BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Brandi Mizell feared the broomstick.

She can laugh about it today, now that her inmate days are past. But Mizell was convinced she'd be raped in this way at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.

Pop culture -- especially movies and TV shows -- led Mizell to believe that the broomstick was an inevitable reality for an incarcerated female, in Wetumpka or anywhere else.

"I didn't sleep for a minute," she admits. "I was just like, 'I'm going down and I'm fighting for my life.' Needless to say, I never saw or heard any of that."

But Mizell did have a wake-up call during the months she spent in an Alabama prison, and before that, doing time in a county jail. Mizell found out exactly what life was like behind bars, and she vowed never to return.

"I knew when I walked in, I was ready to go," Mizell says. "I turned blind eyes to lots of things. I didn't say a lot of things to the guards that were disrespectful, and nasty, and gross, and all those things to me, because I was ready to go. That was me. I'm getting on up out of here, as soon as possible."

She worked in the prison kitchen. She went to the prison church. She made a few prison friends. And she eventually entered a transitional program at the Lovelady Center in Birmingham.

The Lovelady Center, a nonprofit organization, provides services for women who've been released from prison, helping them with housing, meals, child care, job training, substance abuse counseling and more.

On a recent afternoon, Mizell and five other women from Lovelady -- Jada McDaniel, Karen Dube, Sheena King, Donna Burton and Sharon "Shay" Curry -- gathered at the center to talk about their experiences in prison.

Their goal: to help others understand what prison is really like, and to separate fact from fiction. They agreed that many people have notions about prison gleaned from popular culture -- from dramatic films such as "The Shawshank Redemption," sensationalistic TV movies such as "Born Innocent" and dark comedy series such as Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black."

"With a lot of these TV shows, they glamorize it," Mizell says. "I think the lack of reality hurts."

The women -- who'd served sentences at Tutwiler ranging from a few months to several years -- shared their own stories as they responded to the following pop-culture stereotypes about life in prison.

True or false? We asked; they answered.

Women clean the dormitories at Julia Tutwiler Prison with maxipads, according to our focus group from the Lovelady Center. The inmates have to be resourceful, making the most of supplies and tools available to them. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

1. It's really dirty in prison.

Donna Burton: I absolutely agree. It's filthy. My experience was, you get punished, so you have to clean. As far as where you eat, in that area of the kitchen, and some of the bathrooms, it's dirty.

Jada McDaniel: I can't say that it was so much dirty as old. There's only so much you can do with rust. You can only clean it so many times. If it's old, if it's mildewed, if it's dilapidated, there's only so much bleach will do. It wasn't really dirty as opposed to decrepit.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I personally didn't find that it was dirty, because we were the cleaners. The officers I dealt with at that particular time, they were all about screaming, how you were going to get a toothbrush and do it. ... You didn't have no choice.

2. In prison, things are always broken -- light switches, faucets, phones, toilets, etc.

Jada McDaniel: On occasion, a phone would be broke, or a toilet might not flush right, but you've got 20. Who cares if one of them don't work? It's not that big an ordeal. To be honest with you, we don't have a light switch, so we were glad if some of the lights didn't work. Please cut some of those lights out. You really don't have that much technology to even worry about being broke.

3. Prison is infested with bugs.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: Most definitely, in the food. Anything green you gonna get you to eat, there's gonna be a bug. ... They're just cooked with the rest of it, like, grasshoppers and stuff.

4. In one episode of "Orange Is the New Black," inmates train cockroaches to carry cigarettes from cell to cell. Could that actually happen?

Jada McDaniel: You deal with a lot of bugs, but I wouldn't say they were trained. ... I've never had that experience. I have experienced people having rats for pets. You have people that, I guess, are needy that way. They begin to give them little treats, or little pieces of this or little pieces of that. I wouldn't say it's as friendly a relationship as "The Green Mile," with (the mouse) crawling all over him, but I've definitely seen people that had a specific rat that came, and that was their rat, their pet. And the rat knew if he came, he would get food. That's something I have seen. Just feeding them, just to be able to say, "I got a pet rat." You know, different strokes for different folks.

