While you're in federal prison # Your time The dominant experience of incarceration is not danger. It is boredom, repetition, and waiting on people who are not in a hurry. The reality ## What the days are made of Most of what you are afraid of right now will not happen. Nearly everything that actually wears on you will be administrative or tedious, and there is a great deal more of it than you expect. The structure ## Build a routine in the first month **People who structure their days do their time better than people who do not.** This is the most reliable observation in this entire guide and the one most likely to be ignored. A job. Programming, which you want anyway for the credits (time off earned through programming). Exercise on a fixed schedule. Reading with some purpose to it rather than whatever is lying around. Something you are learning that has an end state. The specific content matters much less than the fact that the day has a shape. The warning signs ## Watch for the drop Depression inside does not usually announce itself. It looks like sleeping through the afternoon, then through the morning. Skipping commissary (the prison store). Not going to rec (recreation time). Letting mail sit unanswered for a week, then two. Telling people not to come for visits because the drive is long. Every one of those has a reasonable-sounding explanation, which is exactly the problem. Notice the pattern rather than the individual excuses, in yourself and in the people around you. The crash ## The visit cycle Visits are the best hours you will have and the crash afterward is real. The same is true of good mail and good phone calls. Everyone experiences it, almost nobody mentions it, and knowing it is coming takes most of the sting out. Do not stop taking visits to avoid the crash. That trade looks rational and is not. The calendar ## Do not count days People who track the number are miserable. The standard formulation is that the days are long and the years are short, and it is accurate. Work in program cycles, seasons, or team meetings, and let the arithmetic take care of itself. The erosion ## What it does to you A year of not choosing what to eat, when to sleep, or where to stand does something to the part of you that makes decisions. It atrophies, the way anything unused does. The people it happens to are not the people who expected it. It is generally the ones who were most certain it would not. What it looks like: deferring choices you could make, waiting to be told, letting outside relationships lapse because maintaining them takes effort and the effort feels pointless, and gradually finding the institution's rhythm more comfortable than the alternative. The counterweight ## What helps Cheat sheet - **Keep making decisions** , even trivial ones, deliberately. - **Maintain your outside relationships actively** , especially when it hurts to hear what you are missing. - **Stay current with what is happening at home** rather than tuning it out. - **Keep a project with an end state** , and finish it. - **Plan for release from early on** , not from the last six months. **The time passes either way. What varies is who walks out.** That's the generic layer — the next guide gets specific ### [Doing time at a low](/going-in/security-levels/at-a-low) If you are headed to a low security FCI, this is where the general rules get specific: the fence, the schedule, the coexistence question, and how conflict actually happens there. That's the guide You cannot bring this with you. What you can bring is the shape of it: be unremarkable, pay what you owe, touch nothing that is not yours, and say less than you know. Read it again before you report. For your people ## 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](/for-families) — 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](/resources/facilities) with [email alerts when visiting stops](/lockdown-alerts/subscribe), the [support group directory](/resources/support-groups), calculators for your release math, and [free answers](/contact) when they have questions. Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you. **Need help with this? Just ask.** These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. **Answers are free** , and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer. [josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Inside%20question) I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.