Christian Howes

When I first got locked up, you know, we came from the same family.

And I was on full scholarship at Ohio State University at the time.

And I had been identified as, quote, unquote, academically gifted and all these things.

And a lot of people thought that what I did was kind of like didn't really count as a crime.

It's kind of like, but it did.

But that was like an old narrative.

It was like, oh, it's just drugs.

Yeah.

And so when I went in, I kind of had this narrative inside that was like, well, I'm a drug dealer.

And I think you see a lot of this in prison.

Oh, absolutely.

People are like, well, there's a hierarchy.

And so I kind of have that story when I went in.

But the longer I was in, the more I saw, I'm exactly the same as everybody else here.

Yeah.

Why is that?

Yeah.

I think part of it was that I saw the people that I was with as being deeply human, you know, that there was so much I could learn from them, that they had so much rich knowledge and wisdom and soulfulness, and that, you know, my relationships with them were meaningful.

And I was learning so much from the people that I met in prison.

Yeah.