One of the few reported plays of the “Get Back Into Jail Free” card

Imagine being cut off from society for so long that you have no idea how to use a computer, the internet or a cell-phone. Such was the case for Randall Lee Church, a 46-year old Texan who was released from prison earlier this year, and subsequently set fire to a house so he could go back to prison, unable to deal with the stress of living in a society 26-years ahead of him.

Said Church in an interview from jail at the start of a new sentence for arson:

Everything had gone fast forward without me … I didn’t know how to use computers or cell phones or the Internet.

In 1983, when Church was convicted and sentenced, Ronald Reagan was US President, personal computers were enormous, expensive toys of only the very rich, and cordless phones were just coming into use.

It’s not unusual for released convicts to suffer extreme mental and emotional duress on release from a long sentence, and that mostly due to the social stigma attached to their being ex-convicts.

Church experienced this stigma first hand:

The weirdest thing was walking into a store, like Walmart, and have parents hide their children from me, like I was supposed to jump at them.

What’s not very common is re-offence in order to gain admission back into the prison system – experts claim that no figures exist showing the regularity of such an occurrence.

[Source: chron]