Overcrowding is a big problem for inmates at Julia Tutwiler Prison, but not for prisoners on the Netflix series "Orange Is the New Black." "In Tutwiler, you are on top of each other," says Karen Dube. " They have so much bed space on that show." (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

5. There's a room with a TV bolted to the wall, and everybody fights over which show is on.

Donna Burton: There's select few people that were in charge of the TV, among the inmates, and they choose what they wanted to watch. They wrote it on a piece of paper, and that's how they went. ... So the best thing for me was to not watch TV.

Karen Dube: In the TV area, there's maybe 200 people in the dorm, and maybe room for six or seven people to sit down. So you sat on your bunk or went to church. ... Or the guards would put what they want on.

6. There's a line of phones on the wall, and everyone is anxious to make calls, trying to get other prisoners to hurry up.

Brandi Mizell: The phones were very important. ... But it's so expensive -- so much so, that to call Atlanta from Tutwiler costs $25 every 15 minutes. My mom is like, "Don't be calling me! I'ma come see you next Friday." But the phone calls were very important. Nobody really writes letters anymore. Now, were people busting each other upside the head, and things like that? I never witnessed any of that. I saw more fights in the county jail over the phone than I did in prison. Now, in the county, you had a fight on your hands, because everybody was trying to call the bail bondsman or whatever. But the phones were definitely important. They were a lifeline.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: It's so expensive. My mom would say, "Hello, how you doing, you all right?" And I'd say, "Yes, ma'am." Click.

Jada McDaniel: Telephones, for me, made it harder. It made my time longer. You can't live inside prison and outside at the same time. You just can't do it. For me, I did better if I stayed away from the telephone, simply because it makes you crazy. You're sitting there, and you can't get ahold of so-and-so, and you're wondering what they're doing, that kind of thing.

7. There's a prison hairstylist with a salon and lots of tools at her disposal.

Sheena King: We did hair with nail clippers. And they did a very good job at it. The same inmates cut other inmates' hair. They don't have a salon; they do it in the bathroom, like that.

A bed in a dormitory at Julia Tutwiler Prison. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

8. It's hard to sleep in prison. It's noisy; the lights are on; guards wake you up for count.

Jada McDaniel: There's "lights out" time, and it kind of quiets down then. Nine times out of 10, you're ready to go to sleep way before lights out. But you're either going to develop a "you can go to sleep" type thing, stick some toilet paper in your ears, put a towel over your eyes and go. That's one way that I coped with it. But you're going to get woke up at least once a night to recite your AIS number (Alabama Institutional Serial number) to the guard, because they count during the night, too. ... And during a shakedown, you're liable to be up half the night, and then go straight to breakfast and be up all day. You have to remember that you start your day at 4 a.m., if you eat breakfast. So it is what it is.

9. The food is horrible. You'll never have a good meal in prison.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I used to have a visit with my kids and it's called Aid to Inmate Mothers, and they used to bring my kids every second Saturday of the month. The volunteers would bring food, or it would be a certain guard or something would say, "Shay, guess what I cooked," and get it that way. But for what's coming out of the dining room, it ain't happening.

Brandi Mizell: I worked in the kitchen and we fried the chicken and the fish and all of those things. So where everybody might get one piece of fish, we'd get three. Not to mention, one of the cooks that came in liked our little crew, so he would bring us in things sometimes. Like when you're in prison, and you haven't had a Burger King cheeseburger in a year, it's like lobster. ... So when you say "good meal," a good meal for me was a cheeseburger and a pie from Burger King.

Now, that mystery meat food, on the box when it comes in, it says, "Not fit for human consumption," and we would have to cook it and serve it. Some people, that's all they have to eat. And I'm talking about, you're biting down on bones and gristles. But if you don't have anything else, then that's just what you're stuck with.

Sheena King: My favorite time was when my mom and dad would come, and bring a whole bunch of quarters and stuff, and they would have the snack machines that would have hamburgers and stuff in there. I would tear 'em up.

10. Inmates work unsupervised in the kitchen, with sharp knives and can openers.

Brandi Mizell: I worked in the kitchen, and when you had knives, because you had to cut up chickens and stuff like that, the knives were chained to the counter. It would go as far as you were cutting, the chicken or whatever. If she's over here, I couldn't just take the knife and stab her. She's have to be actually laying down on the counter.

