. These kids have been taught the right things, whether their parents did the right thing or not. What they haven’t had access to is some way to emote their emotions. We really need to do that. Education is available to all the kids we’ve ever worked with. They’ve all gone to school, some have done well in school, some have actually excelled. So, I see that a little bit differently.
CHUCK: Okay.
CAROLYN: We are educating them so it’s not the education so much for the children. It’s those that drop out, because now they’re angry, they’re hurt, so they’ve joined gangs, because they’ve had no one to accept them, they’ve turned to drugs, because they joined gangs. They’re angry, so they act out their anger even violently, get themselves in trouble. Then they drop out of school because of the emotional aspect of this, not because we didn’t provide the education for them.
CHUCK: Okay. Now, and the music starts, because we are, again, coming back to a commercial break. This is Chuck Gallagher on Straight Talk Radio. This has been a fascinating conversation. We in the United States have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the developed world. That is not a great statistic for us and my guest, Carolyn Esparza, has written The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey. So, stick with us. This is something that literally touches everyone that is likely listening to the show in some form or fashion. So, stick with us as we go into the shadow side of life in America, especially those impacted by a prison sentence. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. We’ll be back in a moment.
[Commercial break]CHUCK: Well, this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and we are back, talking about The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey. Now, if you’re just joining us, let me give you some information. Number one, I have been to prison. I’m not particularly proud of that, but it is a part of my life and something that I am very transparent about. And number two, I have lived through the experience of admitting that I was a liar and a thief, devastating my family, changing life in a dramatic way by going to prison and coming out on the other side, and finding out what that experience was like, and finding out that success can be anyone’s if only they’re willing to make the right set of choices. Carolyn Esparza is the founder of the Prisoner’s Family Conference and this year, I guess, 2015 will be the 8th year? Is that right?
CAROLYN: No, it’ll be the 7th year.
CHUCK: Oh, it’ll be the 7th year and, Carolyn, what are the dates for the Prisoner’s Family Conference which is held in Dallas, Texas?
CAROLYN: It’s May 6-8. It’s a three-day conference.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: 2015.
CHUCK: Give me the website so people who might have an interest in attending the conference because of their connection with perhaps an incarcerated loved one or someone that might be headed in that direction. How do they find out about the Conference?
CAROLYN: Well, first of all, the Conference is definitely for prisoners, prisoners who have returned to the community, their family members, but it’s also for anyone who is affected by incarceration. That means people who work with families and children who may have been affected by a loved one being incarcerated. The website is very simple, it’s all those “w” and then just prisonersfamilyconference.org.
CHUCK: Prisonersfamilyconference.org. I have been honored to be a part of that Conference, off and on for several years and I will say to you,it is absolutely worth the time and effort. Having lived in Dallas at one point in time in my life, Dallas is an easy place to get into and central in the United States, so I would certainly encourage people to be there.
Carolyn, we’ve talked a lot about the prison journey. I want to go into kind of an odd place for just a moment. Texas ranked second in the rate of incarceration, state by state. I think Louisiana might have them beat. We were talking about the prisons in certain places in Texas, being the community, and it’s almost like, at least it seems like it to me, it’s almost like a prison is a military base, so to speak, in that, there’s no politician alive that wants to close a base in their constituents area because it eliminates jobs. So it’s almost like the political will is a) we don’t want to lose jobs in wherever it happens to be, and two, I’ve got to be strong on crime because people want to feel safe. So, is there a solution to reducing the rate of incarceration?
CAROLYN: Well, this “strong on crime” issue is very widely debated and we need to be smart on crime.
CHUCK: I like that.
CAROLYN: Yeah, we have the drug war. That doesn’t affect all prisoners, but a large majority of people that are in prison have substance abuse problems or addictions or they’re incarcerated because of drugs. The drug war has been just a total failure since the day it was born, way back in, I can’t remember when. Nixon, I think?
CHUCK: I believe so.
CAROLYN: I think so. We need to erase this drug war. We also need, as I was saying before, we need people who will support rehabilitation and education of prisoners once they’re incarcerated to lower their incarceration rate. There are always jobs. When these computers and all this electronic stuff came in and took over people’s positions, I remember walking into a factory one time where there was nothing but robots, doing jobs that men had done, but now people have learned how to run the robots, and create the real robots, and build the robots. So we can figure their lives, if you will, just like prisoners have to do when they come out of prison.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: We need to look at change. The change, as I said to you much earlier, I said change is always difficult no matter who’s making that change. But our politicians, our legislators need to look at the fact that this is affecting our entire country. It is deteriorating the quality of life for all of us in the community that we have the largest and growing prison industrial complex in the entire world. The statistic, I haven’t heard you say, so we need to say it, is that the United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the entire world’s prisoners.
