One of Tim’s sketches – How To Draw a Hand.
7/2025. By Tim Martin.
I am a convicted felon. My sentencing hearing is October 3 at 9:30 am. If I’ve felt safe, content, strong and at ease, as the loving-kindness prayer suggests, it’s because of the letters, calls, photos, books, apartment moving, subscription cancelling, finance managing, news curating, and more that I’ve received from family, friends and supporters while living in the DC Jail. My heart is so full of gratitude, relational accountability and sobriety.
Checking in on Thursday April 10 included a brisk strip search and shower, receipt of jail clothes, thin mattress, sheet, towel, hygiene kit, inmate handbook, health screening, brown bag dinner, and escort to cell 23 of the Intake housing unit, one of eighteen secured neighborhoods within the Central Detention Facility.
For most people, when the cell door first shuts can be a very challenging time, when bravado and pretension fall away and they are left to reflect on behaviors and choices that led them here from a life of little opportunity, large intergenerational trauma, and systemic indignity, repression and scarcity that subsidizes colonial-capital gains, comforts, conveniences and securities of others.
Yet for activist dads like me it’s a time of meditation and restoration from the uncomfortable but necessary work of resisting corporatocracy, with its mis- and disinformation campaigns. And to wake up public perception and respond meaningfully to the violent and unsustainable reality of our existence, which is based on stories that have expired and myths that are crumbling.
The next day I was assigned a custody risk score of medium (on a scale of low 0-5, medium 6-10, and high 11-15, based on violent criminal record and or current charges). They use this number for housing unit placement, cellmate pairing, and eligibility for correction treatment programs. When I asked why I didn’t get a lower score due to the nonviolent nature of my crime, I was told it was just policy. I learned later that it’s related to my remand status and should change to low after sentencing.
The rest of the day and weekend was spent converting my jail cell into a monk cell by wiping down existing crumbs, hairs and food splatter marks from all surfaces with moistened bathroom tissue paper; strength training using the bunk bed as a climbing gym; bathing with sink and washcloth like in the hospital after surgery; and reading the 31-page handbook. Sunday I received a surprise 20-minute video call from a friend who was checking in and letting me know that money was added to my commissary account.
By Monday I had my first four questions to my case manager filled out on an inmate request slip, but before I could submit, I was moved to the general population housing unit SW3 (South wing of CDC, door on the right towards the West, 3rd floor).
While waiting my turn to enter through the gate of the entry foyer I noticed the absence of exterior windows throughout the common spaces where folks were playing basketball, socializing or milling about. I also noticed a pattern since arriving: wherever I am in the jail, as a white man I’m in the minority. In my experience, white people do not make up more than 6% of the folks in this jail. I am experiencing the racialized incarceration system I had only understood from books before: like “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin, “Between The World And Me” and “The Message” by Ta’Ne-hisi Coates, and “Hospicing Modernity” by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira.
Interrupting this realization, a younger inmate standing on the stair landing laughingly said I looked like a pedophile, which seemed ironic and I couldn’t decide if he was teasing or threatening. Minutes later an officer entering the unit stopped, looked at me and said, “if you ever want to move for any reason just let an officer know”, and then kept walking.
I was eventually put in cell 11 occupied by an upper forties aged, light brown skinned gentleman who introduced himself as “E” (I assumed to protect his privacy outside). “E” did not seem pleased to have a new cellmate. His stuff (property) covered most of the table, ran along the wall on the floor, and surrounded his mattress on the lower bunk. I put my mattress on the top bunk and climbed up with my big plastic bag of property.
To be Continued!