January 27, 2018 • 44 mins
Most people have a basic understanding of how prisons work, but it's often heavily influenced by fiction. What's it really like behind those bars? In this episode, Josh and Chuck reveal the practices, controversies and harsh realities of prison life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hi, everybody, Chuck here, Welcome to Stuff you Should
Know selects. Every week, as you know, we pick out
curated episodes that were some of our favorites, and this
week I'm gonna go with Prisons Colon Not as Fun
as you think. This is from August twelve, two ten,
and quite frankly, this could have been probably a two
part episode. We may follow up at some point, but
(00:22):
it's a really good, honest look at prisons in the
United States and uh, just sort of the state of things.
And it was very eye opening for me and Josh
I remember, and it's got a good title to boot
courtesy of Mr Josh Clark. So here we go with
Prisons Colon Not as Fun as you think. Welcome to
(00:51):
Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant as if you're surprised, Uh,
and that makes this stuff you should know, right, Chuck, Yes,
we are here, Josh, and uh can we talk about prisons? Now?
(01:14):
We can talk about prisons. Remember in the Presidential Pardons episode,
I was talking about how people have been calling for
President Obama to reduced to basically issue a blanket pardon
for people who are convicted under the mandatory minimums for
crack where there's a huge disparity, and I said it
was like five to one. It's actually it was I think, um,
a hundred and eighty to one disparity. Right, boy, Well
(01:37):
he did it like pretty much as we were recording
that he signed this law or Congress was passing this
law that reduced the mandatory minimum and basically in effect
overturned the sentences of first time offenders who are convicted
and we're given these five years and anybody who was
convicted under the old mandatory minimum laws. So there's gonna
(01:59):
be a lot of people coming out of prison looking
for crag. Well that's one argument that's not very fair
to say. No, it's not, But I mean, isn't that
kind of the the way that Americans and probably people
in general view prisoners. It's like, you did something wrong,
so you deserve to be where you are. But that's
without having any real concept of what prison is like.
(02:21):
I mean, I know I don't want to be in prison.
Have you ever seen the movie An Innocent Man? Remember
we talked about that Tom Sellick, very scary scene. That
was it for me. I was like, I don't ever
want to go to prison ever. Um. But that's about
all I knew about it until we started researching for
this very robust podcast on how prison works. So chuck, um,
(02:45):
I guess apparently when this article was written by Grabanowski,
it was I think two thousand five is short. That
was the latest stats he had, and it said he
said that there were like more than two million people
in prison, right, and it's actually decreased. Yeah, I've got
one point six million at the end of oh nine.
But when I look at these stats there, they're all
(03:06):
kinds of stats. Um. You know, one in thirty one
adults is in the correction system, but that includes jail, prison, probation,
and supervision. So they narrowed that down to only in prison.
One and every one hundred Americans is in prison. I know.
And that crazy. Did you see what fair state top
the list for the most number of adults in prison?
(03:27):
That's right, Georgia, Georgia one in thirteen people, one in
thirteen adults, and Georgia's in the correctional system. That's crazy. Yeah,
we live in a state of criminals either that or
some like a real police state one of the two. Uh. Yeah,
I'm not gonna comment on that. It's a chuck. We
should probably calm down. Let's settle down here. Let's talk
about prison. Prison is a deterrent, it's a punishment, and
(03:51):
it's hopefully there's increasingly it's becoming a place of reform
and rehabilitation. And we'll talk about that a little bit. Um.
But in the US, there's pretty much three three types
of security levels for prison, right, Yeah, with one extra
little added measure that we'll talk about. It's a big
extra though. Yeah, you got a minimum, you've got medium,
(04:14):
and you've got of course everyone's favorite maximum security prisons
and uh minimums security prison. We we're mainly going to
cover maximum because that's really the most interesting. Even though
I think they said like only or in max is
that right? Well, according to the two thousand five stats,
but um minimum is more like like a college campus,
(04:35):
that kind of thing. It's like that weekend that you
did orientation at the college you eventually went to. I
would think that's likeum security prison, right, Uh. And that's
definitely non violent offenders with pretty clean criminal records or
maybe you've served time in a medium and you were
really good, and they were like, yeah, let's bump this
dude down to maximum or minimum. Yeah, right, right, then
(04:57):
you've got medium. And that's the one that actually you
you would see most um on like television shows or something,
people think that's maximum. But when you see prisoners able
to like move around and play cards and stuff like that,
that's generally medium from what I understand. Right. Yeah, they
have like dorm room style accommodations a lot of times
with you know, eight or ten guys to a room. Um,
(05:18):
and like you said, the little social day rooms where
they hang out and trade cigarettes and like on oz. Yeah, exactly,
do horrific things to when they We'll get to that too. Uh.
And then of course the grandaddy of them all is
the maximum security prison. These are the violent offenders, guys
that have escaped or tried to escape. We're gonna say
(05:38):
guys a lot. Yes. I think less than ten percent
of the prison population is female. So it's not like
we're not trying to give the ladies their due. We
know you can do awful things as well. It's so
props to you, but we're gonna say dudes a lot. Well,
there's and then there's a subcategory that it was pretty rare. Um.
That came about in nine at the maximum security prison
(06:01):
in um Marian, Illinois I think not Juliet Marian, right um.
Two guards were murdered in two separate incidents on the
same day and the prison went into lockdown, which bad coincidence.
Is that what they called it, and that's what I
call it. The prison went into lockdown, which is where
you're in your cell all day, you can't move around,
(06:22):
you can't do anything, you have no freedom of movement. Um.
And it remained in that state ever since. So it
basically gave birth to the super max prison, right uh.
And since then a lot of prisons have been opened
as super max prisons. They're in a state of lockdown.
And if it sounds a bit familiar, basically the entire
prison is a series of solitary confinements there the whole. Yeah,
(06:45):
they call it officially, it's called Security Housing Unit and
s h U, but everyone calls it the whole, just
like in the movies. And as far as prisons go,
solitary confinement and then especially super max is extremely controversial,
right um Uh. Solitary confinement originally was created in eighteen
thirty by a warden and a prison in Pennsylvania, with
(07:07):
the lofty goal of giving a convict nothing but time
to contemplate what he'd done, the bad thing that he'd done.
I think anything that was supposed in eighteen thirty is
a good way to punish people. You might want to
review that notion again here. And so, yeah, they basically
found out that actually these are they don't sit around
(07:28):
and think about all the bad they've done. They kind
of go nuts, and not just kind of go nuts,
they go clinically insane as anybody would, right, or they
go in sort of insane, and they really go off
the deep end. Right because prison has also and still
remains used to Um, how is the mentally ill at
times not as much or as overtly as before, but
still you find the insane in prisons, right. Um. The
(07:51):
other problem with a super max facility, besides the fact
that it amounts to torture, psychological or otherwise, is that, um,
these things, these places are reserved for the worst of
the worst, supposedly, and in any given state there's a
couple maybe the worst of the worst, But a super
max prison may have a couple hundred cells. Yeah, you
(08:13):
gotta fill the cells somehow, So you have relatively minor
offenses or convicts, um going into super max prisons killing
themselves in a really horrible way. Yeah, this is a
big build up in the nineties. I think they said
by the end of the decade and of the nineties
that um, thirty different states had a super max prison.
(08:36):
And you said that each state only has a handful
of dudes that even qualify. So, like you said, they
get put in there, they kind of go through a
zookosis of sorts, like weird behavior like the bears walking
in circles. Um, except way way worse, way, way worse.
This one guy in Wisconsin, he was a sixteen year
old car thief. Another guy, twenty year old David Tracy,
(08:58):
hanged himself in a Virginia super max and he was
nineteen and he had been there for two and a
half years for selling drugs. No, he'd been there for
a year and he had a two and a half
year sentence and he still hung himself. He couldn't even
make it a year halfway into a two and a
half year sentence because he was immediately put in solitary confinement. UM,
and then it gets worse. Apparently, UM people have um
(09:18):
been known to swallow razor blades. One guy uh in
in Indiana super max prison choked himself to death with
a washcloth, and another guy, twenty one year old mentally
ill prisoner in that same prison, set himself on fire
and later died from those wounds. Yeah. The good news, though,
my friend, is that um, a lot of supermaxes have
(09:41):
been downgraded since then, Like the current trend is to
downgrade your supermax to regular max. So they're kind of
getting the message a little bit that we really don't
need that to this many super max prisons. Yeah, apparently
the nineties were bad. Yeah, but there was only one
federal super max, only one, which one a d X
in Florence, Colorado. A d X Florence. But like you said,
(10:04):
it's mostly on the state level. That's for like the
really really bad tax evaders. I imagine a d X
is not the kind of place you want to take
a tour. Think that the single federal supermax is not
the kind of place you want to be. It's a chuck, you, buddy,
(10:47):
have just been popped. Say, growing marijuana indoors. You're going
to prison. Let's come to terms with that, okay, okay, Um,
there's a couple of ways that you actually get to prison,
right yeah, and there as follows. You can take a taxi,
which apparently is more routine than we would imagine. I
(11:08):
had no idea. Um, you can be dropped off by
a friend or family member. That's what I would choose,
as in, I think that's what Edward Norton. I'd have
my mom take me. Do you drop me off at prison? Right? Well?
And um, you can also take the prison bus. Right
It's called the Diesel to Diesel tour because they'll you know,
it's a prison bus. It's not like some luxury greyhound
(11:30):
uh bus liner. You know how nice as greyhounds are.
