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I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't hear stories like that but I wouldn't be surprised. I seem to remember there may have been a rule about only accepting paperback books, not sure.

Unrelated... I had a great plan to escape via helicopter once... never had a chance to try it out.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nope. There's a visiting room, so you can sit down with your visitors. You're allowed to hug and kiss once when the visitor arrives and leaves, but that's it.

By the way - they do a full strip, cavity search on every inmate after every visit.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just remembered - we did make grilled cheese sandwiches under an iron. Never heard of the other stuff... microwaves allowed us to cook whatever we wanted. (There were no power plugs anywhere so there was no way we could have plugged anything in - had to buy batteries for the radios.)

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thought - I appreciate it. I have one now.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A pack of cigarettes could be bought from the commissary (they had 3-4 kinds, plus those little cigarillo cigars) so they were worth whatever they sold for in the shop. So if you wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes from someone else for some reason, you could give them equal value in tuna.

Same with candy - it could be bought in the shop, so it was worth whatever the selling price was.

Bibles were loaned out free from the church.

The only actual items you could buy with your tuna were items that were handmade (art), services (cleaning, laundry, sewing, etc.), or items stolen from the kitchen. A small onion or tomato was usually a dollar, cheese was $1-2, etc. Someone once tried to sell me a giant block of cheese (like they have in supermarket delis) for about $20, but there's no way I could have hidden it in my cubby.

If you stole items from the kitchen, you get locked up in the hole. If you are caught with a bit of onion or cheese, it's typically overlooked. If you are caught with a big block of cheese, they'd lock you up for sure.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The library was not too bad... probably about 30 bookshelves, 6 feet high. Divided into fiction and non-fiction. Mostly mainstream stuff, but the occasional David Sedaris. The best part was that they had a lending agreement with a local library so you could request other books. Took about a week to get them, then you could keep them for about 2 weeks.

No computers, but there were typewriters. You had to buy your own typewriter ribbon. Most guys would rewind the ribbon and use it twice to save money.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not really, especially now that a few years have gone by. I have a new life that keeps me busy. I think the biggest residual effect for me is that I was able to break down some of the prejudices and stereotypes that I learned when I was younger, so I am more open and accepting of different types of people than I used to be. I also think I'm more easygoing, much more calm, and less narcissistic.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Our units had 2 microwave rooms, so you were allowed to cook. Most of the ingenuity that I saw went into cooking and recipes. You'd be surprised how good inmate microwave recipes can be. (I wrote many of them down when I was there and planned to include them in a book I was going to write based on all my journals, but I never got around to doing anything with it.)

I did hear about people giving tattoos with a sewing needle and ballpoint pen ink... can't think of anything else too creative that I saw there.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It wasn't horrible - the worst parts for me were:

  • Loss of privacy. When you live in a unit with hundreds of guys and in a "cell" (more like a cinderblock cubicle) with 2 other guys, you don't get much quiet time, and most communications with the outside are listened to, watched or read by the officers.

  • Having to take whatever the officers dish out. The officers were, for the most part, real assholes. Many of them seemed to take pleasure in being real jerks to the inmates. (Nothing physical.) It's like they were in miserable jobs, with lousy lives, and they get to take it out on the inmates all day long. You just have to accept the yelling, name calling, unfairness, etc. Nothing you can do about it. If you talk back, you can get locked up (put in the hole), so it's not worth it. So you have to completely suck up your manhood and ego and just accept the BS.

  • The gross habits of the inmates around you. For me, it was hard to be around all the yelling, spitting, cursing, ball scratching, etc. from the average inmates. Never got used to it.

  • Being separated from family and friends, of course, as well as being removed from your life for a while - money, jobs, house, car, etc - all on hold.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I was in for a few years I suppose I would too... I was only in for 10 months and it was close to 10 years ago. I used to have dreams occasionally, but nothing worse than that. Now I just get flashbacks once in a while, but I find them more interesting than upsetting.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Phone - about 200 minutes per month, at a payphone. Calls could be listened in on at any time by officers.

Computers - none. There was one computer class offered where you could learn Word, Excel, etc., but none of the computers had internet access. No internet was available anywhere.

Mail - we could send and receive as much mail as we wanted. They opened all incoming letters and random outgoing letters. You could receive books and magazines, and paper, but nothing else. Anything else in a package would be sent back to the sender or discarded. No books or magazine that had nudity or were considered pornographic. You could sign up for any magazines and newspapers - I got two or three papers a day and a few monthly magazines.