They had people watching when you opened a can of something. You could easily cut someone with a can opener. But they had someone by you, watching you open those big industrial cans of green beans and stuff like that.

Inmates in the yard at Julia Tutwiler Prison in Alabama. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

11. Everyone smokes in prison, and cigarettes are a prized commodity.

Sheena King: Yes, that's true. When I was there, the girls in A dorm, that's where you go at first, they couldn't smoke. There would be girls running by, selling cigarettes for $30, and they're only, like $3 a pack. They were hustling big time on those cigarettes.

Karen Dube: When I went to jail, I sat there for 3 1/2 months before I went to Tutwiler, and we could not smoke. When I went to Tutwiler, the first thing I wanted was a cigarette. I knew we couldn't smoke, but it was, "Do you have any T-shirts to trade for a cigarette." It was something that people did. It was almost like, "Let me see if I can get away with it, without getting caught." There was always that little bit of excitement. I think we did it to pass the time.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: Cigarettes were most definitely a stress reliever for me. Somebody dies, go out and smoke. Things are going wrong, smoking was somewhere I could turn to, when I couldn't turn to the drugs. I had that to comfort me.

Brandi Mizell: I don't think cigarettes were any more desirable in prison than they were on the outside. You just couldn't get the drugs as quickly and as inexpensively as you could get them on the outside. So they were a hot commodity. ... Nicotine, which is a drug, took the place of the street drugs when you were in prison. I believe that is why they probably seemed to be so desirable, when you were in. Smoking is just smoking, in or out. People that smoke, love to smoke, and they can't do without it.

12. Prisoners make their own cigarettes.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: When I was in prison, you would make cigarettes from collard greens and turnip greens. The crazy thing about that was, after it dries out, you roll it up with the toilet tissue roller, then you got to get you something metal to stick in the socket, to light it up. Or you'll electrocute yourself. You put your lips to it, and pull.

13. People in prison make booze (also known as "hooch") with strange ingredients.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: Today, I don't think you can really do it, because of the smell, and the yeast, and things that you would have to acquire, to steal from the kitchen to make it happen. Back in the day, we used to make it. You could steal yeast and everything pretty easily. You would dig a hole and bury it, you know, so you couldn't smell it. (Inmates) didn't do that too much, because of the stomach poisoning you could get from it. They stopped doing it and basically started drinking Thorazine. That took the place of the hooch. Thorazine in coffee. You get it in the pill line.

Brandi Mizell: I believe when prescription medications kind of came to the forefront that the hooch probably took a backseat. It's much easier to get pills than it is to make alcohol. I think when it comes to hooch, they made it, but you get about a cupful, or a little swig or something. Other than that, it was about pills. And cigarettes.

14. It's easy to get drugs in prison, from the officials or otherwise.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: You go to psych.

Brandi Mizell: Same as on the street. You go to the doctor, and you ask for them, and then you can get them when that prescription runs out, from somewhere else.

"I'm all about the woman, not the women, and what makes them make the decisions that led them to prison, and what makes them make the decisions that led them back again," says Brandi Mizell. "I just feel very passionate about rehabilitation and transitioning. I feel that gets lost when people are talking about being in prison. What happens next? If you are not given the tools to transition, what happens?" (AL.com file photo)

15. There are long lines in prison, for just about everything.

Donna Burton: The main one that got to me was the pill line, because it was so long and people were so anxious, and their medicine had already worn off. They're getting mental health medications, and they're crazy and fighting over places in line ... It was was worst line, it was the worst time of the day. And when they call pill line, people would run from one end of the prison to the other, in a stride to get to that line.

You've got to pretty much have a diagnosis to get mental health medication in the penitentiary, or go back there and lie to 'em, in medical, to get something that you can trade for food or whatever. When I was in there, it wasn't that easy. That's why you have so many people running to get in that pill line, so they can get that medicine up there in that jaw, so they can keep it and use it in multiples, to get high with, or to sell it to someone. That was one of the most important lines to me. Even the food line wasn't that important.

16. Prisons are stingy with heath care for inmates.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: You have to be dying.

