Ex-Prisoners Are Revealing Their Biggest Shock Of The Outside World After Being Released (25 Pics)

My brother served a little over 3 years but the morning we picked him up we stopped by a grocery store to let him grab some snacks. He’s walking back to the car with this stunned look on his face and finally, as he gets to us he goes “I felt like I was on an acid trip I haven’t seen that many colors in so long, I need to sit down”.

I did 6 years. My biggest shock was finding out you can’t do much of anything without a smartphone. Companies don’t even do paper applications anymore

Just money in general… You have no idea how to handle money, and that takes a little time to get used to.

For my cousin, it was the Gameboy Advance.

This was a while ago (2006 or so). My cousin, who’d been in prison for about 10-15 years, was finally getting out so me and a bunch of the family went to pick him up, then go get breakfast at some diner. I was just a little kid, at the time, so I was playing with my Gameboy Advance, while we were at the restaurant. I’ll never forget how much the game I was playing blew my cousin’s mind. He saw it and immediately said “Holy shit, what is THAT?! Look at those graphics! Oh my God, that’s insane! (His sister) are you seeing this shit?!” To me, it was just some “meh” Star Wars game, but to my cousin, it was the future.

It’s actually through video games that me and him bonded a lot. I would tell him about or show him new stuff in the gaming industry and he would tell me stories about the games he would play, growing up.

I have done 5+ years in prison, I was mostly amazed by smart TVs, with Netflix and browsers directly on the tv. And the 4g internet speeds blew my mind as well.

When I got to ride in a car again, it felt like we were going about warp 15. I think we’re only moving about 45 miles an hour. It tickled my dinky like a rollercoaster for about ten seconds. Also, at the grocery store, it was really hard seeing people willfully buy cans of tuna. But I think the hardest thing for me was to quit crushing up spicy Cheetos and putting them in all my food.

My father was a counselor in state prison for 12+ years. He told me the inmates would often talk about wanting to feel their bodies submerged in water. Taking a bath, swimming, etc.

There are only showers so feeling up being weightless, floating, submerged was something these men would fantasize about.

I know a guy who did 2-3 years I think and I worked construction with him. I asked him “what is the biggest thing that stands out to you now that you’re free?”

He simply said: “the fact that I’m here with you but I can physically walk over there to that field 500metres away without anybody or any walls stopping me.”

My father was incarcerated from 2003 to 2016 & the biggest shock for him was technology & how much McDonald’s has raised prices lmao

Spent 6 years behind bars. When I got out the biggest shock was the beautiful sites and colors. I forgot how gorgeous nature was, it put the thought into my mind that I never want to go back because there is no beauty in prison, the beauty is on the outside. I’m glad I’m out now, and every day still take in the amazing outside world for what it is.

I did 4 years. The day I got out my uncle took me to Walmart to get everything I needed. I went off by myself to get the things on my list.

First I went to the lotion aisle. I was looking at all the lotions & became so overwhelmed by all the choices, dry skin, healing, scented, etc. In there I had no choices & was given what I needed. Having all these options overwhelmed me. I gave my list to my uncle to get it for me. It was really hard to go out in public for a while.

The first night I tried sleeping in a dark bedroom like I did before prison, but couldn’t do it. My dad slept on the living room couch with a TV on, so I slept on the other couch. I needed to sleep around people & noise for a while until I got used to being alone again.

I was surprised because one of the things I missed the most was sleeping in a dark, quiet room, alone in a comfortable bed. For a long time, I slept with my arm or a pillow over my head because of noise & bugs.

Just got out. The weirdest thing was seeing all these damn scooters laying everywhere

I did 5 1/2 on a 6 yr sentence. I think my initial shock was how the physical landscape had changed. Places that were once vast swathes of field were now car dealerships and homes. The other one was how people treated and spoke to one another out here. I wanted to fight everyone for about 6 months.

I remember asking a coworker of mine. He said first was that no one had taken his car. It sat for 6 years unmoved in the street. Tires held air and battery was dead but started with a push. Second was how quickly things had gone up in cost. Rent, food, gas, things like that.

I occasionally work with people who’ve just gotten out of jail or prison, and if it’s a longer stay a weird thing I’ve noticed is how often they are enamored of things like Spotify. Like once a guy who had just gotten out after ten years and the first thing he wanted to do was get Spotify set up.

He tried to connect through Facebook but couldn’t remember his password.. In all though, people getting out of jail are doing so much work to catch up. It’s really distressing how little societal support there is if you don’t have family to take you in

I interned at a private criminal defense firm. The most notable shock of any of our released clients had to be one man who in prison for 16 years (odd amount because he was paroled as part of plea deal). He had a daughter who was just a child at the time he was incarcerated, and when he got out, she had just had a baby, his first grandchild. She didn’t tell him about the pregnancy beforehand, she wanted it to be a surprise upon his release. I wasn’t there when our old client met his newest family member or his now-adult daughter, but when he came in a few months later, he still couldn’t talk about the new baby without crying happy tears. He had a picture in his wallet of his daughter when she was little he brought with him to prison, and showed us the new picture of his grandchild he keeps with it now.