Oh yeah, they're nice. It's not like that. You know that.
It's kind of cramped and nasty and smelly and it
sounds like a a locker room on wheels. Well, not
just that. They you go take yourself to the sheriff's
department and um, you know, curse your family member for
not being like, really, couldn't just take me the rest
(11:51):
of the way to the prison. Um, So you get
to the sheriff's department and you basically just wait there
for the prison bus to come pick you up. And
then you know, you stop at sheriff's department, after Sheriff's department,
after Sheriff's department. That's the insulting party. You're like, all right,
can I go to prison? Can I just start this please?
And they're like, well, we gotta make six stops on
the way. Hold on, and the bus is going to
break down in exactly minute. We're gonna go pick up
(12:13):
your future boyfriend first, So Chuck, you um finally get
to prison, right, Thank god, those cookies that your mom
gave you have been taken away from you. I mean
just immediately. You didn't even get to eat one. They're
showing down on those, the guards are and you have
a new moniker. You have a new name, a new
(12:33):
catch all name that describes you as a newly inducted prisoner.
You're a fish. Yeah, yeah, just like in the movies.
You know a lot of this. I thought, that's just
like in the movies, And it is just like in
the movies because they know a lot about prison. So
why would you make a prison movie that was you know,
completely unrealistic right when you can make the real deal
and it's very compelling. Yeah, and we'll talk about movies too.
(12:55):
But yes, you are a fish, Josh, You're all your
stuff is taken and cataloged, hopefully kept. We'll get to
that later as well. Some of it might be lost
along the way. Uh. You are allowed to bring in
like your reading glasses and maybe a few books. No cookies,
No cookies, you're legal papers if you you know, were
into that, and so you're you're processed, right, and you're
actually processed, often in full view of other cons in
(13:20):
the fish tank. And they call it, Yeah, they call
it the fish tank because all the guys who are
already in prison can sit there and watch. Right. Um,
but they keep you segregated for about thirty days or more.
You had no idea what was that long? I didn't either.
I thought they lowsed you. They sprayed you at the
fire hose, gave you an orange jumpsuit and threw you
in there. That's what I imagine. But yeah, no, for
(13:40):
thirty days you're basically segregated. I imagine what the other
fellas on the diesel tour, you know, and um, you
are assigned a job most likely tank like you're on
full display, like for thirty days. Dudes are sizing you up, hungry. Well,
like in Shawshank when they took bets on who was
going to be the first guy, first fish to break
(14:01):
down and cry that first night, it was that fat
guy broke down and cry, and then he got beaten
and bad things happen to him. I always confused that
in The Green Mile, I didn't like that one. No,
Sean Schenk was definitely better, but I often confused scenes
they were shot almost exactly the same. Yeah, agreed. So uh,
(14:21):
once you get out of your fish tank, you get
your cell assignment, you may get your job right and
again for about ten cents an hour. That's what you're paid.
You should. I read the letter real quick. There's actually
a site on the web called prison talk dot com
and it's not as hot as you would think, but
you can go to forums there and read x cons
(14:43):
and maybe even some current cons if you have internet
access and like a minimum security talk about things on
these prison forms. So I found a letter of I
was digging around about jobs, and this one guy said
the worst job he had was being a dorm janitor.
He got paid forty cents a day, the not by
the hour, forty cents a day, five days a week.
(15:03):
There were four dorms total, about sixty guys in each,
two bathrooms in each. You don't want to have a
salaried prison job as a convict. I'm not sure if
that hit home. Sixty guys sharing two bathrooms and this
guy was in charge of cleaning that on a daily basis.
I do appreciate you repeating that. So he swept off
in He said he kept the dorm rooms clean. You've
(15:24):
never seen a battleground of chaos until you've seen a
bathroom after thirty guys take a shower, mud dirt, torn tissue,
blue state soap. So I guess they get SOAPA signed
to them and never really thought about that. So anyway,
tobacco spit in the in the hangout room, garbage, um,
cigarette butts from roll ups. Basically, this dude had to
(15:45):
clean that stuff up for forty cents a day. And
he said that was the worst job you ever had
in prison. And he didn't even mention the fecal matter. Well,
I think that's implicit. Well I just made an explicit chuck. Yes,
So that is one example of a prison job that
you can get um and then you're off to your room,
which I would encourage everyone out to walk off eight
(16:06):
ft by six ft wherever they are and get a
good look at how large that is. And that's about
the size of your prison cell. That's close to what
we're at right now. Yeah, that's small, and that's a
little claustrophobic. Usually, well it depends. The most prison cells
are designed for one guy, and then as prisons have
(16:28):
grown increasingly overcrowded, they'll go and like both a bunk
to another bunk to the wall, and then while you
have a cell for two and then sometimes there's three whatever.
Usually if it's designed to house more than um one
or two people that it's a dorm and it it
can accommodate about eight guys per cell. Right, yeah, I
(16:48):
mean we could do a whole podcast on overcrowding and
the issues there. That's like a very deep problem, but
we'll just mention it and say it stinks. I'm beat
literally and otherwise right yeah, um, so chuck, the you've
got the general population cellblocks, right, which are all of
the cell blocks aside from the fish tank and maximum
(17:09):
security which is also known as the whole right, and
you've basically did you watch OZ a little bit? I
think from what I understand that that's really accurate. I'm
sure it is. So there's like a centrally located guard
and like loose sight or whatever. They're like, you can't
get through this, you know, operating the all the cell
(17:30):
blocked doors and like letting people in and out, and
they have a three and sixty degree view right well,
and each one I thought this is interesting, is fully
each wing is fully staffed in case you need to
lock down that wing. You've got all the dudes there,
you need to take care of it, and it can
be sealed off from the rest of the prison because apparently, um,
the riot mob mentality can spread like wildfire among the
(17:53):
president population. Yes, yeah, so um, and you would think,
you know, people try to escape, which, by the way,
there's a a double check. There's a stuff you missed
in history class podcast about Alcatraz and the Great Escape.
They escape from Alcatraz, great movie. So if you want
to learn more about that one, you can check that out,
all right, if you're so inclined. Um, But to make
(18:15):
sure that no one has escaped at any given point
in time, they do counts through about the same time
every day, probably the same time every day. They just
do a head count where you have to like line
up and they say, okay, everybody's here, right. Then at
night they walk around and count you while you're sleeping, right, yeah.
And then not only are you there, but you where
you need to be. So if they say, well, Josh,
(18:37):
you're in Chuck cell again, you know where you need
to be, so they'll beat you down and take you
to your own cell. Right, I'll feel like I need
to be here, don't you hear our podcast? The Chuck
is my partner. I wonder what the good fellas? Uh
that had to be minimum or was that just a
sweetheart deal? That was a sweetheart to remember when they
were all in the same room, like cooking steaks. Yeah,
(18:58):
they the one guy could slice the garlic so thin
it would liquefying the oil so great. So Chuck, let's say, um,
you've become acclimated. You're no longer fish you. Um, you've
shanked your first guy. Um, and you you're settled in
for a nickel right. Shank of verb? Yeah, shank is
(19:19):
a verb and and doun and shiv is also another
name for a shank, right, which is a homemade knife. Yes, okay,
I just want to get that clear. I don't know
that it is clear. Well, a shiv and a shank,
I now, can both be nouns for the knife. But
I've also heard that you can shank someone and you
can show someone you can. I think they're both nouns
and verbs very loosen prison for the same one. They're
(19:39):
very understanding, yes, with the vocabulary. Um, so you've settled
in and you are living your life in prison behind bars,
you know. Um, it's it's I would imagine fairly horrible.
But there are bright and shining moments and those basically
(20:01):
consist of the trip to the commissary, right, yeah, And
I don't I didn't know this, they don't. You don't
see this a lot in movies. All you see is
the black market stuff. But there is actually a commissary
where you can you have an account where you your
little prison money goes into your account. They obviously don't
give you cash. That wouldn't be a good idea. And uh,
you go to the commissary and say, hey, I like, um,
(20:21):
whatever is approved on the list, you know, like a
pack of smokes and uh People magazine and they're like,
well that's you know, three and a half dollars. So
you go work for a month People from January, Sexiest
Man Alive. And actually they debit each Each prisoner has
an ID card that is linked to basically their prison
(20:45):
work account. That's when they take their their debited credits
or given credits, and then it's debited from their account
when you buy stuff from the commissary. I learned about
that from Snoop Dogg. Really, so that's the fancy modern
prisons have it all electronically hooked up, which makes sense.
But um, like we said, there's also a black market,
which you have seen in every prison movie ever. There's
(21:07):
dudes trading cigarettes for favors or for protection, or for
better books or better People magazines or whatever. And there's
also visits from out of doors. Yeah right, sure you
get the bad stuff in a lot of times. Again,
good fellas, you remember Karen snuck in like those huge
(21:30):
bag pills. I mean just like like in her purse
or in her bra or something. Yeah, they clearly didn't
check her. Again, I think that they got special treatment,
right and chuck um one of the things that I
would imagine goes for a pretty high price, you know,
maybe a dozen cigarettes or so. Um is prison wine, right, Yeah?
(21:52):
Which prison wine? PRUNEO. Have you ever seen the site
where the guy eats nasty things, Steve, Steve, don't eat it.
I think it's called um. It is really funny And
I saw this years ago. This guy made Pruno prison
wine in his house and it's made with like fruits.
