I’ve seen/read plenty of media about being locked up in various types of jails and prisons. But, I’d like to hear some first hand accounts from people. How’d you pass the time, see anything rough, what country were you in, did you rehabilitate yourself, was there even opportunity to rehabilitate yourself?
Been in county jail in Tennessee a couple times. Two different counties.
In the first one there was a guard in the pod of 100ish inmates at all times. It was very boring. I read any books I could get, mostly Western cowboy smut like Slocumb to my dismay. I got a Quran once from some Black Muslims, that was interesting. Worst thing that happened in that jail was getting collaterally teargassed when an old guy wouldn’t get off the phone. I was in there during the Super Bowl once though, that was actually pretty fun.
The other jail had smaller pods with no guards. Maybe 30ish people to a pod. No nurse on staff and a busted AC. One dude was withdrawing from heroin and booze and kept having seizures, they’d just move him to a different pod with AC for a bit. I made a paper chess set and we played cards. The bullies ran the TV so I had to watch that godawful American Sniper garbage one night, that annoyed me.
The second jail was where I detoxed from my last drink. It’s been like 9 years or so now.
Congrats on sobriety. Id love to hear more about the jail super bowl party lol.
Thanks!
So, that pod was one big room with two floors of bunks around a central common area with one TV. The antenna was made of snack wrappers and unreliable. I think the game was Steelers v Seahawks. The whole day was full of people covertly betting or trying to “buy” one of the maybe 20 seats, which the guard was constantly battling. After the first hour or so, most people settled in more or less. My bunk was pretty close to the TV so I was able to watch from my cot. Suckers.
If I recall that Super Bowl sucked hard and most people went to bed annoyed 😅
i did a month in county about a year ago. i learned how to play spades and that was always fun and a good time killer.
they gave us all tablets and I’m really quite a “phones are bad for you” type of person. I try to challenge my technology addiction the best I can out here and look up at the world around me … but I am not the least bit ashamed to admit that I bought (yes bought, for $9.99 I’m pretty sure) subway surfers and spent most of my waking hours in there surfing the subways.
a month is laughable time to most people that I came across in there but it felt like a year. time dragged on. and it was really cold all the time (coming from someone who’s from up north and this jail was in the south)
they had chess but I think I only played two games of it with one friend I had made in there (one of those games opening with bongcloud, we both died laughing) I’m not very good at chess tbh. I tried to make a Go board out of paper but I couldn’t manage to keep the lines straight enough or spaced well enough.
didn’t really have too much excitement other than people pointing out the hatches on the walls that they supposedly would shoot pepper balls out of if there was a riot, never saw that theory in action. i did see the Go Squad tackle one guy who refused to go to his cell but it was not really very dramatic, you could tell they had done it a hundred times before so he couldn’t really do anything to stop them… honestly I was pretty impressed at how lighthanded they were with it, like yeah a big guy did tackle him right down to the ground but they weren’t trying to rough him up or anything they just did the minimum they had to after talking failed. i got hired (handing out food trays and cleaning up) and fired (coworker didn’t like me, started a rumor I wasn’t showering and got me fired… not sure what his problem was but I didn’t need the two for one I really just liked having something anything to do for part of the day(the US prison system is modern slavery and that is intentionally built into the 13th amendment))
that last part was really drilled into my head. people don’t take prison jobs for <$1/hr because they want the money, I’m not even sure how common it is for prisons to offer 2 for 1 for a job (meaning your time goes by twice as fast) I think most people take the job because being locked up is fucking excruciatingly boring and anything to make the time go by quicker is a blessing.
sorry that’s really rambly and disjointed, I’d be happy to answer any questions you have