I have a friend who was in prison, he played a lot of D&D. Though he always had to be the GM cause the people in his playgroup weren’t very creative.
Also, oddly, Magic the Gathering cards weren’t allowed at his facility, but inmates could get books that had all the cards printed in them, and then make their own copies of them.
So yeah, after murdering your wife, you play D&D and Magic.
I wonder if it’s because some of those cards have substantial real-world value. I mean, it’s funny to think of cards with monster pictures on them as prison contraband along with the cigarettes and makeshift knives, but it’s a thought.
Well, I have a friend in the Florida penal system. He works his job for however many hours a day they let them. He reads magazines (I’ve subscribed to two for him*), writes letters, watches tv, plays games, works out…whatever he can to pass the time.
*He’s a former co-worker who is a really good guy, but did something dumb that had tragic consequences and got everything the system could possibly rain down on him in the way of punishment.
Spoon. Tunnel. You get the idea.
Is that a euphemism for something?
I know, escape…
Reminds me of this old joke:
I’d still be in prison if it weren’t for my lawyer.
…
Yeah - it goes a lot faster with two people digging.
I know a gal who has “good behaviored” herself onto a conservation camp, which means you work your ever-lovin’ ass off learning to fight fires. She says she has never worked so hard in her life. She is doing about 4 years for killing her child in a DUI accident.
ETA- I spent the longest night of my life in county. That’ll never happen again.
Depends greatly on the prison. I have never even heard of having a multi-burner range in a prison before. I spent most of my time in Texas…
Remember this, prison is a place were many people are spending long periods of time. You don’t usually even goto one unless you are gonna be there for more than a year or two. Otherwise you do your time in county jail. The place is set up for this.
That being said there is a society behind the bars. People live there. They don’t go home like the guards. no vacations. Freedoms taken away do not necessarily mean boredom. Prison systems in a state are complex. Nearly all work is done by inmates and it includes much more than mopping, or coking meals. In TX there were farms and almost all the food was grown by inmates. The clothing made from the cotton grown by the inmates and laundered and the pluming fixed, everything. Some farm even made the soap. You can goto school, get your GED, read, make tattoos, watch TV, damn. Come to think of it it is not really a boring place, more of a frustrating place. If you wish you can spend some time thinking of ways to get a prescription from Qadgop the Mercotan, or just find a way to get to visit him for something a bit different. There is always a bustle of activity. Yes there is even gossip/drama like in real life. It is easier in some ways and harder in others.
But each prison is different. You may be sent to a gladiator tank, or max or min security place and things may be a bit different. There will be close bonds made and friendships no one will ever understand. Imagine spending 24 hrs a day with someone/everyone you know. There are no private bathrooms. I bet most of you have not seen your close friends shit, shower, and shave in front of you and everyone else, daily everyday. That is not necessarily what makes the bond, but sharing experiences like these that no one understands does, and havening thousands of hours to talk about it does. Hell, having all the time in the world to tell your whole story to someone, everything really, what are you gonna hide all modesty was stripped a long time ago in city/county jail
I understand now why people will go back to prison after a long stay. You may work but every meal is prepaird for you, and you are told when to eat, the showers are cleaned for you, you don’t have to launder your cloths, pay you taxes, get insurance, buy new cloths, cut the grass, goto the store, say hello or good by to anyone all that often, pay your bills. Even with schooling and books and TV it is a wonder that anyone ever makes it after a long stint in jail. To be able to do all these thing for yourself again is hard, especially all at once, and specifically for youth.
I have watch all those prison shows. Yea, it is a small taste of some prisons, kinda.
But akin to understanding a country by watching Anthony Bordain’s No Reservations.
Ten years sober coming up. I spent over three years of my life locked up in various prisons, jails and institutions in 4 states; AK, CO, FL, TX. Drugs and alcohol.
Add one poster of Rita Hayworth.
When I was a cocky kid I once said to my dad, “I wouldn’t even mind going to prison, since I’d be such a bad-ass when I’d get out.”
Without missing a beat, he said, “You wouldn’t be a bad-ass when you got out, you’d have a bad ass.”
Oh yeah, and FriarTed, where in SE Indiana are you? I’m in Bloomington.
As fifty-six said, prison is not a fun place to be. It’s the proverbial long stretchs of boredom interrupted by occasional moments of terror.
I spent three months in a maximum security jail followed by six months in a medium security jail. My crime was neither sex or violence related and I’ll leave it at that. This was 20 years ago in a northeastern state. Sentences for less than a year were served in the jails, mostly. I was in the max facility until sentencing.
It’s unimaginably boring. And scary. In the max jail, it was thunderously noisy, your choice limited to your cell or the crowded dayroom where meals were served. I slept and read a lot there, but also went to the day room to play chess and watch tv.
There were 4 wings with a command center in the center ( imagine that). To get in our out of the dayroom or your cell you had to wave your arms and bang on the walls. All the walls in the dayrooms being clear plastic of some sort.
After sentencing I was sent to the old jail next door (this building no longer exists). It was ancient and badly overcrowdedd. Every tier had as many overflow beds as could be crammed in. No space at all. One toilet for maybe 15 inmates. Everything was dirty, paint-peeling and freezing as it was now winter. There I think I slept for two weeks except for guy who would sit on my bed everyday and tell me the crimes he was planning. They always involved kidnapping a banker and his family, and he had all kinds of sadism planned for them. It was excruciating being there.
From there I was given a job and sent to a dorm. We unloaded the trucks behind the kitchens and picked up all the bags of trash around the two jails with a truck. In the dorm, everyone was either doing a short sentence or were at the end of a prison sentence and on their way to a halfway house. Everyone had incentive not to fuck it up. The dorm had it’s own coffee maker with unlimited coffee. We unloaded the food trucks so we got all kinds of goodies. We smoked, bullshitted, played cards…the day wasn’t endless because of the work and at night you could go out on garbage runs in the truck. I could have jumped off the truck any night and been on a downtown city street. Never tempted, though.
Of course, we smoked pot, made “pruno” by fermenting oranges, sugar and water in plastic bags. Probably some kind of bread for yeast but I forget the whole process. I failed a piss test, got sent back to a dorm with no priveleges and finally got out.
To those of you who served time or work there: do you ever give the “scared straight” speeches to kids; tell them about what life is like and not to fuck up?
Also, to all of you that did serve time: Glad you made it through and good luck to you.
I spent a week in jail back in May and since I’m quiet and shy, I mostly just laid on my sleeping pad and read. The selection wasn’t great and I didn’t enjoy a single book I read but I did manage to finish four or five ~300 page books in the time I was there. The other people in my barracks style block played cards, talked, exercised, watched TV, or napped.
As I recall, dominoes.
Hours and hours and freakin’ hours of dominoes.
I hate dominoes to this day!
This is true
Idiot boyfriend of a friend was in the clink. He wrote her an 8-10 page letter every single day. He also, by the looks of his letters, spent a lot of time making lists: movies he owned, his Top 10 whatever… very High Fidelity.
FYI, the former governor will be going to FCI Oxford, a Club Fed property.
How do you pass the time in prison?
I hang out at the bars.