It's sort of like a Sangree type of thing. Then
(22:12):
you put like moldy bread in a sock and it's
like soaking all together in a bag till it ferments,
and it's imagine pretty disgusting. Steve said it wasn't that bad.
He drank it. He did a white and a red.
He said the white smelled like wrecked um, but he
said it tasted just like alcohol. And he said the
red actually wasn't that bad at all. He said, he
(22:35):
said it tasted wine like and got him drunk, which
is which is the deal. And uh so that that
was the deal with Pruno. Wow. I wouldn't recommend trying
in this at home, by the way, No, but that's
the whole point. I mean, you're not at home. You're
in prison and you want to get drunk, so you
make pruno. Yeah, unless someone wants to. Like you said,
(22:55):
with visitation, you can sneak things in if you're you know,
on the down, you're really not supposed to do that
way not supposed to. You get searched and um, and yes,
we are talking about visitation as well, now right, I
didn't realize that UM visiting hours are basically like business hours.
I thought it was like one day a month and
(23:17):
everybody came at the same time on the same day.
But that makes zero sense. UM. Prisoners are assigned a
set number of visits per month, and I think the
maximum number of visits you can get per month is
for the most exemplary prisoner on the planet. Yeah. I
would imagine that that's something that they take away pretty
pretty routinely, if you, you know, are being disciplined, yes, Josh.
(23:38):
And you also have to have a list when you
go in of who you say can and can't visit you.
And if you're not on that list, you can eventually visit,
but it's gonna take a long time and a lot
of paperwork and red tape. Yes, right, Yeah, and I
think you have unlimited visits from investigators, your lawyer, and
that's about it, right, Yeah, but they still keep track
of all that and your search coming in and the
(24:00):
prisoner and the and the visitor both searched coming in
and out. I don't know if it's a full body cavity.
It probably depends on the max level or your crime.
I think kind of follows you around in prison, like
what you did, what you're convicted of, Like if you
were convicted for smuggling things in your butt, and I
check you a little more careful. And of course, now
since we're talking about um, oh, and during visitation, like
(24:23):
just regular visitation, right, Um at a minimum security remember
this is just like college orientation weekend. Um. It looks
like a waiting room. Um. And then in maximum security
visitation is like through that bulletproof class on the phone. Yeah,
it's pretty accurate. And then there's a different kind of
visitation that I think everybody likes to think about, at
(24:46):
least thinks about whenever they hear prison, and that is
conjugal visitation. Right yeah, it's it's one of the two
ways that you can have sex in prison. Right. This
is far more the um the I guess more governmentally
defended way of having sex in prison. Um conjugal visits. Actually,
(25:06):
we're um. Originated in nineteen eighteen in Mississippi at a
state prison in Mississippi, where they remain in effect. But
originally they were created as a reward for hard work
on the chain gangs and stuff, right well, and to
incentivize them to work harder to write um, and it
worked really really well. UM. Nowadays that's not used quite
(25:28):
as um overtly as an incentive or reward. Um. It
is a reward for for good behavior or you have
to be like, you know, the one who can get
as many visits a month as one possibly can level
of good behavior prisoner. But um. It's generally defended in
two ways. One is a basic human right, like you
(25:49):
have a right to have sex even if you're incarcerated,
just like you have a right to food and water
and being kept clean, sure, right um. And then the
other way, and this this appears to be much more
legitimate in the eyes of the correction system. It's a
way to maintain the family bonds throughout a stint in prisons,
right sweet. And that's what it's even officially called as
(26:10):
the extended family program, right, So it's not just about sex,
Like you can have your whole family come over and barbecue.
In some states it's UM In Canada, I think they
have there there. I guess visitation areas look like apartments
have barbecues. There's such wisses you can have. You can
(26:30):
have up to three UM family members at a time visit,
or you can just have your wife and it has
to be your wife and you have to have been
married before, because that's the whole point they want. They
don't want you to turn into even more of a
deviant than you were going in. They want you to
keep talking to your wife and keep you know, loving
(26:50):
your kids, being love by your kids, and to make
that that transition back out into the normal world that
much easier. Right, Right, So, if you're one of those
serial killers and you have one of the weirdos that
writes you and you mary and then you marry them,
they can't come and visit you and have sex, right right, No,
Okay no. UM. If you were gay, however, and you
have a domestic partner and you are in Mexico City,
(27:12):
Brazil or California, you are entitled to conjugal visits as well,
which is pretty significant in California because in two thousand
seven you could have a conjugal visit if you were gay,
but you couldn't get married if you were gay, thanks
to Proposition eight, which was just overturned. Yeah yesterday. It's
(27:34):
not over yet. The proposition night was overturned yesterday. Yeah.
So that's the that's the skinny on conjugal visits. Not
not quite as again like arrested development, I don't think. Yeah,
And they don't use it a whole lot anymore. They
say that it's pretty uncommon. There's only six states, right, Yeah,
but um. The one thing I thought was funny though,
that one of the rules for the visiting UM person
(27:58):
is the dress appropriate. And they said on the list
of rules was no transparent clothing or bare middriffs, strapless attire,
or anything with obscene or offensive language. So your wife
can't get all dolled up in her baby doll lingerie.
I don't know. I think they're like, can't you just
put a trench coat on like everybody else? You know,
(28:19):
have you not seen the movies exactly? And I think
the mix that's it's a mixed bag on whether or
not experts agree or they disagree and disagree whether or
not it actually serves a really good purpose. Well, yeah,
and the studies on it have have shown mixed results
about whether or not it prevents recitativism. Yeah, that's one
bone head word s y s game that you should know.
(28:46):
Scaly should know knows. But so check. You mentioned there's
(29:10):
another way to have sex in prison, and this is
one of the reasons I don't want to go to prison,
because actually there's two more ways. Oh yeah, well, you
can have consensual sex with another man if you're in there,
which doesn't necessarily mean you're homosexual. A lot of guys
just there's nothing wrong with that, Like I just just
do that because they're in there. And uh, there's also
rape that happens in prison. That's the reason I don't
(29:32):
want to go to prison, just one reason. In two
thousand seven, Josh, we have a statistic from the Bureau
of Justice says four point five percent of state and
federal prisoners reported being raped in the past year, and
that is um seventy thousand prisoners in a year. We're
sexually abused by either guards or other inmates. See, that's
(29:52):
all over the place because there's other I've seen other numbers.
UM one one two thousand four study found that zero
point zero zero five percent even reported being raped while
they were incarcerated, and then a lot of those were probably,
you know, untrue. Well that's the deal, is reported. That's
the key. Like rape goes unreported a lot, just period,
(30:16):
but it definitely goes unreported in prison because you don't
want to be a snitch. Well sure, but no, I
think these are people who have been let out already.
Oh okay, yeah. But then in two thousand three, the
year before UM, Congress created the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Did you know about that? UM and the number they
used just thirteen percent and estimated of prisoners are raped
(30:39):
during their incarceration and their goal is zero. Well yeah,
and they're like, you have to have a zero tolerance
policy on UM. Inmate to inmate rape, UM and guard
to inmate or employee to inmate, sure rape that kind
of thing too, because it's not just inmates raping one another.
Guards at correctional facility have been known to UM be
(31:02):
a little heavy handed and possibly psychotic themselves. Yeah. And
I can say this because my cousin was a prison
guard for a little while a corrections officer cousin Wolfe.
Was he high school grad? Well he had to be. Yeah,
but you don't have to go to college to be
a corrections officer, No, you don't. You just have to
know how to shoot a shotgun. But to be the
warden you do. Yes, okay, Josh. Let's say you're in
(31:24):
prison and you commit a an offense or you're caught
raping somebody under the new zero tolerance policy. Well, if
you're caught raping someone or murdering someone, you would actually
go to trial for real. But if you're caught doing
something a little less offensive, um, you can go to
the whole. They can um remove your good behavior time,
(31:46):
transfer you to to a scarier prison, or like you said,
limit your visiting hours. That I'm sure that's a good
way to dig back at a prisoner. So you can't
get visits, um, and you get demerits called shots, and
they log those to your little file. Yeah, and they
take those into consideration when you're up for parole hearing,
(32:06):
or you're up to maybe get more visitations. If if
they're any time, they're looking at your behavior. Yeah, um,
they'll look at the shots and they follow you around.
You don't want any shots. And that's official punishment. Is
there's also unofficial punishment needed out by guards, right, Yeah,
I would rather have the official punishment, I think, because
just like in the movies, the guards can shake you down.
(32:29):
They can quote unquote um investigate what you have in
your room, but what they're really doing is like destroying
the things that you've grown to depend on to keep
you saying, I know, have you ever seen Birdman of Alcatraz? Yeah,
it's awful, and they take his birds away, I know, well,
and then uh, escape from Alcatraz. They took away the
one guy's paints. The old dude that painted that was
(32:52):
like the only thing he loved, and they took away
his canvas in his paints. Some jerk warden. It's always
a jerk arden. Well yeah, except Brewbaker. We'll talk about
that too. Uh. And guards can also beat you down,
and if nobody sees it and no one reports it,
then it's just what happens. Well, I think it's I
think that's officially sanctioned. I don't think that they have
to get permission to beat you down. If you permission, say, hey,
(33:14):
this guy is getting a little ordinary. So I'm gonna
break a river or too. But what I'm saying is
I think they have a pretty wide berth as to
what sanctions the beating and Grabmanowski put it, I'd like
to I'd like to quote him here. It is not
uncommon for guards to fire shotguns at prisoners whenever they
see any commotion. I didn't understand that one, and I
double checked, and it says at prisoners, not just fire
(33:35):
shotguns like up in the air something. It's just like, hey,
there's you guys are scuffling, kaboom. Yeah. I don't know
about that one. Yeah, this is indoors. Uh. So, like
we said, um, snitches are not you don't want to
be a snitch in prison. Um. It's very much that
mentality that you see in the movies where keep it quiet,
don't rat on anyone because if you do, then I mean,
(33:57):
who knows what's going to happen. Well, I can tell
you what's gonna happen. You're likely to be shanked or shipped,
which is the same thing, or raped and shaw shank. Yeah.
