Over the coming weeks, I came to understand the answer - it's all about the routine. Inmates and officers alike mark their time by the tasks of the day: a morning inspection by the warden, three meals a day, medical calls, and head counts. And the longer the crew stayed, the more we started falling into our own routine: 5:30am wake-up, 6am shower, 7am arrive at the prison, 12:30pm go out to lunch at the sandwich shop, 12:45pm order the same sandwich as yesterday, 1:30pm back into the prison, 7pm finish, 8pm dinner, 10pm bed, wake up and do it again. Everyone on the crew joked about it, but we were doing our own time.

And in doing that time, we become part of the routine for both inmates and officers. We knew all the officers by name and what shift they worked. We knew the inmates' nicknames - Yankee, Two, MC, Lecter, Young Dukes, Johnny Reb. We got to know the power structure - who the shot callers were, who ran the hustles, and who controlled the inmate economy. All the while we attempted to document, not become part of, inmate life - a line that I unexpectedly bumped up against.

I was interviewing an inmate who had just come back from an appeals trial. He was in the Special Management Unit, a segregation unit that's mostly for punishment but is also used as a holding pen for returning inmates while they wait for a bed to open up in general population - and none of his friends knew he was back at the prison. In between questions, the officer stepped out of the room and the inmate, seeing an opportunity, dropped a "kite", prison slang for a note, at my feet. Without thinking I put my foot over it just as the guard came walking back into the room. At the end of the interview, I "casually" leaned over to pick up the note and put it in my pocket. And as we were walking back to the cell, the inmate gave me the name of another inmate and asked me to deliver it - it had "important information."

I had no idea what was in the note. I started thinking, should I give it to the prison? But that would violate the trust given to me by the inmate, who had let us follow him through some very difficult times. Should I give it to the intended recipient? But that would violate the trust given to me by the prison, which let us spend this year here. So I took it home that afternoon, and that evening I set it on the table in front of our crew. We sat around the folded paper and discussed what to do with t, but couldn't come up with a solution. We were flying home the following day, so we left it, unopened, and walked away.

Three weeks later we returned to Georgia and once again faced down the unopened kite sitting on the kitchen table. Still unsure what to do, I put it back in my pocket and returned to the prison. As I entered the gate I made my decision. I headed to the inmate who had given it to me; I told him I hadn't read it and couldn't deliver it. He studied me for a moment before his face curled into a smile. "You probably don't know what you just did," he said, "but you just gained you and your crew huge credibility in here."

I had learned another lesson about doing time, one of many I would take away after a year in this community. Perhaps ironically, honesty goes a long way in here. Be yourself and you'll earn respect. It's the only way to walk the fine line between the rules of the prison and those of the inmates.