While you're in

Ten things. Notice how few of them are about danger and how many are about paperwork.

The ten

1. Do your intake assessments in week one

   The needs and risk assessments are what make you eligible to earn FSA credits. Nobody will chase you to complete them.

   Every week you wait is time off your sentence you simply do not get.

2. Ask about halfway house at your first team meeting

   Not your second. If your sentence is short the referral window may already be open when you walk in.

   Nothing happens until someone asks, no metric attaches to anyone doing it on time, and the whole cost of a late referral lands on you. I did not push. It cost me most of a year in home confinement I was eligible for — the most expensive mistake I made, and it was free to avoid.

3. Answer the paperwork question plainly

   Day one, someone asks what you are in for. What is being established is whether you have a sex offense.

   Name your offense briefly, without inflating it and without going vague. Vagueness is the only wrong answer. The role covers how that conversation actually runs.

4. Do not go into IFRP refusal

   Refusal status costs you your FSA benefits and a list of other things. You save some money and lose months. The full list of what it costs is worth reading before you decide.

5. Never be alone with staff

   Extended private conversation with an officer reads as informing. That needs no evidence, travels faster than any correction, and is close to impossible to walk back.

   Bring someone from your car. Not for protection — for a witness. Pleasant, brief, in the open.

6. Pay what you owe, when you said you would

   Nearly everything runs on credit. The amount is never the point; what is in question is whether your word is good.

   If you will be short, say so before it is due. That is a normal conversation. Being found short afterward is a different one, and debt is where that goes.

7. Do not touch anyone's property

   Not to move it, borrow it, or look at it. This is the closest thing to an absolute rule in the building and it is the most common way a new man creates a problem by accident.

8. Know what a fight costs before you are in one

   Twenty seconds gets both parties a shot regardless of who started it. Good time, the SHU, programming stops so credits stop, possibly a transfer up.

   And the part nobody counts: a shot is a reason to cut your halfway house recommendation. Frequently the most expensive piece, and never what anyone was arguing about.

9. Read your own sentence computation, then write everything down

   Errors happen and nobody else will find them. After that: date, name, what you asked, what you were told, every time.

   Two minutes each. It is the only leverage you will ever have, and it is the difference between an argument and a file.

10. Build a routine in the first month

    A job, programming, exercise on a schedule, something you are learning that has an end state.

    Men who structure their days do their time better than men who do not. This is the most reliable thing in any of these guides and the one most often ignored.

The reasoning under all ten is in while you're in. If you already know you are headed to a low, the low security guide is the same material with the specifics filled in.

Hand the rest of this site to your family

You will not be able to look things up once you're inside. They can, and this is where: everything written for the one waiting — a twelve-part guide to mail, visiting, money, and your release date, plus their own FAQ and checklist. Alongside it, a guide to every facility with email alerts when visiting stops, the support group directory, calculators for your release math, and free answers when they have questions.

Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you.

Somebody has a report date and none of this. Pass it on.