The Cellar - How's Prison?

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A fascinating thread, by a college grad the goes to jail in Michigan for armed robbery. Being literate, he describes his experience well. Near the end of the thread a supposed Michigan prison guard claims it's bullshit, but I think it's a good read .

Quote:

I don't want to give away too much of my personal information, but I'll say as much as I feel I can:

I didn't grow up in Michigan, but my parents had been thinking of moving to Ann Arbor, which co-incided with UMich being the closest thing to Ivy League I was going to get into. I was at the LSA, College of Literature - but I flunked out of language training. Mom and Dad fronted the cash for me to study overseas, hoping I'd get to Europe and actually learn enough German / French for me to come back the next semester and finish my degree. I ended up traveling with a bunch of Australians and decided to fuck off college and head to Sydney. Mom and Dad threatened to stop funding what was becoming basically an all expenses paid drug binge unless I re-enrolled, and I convinced them to pay for me to go to the University of Sydney - which is just this spectacular campus right in the heart of the city, only half an hour from some of the most beautiful beaches you'll ever see in your life. I stayed for 3 years and actually manged to piece together a degree. I told my parents I wanted to stay, and had already applied to extend my student Visa - but they told me if I did they'd cut me off.

It was the stupidest thing I ever did in my life, driven by laziness and privlidge, but I decided to go back to the States. In Australia, university is different - they don't have a distinction between college and uni - you can get your BA at 21 and off you go. Mom and Dad didn't think it was good enough so they wanted me back at Uni doing a post grad course. They're both academics and they didn't want to cut me lose without a 'proper education'. Fucking backfired because Michigan depressed me so much I ended up fucking off to Detroit and squating, bar tending, just generally being a miscreant really. Long story short, that's where I was when we decided we could get away with a stick up job.

So basically - I was an over privlidged little fuck who had the world laid out at his feet, and threw it all up down the toilet. One of the many things that prison taught me - especially after being confronted with the suffering and abject poverty of black convicts - is take what you're given and don't argue. Because you got lucky. You could have been born black with a crack pipe in your crib. Crib as in, cot, not you know, a house. I might have done time but I'm not that ebonic.

I don't believe two years for armed robbery.

Wasn't it four years in a plea deal, served two, then paroled? Depend on the circumstances of what he pleaded guilty to. Could be, for an educated white boy with a socially influential family. I've heard stranger things.

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Originally Posted by Gravdigr (Post 689007)

Fuck prison.

"...take what you're given and don't argue... "

Sounds like my kind of place.

I've never read anything like it before.

Did you read it Digr? Does it gel with your experience? Or did you get to enjoy one of the lower security options? Scared the crap out of me, I can tell you. I think I might have my kids read it before they fly the nest....

Serves him right. He should have done 5 to 10 just for being a dumbass.

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Originally Posted by TheMercenary (Post 689125)

Serves him right. He should have done 5 to 10 just for being a dumbass.

That's funny, that's what he said.

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Originally Posted by monster (Post 689047)

I'm not real sure this guy has ever been in a prison. A county jail, maybe. But I think this guy watched too many episodes of Oz.

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I decided to get onto horse after a few months, mostly as something to do.

Well, of course you did. I did LOfuckingL when I read that a bag of Reese's Pieces would get you an eight-ball. If that were even close to believable, there would be a line outside your local correctional facility, to get in.

Also suspect: He came up for parole three times in eighteen months??? coughbullshitcough

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I saw 12 deaths inside. Three of them were at the hands of screws.

The prison that loses twelve inmates in eighteen months exists in maybe three places on Earth. A Russian gulag, a Mongolian labor camp, and Hollywood.

My only experience with violence (outside of just a plain old fist-fight) was when one of the guys in my pod put two RC Colas in a pillow case and clocked a guy that owed him five bucks from a card game. I guess the guy mighta been dead, I just thought he was out cold. He never moved after the hit, and he held his fists out in front of him like a turn-of-the-century boxer. He was like that when they wheeled him out, and I never saw or heard anything else about it.

Also, most guys wouldn't talk at length about any serious amount of time spent in a real prison. And some guys would, kinda like war stories. You just see/do/accept things that one would not see/do/accept anywhere else. What happens in prison/war(/Vegas) stays in prison/war(/Vegas).

All in all, I think this guy's filled with a fair amount of shit.

The toothbrush shiv is the real deal tho, I had one.

Quote:

Also suspect: He came up for parole three times in eighteen months??? coughbullshitcough

I thought he said had to stay an extra tree months because of the parole board refusing to see him, three months in a row.

I may have misunderstood.