What are the ropes you have to learn when first going to prison? Like, the schedules of when to eat, where to go for exercise, etc. Are you just thrown in and left to fend, or does someone tell you what to do? Does everyone have a job to do, or is that a privilage to ward off against extreme boredom? What facilities does the average prison have (library, mess hall, exercise yard, license plate making room, ???)
-Tcat
A friend of mine spent several years as a guard in an Indiana prison. Here’s some of the things he told me:
Most of the guards were members of the KKK. His supervisors tried to recruit him. When he refused, he was harrassed. and his cars were vandalized.
The only drug that was hard to obtain inside the walls was alcohol. The rest were smuggled in. The official position was that the stuff came in the mail, with visitors, or in food shipments. In truth, a few corrupt guards brought most of it in. Alcohol, on the other hand, was made in-house as small batches of crudely brewed hooch. It was described as nastier than the worst booze you can buy on the outside.
If you had specific reason for fearing another convict, a request to be housed away from him would probably be approved. If it was just case of you happened to be afraid of him because he was scary, then you were SOL.
Good jobs were gotten by a combination of good behavior and cozing-up to whatever prison employee was in charge of where you wanted to work.
As far as I know, bribery played no significant part in the relations between inmates and prison staff. There were, of course, exceptions. Those cases would usually end in the staff member involved getting in it over his head, the tables turned, and being black mailed into doing something like smuggle drugs.
The most disturbing experiences for me personally related to when a convict would go over the deep end. One day he might be the polite and reliable orderly who cleans your office, the next day raving in solitary confinement, stripped naked because he was using his clothes to hang himself and flinging feces at you when you brought him his meals. Another prisoner for some twisted reason refused to allow a leg wound to heal. He would pick at it and put filth in it and he finally died from it. Self-mutilations, probably as an attempt for sympathy, were common. A convict had to be very crazy to actually get sent to a mental facility. Some were on daily doses of thorazine to keep them calm.
You had to keep in mind that just going in to work every day was a potentially life threatening situation. This is different than, say, a cop. A cop stops a car and it is potentially dangerous. But when he gets back in his car and drives off, he can rest easy until the next encounter. In contrast, at the prison where I worked, most deaths on the job were the results of planned murders and happened while the officer was doing something routine like sitting at his desk. Wrestling two fighting prisoners to the ground was the most violent situation I ever faced personally. But once I worked a cellhouse and the next day another officer was speared with a modified broom handle (but not fatally).
I think that it is appropriate in primitive societies without the benefit of our modern penal systems. But I’m against it for us today. But this is too deep for me to adequately address here.
I purposely tried to not know what each prisoner’s crime was. That made it easier to treat them equally and fairly. But there were some well-known serial killers and child molestors (but no one I knew was both of these).
Sure. Most of them.
I didn’t know. Gangs were active but kept a low profile.
Some were successful at keeping their crimes a secret from the rest of the convicts. But many end up entering Protective Custody, a sort of prison with the prison to keep them away from the general population. For the lowest of the low, there was Double Protective Custody, amounting to a self imposed solitary confinement.
But I guess the answer to the question would be yes, since that is what they are trying to avoid by entering PC.
Lots. Aside from the usual kitchen and janitorial work and making highway signs for the state, private companies employed prisoners for various factory type jobs. Some of these were inside the walls and some outside (for minimum-security prisoners). Companies liked being able to pay minimum wage and the prisoners liked getting it (regular prison jobs paid a little over a dollar a day).
The salary was too low. Even if that weren’t an issue, my wife didn’t like it.
With exceptions, mostly a revolving door. For some families, going to prison is like a rite of passage, like military or college is for normal people. We sometimes had fathers and sons or brothers doing time together. For others, it is just part of doing business, or what passes for them as “business.”
I suppose there are some spartan facilities out there that do this, but large maximum security state prisons usually cost the taxpayers on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per year per prisoner.
We did have fire drills. Tornadoes caused almost no concern (and this was Kansas!) You couldn’t ask for a safer building than those late 19th century limestone cellhouses.
Probably my second favorite movie (after Jaws). But that is more because it is a finely crafted work of art with a catharsis unequalled by any other film I can think of, than because it holds any similarity with reality. One of Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies”, read his review here.
My great grandfather was a guard at a Federal prison during the 1920’s through the 40’s and from what I know, the life was pretty much as depicted in Shawshank (sans corruption). But a lot has changed since then.
My next favorite prison flick is The Hill with Sean Connery.
I’ve never even heard of it. I don’t watch much TV anymore and I don’t have cable.
The most infamous that I had to deal with personally was Richard Grissom. Trouble with him as that he was so charismatic that he pretty much got to do what he pleased. Most people liked him and were very friendly with him. But not everyone. Then one day he was shipped off to another, more severe facility because he had set a booby trap to electrocute a guard. Oops.
Do prisoners use threats against family members on the outside to control/manipulate prisoners on the inside? what protective measures do prisons use to prevent this from happening.
What security level prison do you work at?
There was probably a murder where I worked on average once every couple of years. Attempted suicides happened a lot. Some for attention probably, but some for real. Few succeeded because the available methods take time (cutting wrists, OD’ing) and they were usually discovered by guards in time to receive medical attention.
With regard to murders of staff members: I mentioned above that a lot has changed since the 40’s. There is much less cruelty. Interestingly though, at this prison’s 140+ year history (measured from 1998) more than half of the staff murders had taken place in the last 25 years. Fear does have its benefits.
I’m not a drinker. My impression was that there weren’t any more drinkers at this job than any other blue collar job. Low salary was my reason for leaving.
I’m not sure of the levels you refer to. This categorization might vary from state to state. There were actually three adjacent facilities where I worked: maximum, medium and minimum security. I worked at each of them, but mostly the maximum. Out of preference. I like my prisoners behind bars.
i think (perhaps you have a different system) maximum is IV, medium is III, and minimum is II.
Level I is where they send rich white guys who swindle the stock market.
The first few days they send you straight to “the hole” – confined to a cell 23 hours a day, no direct contact with other prisoners. This is to (1) get you used to the idea of being in prison before you have to deal with prisoners, (2) give you a taste of what punishment for infractions will be like (3) give us a chance to observe you to see if you’re a nutcase.
There you’re given a rule book. If you can’t read, someone will go over it with you. You do have the opportunity to converse with the other convicts there, so you learn a lot that way too.
After that you go to a regular cell house. If you’re the cautious type, you can spend all day in your cell and come out only for chow, refrain from “yard” or getting a job for while. But without a job, no money, and no extras like your favorite shampoo or cigarettes or personal TV.
The biggest relief from boredom is work. But there is also sports, cards, and TV. The two most interesting jobs that come to mind are (1) a group of inmate cowboys who take care of the small of herd of a cattle owned by the prison and live in a small house outside the walls (2) an inmate who works with the dog handlers and is chased by the bloodhounds on mock escapes.
The KKK thing sounds like a local problem, but the drug situation is exactly the same. Sometimes they brewed the hooch in their cell toilets and pissed in the sink.
Sorry. I meant to answer this earlier. I suppose this is possible but I was never aware of an instance. See my earlier remarks about punks and rape.
This would probably be more likely in a place that had more mafia-type organized crime members. They usually end up in federal prison.
This rang a bell. I worked as a painter at a state mental hospital the summer after I got out of high school. Also at the institution were minimum security (trustee) prisoners from the state men’s reformatory.
One of them decided to escape and was so proud of his initiative that he told just about everyone but the superintendant. They picked him up about a half mile from the grounds and then he went to Fort Madison, the state penitentiary.