Jada McDaniel: I've actually seen somebody die. There was a lady, she had been telling them all night long, she told them at least three times that her chest had been hurting her. And they kept brushing her off, and brushing her off. She was one of the chronic people that, you know, would go ... because you have people who want to stay in health care. Regardless of that, she was an elderly lady and she was having chest pains. And they kept brushing her off and brushing her off, and they went over to check on her, and she had died. They could not even find that thing ... the defibrillator ... they couldn't even find it, to try to get her back.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: One girl complained of headaches, all day long, and it was chicken day (in the cafeteria). And they would not pay her any attention. She had an aneurysm and died, in chicken line. Because they did not want to interrupt chicken day.

17. Prisoners hang out and form gangs based on race: blacks with blacks, whites with whites, etc.

Brandi Mizell: There were people that I knew, I was in F Dorm, which had about 200 women, but hanging out? I went to work, I stayed on my bunk, and I went to church services, and I had visitation. They were a few women I was very close with that I came in Receiving with. Two of us were black and one of us was white, and I don't think it kind of mattered. When I was there, there were groups of people that were getting out real soon, and there were groups of people that had a long, long time to stay, and there were groups of people that were homosexual. There were your pill heads. There were groups like that. I wouldn't say so much that it was a race thing. Not an Aryan thing, as you see with the men, none of that type of stuff. It was who you were, when you walked in, was who you drew in there. Basically, like life.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I don't think, in the state of Alabama ... I think maybe in other cities that you might have a lot of gang stuff, but not in Tutwiler.

One of the inmate bathrooms at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

18. There is zero privacy in prison. People watch you shower, undress, go to the bathroom ... you name it.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I was an addict, and a prostitute, and whatever, so I didn't care that much about privacy. When I made it to the penitentiary, I was tired, anyway. But going through the back gate, and allowing someone to spray the crack of my behind with a bug spray, spray my hair, spray up under my arms, and talk to me and degrade me, like I wasn't nothin' and wasn't getting paid, was the worst thing of all of it.

Brandi Mizell: I stayed in a dorm with about 200 women. There were no individual cells. The thing that used to bother me was not using the restroom beside anybody, but taking a shower and people are having sex right beside you, in the shower. And taking a shower and the guards coming there, and just standing there, watching you. And staring. That part, to me, was the most degrading part, as far as privacy is concerned in prison. Because if I want you to see my body, then I was OK with that. But for you to just sit and stare, especially in the position that you're in, was just kind of ... it was creepy. And it was degrading. And then definitely the first time I saw somebody having sex right beside me in the shower. I just about fell out, and hurried up and got out. And I was like, "I'm never coming to prison again."

19. There is sex in prison. Lots of sex in prison.

Karen Dube: I heard stories, but I didn't know. And I found that when I got in one of the big dorms, I was in the jungle. And one of the bathrooms, you did not go in after 9 o'clock. Because if you did, and a guard found out about it, you were going down, as they say. I made that mistake once, and I never did it again.

Jada McDaniel: I think it's more of an opportune thing. You have certain guards that are cool with it, and you've got certain guards that ain't cool with it. When the opportunity presents itself, and the couples see the opportunity, they're going to take it. They're not concerned about whether you like it or not. It's all about them at that moment. So if you're there long enough, you learn what time it is. And you learn to stay to yourself. You learn to not get into anybody's business. ... And honestly, in all reality, if you do that, they don't bother you. ... They're doing their own thing.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I was trying to figure out what I needed to be doing, in order to change my life, so I did a lot of hair when I was in prison. And I would do hair, and the girl would be standing there, and there would be another girl on the side ... It didn't matter where. Wherever a time, place, presented itself, that's where it went down.

Long hair is definitely not allowed at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, according to the Lovelady focus group. "I watched 'Orange Is the New Black,' and one thing they have is hair down to their butt," says Karen Dube. "When you walk into Tutwiler, it's coming off. It's gone. There's a lot that doesn't even come close to what we see." (The Birmingham News file photo)

20. Fights and violence are common in prison.

Jada McDaniel: It all depends on what you choose. You can go in there a homegrown country girl and come out a street thug, if that's what you want to do. ... One of the things that aggravates me most with the TV stuff, and the hype, is that it seems like you're forced (to do things by other prisoners), and don't get me wrong, you have fights between inmates. But the only actual force that you see comes from your authority.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: You had fights, you know. I had one fight, and a girl spit on me. And when she spit on me, it was right before my Christmas box, and I knew I was going to lose my Christmas box, and I worked with her for about 20 minutes.

