Welcome to Prisonlandia

My name is Stephen McGee, and my journey to Prisonlandia began in 2018, but long before that I had dreams, on the verge of nightmares, about visiting this mysterious place. These dreams were never horrific or gruesome, but simply involved me being in a cell with no means of liberty available. I would stir myself in my sleep and force myself to awaken in order to escape the pain of the experience. Of course, going to Prisonlandia would be awful for anyone, with certain exceptions we’ll discuss later, but for me it was the dark abyss of no return and recovery, because you see, I was a police officer during the time I had these dreams (or perhaps visions).

I served proudly with the Houston Police Department (HPD) from 2005 to 2016 and to be quite honest, I envisioned doing it for the rest of my life. I loved my career and the excitement that came along with it. I loved the camaraderie and the idea of belonging to a closely knit group of individuals who felt like family and were all part of a cause that is necessary and respected by most. Never, had I worked so hard to train and further my career as I did during my time with HPD. Great pride is taken in the fact that my convictions and ultimate incarceration had nothing to do with my performance on the job. However, my unstable personal life had everything to do with it. Like I’ve told several people while locked up, “Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes” – this was usually said in response to someone’s shock over the fact that I was an inmate who was admitting to being an ex-cop.

My inappropriate personal lifestyle led to my resignation from HPD in October of 2016. Prior to this, my career was certainly headed in the right direction with several notable achievements including a promotion, which was not a simple task and nor should it be (we’ll discuss this later within the context of Prisonlandia staff). Unfortunately, the stress incurred from regular duties at work, plus the added promotional stresses, took its toll on my personal life. It came to a head in 2016 when I went through a divorce (that I initiated, but it’s still stressful) and then resigned just three months later. For those of you who find numbers interesting, I’ll briefly share a very strange “coincidence” that occurred during this time. On July 20, 2016 I took off work to file my divorce papers at downtown court, the next morning first thing, I was relieved of duty and under investigation by internal affairs. For about two and a half months I was relieved of duty with pay as internal affairs investigated me and ultimately, I determined it to be in my best interest to resign from the Department instead of moving forward with the investigation, volunteering more information, and ultimately having the Department “pull the trigger” with a termination. I submitted my resignation on October 3, 2016 – the day that would have been my wedding anniversary.  This unusual parallel of events, the loss of career and my divorce, made me wonder if there was some negative karma that was being dumped on my head. Over the following six months I applied for and tested with numerous departments and was consistently in the top scores for testing but despite that, I would get an email or phone call a couple weeks later explaining that I had not been selected. It didn’t matter that I had an awesome resume and a ton of valued experience, I couldn’t get a sniff anywhere!