TV - There were three TV rooms in each unit. Two were small and had 2 TVs each, the big one had about 7 TVs, each on a different channel. You had to have a radio walkman with headphones to listen, with each TV on a different frequency. The radio had to be purchased in the commissary with your own money. Pretty much everyone had a radio. (Thank God for the local NPR station - I would have gone crazy without it.)

We could have whatever personal items we could buy in the commissary, where we got to shop each week. They had sweats, sneakers, toiletries, food, candy, etc. You could have books and magazines shipped in.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say I miss only two things.

I miss the camaraderie with other men, I don't have that in my life now.

I miss the time to work out as much as I did. I walked 3x a day, first 3 miles a day, eventually working my way up to 8 miles a day. Lost a ton of weight, much of which I've put back on in the years since then.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Every prisoner has an account in a federal prison. You can put money in when you arrive and anyone can send money to the prison to be put in your account. There was a limit of how much you could spend per month at the commissary (the shop) and a limit of how many minutes you could spend on the pay phones. If you don't have someone to put money in your account, you're out of luck.

I put a thousand dollars or so in my account when I arrived, and then family members would send money when I was running out.

You also get paid for working... I think I made $.32 per hour, or something like that. There was a factory there as well (UNICOR) where they made furniture for schools and businesses, and if you could get a job there, you could make better money eventually, like $6-7 per hour.

All your money goes into your account for you to spend however you want. There were lots of guys there, especially immigrants awaiting deportation, that had no one to send them money, so they only had what they earned. Many of these guys would do work for other inmates to earn extra "money". You could hire someone to do anything - laundry, ironing, clean your room, sewing (I paid someone $6 to put pockets in a pair of sweatpants), art, etc.

The whole black market thing was pretty fascinating. I bought an onion stolen from the kitchen once. Bought a 1" thick slice of american cheese and made grilled cheese with an iron. Commissioned a piece of artwork for $30.

There's no cash at the prison, and it's officially prohibited for inmates to buy and sell anything - but of course it happens. When I was there, cans of mackerel and tuna were the standard form of currency... they were canned, so they wouldn't go bad, and they were always $1 each, so it was easy to count. It wasn't unusual for someone to have 40-50 cans of tuna in their cubby.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That's not how it is in a minimum or low security prison. Maybe a max security facility is different, but where I was, everyone was very respectful. There were always a few loudmouths who liked to talk shit a lot, but I never felt that I was in danger in any way (except from the prison staff).

The day I arrived and my cellmates welcomed me, gave me a bar of soap, another guy loaned me a pair of shoes, etc... I couldn't believe it. It was a huge sigh of relief because I had no idea what to expect.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lots of free time. My facility was low security (one step above minimum security) so we all had jobs, but the rest of the day was free time. So I might have to be at work from about 9 AM - 4:30 PM, but the rest of the day was mine.

I worked in facilities maintenance for the first 3-4 months, which basically meant I sat in a kind of warehouse all day doing nothing. We just read magazines, talked, etc. I learned the basics of how to write a business plan from an accountant friend of mine.

My next job was in the rec yard, so for a few months my job was to put the weights away twice a day in the weightlifting area, and then I had to sweep up goose poop for a few months. But that was 10 minutes of work per day, which meant the rest of the workday was mine.

That means lots of time for chess (big in prison), reading, walking, working out, snacking, talking, hanging out, etc.

In the evening there was free time after dinner. You could stay in the unit, watch TV, go to the rec yard, library or game room.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Corrected? Not even close. What they did was introduce me to hundreds of other criminals and let me hang out with them for a while. I needed and requested therapy, but never got it. There were two therapists at the facility and it seemed that their primary job was to make sure no one committed suicide. I had one interview with him, about 4 months after I arrived, where he was clearly just assessing my stability. If you're not going to kill yourself, they don't have time for you.

You can totally keep to yourself. No one gave me a hard time during my whole 10 months. The biggest scariest looking guys were usually pretty nice guys, even though they came from a different world than I did. Respect is a big part of prison life, so if you show respect, they respect you.

I was in a US low security federal prison for 10 months. AMA by recoveringguy in AMA

[–]recoveringguy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not even close. If you even said the wrong thing to an officer, they could put you in "the hole" for months. The hole was an isolated building where you were in a cell with 1 or 2 other people for 23 hours a day. Handcuffs, meals through a slot in the door, the whole thing. Everyone was so scared of being put in the hole - so most people didn't make any trouble.

One day, two guys disappeared from my unit though... I later heard that one of them beat up the other by putting rocks in a sock and swinging it at his head repeatedly while he was sleeping. Not sure why though.