About this story<\/h6>\n
![\"Marc](\"http:\/\/stories.kera.org\/price-of-prison\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2019\/09\/OCA_Marc_Wilson2_2500.jpg\")
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For people living on the financial edge, a prison sentence often pushes them over it.<\/p>\n
Our One Crisis Away project’s Price of Prison<\/a> series continues with an examination of how time behind bars erodes wealth \u2014 for offenders, for families and for generations.<\/p>\n I’ve spent the last few months getting to know Marc Wilson, a father who had his family firmly in the middle class … until a drug conviction sent him to prison for seven years. He expects to spend the rest of his life trying to dig out of that financial hole.<\/p>\n \u2014 Courtney Collins, KERA reporter<\/em> Wilson says it’s impossible to do what the C.O.s want and also get along with the inmates.<\/p>\n “If you try to listen to the corrections officers, that might go against something that the offenders are doing,” he said. “And at the end of the day, you’re in there with the offenders.”<\/p>\n And going against the grain in prison has consequences.<\/p>\n “I’ve actually seen people get stabbed. I’ve heard of people getting raped and beat up so bad,” he said. “There’s plenty of times where they find knives and shanks all over the yard, all in the housing units.”<\/p>\n From March 1, 2012, to March 1, 2019, that was his day-to-day. Marc Wilson, who’d been a nurse and single father, spent 2,500 days in a Missouri prison because he drove cocaine across state lines.<\/p>\n “I mean, it’s just a horrible feeling, knowing what I’ve lost and what I could have had by now.”<\/p>\n Before his conviction for drug trafficking, Wilson was earning close to $90,000 a year. He owned a home and a car. He had $20,000 in savings. He didn’t need<\/em> to traffic drugs. He says that over and over. He didn’t need<\/em> the money. He wishes he could turn back time.<\/p>\n “In prison, just thinking about all the things that I’ve messed up by doing this, it kept me awake many nights,” he said.<\/p>\n He’s out of prison now, but:<\/p>\n It’s all gone, and Wilson can’t imagine returning to life as it was.<\/p>\n “I really don’t even think I can make it back to that at this point,” he said. “I’m really just trying to make myself comfortable and just live.”<\/p>\n When he says comfortable<\/em>, he means the necessities: food, clothes, bills paid. He’s got a $12-per-hour job installing cable lines at construction sites. He’s crashing with an uncle in Mesquite, Texas.<\/p>\n
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