My Lost Decade Podcast

My Lost Decade, Ten years in prison, a lifetime learning how to escape my own mind

My Lost Decade deals with the Reality of life behind bars as I experienced it and mental health issues like depression anxiety and thoughts of suicide. Coming to Terms with Ourselves Mental illness. Madness. Insanity. Call it whatever you want. The moment we stop denying it and finally admit something is wrong, that’s where healing begins. That moment gives us a new level of awareness. We stop running from ourselves and start facing the truth. Like many people, I spent years ignoring the warning signs. I convinced myself I was fine. Most of us do — until life forces us to stop. Sometimes it’s the death of a loved one. Sometimes it’s the breakdown of a relationship. For me, it was the day I was arrested. Thursday, May 8th, 2014. The day my entire life changed forever. Over the next ten years, inside some of America’s most notorious prisons, I was forced to confront the mental health struggles I had spent most of my life trying to avoid. I could have taken the easy route and accepted the medication prison psychiatrists handed out so freely. But from what I saw, those drugs didn’t heal people — they numbed them. They turned human beings into walking zombies, easier to control and easier to manage.

My Lost Decade, Part 4 If you want to see the worst of humanity, go watch the shift change at any prison in America

If you want to see the worst of humanity, go watch the shift change at any prison in America The brutal, unforgiving, dehumanizing system they call the California State Prison Life. The California Prison system is a brutal unforgiving environment, the whole system is designed to dehumanize you, turn you into an animal.  That way they, the system ensures that most of the inmates return because they can’t adapt to life outside of prison. The yards are run by gangs, not the guards.  Which gang depends on the race that has the largest numbers, it’s as simple as that.  It’s a subculture controlled by brawn not brains.  The level of violence must be seen to be believed.  Life is cheap, it doesn’t take much to be put on a hit list.  Most of the violence is over drug and gambling debts but it could be as simple as looking at the wrong person the wrong way.  The control system is called “Politics”, but the truth is it’s nothing more than racism.  It’s done to keep the gangs at each other’s throats.    There aren’t enough guards to completely control the inmates.  It’s in their best interest to make sure the gangs are busy worrying about the other gangs.  They the guards, would work hard to promote the race riots.  They could then clear out the inmates they couldn’t control, plus of course the mandatory lockdown which could last for weeks, no movement whatsoever, no yard, no visits.  That allowed the guards to spend all their shift in their little office watching porno videos on the internet.   Being a prison guard is a lazy man’s job, I have heard it said many times by civilian prison staff, “if you want to see the worst of humanity, go watch the shift change at any prison” and they weren’t wrong.  The whole justice system in America is nothing more than warehousing men for profit, it’s a business worth billions of dollars. It has nothing to do with rehabilitation, that is just a euphemism used to generate more money for doing absolutely nothing.  It’s jobs for the boys; most would find it very difficult to secure work doing anything else.  A great many of them would never be able to hold down a greeter’s job at Walmart.  The level of education was unbelievably low; many would use inmates to read out the names on the mail because they couldn’t do it themselves. The only difference between the guards and the inmates is that they have badges.  I would think to myself, I have somewhere around 10 years to do, but those fools have life, what a way to live.

My Lost Decade, Part 3 My introduction to the Penn

The screams from the gang rapes will haunt me forever My introduction into the world of the California State prison system was an education that I will never forget.   That education came at the reception centre in Chino.  Without doubt one of the most notorious yards in all the California prison system.   Its way past horrible, it’s old, all the buildings are falling apart, leaking roofs more broken windows than fixed ones, with enough black mould in each building to kill a whole town never mind the inmates in that building. The first thing you learn is that the violence you witnessed at country jail is nothing in comparison to the Penn (Penitentiary).  You’re with the “big boys” now.  These are some of the most violent criminals in all of America, many are just outright crazy.

My Lost Decade, Part 2, Arraignment to Sentencing

“I saw my first inmate killing within 5 weeks. An argument over food… it ended in seconds.” “I was arrested at my home in Georgia and transported to San Diego for arraignment. What followed was 31 months in a detention centre that breaks you down piece by piece. 23 hours a day locked in a cell. Freezing cold. No windows. Food so bad you’d rather go hungry. And if you didn’t have money on your books—you did go hungry. Court days? Worse. Up at 2:30 in the morning, moved from cell to cell all day… just to be told at 2:30 in the afternoon that your case was delayed. Again. And when you finally stood in front of a judge, you’d hear a version of your life that didn’t resemble the truth. But you stay silent—because speaking could make it worse. It took 31 months just to reach a plea deal.”

My Lost Decade, My First Day in an American Prison

“At 6am, I was watering my roses in my front garden. Four hours later I was in handcuffs… and within twenty-four hours I would learn how quickly the system strips you of your identity.” From a dramatic armed arrest involving multiple federal agents and helicopters, to the degrading and dehumanising intake process inside an American jail, Episode One immerses listeners in the moment where freedom is abruptly and permanently taken away. “In that moment I had stopped being Carl Battie. I became nothing more than a number in a system that didn’t care who I was.”