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‘The closest to hell you can get’: What life is like inside a prison

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‘The closest to hell you can get’: What life is like inside a prison

By Gary Bogatz
‘The closest to hell you can get’: What life is like inside a prison
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Photo by Alex Potemkin/Getty Images.

My name is Gary Bogatz. In 2022, I was sentenced to 68 months in prison and arrived in St. Cloud that July. I realize that prison is not meant to be a holiday, but that summer was hot and my un-air-conditioned cell was the closest to hell you can get while still breathing. 

My new cellmate bragged about his criminal past, then refused to be locked in his cell. At one point, he was chased by a mob of guards into our cell, where he refused to be handcuffed. So they returned in riot gear.

I explained I was not part of this man’s rebellion. They still handcuffed me to the bars. They pepper sprayed him, me and all my belongings. Then came in six guards. Eight people in a cell designed for one. They pushed me while cuffing my cellmate, beating my head against the bars. They placed me on investigative review, which means I was not allowed to leave the cell for 24 hours. Blind, bruised and left alone. No phone, no shower and nothing but the taste of pepper spray.

Shortly after, the prisoner above me got COVID-19. Four days later, 60 people had COVID. They locked us down for 14 days. During an early August heat wave, I was allowed just two showers and one phone call. 

As soon as I tested negative I was sent to the correctional facility in Faribault. The overpopulation there was extreme. We were stacked up like firewood, with one guard to oversee a unit with more than 200 people. For four months, the understaffing meant our movement was highly restricted, despite it being a medium security facility.

Desperate to be transferred, I applied and got into Prison Fellowship Academy, which is a yearlong faith-based program at the facility in Lino Lakes. The program was life changing, teaching real leadership skills and core values. Sadly, they too are under the umbrella of the Department of Corrections and cannot operate apart from it. 

While less traumatic, Lino Lakes was still littered with problems. The Department of Corrections acknowledged in September 2023 that three out of 10 faucets tested positive for lead content above EPA limits. For some days we all were given seven bottles of water.  All 1000 of us there. Then it stopped, but we never got reports on the water being better. This too, I believe, would come back to harm me. 

Shortly after, an inmate killed another inmate. The unit’s new lieutenant had previously banned people from changing cells. Both inmates said they needed to be separated, but no one listened, and a man wound up dead. 

These are just a few things I saw, and the struggles we all faced. And while there is more to say, I want your main takeaway to be this: The way we “correct” is wrong. 

We are not providing our inmates a fighting chance to rehabilitate. We are instead making people fight a system that is abusing them. 

The data show what we’re doing is a failed experiment. It’s time we revisit what ought to be the true mission of the prison system — helping people who have broken the law correct their ways, and give them hope of becoming law-abiding citizens.

For me, things changed on December 23, 2023. After 16 months of wrongful incarceration, I was released after winning my appeal. It was the day after I graduated from the Prison Fellowship Academy. I will never forget the impact my victory had on my fellow inmates. It was like they witnessed a Christmas Miracle. 

Joy and tears and so much love left with me as I was reunited with my wife and children.

After a four-year battle in court and prison, the judge dismissed my case altogether. They do make mistakes. Rarely, they fix them. 

Although this story has a happy ending, it has come at a price. The mental and financial burden to me and my family has been substantial.

I also suffer physically. My doctor says that due to contracting COVID-19 three times in 16 months and lead in the water, I am suffering long-term effects to my vocal chords, which makes it hard for me to speak. 

But I will not let them take my voice. 

I may not be able to speak all the time, but I can write. And I can be a testimony to the struggle of all prisoners. Both innocent and guilty. We all need justice.