The TRUE stories of a former inmate. Part 2 (from imgur)

[tmonster]

The TRUE stories of a former inmate. Part 2.

Disclaimer: This is based on my experiences in a US jail, not a prison. Jail is something every inmate has to experience before prison. Jail=short term (usually up to 1.5 years), Prison=long term (1.5 years-life) aka Oz and Orange is the new Black is prison life. Prison life is more comfy, as they know you will be doing a long bid there, and jail is more..uncomfy..as they expect your time to be short and a lesson to be learned. Let us begin on our next journey.
Going into jail an alcoholic, how was the detoxing process?

Well, luckily after sentencing me, I immediately went to another part of the court house where they actually let me choose a date to turn myself in and start my sentence (as Piper was also able to do on OITNB). During that time, I slowed down on alcohol consumption knowing I didn't want a full on crazy detox scene happening in jail. My form of alcoholism was me just knowing that IF I needed to drink to go through my daily routines, I had a bottle somewhere close to me. Jail takes away that warm inviting alcohol security blanket so it was tough. I had to reteach myself to fall asleep sober, which was most difficult. For the first month in jail, I would wake up from sleep or naps with my body drenched in sweat. It fukking sucked. In hindsight, surviving jail without alcohol was the hugest step into me being in remission with my alcoholism. I urge that anyone having an alcohol problem feel free to message me. I've been to countless AA meetings, counseling sessions, having "friends" turn their back on me during my time of need. I'm more than happy to give you advice on the Devil's Juice and how to control it. People have asked if I still drink. The answer? Yes. But NOW in moderation, I am proud to say. And NO getting behind the wheel of a car. Don't have my damn license right now anyways, so yea thats easy enough. They did offer AA meetings in jail, which I attended, and church services every Sunday, which I also attended. A lot of people attended church if only for the reason of getting out of the cell block for an hour.
What was it like keeping in touch with family and friends on the outside?

It was hard. I mostly communicated with just my immediate family, through phone calls. Everytime I'd call them, I'd put on a front and act like jail wasn't so bad. Ya know, "staying strong" for them. I didn't need them at home worrying about me with them knowing there was nothing they could do for me. I played it off by telling my family "ya know me, I can adapt to any situation!" which is true, I adapted.. But the crippling loneliness is something you never quite adapt to. I waited until AFTER I was free to tell my parents the depressing side of jail. Oh and as for phone calls and how much they cost? I'll give you a rough mathematical figure. I had to serve 10 days for my first DUI. During that time, I made one 15 minute phone call 9 of those days. It cost me 55 bucks. People say talk is cheap...well I'll be damned.
Is the bathroom secluded from the rest of the pod you were staying in?

Nope! Now this made things very awkward. The shytter DID have a door. But the door and two walls around it were low enough that while dropping your kids off at the pool, or taking the Browns to the Superbowl, or just plain shytTING, was a public ordeal. I literally could take a dump and watch TV across the room with how short the door and walls were. I literally DID do that. Also, jail house courtesy is not taking a shyt while a meal is being served. No one wants to hear your flatulence while eating a meal we already consider shyt. "Throw some water on it!" Is something I heard being said to the fishes, or "new comers" a lot. It refers to you flushing the toilet every time immediately one of your brown babies hit the water. It keeps the funk out of the pod. Instead of hand soap, we used a spray bottle of orange cleaner and sprayed it on our hands to wash them. That same bottle is used to spray off the toilet before you sit on it, the inside of the showers and the tables we ate off of. Gross. But jail is NO time for you to be play prim and proper and act disgusted about your living situation. Inmates would jump on you in a second if you act like you're better than them. Inmates would hold conversations while taking care of business. Awkward. Did notice one of the homosexuals talking to me as I was doing my number 2 and glancing over the 3 foot high wall at me. It was..just..not pleasant. As for the showers, there were 2 individual sized showers, with a curtain on the outside of each. People walked around naked after getting out the shower and drying off..during those times I just kept my eyes glued to whatever book I was in because ain't nobody got time for that! (Well, actually all I had was time...but for THAT? No thank you. I'm more of a lady's man, not a man's lady).
Do people masturbate in jail? If so, how? Where?

