Sad Reality.

Truths about prisons

Estelle "Sissy" Arwood doesn't look like a murderer. She's short, overweight, with a fair complexion, too much makeup, up, a new "perm" she's proud of, and subscriptions to both Glamour and Cosmopolitan.

At 16, Sissy was having problems at home. Her stepmother hated her 14-year-old boyfriend. Sissy missed her mother, who died when she was nine, and she had never forgiven her father for re-marrying. She and her boyfriend, along with his cousin (who was another boyfriend, according to Sissy), decided to solve their domestic squabble in high Miami fashion. As Sissy describes it: "My boyfriend and I were involved in an interracial relationship, and my stepmother would not accept it. So I killed her. I didn't do the crime, my boyfriend did."

On her last day of freedom, in 1986, Sissy unlocked a window at 4 a.m., after her father had left for work, and let her co-conspirators into the house. One hid under a bed, and one in a closet. Sissy then left for school. The two boys confronted her stepmother and strangled her.

What Sissy's account of the crime neglects to mention is that she and her two boyfriends also planned to kill her father, who had recently won $250,000 from a Las Vegas slot machine. The double murder was foiled because her stepmother was able to reach the phone and dial 911 before her attackers overpowered her. The 911 operator ended up talking with a male voice telling her to cancel the call.

Sissy is likeable and talkative, with a childlike manner. She is sorry for what she has done, proud of the classes she has taken in prison, (she's a certified optician), and looks forward to receiving her GED. She attends chapel and Narcotics Anonymous regularly, and hopes to be*reunited with her boyfriend and her stepsisters when she leaves prison. She's reconciled with her father, and he visits often. She even wants to have a family.

This sort of personal change for the better is the grandest achievement a prison can hope to encourage. But it is elusive. Even prisoners who turn their lives around while in lock-up often revert to old bad habits once released into the less orderly real world.