10. TV Time

“Almost a huge fight between 3 Vietnam vets and a 25 year-old meth dealer because he switched from the History Channel to that week’s new Breaking Bad during our precious TV time. That was my first time watching the show and he made the right call.”

11. Rival Enemy

“I was incarcerated for 9 years, 1 month, 4 days. I’ve seen many things. I just turned 30.

The worst I’ve seen was 2 guys on life sentences back in courts for retrial seeing a rival enemy in for DUI over the weekend. Guy didn’t make it home.”

12. “The guards hated him”

“This isn’t something that happened to me, but it’s something I observed while in. My life was uneventful in my time…which was only about 4 months, and only during nights because I had multiple releases.

Anyway, our jail was divided into sides and floors. The higher up you were, the worse of an offender you were. 1L was the floor with the men with releases or protective custody, 1R was women. Up through 5R and L which were serious, violent offenders.

1L was 12 individual cells (~5’x8′) surrounded by a larger cage, one tv in the dead middle. Our floor got the new arrivals who mostly (myself included for the first 2 months) had to sleep on rubber mats on the floor.

One day a young man whom I knew from childhood was moved onto our floor. He’d been in the system since about 12. He had finally been granted work release. The guards hated him. They didn’t pull any punches. This was the year 2000. He was about 19 at this time. The night they moved him in was uneventful.

The next morning, his release was for 6 a.m., to be at work at a restaurant at 6:30. The overnight guard loved doing things like dropping our food or releasing us late or holding us for an extra inspection or whatever. That morning, he was ‘too busy’ to let this inmate out until 9 a.m. Our only phone was collect, and he did, for whatever reason, turn it off that morning so none of us could use it. Kid finally gets out, his ride still waiting, and beats feet to work. They actually let him work till noon, at which point he came immediately back like he was supposed to, during which time they made him sit in the sally port for about 5 hours w/o food, water, or bathroom.

So he gets in (after dinner) and goes back to his cell, pretty dejected but not being bad or disrespectful. The next morning, they do the same thing. He gets to work and the manager can’t do much but fire him, so he comes straight back to work and calls his PO on the way, and she calls the jail to tell them that he won’t need his release the next day.

So he comes back on the floor, and pretty much immediately gets on the phone w/ his lawyer and family trying to find a new job.

Queue the worst guard in the place. She comes walking down the floor (outside the second cage) laughing, saying something like ‘How was work X?’ To which he responds ‘You know how it was.’ And she says something like ‘Shoulda known a lazy good-for-nuthin’ wouldn’t get to work on time. Looks like you’re going back upstairs with the rest of the idiots.’

So he says something like ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’ which was of course what she was hoping for. ‘LOCKDOWN’ she says loudly, which is where we all go back to our cages or mats. We all abide. She gets on her walkie and says her ‘close first left’ and locks us all in, ~3 hours before normal time. He says something like ‘You ain’t gotta take it out on all these dudes, they didn’t do nothin’ and she says ‘SHUT UP INMATE. ON YOUR KNEES.’

Now you have to remember that she’s ~6 feet in front of him, and none of us can see because we’re all in our cages. Only the cage next to him can see her really because he’s in the last cell. So she starts screaming at him, calling him names, making fun of him…nasty nasty stuff. So…he calls her an idiot, or something. She pulls out her can of bear spray (giant pepper spray can) and just hoses him down (and the rest of us, by proximity). Then she calls in the ‘response team,’ which is just one dude and his dog, and they haul the kid out (not fighting!) in cuffs and drag him away, leaving the rest of us to wheeze on pepper spray for the rest of the night.