CHUCK: Wow.
CAROLYN: That disparity is beyond comprehension, as far as I’m concerned.
CHUCK: Well, it really is and I’ll never forget going into prison and fairly enough, I earned that right because I broke the law, but I’ll never forget going in and connecting with my cellmate. His name was Buck, my name was Chuck, so we were Buck and Chuck. I don’t know if they did that for comic relief or whatever, but nonetheless, he was about a 5’8’’, African American guy. Once we got to know each other, I found out that he was incarcerated for selling drugs. Okay, well, that’s breaking the law. But the fascinating part was he’d been under surveillance since he was 16 years old, but had they arrested him under the age of 18, he would have gone to some state or juvenile-type facility, but they waited until 2 days after his 18 birthday because they knew at that point the war on drug required a minimum sentence of 5 years. And of course, when they went into his home, where he lived with his grandparents, his grandfather had an old shotgun and because there was a gun in the house, that added another five years. So, we could take the young black male off the street for 10 years of his life. You have to ask the question, was the public protection really served by that? You know, I don’t think so.
CAROLYN: I don’t think so, too, and that’s where our general population is totally unaware that this is all going on. They’re unaware of the corruption. We haven’t even touched on that. I could go on for about 20 years on that subject.
[Chuck laughs]CAROLYN: That manipulates things, like you said, they waited until he was 18, sure, but we have a lot of children, we have children sentenced to life without parole sentences all throughout the country. I’m working with a child prisoner now. He was 15 when he did the offence, adjudicated as an adult. He’s been in prison 23 years, and as a sex offender, and people, that’s a whole other topic too talk about and all the myths about sex offenders. They are now civilly committing him to prison which will be essentially for life.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: Even though he got a 30-year sentence, and the 30 years are almost up, now they’re telling him they’re civilly committing him and every 2 years he’ll be re-evaluated. Since that law has gone into effect, no one has been released. Every two years if they evaluate, then they say, “Oh, they’re still dangerous,” which is not true.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: Not that there’s any danger to the society and people need to learn. We fear what we don’t know.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: And it’s just like fearing prisoners coming out of prison. Well, if we didn’t know you, Chuck, of course we’d be scared of you. God, you’ve been to prison! That’s terrifying.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: Why is that terrifying? It’s terrifying because we don’t know what a prisoner is or what they go through, what they want to do when they come out, their passions for the future. We need to allow ourselves to know these people, to understand the truth about them. The fact is that other offenders, they re-offend more often than sex offenders do.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: It’s all we hear about in the news, which is just grotesque. Of course, sex offences are a taboo, or sex is a taboo in this country, but that’s getting into a whole other area. So, look, I maybe missed your point.
CHUCK: No, no, but, Carolyn, let me say this, and it’s kind of funny I have to look back at prison and say it really sucked. It was not pleasant.
CAROLYN: Very true.
CHUCK: But there are parts of it that in retrospect are just, they’re comical. It really is a comedy scene. When I got in, of course, as an inmate you have to have a job. So, I was told, “You better find something that you might want to do, otherwise you’ll be doing something you don’t want to do,” so I went to the business office at this prison and I said, “I’m a former CPA. Gosh, I could work here.” Well, the business manager at the prison, he was ecstatic because he had a whole group of white-color criminals running the office and he didn’t have to do a thing! If they had had Facebook then, he could have sat on Facebook all day or played Candy Crush because they did it all for him.
CAROLYN: Sure.
CHUCK: But I was there for maybe two months, two and a half, and one day the warden comes in. He talks with the business manager at this prison and we could hear muffled voices behind these glass doors that were supposed to be soundproof and when he comes out, he said, “Inmates!” and we all look up in attention and he fired us all.
CAROLYN: Oh.
CHUCK: Now, first thing I’ve got to say is it sucks whenever you’ve been to prison, but then when you get fired from a job in prison, I mean, it just doesn’t get much lower. But he fired us because we were smart enough to recognize the money they were spending for little simple stuff was three times what they could have bought it for if they just went down the street to Walmart and they were afraid that we would write a letter and expose the fact that they were far overpaying on these contracts.
