Please do not violate your curfew or the other restrictions that are placed on your behavior.
I was homeless for 4 of the past 5 years. At the Pine Street Inn, guests are awakened at around 5:45 a.m., when the flourescent lights are turned on without ceremony. The yelling by staff to "Get up" starts at 6:00 a.m., and you get out of bed or security is called to remove you from the building. You do this every day, including weekends.
The curfew for guests who are in the Emergency Beds lottery program is 7:00 p.m. That's the latest that you can get into the building; the lottery starts at 6:00 p.m. or a few minutes before 6:00 p.m., so the real curfew is 6:00 p.m. to get a ticket for the lottery.
I'm 41 years old. Do you think that I or any other adult likes having a curfew of 7:00 p.m. every night of the week, or having to get up at 6:00 a.m. every morning? I never argued with staff about those rules; I confined my unhappiness about them to quiet discussions and jokes about them with the homeless people around me who also hated having to live like that. I also wrote about it online sometimes, which I could do because I am not convicted of a felony or trying to contest a felony conviction and didn't have to worry that what I wrote could put me in jail. I also know that places that have to coordinate processing and trying to meet the needs of lot of people every day have to have schedules and rules.
Do you know what a blanket party is? A blanket party is what it is called when a group of jail inmates throw a blanket over someone and hit the person with everything that they could find that would hurt. Survival is not a guarantee.
Jail is a place to avoid. Doing things that make you seem anything other than repentant, cooperative with and grateful to the criminal justice system for the liberties which it has given you, while your punishment for a conviction is discussed by the people who have the power to decide what happens to you, is not intelligent.
Copyright L. Kochman, March 18, 2016 @ 12:32 p.m.