Remember Andy's problem there with the with the sisters. Yeah,
but he got back. That was one of the great
redemption seems of all time. I think the whole movie
was great, Like, oh no, I'm sorry, I was thinking
(34:18):
of the Green Mile. Sorry, but the funny thing is is,
and it's not funny to the guards, but they're way
way more prisoners than guards. And every once in a
while in history we've had these big uprisings where the
prisoners have actually taken control of the prison. Yeah, if
you work at a prison, you don't want to hear
the word attica sounded out by like enchant form by
(34:43):
one or even more one or two prisoners. Is that
what they use? Now? Is that the signal? Well, no,
I mean like that that means that there's violent unrest
right around the corner. I thought that was a signal.
Now it was like attica. I don't know if it's
a signal. Is more like a call to arms, you know,
And all of a sudden there's toilet paper on fire
and guys are coming at you and it's just not good. Yeah,
(35:04):
that didn't work out too well. No, it was seventy one, right,
And apparently Atteka Prison in Upstate New York was really
really deplorable as far as its treatment of the prisoners went,
which is really saying something because their prisoners to begin with,
and to have like the prisoners even know, like you
can't do this, Um, that's pretty bad. So they took
(35:27):
a couple of guards hostage, rioted, um held them, and
demanded for better treatment. And the State of New York
was like, okay, all right, we hear yet, and we're
going to storm the prison. And I think thirty three
people died. Uh No, thirty nine guards. Yeah, thirty nine
guards and prisoners died. And that was in UM and
(35:51):
then in eight there's one in New Mexico, right, Yeah,
the New Mexico State pen uh near Santa Fe was
another uprising, and that was where thirty three inmates were
killed and no guards were killed, but seven of them
were captured and beaten pretty severely, right, and apparently some
of the inmates that were killed died from torture. Really
(36:11):
just pleasant. I mean, think about it, Chuck. It's bad
enough to go to prison, but one of the aspects
of prison is that there's an end of your sentence. Right,
there's a light at the end of the tunnel if
you can make it. Dying in prison is about as
bad as it gets, especially dying of torture in prison,
I say, it's pretty bad. So Josh, let's say you
(36:31):
don't die. Let's see you serve your time and you
do get out. What what what goes on there? Well,
you would be like of all prison inmates get out. Yeah,
which is one of the reasons why you want those
family bonds in there, because you want to keep people
on the up and up rather than Prison represents a
real double edged sword. Either it reforms people or it
(36:53):
makes them worse, and a lot of that depends on
how a prisoners treated and the option get into them
in prison. UM. One of the big trends now is
education as part of rehabilitation. So I think every single
state prison in the US UM offers a G. E.
D Course and some of them require it for parole,
which is good. Yeah. Right. There's also vocational course. Is
(37:17):
that kind of thing? Right? Yes, But once again, like
in shaw Shank, you can take that course and pass
the test, but if you have a jerk warden, you
still might get shot. You know, we should have done
at the beginning of this podcast. We should have just said, everybody,
go watch Shawshank Redemption. Everybody'll see you next week. Everyone
loves that movie. Can we talk about the movies now?
(37:38):
Are we there? Not quite? Okay? Um, chuck. There's a
lot of people out there who don't think that prisoners
should just be left to rot, that they there there
should be prison reformed, that there shouldn't be any rape,
that that Congress shouldn't have had to have passed a
law requiring zero tolerance on prison rape. Um. And there's
(37:59):
actually been a prison reform movement going around since I think, uh,
possibly earlier than that, I don't know. Yeah, the Quakers
are huge on prison reform as well. Uh. And again,
you want prison reform, you want your prisoners treated in
a way where there is the potential for rehabilitation. Um.
(38:22):
Because of recitativism, right, well yeah, I mean that's why
they pay them to work these jobs, because they want
to give them some semblance of normal life so when
they get out they can say, oh, well, I held
a job in prison for the first time in my life.
Maybe they were like a drug dealer, what have you? Right, well,
think about it. Recitativism. The highest rate is among property offenses,
(38:45):
and that is a crime of the poor breaking into
someone's house and stealing their stuff. That's what you do
when you're poor, and that's got the highest rate of recitativism,
so it would seem like some sort of education or
occupational program wouldn't help deter that. Well. Yeah, but the
other stat though, that kind of makes me feel weird,
is that I think sixty seven percent of people who
(39:07):
commit crimes to go back into prison. It's an entirely
different crime than they commit. Oh yeah, which was like,
that was really discouraging. I would think maybe if the
guy just can't not steal TVs, he gets out and
steal TVs, you would think, so at least go back
to what he knows. But yeah, that's a little staggering.
It is that would shot any quaker up. And what
(39:28):
what is the rate I saw? I can't get like
the most recent stat but it looks like between fifty
and six somewhere in there from year to year for
recidivism rates. Yeah, though in two and ninety four it
was sixty seven point five, right, I think it's gone
down since then. Yeah, And and that's surprising because the
incarceration rates have gone down too, which is totally bucking
(39:50):
a trend. I think, um, they're going down, that's what
you said. Remember in two thousand five that these stats
are based on. It was two million and changed too.
I'm sorry, it was two million, um one hundred ninety
three thousand prisoners in the US. You said it was
less than two million in two thousand nine. Yeah, but
(40:11):
I think that's people that are currently incarcerated. But that
doesn't necessarily mean more people aren't being incarcerated on a
daily basis, because I think that's true because the mandatory minimums.
I think more people than ever are being incarcerated. So
maybe that was people that had left. I don't know. Well,
whatever it was, there was a two hundred seventy increase
(40:31):
between two that's huge, and we spent I think fifty
one billion dollars to incarceerate people in prison in jail,
whereas um, I think that comes out of twenty nine
thousand per mate per year. And remember a bail podcast. Uh,
it costs twelve hundred and fifty dollars per in mate
per year for probation. How much hundred dollars rather than
(40:54):
twenty nine thousand dollars. But these minor offenses throwing these guys,
especially like the car thief that was in a super
max that was sixteen let me, come on non violent offenses.
You can rehabilitate that kids with some work. Alright, So, Chuck,
I think it is movie time, don't you think so? Yes,
Josh movies. I made a list of my favorites. Feel
(41:16):
free to chime in. Shawshank Redemption that's number one for me.
The Green Mile, and that's not on my I've got
Escape from Alcatraz because I saw that when I was
a kid, and it's still like an awesome movie. Papillon
Classic with the Dustin Hoffman with the glasses, with the
glasses and and Steve McQueen. Right, it was in The
Great Escape to also a great prison movie. Cool Hand
(41:39):
Luke was probably the funniest one of the lot. The
Longest Yard. Actually, that might have been the funniest one.
I never saw either of them. Really, You're nuts. Bad
Boys Classic with Wilsmon and the Sean Penn went about
the Juvi detention. That's when Sean Penn was like, you know,
nineteen years old and he was in juvenile detention and
(42:01):
then he he filled a pillow case up with a
soda cans and just annihilated this dude one night. Yeah,
that's called a slock by the way. Now, that's one's
in a sock. Okay, I imagine this is me. It's
called a slaice UM American History X. That was pretty brutal. Yeah,
that was very brutal. Brew Baker, did you see that one.
(42:23):
That's where Robert Redford went in undercover as a prisoner
to sniff out how awful the prison was because he
was going to be the next warden. You're talking about
the natural and then most depressing, definitely Midnight Express for me,
the Turkish prison one ye Midnight Run was pretty depressing.
(42:47):
And UM Animal Factory is the one I'm going to
say is the most realistic. I have not seen that one.
That's the one that Steve Bushimmy directed and um edward
for long and I think William Dafoe is in it.
It's really good and it's of the animal factories, so
you have a pretty good idea that it's realistic. I
saw a Taxi to the Dark Side last night, and
it's not. It's about the US's policies on torture and
(43:10):
how we implemented him post nine eleven. But there's a
lot of prison stuff in it, like Abu Grab and
bog Room and stuff like that it's pretty disturbing. Yeah,
we didn't get into I mean, there's so much about
prisons that we didn't get into. Here. We could do
like three more podcasts that we wanted to and if
it seemed like we danced around something, oh, I don't know,
Capital Punishment, Yeah, I didn't go there. That's coming. I
(43:33):
can't wait to do that one. It's gonna be sweeping.
There's gonna be top hats and like people doing like
the can can and stuff at the beginning. It's going
to be enormous. Yeah, I think we have the rockets
lined up for that one. We do in prison Garbent. Yes,
so Chuck's telling me he's given me the double wink,
which means there is no listener mail. It was too
(43:53):
long and too full of goodness. You know what that means.