21. Prisoners make weapons by putting padlocks in socks.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: The lock in the sock is for people who have no hope. You had too many people in there with too much hope of getting out one day, to do the lock in the sock. You might have some vicious fights between lovers, or something like that. You might have something done to you that's so disrespectful that you're gonna have to go ahead and deal with it right then. But drawing that kind of blood? That's hopeless.

Brandi Mizell: The lock in the sock was county (jail) days. By the time I got to prison, I was all fought out, unless somebody was going to do something like that to me, which didn't happen to me. ... The worst ones that I saw were the lovers, and the fights between the guards and the inmates. I saw some bad business between guards and inmates. You know, guards pulling women off their beds, slamming their heads against the walls, punching them in the face, and then taking them to solitary. ... You can't just let somebody beat you to death. You have to fight 'em back, to protect your life. It's about survival.

Is it possible to make a realistic TV show about life in prison? "I think it would be hard to depict it," says Brandi Mizell. "Not because you couldn't, but because of the entertainment purposes. I think they exaggerate it, for entertainment purposes." (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

22. Friendships between women are hard-won in prison.

Karen Dube: I was told before I went to prison, "You're never going to make any friends. You can't make friends in prison." I've got some lifelong friends actually that were in prison with me, and have come through the program here, and they will be my sisters for life. They stood by me in prison; I stood by them in prison. Just to have that support, because I think you've got to have somebody to talk to in prison. You've got to have someone that you can just vent on, talk to, get information from.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I think the friendship thing meets what you need. If you lacked a mother-father figure, then you gonna find you a state mom or a state dad, or some siblings. That's for real. That's what kept you strong. You found in another person what kept you strong.

Sheena King: Before I went to prison, I never had a female friend. ... Actually, that's something I can take with me for life, after going to jail and prison, because I started to learn that it's OK to have female friends. And I had some really good friends, and I don't really talk to them now, but it opened the door for me to be able to have female friends.

23. There are rituals and rules in in prison, which must be learned from other inmates.

Brandi Mizell: You learn quick or you get humiliated. You don't get a week; you get a day or two.

Donna Burton: For me, being young and going to prison young, and being there twice or three times, people knew me. Old-timers knew who I was, so they kind of took me under their wing. And I remember one lady in particular, whose name was Linda. She took me to the side one day and said, "This is what you do. This what you don't do. This is who you hang out with. This is who you don't hang out with. And that's who you might want to think about hanging out with." She said, "You do this; you do that. And you listen to me."

"When I was (at Tutwiler), in 2008, they had so many people there, and they were over capacity," says Brandi Mizell. "When people would come to visit, like government officials, they would take (inmates) to the county jail across the street, so the numbers would match and bring them back when they leave." (AP Photo/Kevin Glackmeyer)

24. If you know the ropes, it's easy to get contraband items in prison.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I think you can get what you need. It all depends on who you know. You might have a guard who'll bring you a couple of joints. You might have a guard that fell in love with a girl that'll do a certain thing ... and then you're able to get stuff. And then you're generally not going to share, or tell anybody too much about it, because you're scared you're going to lose it.

25. The long-timers control things in prison.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: The state of Alabama, they pass out time like it's a gift. You have so many women in prison with a lot of time. It don't matter. You're trying to figure out how you're doing to do 30, 40, 50, life without ... finally got off death row and just want to breathe some air, you know. You get women there that have a lot of time, and I don't think they just put everything they have into controlling something.

Brandi Mizell: I think the principle is like working at a company. You have seniority. If you've been there for 10 years, then you have seniority. I mean, it's just like having a job. ... From what I saw, the people who had been there a long time just respected each other. They did not hang out with each other, they respected each other. And the people who had not been there a long time respected their seniority.

26. Guards hurl verbal abuse at prisoners.

Jada McDaniel: For me, the most degrading thing, aside from being searched, being sprayed like Shay said, was how the guards talked to you. All that stuff, yeah, that was bad. But to be talked to that way, day after day after day, was crazy. Being told you're worthless, "Aw, don't worry about it, you'll be back."

Sharon "Shay" Curry: It's not just only the guards that takes away your sense of dignity and pride and stuff. We did it to each other, as well.

