Not trying to justify locking people up because they prefer it at all. Just pointing out that not every every released inmate’s choice is between an overcrowded ,violent ,hard physical labor prison and moving in with mom or spouse and getting a job, and it’s not impossible that for some, life on the outside is worse than it is in prison.
http://www.voyageurpress.com/showbook.cfm?isbn=0-89658-039-3
James Bruton was the warden at Oak Park Heights here in Minnesota. He recounted a man who wanted to to go back to prison so bad that he told his P.O. either to send him back or he would commit another crime.
Warden or not, at best that’s a 2nd person account.
Crandolph, you seem so fixated on a genuine first person account, why don’t you just volunteer for a few days at a local prison and find out for yourself? Talk to the inmates. Ask to work in an area that assists inmate placement in the communities. Your location lists Philly; I’ll go out on a limb and guess there is at least one prison nearby. If this suggestion doesn’t interest you, then this is all argument for arguments sake, right?
I work in a prison and I have known inmates who did not want to leave when they were scheduled to be released.
Sigh… :rolleyes:
I worked for 2 years as a tour guide at Eastern State Pen, “America’s Most Historic Prison.” This would be it.
We had numerous programs with former guards and inmates there and curret ones elsewhere. I’ve met many of both. Went to SCI Graterford a number of times as part of our programs. Met multiple lifers, some in since the 1960s. It’s precisely because I’ve met so many of these men, worked in the environment, read so much of the literature that I’ve found these 2nd or 3rd person accounts thoroughly lacking detail to be so suspect.
I’ve only been on these boards a few months, but I’ve not known that sort of vaguery to be acceptable GQ material. Frankly I don’t really appreciate the taunting tone (save it for the Pit?), and the fact that you suggest such prison visits as something vaguely threatening seems rather to make my point for me as to what miserable environments so many of our prisons are.
Well apparently there hasn’t been too much official documentation on inmates who are released then want to stay, so people are trying to answer your question the only way they can. With how anal you’re being about first hand accounts (maybe rightfully so), a reasonable solution would be for you to go research it yourself if you’re truly curious.
Well, the OP sounds like an attempt to seperate fact from urban legend. In all of the other threads I’ve seen of this sort - and they’re a fairly common type - people wouldn’t let it go at 2nd person with no explanatory detail. That’s almost the definition of how UL are spread.
If we removed posts for being “anal” and “fixated,” how much SDMB would be left? 
A lot of urban legends can serve to reenforce ugly stereotypes or bolster societal belief systems about something uncomfortable. (A classic example being African-Americans naming their kids after Jello flavors and such, suporting the idea that “these people” - no doubt collecting welfare - are stupid, breed like bunnies and have no parenting skills.) When you have a society like ours posting record numbers in the prisons, a widespread belief that some people like being there takes pressure off of having to deal with that as a problem. Add in my experience dealing with inmates/former ones and that’s where my healthy skepticism comes in.
Crandolph, you need to differentiate between an “urban legend” and a legitimate reference. If someone says, “I heard about something like that happening” you can ask for further information. But when someone says, “James Bruton was the warden at Oak Park Heights here in Minnesota” and provides a link, this is more than just a rumor being passed along. Several people also posted other examples which you dismissed as exceptions to some unidentified rule. At some point, you cross over from a healthy skepticism to a refusal to face evidence which contradicts your opinions.
Understood. I agree. I could also provide a link to Debbie Harry claiming she narrowly escaped capture by Ted Bundy in NYC in a certain year in the 70s, which is covered in Snopes as a very common phenomenon (women claiming they escaped Bundy or 2nd person accounts thereof). That Harry believes that to be true isn’t making it true, but this is a story making the rounds orally which is easily debunked. That a warden is citing a 2nd person account without providing much detail as to why the inmate told a parole officer he wanted to stay doesn’t quite do it for me. We all know things change in the retelling.
It also suggests the warden doesn’t have any first person experience with this in his years working his way up to that position, or in it. Why cite a 2nd hand story as exceptional if you have a 1st hand one?
Having been arguing one side of this argument to this point, I can site 2 true stories from Eastern State Pen which seem to back up the urban legend at first glance until one examines the detail a bit more.
Al Capone spent 9 months in Philadelphia jails, mostly Eastern State, for a conveniently discovered weapons violation (while changing trains!) in the 1920s. A lot of people think he arranged the arrest with corrupt police in order to avoid Chicago gang warring at the time, without losing face or looking like a coward. He had art and writing desk from home, his own private cell (owing to irregularities in the architecture, one of the 2 largest), a radio, they let him keep his door open, gourmet food and possibly women delivered, etc. Even access to the warden’s telephone. Despite all of this, it appears a judge may have given him more time than he expected or arranged, and he retained a lawyer to try and help spring him earlier.