That means we just haven't gotten any listener mails. So
we want to hear from you. Just type some stuff
out that we would find interesting. Spanking on the bottom maybe, yeah,
talk it first and uh send it to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com for more on this
(44:18):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com
M Hi, everybody, Chuck here, Welcome to Stuff you Should
Know selects. Every week, as you know, we pick out
curated episodes that were some of our favorites, and this
week I'm gonna go with Prisons Colon Not as Fun
as you think. This is from August twelve, two ten,
and quite frankly, this could have been probably a two
part episode. We may follow up at some point, but
(00:22):
it's a really good, honest look at prisons in the
United States and uh, just sort of the state of things.
And it was very eye opening for me and Josh
I remember, and it's got a good title to boot
courtesy of Mr Josh Clark. So here we go with
Prisons Colon Not as Fun as you think. Welcome to
(00:51):
Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant as if you're surprised, Uh,
and that makes this stuff you should know, right, Chuck, Yes,
we are here, Josh, and uh can we talk about prisons? Now?
(01:14):
We can talk about prisons. Remember in the Presidential Pardons episode,
I was talking about how people have been calling for
President Obama to reduced to basically issue a blanket pardon
for people who are convicted under the mandatory minimums for
crack where there's a huge disparity, and I said it
was like five to one. It's actually it was I think, um,
a hundred and eighty to one disparity. Right, boy, Well
(01:37):
he did it like pretty much as we were recording
that he signed this law or Congress was passing this
law that reduced the mandatory minimum and basically in effect
overturned the sentences of first time offenders who are convicted
and we're given these five years and anybody who was
convicted under the old mandatory minimum laws. So there's gonna
(01:59):
be a lot of people coming out of prison looking
for crag. Well that's one argument that's not very fair
to say. No, it's not, But I mean, isn't that
kind of the the way that Americans and probably people
in general view prisoners. It's like, you did something wrong,
so you deserve to be where you are. But that's
without having any real concept of what prison is like.
(02:21):
I mean, I know I don't want to be in prison.
Have you ever seen the movie An Innocent Man? Remember
we talked about that Tom Sellick, very scary scene. That
was it for me. I was like, I don't ever
want to go to prison ever. Um. But that's about
all I knew about it until we started researching for
this very robust podcast on how prison works. So chuck, um,
(02:45):
I guess apparently when this article was written by Grabanowski,
it was I think two thousand five is short. That
was the latest stats he had, and it said he
said that there were like more than two million people
in prison, right, and it's actually decreased. Yeah, I've got
one point six million at the end of oh nine.
But when I look at these stats there, they're all
(03:06):
kinds of stats. Um. You know, one in thirty one
adults is in the correction system, but that includes jail, prison, probation,
and supervision. So they narrowed that down to only in prison.
One and every one hundred Americans is in prison. I know.
And that crazy. Did you see what fair state top
the list for the most number of adults in prison?
(03:27):
That's right, Georgia, Georgia one in thirteen people, one in
thirteen adults, and Georgia's in the correctional system. That's crazy. Yeah,
we live in a state of criminals either that or
some like a real police state one of the two. Uh. Yeah,
I'm not gonna comment on that. It's a chuck. We
should probably calm down. Let's settle down here. Let's talk
about prison. Prison is a deterrent, it's a punishment, and
(03:51):
it's hopefully there's increasingly it's becoming a place of reform
and rehabilitation. And we'll talk about that a little bit. Um.
But in the US, there's pretty much three three types
of security levels for prison, right, Yeah, with one extra
little added measure that we'll talk about. It's a big
extra though. Yeah, you got a minimum, you've got medium,
(04:14):
and you've got of course everyone's favorite maximum security prisons
and uh minimums security prison. We we're mainly going to
cover maximum because that's really the most interesting. Even though
I think they said like only or in max is
that right? Well, according to the two thousand five stats,
but um minimum is more like like a college campus,
(04:35):
that kind of thing. It's like that weekend that you
did orientation at the college you eventually went to. I
would think that's likeum security prison, right, Uh. And that's
definitely non violent offenders with pretty clean criminal records or
maybe you've served time in a medium and you were
really good, and they were like, yeah, let's bump this
dude down to maximum or minimum. Yeah, right, right, then
(04:57):
you've got medium. And that's the one that actually you
you would see most um on like television shows or something,
people think that's maximum. But when you see prisoners able
to like move around and play cards and stuff like that,
that's generally medium from what I understand. Right. Yeah, they
have like dorm room style accommodations a lot of times
with you know, eight or ten guys to a room. Um,
(05:18):
and like you said, the little social day rooms where
they hang out and trade cigarettes and like on oz. Yeah, exactly,
do horrific things to when they We'll get to that too. Uh.
And then of course the grandaddy of them all is
the maximum security prison. These are the violent offenders, guys
that have escaped or tried to escape. We're gonna say
(05:38):
guys a lot. Yes. I think less than ten percent
of the prison population is female. So it's not like
we're not trying to give the ladies their due. We
know you can do awful things as well. It's so
props to you, but we're gonna say dudes a lot. Well,
there's and then there's a subcategory that it was pretty rare. Um.
That came about in nine at the maximum security prison
(06:01):
in um Marian, Illinois I think not Juliet Marian, right um.
Two guards were murdered in two separate incidents on the
same day and the prison went into lockdown, which bad coincidence.
Is that what they called it, and that's what I
call it. The prison went into lockdown, which is where
you're in your cell all day, you can't move around,
(06:22):
you can't do anything, you have no freedom of movement. Um.
And it remained in that state ever since. So it
basically gave birth to the super max prison, right uh.
And since then a lot of prisons have been opened
as super max prisons. They're in a state of lockdown.
And if it sounds a bit familiar, basically the entire
prison is a series of solitary confinements there the whole. Yeah,
(06:45):
they call it officially, it's called Security Housing Unit and
s h U, but everyone calls it the whole, just
like in the movies. And as far as prisons go,
solitary confinement and then especially super max is extremely controversial,
right um Uh. Solitary confinement originally was created in eighteen
thirty by a warden and a prison in Pennsylvania, with
(07:07):
the lofty goal of giving a convict nothing but time
to contemplate what he'd done, the bad thing that he'd done.
I think anything that was supposed in eighteen thirty is
a good way to punish people. You might want to
review that notion again here. And so, yeah, they basically
found out that actually these are they don't sit around
(07:28):
and think about all the bad they've done. They kind
of go nuts, and not just kind of go nuts,
they go clinically insane as anybody would, right, or they
go in sort of insane, and they really go off
the deep end. Right because prison has also and still
remains used to Um, how is the mentally ill at
times not as much or as overtly as before, but
still you find the insane in prisons, right. Um. The
(07:51):
other problem with a super max facility, besides the fact
that it amounts to torture, psychological or otherwise, is that, um,
these things, these places are reserved for the worst of
the worst, supposedly, and in any given state there's a
couple maybe the worst of the worst, But a super
max prison may have a couple hundred cells. Yeah, you
(08:13):
gotta fill the cells somehow, So you have relatively minor
offenses or convicts, um going into super max prisons killing
themselves in a really horrible way. Yeah, this is a
big build up in the nineties. I think they said
by the end of the decade and of the nineties
that um, thirty different states had a super max prison.
(08:36):
And you said that each state only has a handful
of dudes that even qualify. So, like you said, they
get put in there, they kind of go through a
zookosis of sorts, like weird behavior like the bears walking
in circles. Um, except way way worse, way, way worse.
This one guy in Wisconsin, he was a sixteen year
old car thief. Another guy, twenty year old David Tracy,
(08:58):
hanged himself in a Virginia super max and he was
nineteen and he had been there for two and a
half years for selling drugs. No, he'd been there for
a year and he had a two and a half
year sentence and he still hung himself. He couldn't even
make it a year halfway into a two and a
half year sentence because he was immediately put in solitary confinement. UM,
and then it gets worse. Apparently, UM people have um
(09:18):
been known to swallow razor blades. One guy uh in
in Indiana super max prison choked himself to death with
a washcloth, and another guy, twenty one year old mentally
ill prisoner in that same prison, set himself on fire
and later died from those wounds. Yeah. The good news, though,
my friend, is that um, a lot of supermaxes have
(09:41):
been downgraded since then, Like the current trend is to
downgrade your supermax to regular max. So they're kind of
getting the message a little bit that we really don't
need that to this many super max prisons. Yeah, apparently
the nineties were bad. Yeah, but there was only one
federal super max, only one, which one a d X
in Florence, Colorado. A d X Florence. But like you said,
(10:04):
it's mostly on the state level. That's for like the
really really bad tax evaders. I imagine a d X
is not the kind of place you want to take
a tour. Think that the single federal supermax is not
the kind of place you want to be. It's a chuck, you, buddy,
(10:47):
have just been popped. Say, growing marijuana indoors. You're going
to prison. Let's come to terms with that, okay, okay, Um,
there's a couple of ways that you actually get to prison,
right yeah, and there as follows. You can take a taxi,
which apparently is more routine than we would imagine. I
(11:08):
had no idea. Um, you can be dropped off by
a friend or family member. That's what I would choose,
as in, I think that's what Edward Norton. I'd have
my mom take me. Do you drop me off at prison? Right? Well?
And um, you can also take the prison bus. Right
It's called the Diesel to Diesel tour because they'll you know,
it's a prison bus. It's not like some luxury greyhound
(11:30):
uh bus liner. You know how nice as greyhounds are.
Oh yeah, they're nice. It's not like that. You know that.
