There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess -- I'm the guy who can get these for you: cigarettes, a bag of cigar, if you want that, a bottle of wine to celebrate yourson or daughter's high school graduation, or almost anything else. . . within reason, that is. It wasn't always that way. I came to Shawshank when I was just twenty, and I am one of the few people in the prison who is willing to admit what he did. I committed murder . I put a large insurance policy  on my wife, who was three years older than I was, and then I fixed the brakes of the car her father had given us as a wedding present. It worked out exactly as I had planned, except I hadn't planned on her stopping to pick up the neighbor woman and the woman's son on the way down Castle Hill and into town. The brakes let go and the car crashed through the bushes, gathering speed. Bystanders said it must have been doing fifty or better when it hit the base of the Civil War statue in the town arid burst into flames. I also hadn't planned on getting caught, but I was caught. I got a pass into this place. My state has no death penalty , but I was tried  for all three deaths and given three life sentences, to run one after the other. That fixed up any chance of parole  I might have, for a long, long time. The judge called what I had done 'an extremely evil  crime', and it was, but it is also in the past now. Have I transformed myself, you ask? I don't know what that word means, at least as far as prisons and corrections go. I think it's a politician's word. It may have some other meaning, and it may be that I will have a chance to find out, but that is the future. . . I was young, good-looking, and from the poor side of town. I met a pretty, headstrong girl who lived in one of the fine old houses on Carbine Street. She got pregnant  later. Her father was agreeable to the marriage if I would take a job in the company he owned and 'work my way up'. I found out that what he really had in mind was keeping me in his house and under his thumb, like a disagreeable pet that has not quite been housebroken and which may bite. Enough hate eventually piled up to cause me to do what I did. Given a second chance I would not do it again, but I'm not sure whether that means I am transformed. By saying that "I got a pass into this place" (in Para. 3), the man means that   _  .
he had to stay in prison he was allowed to go home he was caught by the police without a pass he has stayed in the federal prison before