I just found out that my cousin has been convicted of a weapons charge and is currently spending the next 10 years of his life at the Frankfort Career Development Center. This is a minimum security prison.
What is his daily life going to be like? Is prison a place where you fear you’ll be the next person with a sharpened toothbrush sticking out of your back? Is rape as prevalent as you see on TV? Is it “3 hots and a cot” with nothing to do? Television? Internet? What should we expect when he’s released? Right now he’s a pretty stable guy. Will he be a different person? Moody? Violent?
No personal experience, but I had a friend who was convicted of a drug charge when he was about 21-22, and sent to a minimum security prison for several years. He told me it was a lot like a college dorm, only you never got to leave and the food sucked. This was pre-Internet, so I don’t know about that, but he said there were TVs in a common area and various things to do like a library, workout room, etc.
I haven’t talked to him much since he got out, but he appears to have gone on with his life. Last I heard he was in a PhD program and married, so things seem to have gone OK.
I used to be a guard and have worked in max, medium and minimum.
One thing to be aware of is many minimum facilities may also have violent offenders who have been (recently) well behaved and got sent to minimum simply because there are too many worse than them filling up medium and max. So you never know what they might do. he still has to watch himself.
Conversely, many systems will send you to maximum security if you screw up. If he gets caught with dope or having relations with a female staff member–both of which are probably relatively easy to do in a minimum facility–he could get sent to the hole. Then, often, a person has to work his out of the hole to regular max, then medium, then minimum. could take months to get back to the “campus.”
As for the rape thing, its hard to say. But the general rule is that you don’t so much get raped as get intimidated into giving it up. If you stand your ground, generally they’ll give up since there are enough other punks giving it up. But if you give in once, you’re marked for life. An so the next time, standing your ground will just get your ass kicked, and then raped.
I work in New York not Kentucky so YMMV. The biggest downsides of prison are a lot of boredom, a massive loss of privacy, and having other people tell you what to do all the time. Forcible rapes and murders are not common occurences, especially in minimums. No internet but a lot of TV (but you have to share watching it with a bunch of other people).
my buddy spent a couple months in minimum security back in high school for “stealing” his mom’s car (it was his car, under his mom’s name, but they got in a fight and she actually ended up pressing charges cause she was a real bitch back then). Anyway, he said it was a lot like camp, but he had to go to bed at like 4:30pm or something, and wake up at 6am. Basically it was just ridiculously boring all the time
really? Shit, that sounds better than japan!
(actually, getting caught with dope here is a major offense, they don’t distiguish between drug classes, so you can get up to 7 or even 10 years in jail, depending on the amount. And Japanese prisons are MUCH worse than American)
Weapons charge? In the land of the Second Amendment? Shit, no wonder our prisons are overcrowded (said the guy who made extra money teaching literature to minimum security inmates). There are a lot of people in prison who shouldn’t be there.
That said, TGWATY has the best take on it. Oh, there’s hanky-panky, all right. You’d be surprised how many otherwise self-respecting and downright attractive women find themselves somehow beguiled by the bullshit of a minimum-security Lothario. Happened twice this past summer at the facility where I teach.
Sometimes I think the worst damage is done to prison staff folk who aren’t cut out for the job. You have to have a very firm hold on your ethics and standards.
One thing I’ve learned (and TGWATY may back me up on this) is that there are no loners in prison. You gotta’ make friends – somebody has to have your back, or a predator will use you for his own purposes. And predators don’t always wear prison garb.
Well, selling a stolen gun would be illegal because selling stolen stuff (knowing that it’s stolen) is illegal, so that’s not necessarily a “weapons” charge. That’s a theft charge. “Weapons charge” means a weapon of some kind was used in a crime. F’rinstance, managing to get aboard an airplane while forgetting about the 6" dagger in your purse could be a federal weapons charge. Having an unloaded gun in your pocket – never mind whether the gun is “registered” – while boosting a stereo from a Hummer parked in a bad neighborhood can get you several years in the hoosgow for a “weapons charge,” which would be more severe than the theft charge, thanks to the influence of feel-good liberals in most state legislatures, including the one under whose laws I must live.
Sorry, I’m not a fan of “weapons charge” convictions. I think they’re chickenshit butt-savers for lazy or under-funded DA offices. And I come from a family of cops!
So holding up a guy with your fists should carry the same penalty as holding him up at gunpoint? Convicted murderers should be allowed to own guns, etc?
e: never mind. You’re the sort that uses “liberal” as a pejorative. Forget I said anything. Not worth my time. :rolleyes:
His charge was “Possession of a Weapon by a Convicted Felon”. I’m not an expert but it sounds like the judge gave him a pretty hearty sentence for just possession of a firearm…but the family hasn’t told me exactly what he was doing with said firearm when he got caught. :dubious: It’s my understanding that the weapon was registered to his mother.
He was kicked out of the military 15 years ago on a drug charge so I don’t know if that was his prior felony conviction or if he did something else in the interim that I don’t know about.
Actually, in my eastern Colorado, High Plains community, I’m considered a bomb-throwing lefty. I wear the moniker of liberal proudly.
To answer your question, I don’t give a damn whether some guy shoves a ball bat in my face or a Glock 9. I’m just as robbed either way.
Fact is, the physician who goes to prison for self-medicating is treated the same as the rapist who uses a gun to subdue his victim. Maybe that works in your world, but in mine? Not so much. We western liberals are a little more complicated than that.
In my experience, that’s not typically the case. The physician goes to a minimum-security camp and has work-release privileges (tho not as a doctor) and more privileges. The rapist ends up in a maximum institution with more rules and fewer privileges.
It was the physician-rapist that ended up in max. He tried to pass himself off as a guy who just wrote for his own drugs, and some folks bought his story.
This question got me thinking… In the prisons do they sort people depending on their offense in any way, shape, or form? I mean, it sure would suck if you were busted for selling some dope because you were on the struggle and now had to spend several years with a bunch of serial killers just waiting to slit your throat.
