What is prison really like? Part 2
April 22, 2004
"What is Prison Really like?" Part 2 The Aftermath
Part 1, found here.
Would you like to know the telltale signs someone was in prison, and what it is like being out of prison?
...
The easiest way to tell if someone has been in prison is how they are around food and their willingness to answer ANY question without suspicion on why you asked the question.
Former inmates are more likely than not to have tattoos especially crude ones.
Everything and everyone is taken away from you when you become an inmate, so your value system is forever changed. Life is temporary, relationships are temporary, and owning anything, even a pencil, is temporary.
Information, associations, and potential opportunities are the new sources of wealth and power inside the walls of a prison. A meal might be traded for toilet paper, use of a pen, or a place in line to read an old newspaper. When you get visits in prison, other inmates will want to know their names, address, vehicles etc, to sent their friends on the outside to rip them off, knowing they are visiting you.
You are only allowed about 5 or less minutes to eat an entire meal, so if a former inmate is daydreaming, the whole plate of food and the drink might be consumed faster than you have ever seen before. Place your hand near the plate and your hand is struck or grabbed and you get a look like you are about to be killed, there is a good chance you are eating with a former inmate.
Every nuance of your life is exposed while you are prison, figure others have gone through your most private belongings, your clothes, vehicles, everything. If you drove yourself to court in your own vehicle and were sentenced, your car and the belongings are already long gone.
If you are in long enough, you come out without a valid driver?s license, your cloths have been thrown out or donated, so you walk out the gates with unclean, donated items that may not match and possibly aren?t even your size.
Most likely you are on parole, have a strict curfew at your new address, if you are not in a halfway house as most 2nd stinters have no one left that will associate with them, and 1st timers see who their friends really are, and how fragile family connections really are. Your children, siblings, and parents may not even accept mail from you, never mind talk to you.
Rape in prison?
Well, it is a distinct possibility. But you are more likely to be roughed up by guards or other inmates, fights occur almost all the time. If you are raped in prison, you may have to register as a sex offender, according to what I read on one of the posted sheets at a Connecticut Prison on the subject.
I was able to grow a full beard in relatively short time, and looked like Charles Manson on steroids so even hardened criminals looked at me with at least a little fear. One African American with no family on the outside receiving about $3 or so a week for commissary items, was willing to pay the $2 in trade to the floor barber to shave me and cut my hair.
Youthful or easily intimidated individuals are treated ferociously, and give up food, cloths, their toothbrush, and their only towel in absolute fear. Showing fear or telling on a guard or another inmate could mean the severest of consequences or even death.
Being on the outside it is possible that you have no belongings, bank accounts, credit cards, credit, a phone, recent job history, family contacts, friends, decent cloths, or even any great amount of on hand cash.
An inmate may never save money or accumulate possessions as they may fear losing everything at any given moment and know how temporary everything really is.
Fear of authority, lack of respect for those in authority, and knowing really how petty and wasteful Big Brother is, becomes knowledge that you will have above all others that don?t know what human nature and how ugly its head is ALWAYS there.
Others that know that you are on parole might try to have you violated and sent back for sport, or to extort something out of you. One argument with a jealous lover can send you back for years and years.
Prison should be reserved for those that are not able to be reformed when all other forms of punishment have not worked.
A 2nd DUI offense may land a person in prison and wreck their lives permanently, their families may never recover. Retirement and comfort are gone with the wind.
At home confinement, where families stay intact, jobs, home ownership, and credit stay intact, should be a consideration. Families, children, parents, and friends are punished along with the inmate, and they are completely innocent.
-Steven G. Erickson (Vikingas)
What is Prison Really Like? Part 3, preparing for possible incarceration
Additional Notes:
It is hard enough to get a job in the current market, try and get one after being out of circulation forced to be idle with nothing to do for long periods of time and no mental stimulation, with no recent job history, a criminal record, and having to report to a probation or parole officer and special classes at the most inconvenient times, multiple times in a week and actually get a job.
Just having an arrogant, life wrecking, power ego maniac call where you actually get a job, checking up on you and see if you keep that job you struggled so hard to find.
People that knew you before or even asked you advice can now slam a door in your face, insult you calling you ?inmate,? or ?jailbird,? not ask for you expertise or advice, avoid you, or inform others of your demise if they even ever acknowledge your existence ever again.
If you have ever pissed off even one police officer, every step you take in prison and on the outside will be met with difficulty and PAY BACK.
