‘I used to be honour graduate soldier till jail at 20 – my life has by no means been the identical’
Jerry Mathes was honour graduate and soldier of the year in the Army National Guard before a conviction for possessing an unregistered firearm saw him jailed for two years at age 20, leading to decades of PTSD and addiction
Jerry Mathes was a high achiever during his childhood. An A-grade pupil, he enlisted in the Army National Guard following his school graduation, where he excelled as a soldier. “I was the honour graduate, the soldier of the year and battalion top gunner. I volunteered for everything”, the 61 year old writer recalls.
It was during a routine weekday when he made a serious error in judgement that would cast a shadow over his entire life. He and a mate, whose identity he refuses to reveal, had offered to clean the machine guns following a training session.
“We found an extra machine gun somehow. We didn’t know where it belonged, and we started checking serial numbers with no answer. Then I go around the corner, and my friend is stuffing it in a duffel bag.”
His mate requested he cover for him and Jerry agreed. “I was raised that you don’t rat on your friends. He asked me to take it someplace for him and then went off the radar. Then he said we needed to get rid of it and directed me to give it up to some other people, which I did,” Jerry, from California, recalls.
Subsequently, another mate, who lacked the same sense of brotherhood loyalty, dobbed Jerry in. He was nicked and found guilty of possessing an unregistered firearm. Jerry received a two-year prison sentence at 20 years old.
“I was pretty devastated. My dad had been a cop and a municipal judge, so imagine the shame I brought to the family name. And it was pretty scary,” he explains. His initial days behind bars were absolutely terrifying, with an assault occurring within his first week inside.
“The guy’s fist cut me open on the side of my face and I had to get a couple of stitches. That taught me never to put my back to anybody in there,” he recalls.
“You don’t really know tough guys until you actually go to an environment like that. You don’t know what that’s really like and how they will lash out and attack you.”
The brutality was relentless and unpredictable. “There really are some super bad people there that you wouldn’t normally run into. I knew a hit man, for God’s sake. He liked me. He’s like, ‘Hey, let’s go for a walk’. And what are you gonna say to that guy?’No?'”.
“I met the son of a major mob family. These are people that, on the face of it, are all nice guys. We would talk, play cards, work out, but these are also the guys that, if you cross them, you would be dead the next day.”
However, the most devastating blow for Jerry was the gradual understanding that his envisioned future had vanished completely. He had been anticipating a prosperous military career.
“I’d always been told the world would be my oyster. So there was this incredible loss of possibility,” he explains.
He was transferred between various institutions: the county jail in Las Vegas, the federal prison in Tucson, Lompoc, Terminal Island, in Los Angeles and finally the now-closed Boron Federal Prison Camp. “At Boron, most people didn’t get visitors. It was way out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, as far from anything as you could get. My parents came once, I never saw my brothers and my sister.”
Upon his release, Jerry was eager to rebuild his life. However, he inevitably confronted the next challenge: trying to survive with a criminal record hanging over him.
“I was sent to a halfway house to transition back into society. You have very little money, you don’t have a car, and they tell you you’ve got to get a job within a few weeks, or they’re going to start punishing you.”
His initial employment was at the Las Vegas Review Journal, ringing customers. His second role involved fitting tyres. He appreciated any opportunity to work, yet the burden of humiliation proved overwhelming and he sought solace in alcohol.
“There’s this kind of way that prison creates PTSD in people. Addiction is a common result,” he explains. Prior to his arrest, Jerry rarely touched alcohol.
“I didn’t drink in high school. I was the goody goody two shoes. When I got out of jail, I would be drunk at work spinning tyres. I’d show up, go to lunch, drink a pitcher of beer and a few shots, then go back and put tyres on people’s cars.”
As the years rolled on, he distanced himself from his criminal past, taking on various jobs, travelling and penning thoughts in his free time. It was only when he started to chronicle his experiences, which led him to win the PEN America Writing for Justice fellowship, that he chose to revisit his early life.
He now utilises his personal journey to educate prisoners through writing programmes across the US and delivers talks on free speech and prisoners’ rights.
In 2019, he unveiled his criminal history to his daughters. “My oldest daughter shed a few tears. My youngest said, ‘okay, I understand that things happen to people’,” he shares. Admitting the truth was a massive relief.
“Holding in a secret like that is like going downhill for a long time on your brakes, and you start to smell your brakes burning up. When you finally come out with everything, it clears. It’s like breathing fresh air again,” Jerry explains.
This revelation has spurred him to advocate for individuals who find themselves behind bars and face lifelong discrimination as a result, remembering those who enter prison and never leave; losing their lives to addiction and suicide.
“Most of them are just regular blokes. They’re really no worse than maybe some elected official right now. We punish the crime, but we don’t treat the person. We just punish the people and beat them up.”
Jerry quit the booze eighteen months ago following an awkward chat with his GP. Four decades later, still attempting to comprehend how a single choice altered everything, he has documented his journey in his forthcoming book Of Time and Punishment.
He no longer harbours resentment towards the ‘mate’ who pulled him into the robbery, taking a more reflective view on how anyone might have found themselves in similar circumstances.
“At any particular time, anybody could make a bad decision. People are always judged by the worst event of their lives, but there’s so much more than that,” he explains.
Of Time and Punishment by Jerry D Mathes is out now.
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