It's kind of cramped and nasty and smelly and it
sounds like a a locker room on wheels. Well, not
just that. They you go take yourself to the sheriff's
department and um, you know, curse your family member for
not being like, really, couldn't just take me the rest
(11:51):
of the way to the prison. Um, So you get
to the sheriff's department and you basically just wait there
for the prison bus to come pick you up. And
then you know, you stop at sheriff's department, after Sheriff's department,
after Sheriff's department. That's the insulting party. You're like, all right,
can I go to prison? Can I just start this please?
And they're like, well, we gotta make six stops on
the way. Hold on, and the bus is going to
break down in exactly minute. We're gonna go pick up
(12:13):
your future boyfriend first, So Chuck, you um finally get
to prison, right, Thank god, those cookies that your mom
gave you have been taken away from you. I mean
just immediately. You didn't even get to eat one. They're
showing down on those, the guards are and you have
a new moniker. You have a new name, a new
(12:33):
catch all name that describes you as a newly inducted prisoner.
You're a fish. Yeah, yeah, just like in the movies.
You know a lot of this. I thought, that's just
like in the movies, And it is just like in
the movies because they know a lot about prison. So
why would you make a prison movie that was you know,
completely unrealistic right when you can make the real deal
and it's very compelling. Yeah, and we'll talk about movies too.
(12:55):
But yes, you are a fish, Josh, You're all your
stuff is taken and cataloged, hopefully kept. We'll get to
that later as well. Some of it might be lost
along the way. Uh. You are allowed to bring in
like your reading glasses and maybe a few books. No cookies,
No cookies, you're legal papers if you you know, were
into that, and so you're you're processed, right, and you're
actually processed, often in full view of other cons in
(13:20):
the fish tank. And they call it, Yeah, they call
it the fish tank because all the guys who are
already in prison can sit there and watch. Right. Um,
but they keep you segregated for about thirty days or more.
You had no idea what was that long? I didn't either.
I thought they lowsed you. They sprayed you at the
fire hose, gave you an orange jumpsuit and threw you
in there. That's what I imagine. But yeah, no, for
(13:40):
thirty days you're basically segregated. I imagine what the other
fellas on the diesel tour, you know, and um, you
are assigned a job most likely tank like you're on
full display, like for thirty days. Dudes are sizing you up, hungry. Well,
like in Shawshank when they took bets on who was
going to be the first guy, first fish to break
(14:01):
down and cry that first night, it was that fat
guy broke down and cry, and then he got beaten
and bad things happen to him. I always confused that
in The Green Mile, I didn't like that one. No,
Sean Schenk was definitely better, but I often confused scenes
they were shot almost exactly the same. Yeah, agreed. So uh,
(14:21):
once you get out of your fish tank, you get
your cell assignment, you may get your job right and
again for about ten cents an hour. That's what you're paid.
You should. I read the letter real quick. There's actually
a site on the web called prison talk dot com
and it's not as hot as you would think, but
you can go to forums there and read x cons
(14:43):
and maybe even some current cons if you have internet
access and like a minimum security talk about things on
these prison forms. So I found a letter of I
was digging around about jobs, and this one guy said
the worst job he had was being a dorm janitor.
He got paid forty cents a day, the not by
the hour, forty cents a day, five days a week.
(15:03):
There were four dorms total, about sixty guys in each,
two bathrooms in each. You don't want to have a
salaried prison job as a convict. I'm not sure if
that hit home. Sixty guys sharing two bathrooms and this
guy was in charge of cleaning that on a daily basis.
I do appreciate you repeating that. So he swept off
in He said he kept the dorm rooms clean. You've
(15:24):
never seen a battleground of chaos until you've seen a
bathroom after thirty guys take a shower, mud dirt, torn tissue,
blue state soap. So I guess they get SOAPA signed
to them and never really thought about that. So anyway,
tobacco spit in the in the hangout room, garbage, um,
cigarette butts from roll ups. Basically, this dude had to
(15:45):
clean that stuff up for forty cents a day. And
he said that was the worst job you ever had
in prison. And he didn't even mention the fecal matter. Well,
I think that's implicit. Well I just made an explicit chuck. Yes,
So that is one example of a prison job that
you can get um and then you're off to your room,
which I would encourage everyone out to walk off eight
(16:06):
ft by six ft wherever they are and get a
good look at how large that is. And that's about
the size of your prison cell. That's close to what
we're at right now. Yeah, that's small, and that's a
little claustrophobic. Usually, well it depends. The most prison cells
are designed for one guy, and then as prisons have
(16:28):
grown increasingly overcrowded, they'll go and like both a bunk
to another bunk to the wall, and then while you
have a cell for two and then sometimes there's three whatever.
Usually if it's designed to house more than um one
or two people that it's a dorm and it it
can accommodate about eight guys per cell. Right, yeah, I
(16:48):
mean we could do a whole podcast on overcrowding and
the issues there. That's like a very deep problem, but
we'll just mention it and say it stinks. I'm beat
literally and otherwise right yeah, um, so chuck, the you've
got the general population cellblocks, right, which are all of
the cell blocks aside from the fish tank and maximum
(17:09):
security which is also known as the whole right, and
you've basically did you watch OZ a little bit? I
think from what I understand that that's really accurate. I'm
sure it is. So there's like a centrally located guard
and like loose sight or whatever. They're like, you can't
get through this, you know, operating the all the cell
(17:30):
blocked doors and like letting people in and out, and
they have a three and sixty degree view right well,
and each one I thought this is interesting, is fully
each wing is fully staffed in case you need to
lock down that wing. You've got all the dudes there,
you need to take care of it, and it can
be sealed off from the rest of the prison because apparently, um,
the riot mob mentality can spread like wildfire among the
(17:53):
president population. Yes, yeah, so um, and you would think,
you know, people try to escape, which, by the way,
there's a a double check. There's a stuff you missed
in history class podcast about Alcatraz and the Great Escape.
They escape from Alcatraz, great movie. So if you want
to learn more about that one, you can check that out,
all right, if you're so inclined. Um, But to make
(18:15):
sure that no one has escaped at any given point
in time, they do counts through about the same time
every day, probably the same time every day. They just
do a head count where you have to like line
up and they say, okay, everybody's here, right. Then at
night they walk around and count you while you're sleeping, right, yeah.
And then not only are you there, but you where
you need to be. So if they say, well, Josh,
(18:37):
you're in Chuck cell again, you know where you need
to be, so they'll beat you down and take you
to your own cell. Right, I'll feel like I need
to be here, don't you hear our podcast? The Chuck
is my partner. I wonder what the good fellas? Uh
that had to be minimum or was that just a
sweetheart deal? That was a sweetheart to remember when they
were all in the same room, like cooking steaks. Yeah,
(18:58):
they the one guy could slice the garlic so thin
it would liquefying the oil so great. So Chuck, let's say, um,
you've become acclimated. You're no longer fish you. Um, you've
shanked your first guy. Um, and you you're settled in
for a nickel right. Shank of verb? Yeah, shank is
(19:19):
a verb and and doun and shiv is also another
name for a shank, right, which is a homemade knife. Yes, okay,
I just want to get that clear. I don't know
that it is clear. Well, a shiv and a shank,
I now, can both be nouns for the knife. But
I've also heard that you can shank someone and you
can show someone you can. I think they're both nouns
and verbs very loosen prison for the same one. They're
(19:39):
very understanding, yes, with the vocabulary. Um, so you've settled
in and you are living your life in prison behind bars,
you know. Um, it's it's I would imagine fairly horrible.
But there are bright and shining moments and those basically
(20:01):
consist of the trip to the commissary, right, yeah, And
I don't I didn't know this, they don't. You don't
see this a lot in movies. All you see is
the black market stuff. But there is actually a commissary
where you can you have an account where you your
little prison money goes into your account. They obviously don't
give you cash. That wouldn't be a good idea. And uh,
you go to the commissary and say, hey, I like, um,
(20:21):
whatever is approved on the list, you know, like a
pack of smokes and uh People magazine and they're like,
well that's you know, three and a half dollars. So
you go work for a month People from January, Sexiest
Man Alive. And actually they debit each Each prisoner has
an ID card that is linked to basically their prison
(20:45):
work account. That's when they take their their debited credits
or given credits, and then it's debited from their account
when you buy stuff from the commissary. I learned about
that from Snoop Dogg. Really, so that's the fancy modern
prisons have it all electronically hooked up, which makes sense.
But um, like we said, there's also a black market,
which you have seen in every prison movie ever. There's
(21:07):
dudes trading cigarettes for favors or for protection, or for
better books or better People magazines or whatever. And there's
also visits from out of doors. Yeah right, sure you
get the bad stuff in a lot of times. Again,
good fellas, you remember Karen snuck in like those huge
(21:30):
bag pills. I mean just like like in her purse
or in her bra or something. Yeah, they clearly didn't
check her. Again, I think that they got special treatment,
right and chuck um one of the things that I
would imagine goes for a pretty high price, you know,
maybe a dozen cigarettes or so. Um is prison wine, right, Yeah?
(21:52):
Which prison wine? PRUNEO. Have you ever seen the site
where the guy eats nasty things, Steve, Steve, don't eat it.
I think it's called um. It is really funny And
I saw this years ago. This guy made Pruno prison
wine in his house and it's made with like fruits.
It's sort of like a Sangree type of thing. Then
(22:12):
you put like moldy bread in a sock and it's
like soaking all together in a bag till it ferments,
and it's imagine pretty disgusting. Steve said it wasn't that bad.