I may have pissed off the head of the Connecticut State Police and every member below him, with what I wrote in newspapers, emails, and proposed as legislation limitting police powers making police responsible to the people, not just to officials interested in taking our last dollar and our rights.
I tried to have multiple officers fired, the prosecutor who prosecuted me twice fired, and tried to have the judge who sentenced me removed that sentenced me for two years actively BEFORE I was railroaded for ?overreacting? while being beaten from behind in my dark driveway after being stalked and threatened, and nearly robbed by an alleged police informant that was allegedly encouraged by police to harass me because I had complained to legislators and in newspapers about police misconduct and had proposed ?Civilian Oversight? of police, the express route to prison and out of a state.
Free Speech has a price in America, prison!
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It probably cost 10?s of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to force me into going to trial, where my charges should have been dropped when police finally did an investigation and I was called the ?victim? in police reports, but my assailant was not even arrested.
I was supposedly guaranteed a first offender program for $100 allowing to keep my clean record, home, family, pets, business, credit, health insurance, retirement, and the sum total of my life?s work, but the prosecutor I twice tried to have fired for not serving landlords refused to grant me the program.
So it is ok for someone to leave threatening messages on a voicemail, threaten to kill an individual during a robbery attempt on the individual?s property, to stalk and harass, but not to ?overreact? as a victim on your own property.
I saw years of drug dealing, vandalism, break-ins, assaults, and other crimes even with the police witnessing the crimes with no arrests or nothing done, as police were more interested in property confiscation, collecting fines, and making high profile busts, not wasting their time on quality of life or social issues, protecting and serving the public.
You as a taxpayer paid $74/day (your federal taxes) to keep me confined above and beyond the trial cost.
I no longer have a business, home, credit, or much of anything. So you now pay my health insurance, replace my retirement I had worked years investing in, and now you suffer the losses to the local economy as I am no longer a consumer of many goods and services and am no longer a taxpayer.
The non-productive, criminals that greatly outnumbered me in my former Stafford Springs, Connecticut neighborhood continue their parasitic lifestyles unimpeded.
Does this make sense?
My daughter suffers as she no longer has any contact with me, does not live with me as she should, and is not getting a car, or tuition paid by me for her college. My family doesn?t see much me and suffers the embarrassment of having a member that has gone to prison.
For pepper spraying someone who was beating me on my own property, my punishment seems overly unreasonable and harsh. My father had invested $50,000 or so in the renovations to the boarded up properties. I had invested 4 years of back breaking work sometimes every waking moment, 7 days a week for too many months, investing all I had ever made in my lifetime, all lost!
So your tax dollars have been used to ruin a productive citizen, hurting the economy. Possibly millions lost, for what?
The police, prosecutors, and judges (in Connecticut) are doing little to those that are the least moral, responsible, productive, and honest. I guess they figure doing their jobs would keep them from having job security and you would ask how your money was being spent (wasted).
I see that unelected officials and law enforcement officers wield the power, obey what laws they feel like, arbitrarily ruin people?s lives, and operate the puppets, elected officials.
What is wrong with a typical downtown?
What can concerned citizens do about this?
Posted by: LQ at April 22, 2004 12:00 PMLQ,
more Americans need to care, vote, speak out, and write letters and call local and national legislators.
We need to take back America from powerfull assholes that are holding us hostage, limitting our rights and freedoms, and charging us more and more of our daily toil just to live day to day.
The prison system is a taxpayer scam. There is no reason other than greed and corruption to increase the prison cells nationally tenfold from 1980 to 1999 for any other reason.
Police, prosecutors, and judges are not answerable to anyone except themselves. They choose what laws they themselves obey, who they nail, and whose lives they arbitrarily ruin.
Unelected officials have more power than the elected ones. J. Edgar Hoover is the best example as maybe Presidents were answerable to his whims.
Silence is acceptance.
Posted by: Steven G. Erickson at April 22, 2004 01:15 PMThe police, prosecutors, and judges (in Connecticut) are doing little to those that are the least moral, responsible, productive, and honest. I guess they figure doing their jobs would keep them from having job security and you would ask how your money was being spent (wasted).
I see that unelected officials and law enforcement officers wield the power, obey what laws they feel like, arbitrarily ruin people?s lives, and operate the puppets, elected officials.
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It seems to me that the above-mentioned clowns are the finest that money can BUY. Good luck. And take care.
Posted by: Raul Valadez at April 25, 2004 01:22 PMRaul,
'clowns' is a good term for the Connecticut police, prosecutors, and judges, I like it.
posted by The Stark Raving Viking at 11/14/2006 03:14:00 PM