CAROLYN: Yes.
CHUCK: So therefore, they fired us all, moved us out and put crack dealers in the business office, who wouldn’t have known, and therefore kept the corruption, let’s put it that way. Of course, now we hear yet another commercial break coming up and I am so ecstatic for the people that are supporting this program.
This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. My guest is the author of the book The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey and it literally takes you from beginning to end through that process. If you know someone that’s going to prison, go to amazon.com and look up The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey with Carolyn Esparza and we will be back right after these messages.
[Commercial break]CHUCK: Well, we’re in the last segment of our show. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and as promised on Straight Talk Radio, we will talk about any topic, especially expose those topics that need some attention, need some focus. The white, hot spotlight today is on Carolyn Esparza. She is the author of The Unvarnished Truth: The Prison Family Journey. I have to tell you, it is an outstanding book and it is probably, of all the books that I’ve see, and it’s not like there’re many, you can’t go to Barns & Noble and buy Prison for Dummies. Hello, probably would be a good book.
CAROLYN: It probably should!
CHUCK: Yeah, it probably should, but this is the book that talks about what you really need to know from the beginning of the process to the end. I have so many people that come up to me in the programs that I do that say, “Man, I really wish I had known,” because, Carolyn, I think you were absolutely right in the comments that you’ve said, it’s not a casserole moment. People don’t come and openly share with you. I guess being sentenced to prison is a bit like being told you have cancer, maybe worse, because people don’t know what to say, so therefore, they say nothing and withdraw.
CAROLYN: Exactly. I just want to make one little correction, is that actually I am the coauthor of this book. The other coauthor, his name is Phillip Yow and he is a current prisoner in Texas. I’ve known him for, well, almost 25 years. We decided to write this book because we wanted to, I don’t want to say exposé in kind of the negative sense of that, but we wanted people to know the truth of what families really experience, what prisoners experience when they’re incarcerated, to have a real understanding of each other, in other words.
So, we go through the entire legal process, we go through some of the issues that people deal with in prison, with, for example, the gangs in prison. I just had a mother call me the other day and tell me that her son was asked to put money on another person’s books. A real danger when a prisoner is telling you that they need you to put money on someone else’s books, not their books. That means that they’re being extorted in some way, probably, and being threatened and intimidated so I was able to talk to her about that. But we talk about those things in this book and maybe, most importantly, we talk about returning, people who’ve come home from prison and what they will go through, literally for the next seven to ten years after they get out of prison.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: Because it’s not over just because someone is, poof, they’re home. That’s not the end of it. We try to make it as realistic, but not as threatening so that it would be scary to people because we don’t want people to be scared. Again, it’s what you don’t know that’s frightening. Once you know this information, you can deal with it. You have the tools to deal with these things, because we provide some insight into how you can make things better.
CHUCK: Carolyn, I obviously have experienced coming out of prison. I will say to you on my personal experience, number one, I was incarcerated for 18 months. Many people look at that and say, “Oh, that’s nothing. I’ve got a 10-year sentence, or a 20-year sentence,” and I will openly admit that’s a far more dramatic experience than what I had, but even coming out after the period of time that I did, it’s short by most people’s standards, but my Gosh, how quickly life had changed, number one, and it was an amazement to see things that, I’m fairly well educated, you know, just going back to the mall and seeing things, and experiencing Bojangles, which is a local fast food place here in the Southeast. It was an incredibly odd experience and something that I didn’t anticipate. I say that to say I was talking with a lady whose husband was incarcerated and, in fact, was in Texas and he is set to be released, I don’t know, in the next four or five weeks. He was incarcerated for white-color crime. The interesting side to me was her lifestyle has changed some, but not dramatically and here’s this guy coming out. He will not be able to support that lifestyle again. You can almost see the conflict that’s going to arise.
CAROLYN: Um-hm.
CHUCK: Because his life has changed dramatically, her life has changed some. And those two weren’t necessarily going to be an easy reconnection.
CAROLYN: No, they won’t. The other thing is, and I always hesitate to compare these, but it’s very much like the military family, when the soldier goes off to war. Now, the nobility of the experience is obviously quite different, but the dynamics are very much the same. He come back home, she’s kept the house going the whole time, she’s taken care of the kids, somehow kept the roof over their heads. And he comes home and he says “I don’t like that picture on the wall.” Well, who is he to tell her after all these years in this time that she has maintaining things, she’s put things together. Immediately that starts the argument and disagreement. How she’s raised the kids, how she’s… Where was he? He was gone! And it could be vice versa, because we have plenty of women in prison.
