To avoid the problem of running too long a reply, there will be some points which I simply colour green or red. Those in green are ones that I agree with, but don't feel the need to expand on. Red statements are those that I disagree with. I may or may not expand on those points.
Every prison and county jail is different.
Above all else that the author has posted, this statement has to be kept in the back of your mind. The experiences of one ex-convict will never necessarily fully mesh with those of another. Serving time in two different prisons and comparing experiences is like an Yankee and a Canuck comparing their lives. There will be some glaring differences, but enough similarities that the average person can't tell the difference.
I was in a level 5 facility, (they call in V inside because the State uses roman numerals and you don't find a lot of convicts know what roman numerals are. I Romans for that matter. ) - but it was part of a privately run string of prisons, each with anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousands convicts. To manage the population as it swells and declines seasonaly (convict rates drop through winter. no shit. no one wants to commit a crime when it's cold) people get cycled in and out, so there is really no time for re-offending programs, or programs to prevent drug abuse or any of that.
I was in a slightly lower-security prison than this author. It would be equivalent to a level 4 facility, rather than the level 5 that the author spent his 2-year stint. I'm not sure if it's just that the prison he spent his time in sees a drop in convict rates through winter, but I know that we would see a slight increase in our already overflowing population in the coldest months. This increase was often primarily homeless people who had deliberately done something illegal, solely for the purpose of getting a place to sleep and 3 square meals a day.
1. Getting Out
On my last day I started writing this list in my head, and thought it would be funny to post it on the Chans. But really, now I've written it, it's not funny . . . Instead of rape, the thing that tops my list was getting out. After 18 months, I felt like I had the whole prison kick down. I felt like I belonged. New guys looked up to me, like someone who'd seen shit and made it through. As I scaled back on my pretty huge habit, I started to get this kind of zen calm about incarceration, and I liked to think I helped a few guys through their first weeks.
Once you've reached that sense of belonging, the knowledge that you are going to have to leave is one of the worst feelings in the world. I can't think of anything that even compares to that feeling. I suppose the closest thing that I've come across was finding myself estranged from my family. That feeling of being set adrift, with no solid ground to anchor to.
The real problem is that about halfway through your sentence, you stop caring so much about the outside world. The world inside the four walls of the prison become your new reality, and when the time comes to leave, the anxiety is on par with what the Pilgrims must have felt before they left on the Mayflower. You're going into an entirely new world, and you're not entirely sure what to expect there.
Two years is a long time. The world literally changes without you. I got off the bus and went to my favourite bar. It was empty. I went to a cafe my friends used to touch dicks at. None of them were there.
He mentions at one point that it's like you've traveled in time. Technology has advanced without you, friends have moved on, and yet you haven't changed. You and your life are the same as when you went in, but the world has moved on and left you behind. When this combines with the anxiety you had felt before leaving, it becomes a force that is difficult to reckon with.
Thing about prison, is that sleep becomes like a chore you do each day. You're never really tired, so you never really want to sleep, it just breaks up the time. I felt like I didn't want to sleep ever again. Next morning I decided to go for a drive, and thought I'd rent a car - but my driver's licence had expired. I went to get a new one, but because I'd been inside they needed me to get a letter from my parole officer. So I just wandered around for a day. Felt like everyone was staring at me.
You just feel completely lost.
Like him, sleep became a way to break up the time. By the time I left, I was up to 15-18 hours of sleep per day. It was the easiest and fastest way to get through my time. When you get out of that fenced compound, though, the excitement of seeing a new world again, sleep gets relegated to the back of your mind for at least a couple of weeks. The only time I slept in the month after I got out was when I literally passed out from exhaustion. Since my release in September, my sleep patterns have gotten a little bit better, but not too much.
A funny thing about lockdowns - you know how the day before a public holiday people will go crazy and hit all the stores to stock up on food? It's like that inside. The reason the boss' always leaks a lock down is so we buy as much candy as we possibly can, as many smokes, and as much gear as we can cram up our assholes and go quietly back to our cells. That particular lockdown ended up being 72 hours. As far as prison experiences go, they're the most interesting. It's kind of like going on a camp out. You often get guys 'hot racking', where they'll swap cell mates with their bros, or just apedophile groupon cells completely and move their bedding over to hold little sleep overs where they play cards and talk shit. Strangely enough, as bad as a lock down sounds, they really brought blocks together in mutual hatred, and broke up the monotony. I often wondered if the screws didn't just throw them at random to keep us interested.
Perhaps in level 5 "supermax" prisons, the guards allow unauthorized cell changes, but I know where I was, you had to go through a lengthy request process in order to change cells, and any inmate found to be in a cell that wasn't theirs were reprimanded severely for it. Before you say that a reprimand doesn't seem to be that bad a punishment for being in the wrong cell, keep in mind that, inside, a reprimand can mean anything from a day to a week in solitary, a citation in your file (which can prevent you from getting early release for good behaviour), or being pulled off the range and transferred to another. Reprimands are not to be taken lightly, and the jail I was in did not deal lightly with infractions of the few institution-wide rules that were in place. Trading cellmates for a meal lock-up was generally acceptable, but overnight and during lockdown, if you weren't in your own cell, you were in the hole.
The belief that the screws throw random lockdowns just to make things interested is relatively widespread in the prisons, and is supported by communication between the different units. We were set up in such a way that each unit was separate, as was each range, but the unit cleaners were often able to talk at some point during the day, as well as having a relatively good rapport with the screws, which allowed them to give their range a heads-up when a legitimate lockdown was in the works. Occasionally, though, there were lockdowns that caught everyone by surprise, and it was generally assumed that these were thought up by the screws as a form of entertainment. It gave them an excuse to come onto the ranges and do inspections, including strip-searches, and that meant they didn't have to sit in their pods doing paperwork.
All in all, Solitaire, from what I've read, this post seems to have been made by an authentic convict. The experiences and culture that he describes, and the myths he debunks definitely indicate some sort of intimate knowledge of the prison system, and the language and way of speaking make me highly doubt that he's a guard. This author has either spent some time in prison himself, or is very well-acquainted with someone who has, and his testimony regarding the lifestyle that inmates live on the inside rings incredibly true. While I've only made it halfway through his post as yet, I am confident that this trend will continue. Definitely an interesting read for a regular law-abiding citizen. As for myself, while I found it interesting reading, it also brings back a lot of vivid memories. Enough of a jolt to remind me why I don't want to return to that style of life. Thank you for sharing this with us, and with me.
!!!!
