A WRITER WHO'S SEEN JAIL FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE BARS

ON their 10th wedding anniversary, Richard L. Stratton took his wife,
Kim Wozencraft, to Sing-Sing, the prison in Ossining, N.Y. This might
not sound especially romantic - no flowers or candy hearts anywhere
- - but to the Strattons, it wasn't strange at all.

They were there for a screening of Mr. Stratton's film "Slam," a
fictional tale of a young black performance poet who is imprisoned on
a minor drug charge, which Mr. Stratton wrote and co-produced in 1998.
The couple first met at a reading for the PEN American Prison Writing
Contest in 1991, and later founded Prison Life, a magazine about
prison culture that was wildly successful in the mid-1990's but has
since stopped publishing.

In fact, the couple earn much of their living from the prison
experience. Ms. Wozencraft, now 48, is a former undercover narcotics
officer who grew addicted to the drugs she confiscated and spent 13
months in jail in the early 80's. Her experience became fodder for the
novel "Rush," which was adapted into the film of the same title,
starring Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Her husband, 57, spent eight years -- 1982 to 1990 -- behind bars for
conspiracy to import marijuana. This, mind you, was relatively
lenient, since he was originally sentenced to 25 years.

"The sentence was illegal," he said simply. "I got it
overturned."

Mr. Stratton has always managed to make the best of his own troubles.
Now he's focusing on the post-prison experience in "Street Time," the
Showtime series for which he is co-executive producer with Marc Levin,
the director, co-writer and co-producer of "Slam." The two men take
turns directing "Street Time"; Rob Morrow, one of the show's stars,
has also directed an episode. The series, whose second season begins
on Wednesday, is modeled after "The Parole Officer," a short script
Mr. Stratton wrote a decade ago. Mr. Morrow ("Northern Exposure")
plays Mr. Stratton's alter ego, Kevin Hunter, a parolee who went to
jail for five years for selling marijuana. Scott Cohen ("Kissing
Jessica Stein") stars as James Liberti, the parole officer. Guests
this season include Billy Dee Williams and the tennis star Serena
Williams, who plays a former gang member.

Mr. Stratton's prison background is rather uncharacteristic for a man
who grew up in a wealthy suburb -- Wellesley, Mass. -- and whose
mother was a Lowell. But "the Lowells were pretty wild people," Mr.
Stratton said in a Boston-inflected accent. "Robert Lowell was a poet
and a madman. They were opium smugglers. It's in the DNA."

As a youngster, Mr. Stratton embodied that DNA, venturing into tough
neighborhoods and buying and selling marijuana at 16. He started
writing at Arizona State University (where he had quick access to
Mexican border towns to buy drugs), published some short stories, quit
college and traveled to Europe, Lebanon and Morocco. He was also one
of the original founders of High Times magazine, buddying with Neil
Young, Hunter Thompson and Norman Mailer (who, along with Doris Kearns
Goodwin, a Boston acquaintance, later testified on his behalf). By the
time the authorities caught up with him in 1982, he had been living in
Beirut and was the kingpin of some 50 members of the "hippie mafia,"
an international group of largely well-educated, middle-class pot and
hashish smugglers. "I was already on the government's radar," he said,
adding that he never dealt anything harder than pot.

Mr. Stratton did time at many prisons, most notably the Metropolitan
Correction Center in Manhattan, "the prison Hilton," he said with a
kind of awe. "You meet all the elite from the criminal world, they all
come through that place -- all the stockbroker guys, the mob guys,
Boesky, Gotti," he said. Listening to him, it's hard not to feel as if
you have missed out on some important cultural phenomenon: Andy
Warhol's Factory, say, or Studio 54 in the 1970's.

Indeed, he freely admits that his world was "exciting and fun," but it
was also "empty, not creative."

"I wasn't growing as a person, writer or artist," he
added.

Prison gave Mr. Stratton time to write and study law; he successfully
represented himself at his appeal. He considered going to law school
after getting out of jail, but he sold his first novel, "Smack
Goddess," and decided to keep writing. He began doing articles for
Rolling Stone, Esquire and GQ, and dabbled in film and TV. "I'm still
fascinated by the law -- it's all language," he said. "If you can
write a brief that tells an interesting, gripping story, you can get
the judges' attention."

Or an audience's. Unlike, say, the recently ended HBO series "Oz,"
which looked at the inner workings of prison (Mr. Stratton was a
consultant on that show but still says it was unrealistic), "Street
Time" examines the post-prison world. It challenges what Mr. Stratton
sees as the hypocrisy of the criminal justice system; there are no
good or bad guys. Instead, the parole officer and the parolee are two
sides of the same coin: Liberti has a gambling addiction that rivals
Hunter's drug problem, and they both grapple with family and
relationship troubles.

The show is more than loosely based on Mr. Stratton's own prison and
post-prison experiences: in episode 112, for example, a prisoner sits
on a toilet and expels some heroin, an incident that Mr. Stratton witnessed.

"There should be a support group for ex-convicts," he said. "People
need to get back and talk about that. There's such a range of emotions
you go through, starting with, 'I'm free!' and then to the realization
that it's not all it's cracked up to be. You think, 'Maybe I was
better off in prison.' You get depressed."

"When I was on parole, I'd sit in the waiting room and see the
parolees greet each other, hug each other -- they hadn't seen each
other in a while," he added. "Then the parole officer comes in, and
you sit there like students. You're not supposed to associate with
each other. How idiotic is that? They put you in a room together! You
meet people you haven't seen for a long time, and they tell you you
can't associate! They're trying to entrap you. It was a sitcom."

Mr. Stratton's goal is to expose that seeming duplicity to people who
wouldn't normally be familiar with it. And if he has to shock a few of
them with graphic visuals and language, no matter. "We've got so many
people locked up -- the prison industry has touched so many lives,"
Ms. Wozencraft said. "It's brought a lot of people into that world who
might not have had contact with it."

Despite their nontraditional pasts, the Strattons swear they are a
regular suburban couple, living near Woodstock, N.Y. He wakes up at
5:30 a.m. -- a leftover prison habit -- to write. They have two sons
and a daughter, ages 11, 9 and 4. They say they are very open with
them; their oldest son is even shooting a documentary about "Street
Time."

"We've been honest about our past -- it was a pretty good opportunity
to tell them about big mistakes," said Ms. Wozencraft, whose
forthcoming novel, "Wanted" (St. Martin's Press), is about a prison
escape. "Not that telling them is going to stop them -- they'll have
to go through it themselves. But they're pretty fascinated by the fact
that I was shot," she added, referring to her life as a police
officer. "They went through a stage where they wanted to be cops. They
got through it. Thank God."

Her husband is slightly more rebellious. About three months ago, Mr.
Stratton got pulled over on his way home from a dinner with the
director William Friedkin and the film executive Sherry Lansing. The
officer took one whiff of his car, confiscated a film canister of
marijuana and wrote out a ticket. "I went to court for possession of
marijuana, and got fined $150 dollars," he said with more than a tinge
of glee. "It was all very civilized."

Was he nervous? Not really. "The experience of prison prepares you for
anything else," Mr. Stratton said. "Little things don't bother me.
Being in production is like being a general in a small army. These
people get all flustered. I'm like: 'Chill, relax, this is nothing. We
can deal with this.' h"

He added: "As Americans, we have a moral imperative to break laws that
are wrong."