Alright Cory, I'll wade into this one. I didn't do no 20 years like Frank, but still.
I was arrested for my assault on February 13th 2019, at around 4:00pm. I would spend about 36 hours, sitting on a concrete slab waiting to be booked into the Navajo County jail in Holbrook. Once I was, I would spend seven days in "Iso", this is the solitary confinement you hear of. In Holbrook, it's an 8x10 with a concrete bunk, a stainless steel toilet with built in sink, and you. That is it. No mattress, no books, nothing.
After a week in iso, I was moved to "lockdown" which is the maximum security unit at the county jail. I spent 36 days there, locked in a cell with a suicidal white supremacist for 23 hours a day, for a total of 6 hours of "rec" per week.
Finally I was moved to GenPop, where I quickly rose to prominence and "ran the pod".
I should never have been put in the general population. Lockdown was where I belonged. Speaking technically, I have a long history of "gang related violence", affiliations with multiple violent motorcycle gangs, etc. My presence in GenPop nearly resulted in race war on two occasions.
Incarceration=racism. There's no choice in it. You WILL segregate yourself, period. Your "friends" will be the same color as you, almost without exception. The "Heads" will be friendly with one another, but below the leadership level, interracial interaction is frowned upon.
County jail is often more violent and higher tension than prison, as everyone is still fighting their case, its a sword poised over your neck. By the time you get to prison, the fight is over, you're just settling in to serve your time, the hammer has already fallen.
Not every body should be housed with the general population. In fact, county jail should be more segregated. Short term inmates should not be housed with long term ones. We have rules about how our pod is run, and new guys, that are only there for a day or so, don't have time to learn them, and end up getting smashed because the broke an unspoken rule.
Then there's folks like my best friend Dave. The guys job in the Army, for five of 15 years, was teaching very high level hand to hand combat, to some of the finest warfighters on the planet. You don't just put that guy in an open pod with 60 cocky idiots, unless you want a rash of concussions, since dude hands them out like candy. He is the entire reason that Holbrook has a veterans pod now.
I get that solitary confinement isn't great, but the point of Incarceration is to change your behavior, by removing you from public. It's not supposed to be nice or easy, you're supposed to be afraid of it happening to you, which is why you obey laws to begin with.
We need prison reform, no argument, but as a convict myself, I'll say this. I'd rather be locked up in America than in countless other countries. Sure Europe seems like cushy jail sentences, but think of how badly torn up their facilities are with all the migrant problems they have. Check out some of the prisons in Africa or southeast Asia. In some places, they dont even feed you, you're entirely dependant on people outside bringing you food, (Singapore by the way).
If they make prison life too comfortable, they will remove the fear that keeps me out of there. For instance, I want my freedom more than I want to beat the Ex wife's boyfriend. Not because I hate him, I don't care. It's the principle of the thing, he screwed around with my woman and he deserves an ass whipping. It's the simple fear of prison that keeps his teeth in his head. All it would take is a bit of penal system reform, and that guy is getting a lifetime supply of bad days.
Make Jail Bad Again.
longnow.org