Yes, people do in fact masturbate in jail. How do I know? Guilty as charged. Oh, and when you're living with someone months on end, no subject becomes taboo enough that you won't speak on it, so inmates talk about it. Their "porn" of choice? Maxim magazines. They would read it, add pictures to their mental "spank bank", and go to the showers. And beat their dikk like it owed them money. While incarcerated, my big burly black bunkmate (Remember, the guy I refer to as Terry Crews?) put me on a whole new thing. Erotic Literature. He had a thick novel consisting of dozens of made up erotic stories..and I'll be damned if that didn't turn me on more than Pornhub. After handing me the book out of the blue, he said "You BET not beat yo dikk while sleeping above me!" I laughed and said "Naaah man, that aint me!" Well at least when I said it, it wasn't me. I snuck one in at like 4 in the morning. Slow and steady was key. One man was beating his in his bunk, and got caught by a CO, with the CO saying "What the HELL are you doing inmate???" The inmate stammered and replied "N-n-nothing!" And the CO walked away shaking his head. Lucky for the dude caught, the person he was bunking with was a new guy, and didn't challenge the fapper or say a word to him about it. Geez.

 

[tmonster]

How are the Correctional Officers and yall's relationship with them?

In my pod, a CO would do a check on us every 30 minutes. Would come in and walk around, make sure things were ok, and would walk back out. First of...we DID have a Pornstache. Thats a reference for all you OITNB fans. For those of you who don't watch that show, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?? But Pornstache represents a dikk CO. He comes in to mainly just get his check, but he enjoys keeping the inmates in check. This CO walked around with a pompous attitude. Every little infraction, he'd call you out on. Beds not being made. Having meal food stored away. shyt like that. See you're allowed commissary food (food that you order with pen and paper, and have delivered to you a few days later..for us it was order on Monday, receive on Friday) but food that comes on trays are expected to be eaten or thrown away, not saved. Pornstache would randomly point at a bunk, and say "inspection!!" and shake down the inmate and his belongings. Then we had our cool COs. These people got to know us. Got to know what we were in for. Would develop personal relationships with us. Joked around...like you know how you can joke with your buddy and say certain things that if another person said it to them, it'd be on like donkey kong? We had 2 COs where we had that personal relationship with..like if an inmate said they were slick, the CO would reply "obviously not slick enough, your ass is sitting here today!" And they both would laugh and no ill will was had between them. I liked "Robot Man" as we called him. Robot Man was a CO that when patrolling the pod, would walk around VERY quickly and robotic like. He was a young person, 20 years old I believe, scrawny, and had braces. We would joke with him, but had enough respect to not pick on him. Jail is all about respect. You respect others, your stay will be as comfortable as jail can be. You disrespect COs or fellow inmates? Your stay is going to be hell.
Were there many fights? If so, over what?

There were fights. You know how people say "If you go to the same college as one of your high school friends, you shouldn't room with them because you'll get sick of them"? That's jail, except you go in not having any friends and you get sick of being around the same people every. Damn. Day. For example, one scuffle broke out over the width of a brick in jail. OVER THE WIDTH OF A BRICK IN THE WALL. One person thought it was a certain amount of inches, while another person thought differently. It escalated to name calling, and before you know it, CO's were in there breaking the two apart. Remember how I said we had a CO come around to check on us every 30 minutes? What I failed to mention is that we had one strategically placed camera in the ceiling that could see a majority of the pod. It was one officer's job to stare at a screen all day and make sure nothing was getting out of hand in these pods and if they did, immediately alert the COs to come and fix things. I saw bloodied noses, busted lips, but no shanking. No one got killed while I was there. Remember, these are people that are either doing 1.5 years or less, or people awaiting getting moved to prison. They don't want to stir up trouble and add unnecessary time to their stay. With that being said, we're all human and have things that aggravate us. All it takes is an inmate to be in a bad mood and for one wrong slip of the tongue to ignite a situation.
How does jail differ from what's depicted on TV?

I'm going to use the show "Beyond Scared Straight" for this example. It's one of my favorite reality shows, and the premise is they take a bunch of at-risk youth and temporarily incarcerate them for the day to show them what jail life is like. In the show, the kids are walking by cells with inmates yelling obscenities, talking about how they're going to make the kid their bytch if they ever end up locked up with them, driving these kids to tears. Its not like that. I applaud the show for trying to scare these kids into being law abiding citizens (one of my favorite movies!) But you don't hear much screaming unless you're by the drunk tank, where they place people temporarily who have been arrested and are still under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. Those people will scream, and beat on the cell door all night until they eventually pass out. People living in jail are more calm, and accepting of their situation, so they don't run around trying to start shyt. And as for making people their bytches? Refer above to my masturbation question. Thats a lot more legal, with a lot less ramifications than pimping a dude out. Every new inmate is forced to watch a video on PREA, which is the Prison Rape Elimination Act started in 2003. The video basically just tells you what not to do so people don't take advantage of you. One example in the video was an inmate finding a candy bar on their bunk bed. The inmate in the video took the candy bar, announced to the pod "I'm not sure who left this for me, but I'm NOT interested" and places it on a table and walks away. The logic behind this is that if you take it, you owe someone. You could simply owe them a candy bar next time you have one, or you could owe them your ass. I'll pass on the ass (no offense razor10000).
What got traded around, since you don't have cigarettes?

