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It was very early on a cold, wet morning in late spring when I was suddenly arrested and taken to the police station. I had paid my attorney months earlier to represent me and provide documentation to the judge that I had met the conditions required to release a suspension on my driver's license, and I assumed he had done so, until the officer who stopped me for driving through a seedy area of town on my way home from the hospital ran a warrant search. After conversing on his radio, he got out of his car and said he had to escort me to the station, and after what I had been through, I thought I would faint. I wanted to beg, or scream, but remained silent. He seemed very professional and polite, but I was under arrest, and since I was on probation at the time, I knew I wouldn't be released anytime soon.

After we arrived at the police station, I was frisked and booked. I was then issued a jail uniform and transported to a cell on one of the higher floors, where the inmates are housed at the downtown jail. I had accepted a term of probation shortly after being assaulted at the jail, months earlier, and I would have agreed to anything to gain release after the assault, during which I was nearly killed while in handcuffs. I had signed a plea bargain, not really understanding the laws governing deferred adjudication, and still don't, even though I have thoroughly researched the question. The statutes conflict, it seems to me, but it is hard to believe that any law or rule that allows innocent people to be imprisoned, or imprisoned as a result of asserting their innocence, is not a violation of strictures against denial of due process.
My court-mandated period of probation was four years; after an article about the assault was published in a local paper, the probation was arbitrarily revoked pending a hearing, and a hearing on a motion to revoke probation was scheduled for a few months later. I spent the next few months in the long term county jail, and what I witnessed was very disturbing. I had always believed that inmates were mainly incarcerated, especially those with substance abuse issues, in order to be rehabilitated; in my county, various classes and substance abuse programs were mandatory, and seemed to be intended to help the inmates deal with these issues.Not so, it turned out.

After the five months went by, very slowly, as I spent my days walking in the recreation yard and my nights reading in my cell, I was remanded to prison, after the hearing

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