Dick Heidt - City Magazine

| FEATURE
'Take your problems head on, sober':
An inmate's view
Final installment on the N.D. Corrections System series
By Stan Stelter
This is an interview
with a young, Native
American inmate.
Because we agreed
to allow him to
remain anonymous,
a fictitious name
is used here.
John’s five-year-old daughter understands
her father’s situation. “We told her that
Daddy is in time out for awhile, that I’ve
been bad and now I have to be punished,” he
says. “She understands that.”
John was raised in a good family on the
Standing Rock Indian Reservation. But, says
the 22-year-old Native American inmate, his
problem with drugs and alcohol led him to
run afoul of the law.
As John speaks in a low, serious tone, it is
snowy and frigid outside, a good January day
to be inside.
But not inside a prison.
Technically, John is not in prison today.
He is housed in the Bismarck Transitional
Center in south Bismarck, the last stop of
treatment and counseling for eligible, nonviolent
prison inmates as they move back
into society. Typically, inmates spend about
four months here before being released.
After graduating high school, John
found the reservation stultifying, where he
said there was nothing to do but drink and
“waste your life away.” He had some run-ins
with the law over drugs and alcohol, but not
major offenses.
It began to get serious in the fall of 2006.
Then, John was speeding around Bismarck
in a friend’s car and smoking a joint.
Police pulled him over and discovered a
quarter-pound of marijuana in the vehicle.
That led to a conviction for possession of
marijuana with intent to deliver, and a sentence
of five years’ probation.
But, in November 2007, his probation was
revoked after he was caught drinking and
driving. This time he ended up with a twoyear
sentence to “the walls,” his term for the
N.D. State Penitentiary.
After orientation and assessment, John
was sent to the Missouri River Correctional
Center, a facility along the river in south
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