How to Prepare Yourself for Prison

So, it’s time to face reality.  You’re going to prison.  We aren’t talking about Mayberry, with loveable Otis the drunk as a cellmate, the kindly Andy and goofy Barney as your jailors, and dear Aunt Bee whipping up delicious home-cooked meals.  You my friend are headed to an honest-to-goodness Federal Prison!  Now, I know that you’ve seen some movies and tv shows and are prepared for the worst.  Take a deep breath and relax.  You are headed to a Low Security Correctional Institute (LSCI), known to most inmates as “prison lite.”  You will not have to sleep with a shank, shiv, stick, blade, knife, etc. under your pillow.  You will not have to “ride with your car” (see footnote 1 below), “rep the area code” (2), flash gang signs (3), or “check in” (4) (unless you really mess up).  Hopefully, we can get you prepared enough for life at an LSCI to avoid undue problems. 

Where do we begin?  That’s easy.  Take everything you have ever learned about the rules of society, those little social understandings that helped you get by every day, and burn them.  Just toss them out.  You won’t be needing them anymore.  Think of yourself instead as a sociologist or anthropologist undertaking the study of a foreign culture.  Just stick with me here.  I will be your guide.

Before we dig deep and delve into the finer nuances of everyday life at an LSCI, let’s start with eleven things you can practice in preparation for your initial weeks of incarceration.  These are listed in no particular order.  While most are universal, each guest at the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) will have his own order of preference, or non-preference, I guess you’d say.  This becomes evident when you sit around and partake in the common inmate game of, “I can’t wait to….”  Seeing, hugging, kissing my family is always number one, so that is taken out of the mix.  You might expect the next top answer to be something to do with food, women, partying, freedom, or some combination of these.  But in fact you are much more likely to hear, “I can’t wait to…walk in my house barefoot!  What can I tell you, some guys dream big!  Okay, back to the list.  Eleven ways to practice for LSCI incarceration:

1. Shower with flip flops on.  About 170 other guys, with unique understanding of the prison guidelines about maintaining good personal hygiene will be using the showers.  Flesh eating, nuclear powered Athlete’s Foot is just one of your worries.

2. Sleep on a 24-inch wide metal bunk bed with a 2-inch thick pad for a mattress.  If you get a top bunk, don’t roll over!

3. Learn to change clothes in a bathroom stall.  And do not allow your bare feet or clothing to touch the floor EVER!  Let’s just say, not all guys have accurate aim.  Your room will be a cubicle with no door and a 6-foot high wall or an open bunk room.  If you need to get into a fresh pair of boxers, you do it in the bathroom stall.  You can hear guys slamming into the stall doors as they contort themselves to get into their gear, and occasionally a string of curses signifiying that someone accidentally touched the floor.

4. Don’t go outside after 8:30 pm – ever!

5. Watch a lot of TV.  Easy, right?  Not so fast.  Find the two loudest, most obnoxious windbags you know.  Have them sit 6 inches behind you and argue at full volume.  Make sure the show is really good, such as Jerry Springer or Wendy Williams, and that the topic is really important, such as, for instance, the Tupac-Biggie shootings.  (By the way, watching the hair-pulling matches on Springer will help give you a feel for the experience of a prison tv room.)

6. Flush the toilet with your foot.  Don’t lose your balance (see Number 3 above).

7. Hire someone to follow you around all day commenting on your business, saying things like, “Hey man, saw you went to the bathroom at 1:12 am.  What’s that all about?”  “Yo, what were you doing talking to so-and-so by the sinks with your toothbrushes in your hands?”  “Not sayin’, just sayin’, you didn’t take enough time to wipe, bro.” (These are actual quotes.  Nothing escapes notice and nothing is off limits.)

8. Practice talking to crazy people.  You know, that guy from the coffee bar?  The one in the ratty hoody nattering on about conspiracy theories, while taking a break from his thousand page “2 guns on the grassy knoll at Roswell with Black Elvis" manuscript?  See if you can round up about 10 of those guys.  Fill up the wingnut shuttle.  Now chat with them.  Everyday.  All day.  They’ll know what to talk about.  They will be attracted to your relative sanity like moths to a flame.

9. End all phone conversations before 15 minutes are up.  Have someone interrupt twice to remind the other person that he/she is speaking to a federal prison inmate (just in case either of you has forgotten where you are).

10. Eat all meals with a plastic fork and spoon.  No knife!  Practice ripping apart your meals or just tearing into them without cutting.   French toast, pancakes, pork chops – finger food!

11. Each time you practice 1-10 above, don’t forget to laugh.  Yes, it’s a trite old saying, but laughter really is the best medicine.  Especially in prison.  If you take this life too seriously, it will eat you up inside.  Laughter helps you keep your perspective, embrace the absurdity, and roll with it for another day.

Footnotes:

1. Your "car" is your home state.  At higher level prisons, people from the same state are expected to stick together.  So the Upstate New York mountain hipster, Wall Street embezzler, and Brownsville, Bronx gang-banger are supposed to find a way.  Make any sense to you?  Me neither.

2.  Similar to #1, but based on your area code.  You may have seen athletes on tv displaying tattoos of their area codes?

3.  On the rare chance you come across this, remember the fake gang signs you and your boys made up at Whitebread High will not do you any good.

4.  Voluntarily go to Special Housing.  Rare at an LSCI.