He drank it. He did a white and a red.
He said the white smelled like wrecked um, but he
said it tasted just like alcohol. And he said the
red actually wasn't that bad at all. He said, he
(22:35):
said it tasted wine like and got him drunk, which
is which is the deal. And uh so that that
was the deal with Pruno. Wow. I wouldn't recommend trying
in this at home, by the way, No, but that's
the whole point. I mean, you're not at home. You're
in prison and you want to get drunk, so you
make pruno. Yeah, unless someone wants to. Like you said,
(22:55):
with visitation, you can sneak things in if you're you know,
on the down, you're really not supposed to do that
way not supposed to. You get searched and um, and yes,
we are talking about visitation as well, now right, I
didn't realize that UM visiting hours are basically like business hours.
I thought it was like one day a month and
(23:17):
everybody came at the same time on the same day.
But that makes zero sense. UM. Prisoners are assigned a
set number of visits per month, and I think the
maximum number of visits you can get per month is
for the most exemplary prisoner on the planet. Yeah. I
would imagine that that's something that they take away pretty
pretty routinely, if you, you know, are being disciplined, yes, Josh.
(23:38):
And you also have to have a list when you
go in of who you say can and can't visit you.
And if you're not on that list, you can eventually visit,
but it's gonna take a long time and a lot
of paperwork and red tape. Yes, right, Yeah, and I
think you have unlimited visits from investigators, your lawyer, and
that's about it, right, Yeah, but they still keep track
of all that and your search coming in and the
(24:00):
prisoner and the and the visitor both searched coming in
and out. I don't know if it's a full body cavity.
It probably depends on the max level or your crime.
I think kind of follows you around in prison, like
what you did, what you're convicted of, Like if you
were convicted for smuggling things in your butt, and I
check you a little more careful. And of course, now
since we're talking about um, oh, and during visitation, like
(24:23):
just regular visitation, right, Um at a minimum security remember
this is just like college orientation weekend. Um. It looks
like a waiting room. Um. And then in maximum security
visitation is like through that bulletproof class on the phone. Yeah,
it's pretty accurate. And then there's a different kind of
visitation that I think everybody likes to think about, at
(24:46):
least thinks about whenever they hear prison, and that is
conjugal visitation. Right yeah, it's it's one of the two
ways that you can have sex in prison. Right. This
is far more the um the I guess more governmentally
defended way of having sex in prison. Um conjugal visits. Actually,
(25:06):
we're um. Originated in nineteen eighteen in Mississippi at a
state prison in Mississippi, where they remain in effect. But
originally they were created as a reward for hard work
on the chain gangs and stuff, right well, and to
incentivize them to work harder to write um, and it
worked really really well. UM. Nowadays that's not used quite
(25:28):
as um overtly as an incentive or reward. Um. It
is a reward for for good behavior or you have
to be like, you know, the one who can get
as many visits a month as one possibly can level
of good behavior prisoner. But um. It's generally defended in
two ways. One is a basic human right, like you
(25:49):
have a right to have sex even if you're incarcerated,
just like you have a right to food and water
and being kept clean, sure, right um. And then the
other way, and this this appears to be much more
legitimate in the eyes of the correction system. It's a
way to maintain the family bonds throughout a stint in prisons,
right sweet. And that's what it's even officially called as
(26:10):
the extended family program, right, So it's not just about sex,
Like you can have your whole family come over and barbecue.
In some states it's UM In Canada, I think they
have there there. I guess visitation areas look like apartments
have barbecues. There's such wisses you can have. You can
(26:30):
have up to three UM family members at a time visit,
or you can just have your wife and it has
to be your wife and you have to have been
married before, because that's the whole point they want. They
don't want you to turn into even more of a
deviant than you were going in. They want you to
keep talking to your wife and keep you know, loving
(26:50):
your kids, being love by your kids, and to make
that that transition back out into the normal world that
much easier. Right, Right, So, if you're one of those
serial killers and you have one of the weirdos that
writes you and you mary and then you marry them,
they can't come and visit you and have sex, right right, No,
Okay no. UM. If you were gay, however, and you
have a domestic partner and you are in Mexico City,
(27:12):
Brazil or California, you are entitled to conjugal visits as well,
which is pretty significant in California because in two thousand
seven you could have a conjugal visit if you were gay,
but you couldn't get married if you were gay, thanks
to Proposition eight, which was just overturned. Yeah yesterday. It's
(27:34):
not over yet. The proposition night was overturned yesterday. Yeah.
So that's the that's the skinny on conjugal visits. Not
not quite as again like arrested development, I don't think. Yeah,
And they don't use it a whole lot anymore. They
say that it's pretty uncommon. There's only six states, right, Yeah,
but um. The one thing I thought was funny though,
that one of the rules for the visiting UM person
(27:58):
is the dress appropriate. And they said on the list
of rules was no transparent clothing or bare middriffs, strapless attire,
or anything with obscene or offensive language. So your wife
can't get all dolled up in her baby doll lingerie.
I don't know. I think they're like, can't you just
put a trench coat on like everybody else? You know,
(28:19):
have you not seen the movies exactly? And I think
the mix that's it's a mixed bag on whether or
not experts agree or they disagree and disagree whether or
not it actually serves a really good purpose. Well, yeah,
and the studies on it have have shown mixed results
about whether or not it prevents recitativism. Yeah, that's one
bone head word s y s game that you should know.
(28:46):
Scaly should know knows. But so check. You mentioned there's
(29:10):
another way to have sex in prison, and this is
one of the reasons I don't want to go to prison,
because actually there's two more ways. Oh yeah, well, you
can have consensual sex with another man if you're in there,
which doesn't necessarily mean you're homosexual. A lot of guys
just there's nothing wrong with that, Like I just just
do that because they're in there. And uh, there's also
rape that happens in prison. That's the reason I don't
(29:32):
want to go to prison, just one reason. In two
thousand seven, Josh, we have a statistic from the Bureau
of Justice says four point five percent of state and
federal prisoners reported being raped in the past year, and
that is um seventy thousand prisoners in a year. We're
sexually abused by either guards or other inmates. See, that's
(29:52):
all over the place because there's other I've seen other numbers.
UM one one two thousand four study found that zero
point zero zero five percent even reported being raped while
they were incarcerated, and then a lot of those were probably,
you know, untrue. Well that's the deal, is reported. That's
the key. Like rape goes unreported a lot, just period,
(30:16):
but it definitely goes unreported in prison because you don't
want to be a snitch. Well sure, but no, I
think these are people who have been let out already.
Oh okay, yeah. But then in two thousand three, the
year before UM, Congress created the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Did you know about that? UM and the number they
used just thirteen percent and estimated of prisoners are raped
(30:39):
during their incarceration and their goal is zero. Well yeah,
and they're like, you have to have a zero tolerance
policy on UM. Inmate to inmate rape, UM and guard
to inmate or employee to inmate, sure rape that kind
of thing too, because it's not just inmates raping one another.
Guards at correctional facility have been known to UM be
(31:02):
a little heavy handed and possibly psychotic themselves. Yeah. And
I can say this because my cousin was a prison
guard for a little while a corrections officer cousin Wolfe.
Was he high school grad? Well he had to be. Yeah,
but you don't have to go to college to be
a corrections officer, No, you don't. You just have to
know how to shoot a shotgun. But to be the
warden you do. Yes, okay, Josh. Let's say you're in
(31:24):
prison and you commit a an offense or you're caught
raping somebody under the new zero tolerance policy. Well, if
you're caught raping someone or murdering someone, you would actually
go to trial for real. But if you're caught doing
something a little less offensive, um, you can go to
the whole. They can um remove your good behavior time,
(31:46):
transfer you to to a scarier prison, or like you said,
limit your visiting hours. That I'm sure that's a good
way to dig back at a prisoner. So you can't
get visits, um, and you get demerits called shots, and
they log those to your little file. Yeah, and they
take those into consideration when you're up for parole hearing,
(32:06):
or you're up to maybe get more visitations. If if
they're any time, they're looking at your behavior. Yeah, um,
they'll look at the shots and they follow you around.
You don't want any shots. And that's official punishment. Is
there's also unofficial punishment needed out by guards, right, Yeah,
I would rather have the official punishment, I think, because
just like in the movies, the guards can shake you down.
(32:29):
They can quote unquote um investigate what you have in
your room, but what they're really doing is like destroying
the things that you've grown to depend on to keep
you saying, I know, have you ever seen Birdman of Alcatraz? Yeah,
it's awful, and they take his birds away, I know, well,
and then uh, escape from Alcatraz. They took away the
one guy's paints. The old dude that painted that was
(32:52):
like the only thing he loved, and they took away
his canvas in his paints. Some jerk warden. It's always
a jerk arden. Well yeah, except Brewbaker. We'll talk about
that too. Uh. And guards can also beat you down,
and if nobody sees it and no one reports it,
then it's just what happens. Well, I think it's I
think that's officially sanctioned. I don't think that they have
to get permission to beat you down. If you permission, say, hey,
(33:14):
this guy is getting a little ordinary. So I'm gonna
break a river or too. But what I'm saying is
I think they have a pretty wide berth as to
what sanctions the beating and Grabmanowski put it, I'd like
to I'd like to quote him here. It is not
uncommon for guards to fire shotguns at prisoners whenever they
see any commotion. I didn't understand that one, and I
double checked, and it says at prisoners, not just fire
(33:35):
shotguns like up in the air something. It's just like, hey,
there's you guys are scuffling, kaboom. Yeah. I don't know
about that one. Yeah, this is indoors. Uh. So, like
we said, um, snitches are not you don't want to
be a snitch in prison. Um. It's very much that
mentality that you see in the movies where keep it quiet,
don't rat on anyone because if you do, then I mean,
(33:57):
who knows what's going to happen. Well, I can tell
you what's gonna happen. You're likely to be shanked or shipped,
which is the same thing, or raped and shaw shank. Yeah.