Relationships between guards and inmates are complicated, according to our focus group from the Lovelady Center. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

27. Guards have inappropriate relationships with prisoners.

Brandi Mizell: You have to remember that the COs (correctional officers), they work two 16-hour days, so they're around the women more than they're around their families. By the time they get home, they're going to bed, because they've got to get up in six hours and do another 16. So there's your relationship right there: "I'm around you more than I'm around my wife." It's sort of natural for this thing to kind of end up happening -- if not just physically, maybe emotionally. I think that the power that's involved makes it the worst. If you're in authority, then you should not take advantage of the authority you have over the inmate.

28. Guards pressure female inmates to have sex, or rape them.

Brandi Mizell: I do know that I saw mutual a lot more than I heard about the rape. However, in a situation like that, you can exert that force without even physically exerting the force, by saying, "I'll put you in seg (the hole) or whatever." So you've got the authority you have with someone that is not in authority and they may feel a fear behind it. ... I know I saw a lot more mutual, "Get your cousin to send me some money on the books, and I'll do this." ... When I was there, a girl performed a sexual act on a guard, got a cup, spit it out in the cup and took it to the shift manager's desk. As blackmail, because he would not continue to do what he had been doing before.

I know that Tutwiler is under a lot of media (scrutiny) about the rapes, and I'm not taking anything away from the women that have said they've been raped. They may well have. I just personally saw a lot more mutual than someone actually physically forcing someone.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I didn't see rapes and stuff like that. I've seen a lot of consensual stuff went on, and I'm not saying that women who said they've been raped, wasn't raped, because I know some that came in a virgin, should still be a virgin. ... I think the type of people working (in prison), when I was there, had some type of respect for people. The people they're putting there now don't have respect for people and human life and emotions. They're picking up crazy folks off the street, and putting them on the job, with issues. You've got folks with issues, dealing with folks with issues. So it's crazy, is all I know.

"Prison is like a microcosm of the world," says Brandi Mizell. "It seems like there's a lot of bad things going on, and there are, but there are bad things that go on in the world, as well. The prison population is so dense, and it's in one place, that everything you find going on on the outside, is going on in prison." (The Birmingham News file photo)

29. Men draw women into a life of crime, leading them to prison.

Jada McDaniel: Nobody drew me into nothing. I made every choice that I made. There may have been some influencing factors, but ultimately, the choices were mine. And I knew better. I knew right from wrong when I made the wrong choice.

Brandi Mizell: I work in Phase 1 of this program (at the Lovelady Center), and we do assessments. As part of the assessment, we ask: Have you ever been abused, physically, sexually or emotionally? And I guarantee you that 90 percent of the women who come here have been abused in some shape, form or fashion.

At the end of the day, I make my own decisions, but if I don't have it in me to make another decision, I'm going to make the decision that has enabled me to survive, for this period of time. And if using my body has enabled me to survive, then that's exactly what I am gonna do. If stealing has enabled me to do it, then I'm going to do that. If robbing has enabled me, then that's what I'm gonna do.

So I wouldn't blame the men for a lot of the lifestyle, but I would blame a lot of the abuse, whether it comes from dad, uncle, mom, cousin, grandpa, grandma, wherever it is.

Inmates have escaped from Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, but most get caught, said our focus group from the Lovelady Center. And tunneling out? Not gonna happen. (AP File Photo/Dave Martin)

30. People make daring escapes from prison.

Sharon "Shay" Curry: I escaped from prison twice. ... I went to Montgomery for about seven months, got caught, then went back. Then I escaped over the fence, climbed over the fence, barbed wire and razor wire, was running down the middle of the highway, and a pimp picked me up. He took me to a truck stop and I went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Donna Burton: I've known people to escape from the penitentiary and the work-release center. The one that stands out in my mind, I'm just going to call her by initials, is T.C. ... Obviously, she'd been there a long time, and it was kinda understandable. You've been in prison all this time and you finally get to work release ... You get that little bit of freedom. It's your choice. But instead of going back to wait for the van, you get in a car with somebody and you go. It's like a spontaneous thing. You've done something before you even realize it.

I can't sit here and say I never thought about escaping. Because I did. I thought about ways I could do it. But it was just by the grace of God that I never took action.