CHUCK: Sure.
CAROLYN: When you compare those two, sometimes people are offended by that, but it’s a reality. They’ve been gone for a long time, they’re now coming home. They have to adjust, too. Soldiers coming back from war. There’s not a person who comes out of prison who doesn’t have posttraumatic stress disorder, to some degree or another.
CHUCK: Right. Right.
CAROLYN: You’re right about the length of time. Phillip, who coauthored the book with me, has already been in prison 15 years. He has a 60-year sentence and one day we can do a whole program on the injustices were done in his case.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: And in many cases. There are so many innocent people, there are literally 20 or more thousand innocent people in our prisons today. They are treated exactly the same as the worst of the worst, of whatever that is, criminals that actually did a crime. That should not be happening in our prisons. We shouldn’t have innocent people in. By that, I know accidents happen, we’re not a perfect society, but 20,000 minimum innocent people in prison? Innocent people being released, virtually every week read about it.
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: Sometimes it’s overwhelming because, well, it’s often overwhelming because there’s so much that needs to be changed, so much improvement that’s needed, but in the meantime, we’re trying to help families stay together. Families strengthen, actually, during periods of time. There’s no reason for– Right now they’re trying to take visitation away, in-person visitation, when all statistics say that the family is the most important resource in a prisoner’s life, if they even have that resource. Now we want to do video, get these Skype visitations.
CHUCK: Yeah.
CAROLYN: They take those Skype visits, that’s fine as an alternative for people who can’t get there and it’s great to have–
CHUCK: Right.
CAROLYN: Somebody even to see you today. That’s a great thing, but not as a substitute for ever seeing you in person.
CHUCK: Right. There is a big difference to know that someone, a human being that can come in, that you could touch their hand, and you can see their eyes, and you can experience them being there, cares enough to take the time out of their schedule to come and to be with you. I can say, from the period of time that I was incarcerated, there was a big difference between those inmates who received regular visits and those who received no visits.
CAROLYN: Exactly.
CHUCK: Because those of us that got regular visits, well, number one, we wanted to be on good behavior. We wanted that opportunity. We lived for that opportunity.
CAROLYN: Um-hm.
CHUCK: And those that didn’t, not only were they denied that, but they felt that they were unwanted and resented and were therefore more apt to create problems in prison, because what you don’t have sometimes you want. So, if I don’t get it, you shouldn’t either. Let’s have a fight.
CAROLYN: Right.
CHUCK: No, I’m not into that.
CAROLYN: When you come out, to have a family that supports you makes a great difference in your [46:17]–
CHUCK: It does.
CAROLYN: When you come back. So, family is critical. It’s the biggest resource any prisoner can have and we want to strengthen the prison family.
CHUCK: Well, I know we’re rapidly running out of time so let’s go back just for a moment, because I want people to really connect with this. If you know someone that is incarcerated, has been incarcerated, or you’re the family of someone connected with that, please check out the Prisoner’s Family Conference, and I think you said, Carolyn, prisonersfamilyconference.org.
CAROLYN: Right.
CHUCK: And the next conference is going to be held in May of 2015 in Dallas, Texas. I have had the opportunity on several occasions to work with you. I remember El Paso. I think it was Houston and maybe Albuquerque, but the opportunities were really great and the program that is offered through that Conference connects the dots in so many ways with people who are willing to help, but yet, because we don’t move in those circles, we may not know about, and it really makes a big difference.
CAROLYN: It does. Tremendous resources, great networking connections, great friendships. Even here, I just looked at the two of us and we may not talk every day, but we’re there for each other.
CHUCK: Absolutely.
CAROLYN: And all the people– I’ve made some of the best friends I’ve ever made in my whole life through this Conference.
CHUCK: Well, Carolyn, thank you for joining us. This is Carolyn Esparza. She is the coauthor, thank you for correcting that, of The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey. Her other coauthor is Phillip Don Yow Sr. He is incarcerated in the State of Texas. And I commend the two of you working together to expose the truth about that journey because you’re right; what you don’t know can be a fear and that creates problems. So, check out the Prisoner’s Family Conference.
This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. We want to bring you the best in talk radio to make a difference in your life. I leave every show with the statement, every choice has a consequence. So, keep in mind, let’s make some great choices in life. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. Join us next week for another wonderful show.
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