“Outside in, I’m inside out/tell me what this pain’s about”: As one character says, “Everyone who gets sent inside takes a whole bunch of others with ‘em: wives and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and friends.”

To the prisoners, their families represent the outside world, yet they know they must concentrate on surviving inside. And though the families are physically outside, and have been convicted of no crime, they are tied in many ways to the prisoners, and to the prison itself. Theirs is a relative captivity.