Remember Andy's problem there with the with the sisters. Yeah,
but he got back. That was one of the great
redemption seems of all time. I think the whole movie
was great, Like, oh no, I'm sorry, I was thinking
(34:18):
of the Green Mile. Sorry, but the funny thing is is,
and it's not funny to the guards, but they're way
way more prisoners than guards. And every once in a
while in history we've had these big uprisings where the
prisoners have actually taken control of the prison. Yeah, if
you work at a prison, you don't want to hear
the word attica sounded out by like enchant form by
(34:43):
one or even more one or two prisoners. Is that
what they use? Now? Is that the signal? Well, no,
I mean like that that means that there's violent unrest
right around the corner. I thought that was a signal.
Now it was like attica. I don't know if it's
a signal. Is more like a call to arms, you know,
And all of a sudden there's toilet paper on fire
and guys are coming at you and it's just not good. Yeah,
(35:04):
that didn't work out too well. No, it was seventy one, right,
And apparently Atteka Prison in Upstate New York was really
really deplorable as far as its treatment of the prisoners went,
which is really saying something because their prisoners to begin with,
and to have like the prisoners even know, like you
can't do this, Um, that's pretty bad. So they took
(35:27):
a couple of guards hostage, rioted, um held them, and
demanded for better treatment. And the State of New York
was like, okay, all right, we hear yet, and we're
going to storm the prison. And I think thirty three
people died. Uh No, thirty nine guards. Yeah, thirty nine
guards and prisoners died. And that was in UM and
(35:51):
then in eight there's one in New Mexico, right, Yeah,
the New Mexico State pen uh near Santa Fe was
another uprising, and that was where thirty three inmates were
killed and no guards were killed, but seven of them
were captured and beaten pretty severely, right, and apparently some
of the inmates that were killed died from torture. Really
(36:11):
just pleasant. I mean, think about it, Chuck. It's bad
enough to go to prison, but one of the aspects
of prison is that there's an end of your sentence. Right,
there's a light at the end of the tunnel if
you can make it. Dying in prison is about as
bad as it gets, especially dying of torture in prison,
I say, it's pretty bad. So Josh, let's say you
(36:31):
don't die. Let's see you serve your time and you
do get out. What what what goes on there? Well,
you would be like of all prison inmates get out. Yeah,
which is one of the reasons why you want those
family bonds in there, because you want to keep people
on the up and up rather than Prison represents a
real double edged sword. Either it reforms people or it
(36:53):
makes them worse, and a lot of that depends on
how a prisoners treated and the option get into them
in prison. UM. One of the big trends now is
education as part of rehabilitation. So I think every single
state prison in the US UM offers a G. E.
D Course and some of them require it for parole,
which is good. Yeah. Right. There's also vocational course. Is
(37:17):
that kind of thing? Right? Yes, But once again, like
in shaw Shank, you can take that course and pass
the test, but if you have a jerk warden, you
still might get shot. You know, we should have done
at the beginning of this podcast. We should have just said, everybody,
go watch Shawshank Redemption. Everybody'll see you next week. Everyone
loves that movie. Can we talk about the movies now?
(37:38):
Are we there? Not quite? Okay? Um, chuck. There's a
lot of people out there who don't think that prisoners
should just be left to rot, that they there there
should be prison reformed, that there shouldn't be any rape,
that that Congress shouldn't have had to have passed a
law requiring zero tolerance on prison rape. Um. And there's
(37:59):
actually been a prison reform movement going around since I think, uh,
possibly earlier than that, I don't know. Yeah, the Quakers
are huge on prison reform as well. Uh. And again,
you want prison reform, you want your prisoners treated in
a way where there is the potential for rehabilitation. Um.
(38:22):
Because of recitativism, right, well yeah, I mean that's why
they pay them to work these jobs, because they want
to give them some semblance of normal life so when
they get out they can say, oh, well, I held
a job in prison for the first time in my life.
Maybe they were like a drug dealer, what have you? Right, well,
think about it. Recitativism. The highest rate is among property offenses,
(38:45):
and that is a crime of the poor breaking into
someone's house and stealing their stuff. That's what you do
when you're poor, and that's got the highest rate of recitativism,
so it would seem like some sort of education or
occupational program wouldn't help deter that. Well. Yeah, but the
other stat though, that kind of makes me feel weird,
is that I think sixty seven percent of people who
(39:07):
commit crimes to go back into prison. It's an entirely
different crime than they commit. Oh yeah, which was like,
that was really discouraging. I would think maybe if the
guy just can't not steal TVs, he gets out and
steal TVs, you would think, so at least go back
to what he knows. But yeah, that's a little staggering.
It is that would shot any quaker up. And what
(39:28):
what is the rate I saw? I can't get like
the most recent stat but it looks like between fifty
and six somewhere in there from year to year for
recidivism rates. Yeah, though in two and ninety four it
was sixty seven point five, right, I think it's gone
down since then. Yeah, And and that's surprising because the
incarceration rates have gone down too, which is totally bucking
(39:50):
a trend. I think, um, they're going down, that's what
you said. Remember in two thousand five that these stats
are based on. It was two million and changed too.
I'm sorry, it was two million, um one hundred ninety
three thousand prisoners in the US. You said it was
less than two million in two thousand nine. Yeah, but
(40:11):
I think that's people that are currently incarcerated. But that
doesn't necessarily mean more people aren't being incarcerated on a
daily basis, because I think that's true because the mandatory minimums.
I think more people than ever are being incarcerated. So
maybe that was people that had left. I don't know. Well,
whatever it was, there was a two hundred seventy increase
(40:31):
between two that's huge, and we spent I think fifty
one billion dollars to incarceerate people in prison in jail,
whereas um, I think that comes out of twenty nine
thousand per mate per year. And remember a bail podcast. Uh,
it costs twelve hundred and fifty dollars per in mate
per year for probation. How much hundred dollars rather than
(40:54):
twenty nine thousand dollars. But these minor offenses throwing these guys,
especially like the car thief that was in a super
max that was sixteen let me, come on non violent offenses.
You can rehabilitate that kids with some work. Alright, So, Chuck,
I think it is movie time, don't you think so? Yes,
Josh movies. I made a list of my favorites. Feel
(41:16):
free to chime in. Shawshank Redemption that's number one for me.
The Green Mile, and that's not on my I've got
Escape from Alcatraz because I saw that when I was
a kid, and it's still like an awesome movie. Papillon
Classic with the Dustin Hoffman with the glasses, with the
glasses and and Steve McQueen. Right, it was in The
Great Escape to also a great prison movie. Cool Hand
(41:39):
Luke was probably the funniest one of the lot. The
Longest Yard. Actually, that might have been the funniest one.
I never saw either of them. Really, You're nuts. Bad
Boys Classic with Wilsmon and the Sean Penn went about
the Juvi detention. That's when Sean Penn was like, you know,
nineteen years old and he was in juvenile detention and
(42:01):
then he he filled a pillow case up with a
soda cans and just annihilated this dude one night. Yeah,
that's called a slock by the way. Now, that's one's
in a sock. Okay, I imagine this is me. It's
called a slaice UM American History X. That was pretty brutal. Yeah,
that was very brutal. Brew Baker, did you see that one.
(42:23):
That's where Robert Redford went in undercover as a prisoner
to sniff out how awful the prison was because he
was going to be the next warden. You're talking about
the natural and then most depressing, definitely Midnight Express for me,
the Turkish prison one ye Midnight Run was pretty depressing.
(42:47):
And UM Animal Factory is the one I'm going to
say is the most realistic. I have not seen that one.
That's the one that Steve Bushimmy directed and um edward
for long and I think William Dafoe is in it.
It's really good and it's of the animal factories, so
you have a pretty good idea that it's realistic. I
saw a Taxi to the Dark Side last night, and
it's not. It's about the US's policies on torture and
(43:10):
how we implemented him post nine eleven. But there's a
lot of prison stuff in it, like Abu Grab and
bog Room and stuff like that it's pretty disturbing. Yeah,
we didn't get into I mean, there's so much about
prisons that we didn't get into. Here. We could do
like three more podcasts that we wanted to and if
it seemed like we danced around something, oh, I don't know,
Capital Punishment, Yeah, I didn't go there. That's coming. I
(43:33):
can't wait to do that one. It's gonna be sweeping.
There's gonna be top hats and like people doing like
the can can and stuff at the beginning. It's going
to be enormous. Yeah, I think we have the rockets
lined up for that one. We do in prison Garbent. Yes,
so Chuck's telling me he's given me the double wink,
which means there is no listener mail. It was too
(43:53):
long and too full of goodness. You know what that means.
That means we just haven't gotten any listener mails. So
we want to hear from you. Just type some stuff
out that we would find interesting. Spanking on the bottom maybe, yeah,
talk it first and uh send it to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com for more on this
(44:18):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com
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