As in my last post, I mentioned the pill game was a big industry while in jail. When it comes to legal trade, coffee is king. It was the black cocaine behind jail walls. Caffeine is considered a drug, due to its ability to speed up heart rate. It's an "upper". People go crazy awaiting their next cup of coffee, and when they get their hands on it, they mix it STRONG and drink it BLACK (describes me well, haha). I had only drank coffee a handful of times before being incarcerated, but once I went to jail, it was my go-to thing. During my first week before I could get commissary and have my own stash, I borrowed from one of my new friends. I made sure that my intentions were to only borrow some until I got my personal food delivered, and that I would give them the amount I took plus an extra scoop or two. I paid them back with interest, and never had any problems out of it. When a new comer came in, they wanted coffee as well and being the caring delightful person I am, I'd offer them some of mine without asking for anything in return. As long as I didn't feel like they were taking advantage of me or they were drinking too much of my stash up, I felt I'd lend a helping hand to make their stay more enjoyable and happy inmates equal my time not being so dreadfully horrible.
So I heard you have "free time" in jail. What do you do during this "free time"?

Haha we had nothing but freetime. As for me, I did a lot of reading and a lot of writing. In college, I was aspiring to become an English teacher, so reading and writing was my forte. It mentally freed me and temporarily made me forget about the four walls surrounding me. Writing, I would write stories, songs, and poems. Music is my LIFE, and not being able to play instruments or listen to music frustrated me, so in turn I wrote down my own songs. Sang them shyts in the shower and everything. We also had access to a checker/chess board, a deck of regular playing cards, and a deck of UNO cards. I didn't get too involved with those games, but a lot of others did. We had crossword puzzles and word search puzzles too, which I did whenever I wanted to take a mental break from a book I was reading or a song I was writing. We didn't have a workout room. With there being 24 inmates in a pod, I'm guessing there was too much of a liability risk with free weights being around and hoping one of the inmates didn't pick one up and decimate another inmate. That doesn't mean we didn't work out though! You don't know how much stronger you can become by just using your own body's natural resistance. There was a workout for every muscle you wanted to target in your body, weight-free.
Do people gain weight from the lack of mobility or do people lose weight from the horrible food?

Easy. People lose weight. That goes for fat AND muscle. You can stay toned if you really try, but weight loss is almost a guarantee. With the weird eating schedule, you go to sleep hungry very often. The food is VERY lack luster. You don't eat it to enjoy, but to survive. The oatmeal in there was absolutely fukking disgusting. Every spoonful left a "snot trail" of clear liquid from the tray to your mouth. And had the consistency of snot as well. Inmates pick there battles when it comes to eating, and for the most part LOTS of weight was lost by all of us. One of the inmates..my friend, the statutory rapist, got sick and began losing a lot of weight. Something to do with his appendix. The jail had to take him to the hospital (that cost him 500 dollars) and when he got back, all he could talk about was how happy he was to see the outdoors, and to drink a soda, and to have actual ice in his drink. It's sad. He's one of the guys I stay in touch with, because he was a genuinely good guy who just made a bad decision.
Any working while in jail? How about working once you were released?

In jail you're not required to work, but you can ask to work. I asked to clean the kitchen area up, that way I could spend at least a little time outside of the immediate pod. Terry Crews was a cook there before I arrived, but got let go because he put icing on a cake that he wasn't supposed to. We don't get paid, just let out of our confining pods to do the job. There was a code of ethics in our pod where every night, one bunkbed would be responsible for sweeping, mopping, cleaning the showers, wiping down the tables, pretty much cleaning everything. It wasn't a rule, but just something expected out of you by your fellow inmates. The next night, it was the bunk beside yous turn. So every 12 days, I could expect to be cleaning the pod. As for work outside of jail...i'm currently unemployed after working for the the same business for 8 years. It sucks, and I'm desperate to make some money somehow. Not having a license is killing me! If any of you know a way to help, I have strong verbal skills, computer skills, HR skills..There's nothing I can't do, and have a very determined work ethic. Well this concludes Part 2 of the TRUE stories of a former inmate. If you enjoyed this and would like to see a Part 3, holla at your boy and show some love! Again, any questions for Part 3, just leave them in the comments and I'll be sure to answer them! Want to talk about alcoholism? Message me and I will most definitely hit you back up. Shout out to Ned, Brad, Janna, Trevor, Bree, and Lil Carter. WE MADE IT!