5 years for aggravated assault & robbery. I was 3 months past my 18th birthday when I was sentenced. I lived in a small railroad town in South Central PA.

I guess one of the biggest shocks for me was how much the town had changed. The scrubland where we rode our bikes and dirt bikes is now a strip mall. My friend’s driveway is now the main road through that part of town. Someone fixed up the old dive bar and turned it into a fairly popular restaurant and bar. Hell, whole developments popped up all over the place! And while I wouldn’t exactly call the changes “gentrification,” the town certainly has improved as far as standards of living, without ridiculously increasing the cost of living.

Shock number two was internet access. AOL, NetZero, EarthLink, etc, were the go-tos then, but phased out within a couple years of my release as faster access from cable companies became more widely available and affordable.

I was in for Robbery 2: Mandatory Minimum of 5 years, 10 months.

One of the hardest things for me once I got out was making choices.

Let me explain; in prison, you might have two choices for shampoo if you’re lucky. The first time I went shopping for hygiene essentials was at Target. I remember being so overwhelmed by the number of choices for shampoo and having no idea which one to get. I stood in that aisle and cried for a few minutes before I just left without getting anything.

There was this older guy who used to drive a forklift for me. He had done ten years for manslaughter. I never got the full details because he was a good guy and a great worker, so I didn’t care. He went in in his early 20s and came out in his 30s, so by the time I knew him, his prison days were already 20 years in the past.

So apparently, he went in and his eyesight was bad all his life, but he was too poor to go see someone about it. His eyes were never checked and so basically by the time he got out, his eyes were completely shot and he couldn’t see well at all. The halfway house he was in paid for him to see an eye doctor and he got new glasses that fixed his vision. He recalled to me that it was such an amazing thing to see leaves on trees! He said the world was all pretty much splotches and to see detail like that blew his mind.

This didn’t personally happen to me, but I worked for a criminal justice reform group in Florida for about a year and a half. We connected with a guy who got released from prison after 50 years. He was arrested during one of the MLK riots in 1968 and locked away for half a century by an infamously racist and vindictive judge.

As you can imagine, after so much time he was struggling with a lot, but the big things were that he didn’t have any ID anymore and had no way to get it. Didn’t know where his birth certificate or anything was. He said, “it’s like I don’t even exist anymore.”

I was in charge of helping guys in a halfway house find housing and jobs. There was this 73-year-old man who had been in for a long time (I forgot how long but it was definitely over ten years).

Anyways, I have to give it to this guy because he was on it with finding a job even though he had already had VA assistance set up. A difficulty he was having is how you are almost required to have a cell phone these days. I remember him getting frustrated because he saw a job posting on a bulletin board but it didn’t even have a phone number to call.

It was one of those “Text [word here] to 30401 now” deals to schedule something.

My aunt was imprisoned for about 25 years as a political prisoner in China. When she was released she was just agape at the cityscape and how it had changed. The smartphones, being able to pay by just scanning with WeChat (very commonplace there, for paying something like parking it is very convenient), all the cars. The fashion everyone wears now compared to her closet of clothes she had before being taken away so suddenly (literally, she was kidnapped from my mom’s family in broad daylight, unannounced) . In the end she took it all in much better than we all had expected. Right before the pandemic, she had just finished a three-month vacation in Guilin with my other aunts. According to her, Guilin has changed the least.

Writing this for a friend as he doesn’t have his own Reddit account so please understand this is not my story

F (friend) served 11 years in prison for armed robbery and not having a permit for a weapon he wasn’t sentenced for this but admitted to me he had assaulted one of the officers first on the scene.

I went with his brother to pick him up from prison and slowly we took it back to where he used to live (2 hours away). he was always nervous and anxious

His words were “My biggest shock probably was how much had changed, Mum and dad live on the other side of the country, and I’ve lost all communication with all my friends but you and (generic other friend names) ” In a month or so I came by to ask him how he was doing “It’s so weird to not have to give anyone my stuff, I don’t have to hide anything or worry about the consequences if it gets found”

I guess he sadly has quite a rough time in prison with other convicts or even the guards…

My cousin did 5 for meth and robbery, when she came out she started crying when she saw my youngest sister was almost an adult.

I met a dude who had just gotten out of prison after 15 years, he said that his immediate shock was just seeing color. He said that everything in the joint was Grey looking, he went to Walmart and was overwhelmed by all the colors he had not seen in 15 years

I knew a guy who went in around 2005 I want to say, got out a few years later and we were driving around. He kept pointing to people on the street asking ‘what are those?’

This was downtown Seattle at the height of Hipsters. That was a difficult thing to explain. Ended up with ‘The new Goths’ as the best translation.