There was another inmate in the 19th century at ESP who convinced the officials to admit him to help himself cure his drinking problem. As the prison was still an experiment in solitary penology and social engineering at the time, he was admitted. They allowed him to do yard work (this was rare; for trusties) and one day after a few months in he bolted for the door while a delivery was being made. As he wasn’t really wasn’t an inmate no one tried to stop or catch him, and he didn’t return.
I could see how a partial retelling of either of these stories could lead to the foreshortened story that someone wanted to remain in prison beyong their sentence.
crandolph, I don’t think anyone has ever said that people like prison, and would prefer being there to being anywhere else. It remains possible that some prefer it to the alternatives available to those particular people at that time. I have first hand examples regarding similar situations.
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Parolee violates parole, claims that he didn’t want to be released and was force to sign papers agreeing to the conditions. I generally don’t believe this, but given #2, it might sometimes be true.
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Parolee is found guilty of parole, is being sent back to prison, discovers that he will again be released before serving his full sentence, and asks the judge if there’s any way he could serve the rest of the sentence in prison. (I hear this one at least once a week)
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Parolee gets arrested, judge releases him on his own recognizance and parolee calls me to ask how long it 's going to take me to put the parole hold on him. He didn’t want to be released from jail, because the rival drug dealing organization would kill him, and he felt safer inside. (one time incident)
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Parolee has nowhere to live- either he has no family or friends or they are unwilling to allow him to live with them. Is told he has to go to a shelter, as parolees cannot live on the street. Says he will not go to a shelter. Told he must stay at the shelter until he secures another residence or he will be reincarcerated Says " Go ahead". Do they really mean they prefer prison to a shelter? I don’t know. I do know that some of the people with whom I had this conversation didn’t back down and agree to stay in the shelter, even after they were driven to the jail.
If these guys were telling the truth, they wanted to remain incarcerated, not because they prefered incarceration to an abstract idea of freedom, but because they preferred incarceration to the specific circumstances (being under supervision, staying at a shelter, or having people out to kill them) that they would encounter if released.
I believe that in the 1970s at Sydney’s Long Bay Prison, there were several inmates who were discovered with a regular escape route ( a tunnel or something, I’m not sure). Yes, regular. They’d use it to go out for lunch and a beer, then come back.
It was claimed they were institutionalised, and wanted to be in prison. This is possible, but unlikely. If the story is true, it is more that they prefered prison to life on the run - the latter is certainly not freedom in any sense of the word.
F…M…R… Prisons have glossy websites!
Who woulda’ thunk it…?
This seems a hot-button topic, so I won’t exacerbate the situation. I grew up poor. I know the scene. I’ve seen and experienced the inside. Spare me the partronization. You were a fu*#ing TOUR GUIDE??! Where’s my shank…
I also grew up poor…food stamps, single mother, school lunch program, etc. Not quite sure what this has to do with anything.
Yes, a f—ing tour guide, but one in a situation where we interacted with current and former prisoners, in addition to visiting a functioning institution, on a regular basis. If you’d like to have a history-of-American-penology pissing contest I think I’d make out pretty well… uh, for a poor kid(?!) 
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doreen’s recent post is the first one that appears to address the Q with some specifics and I can find that believable. Thanks for the response. What is your job exactly if I may ask? It appears that many of the inmates described are choosing prison over death.
And I have heard any number of people claim - not necessarily here, but many of the posts, especially as text on screen (notoriously bad for getting nuance of meaning) - that prisoners like prison, that it’s a paid vacation, etc. Actually that’s one of the big lessons I learned about the general public’s attitude toward prisoners… through being a f$#%#ing tour guide. I saw part of my job being to educate the public that it’s not Candyland at all, not by a long-shot.
[QUOTE=Crandolph]
doreen’s recent post is the first one that appears to address the Q with some specifics and I can find that believable. Thanks for the response. What is your job exactly if I may ask? It appears that many of the inmates described are choosing prison over death.
[QUOTE]
I was a parole officer, and still work for the same agency in a different function. Actually, only one was choosing incarceration over death (#3). The others are choosing incarceration over limited freedom. I won’t pretend to understand why, and I wouldn’t have the same preference. But they are entitled to their own preferences, even if they don’t make sense to me.
Was answering the OP, not yours. 