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I did almost 3 years in Federal prison for drug trafficking, I posted an A/T thread about it a few months ago. I'll try to find the link although I kinda stopped updating that thread because I woke up one morning and just didn't want to talk about prison at all anymore. Now that I've been out for about 5 months and have started getting my life together I don't mind talking about it that much, especially in the context of this thread. There's also a couple of other goons who have good prison accounts including The_Valuum and clubfedgoon. edit: Here's my thread.
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Apr 3, 2015 19:45
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Sounds to me like this is a case of the system working. Surprisingly, given that part of the system involved was American prison. Yeah it does and I would love to hear more too. It seems very different from my prison experience. I was given no treatment for my drug addiction, just punishment. After I got out I was bitter and angry and honestly after you've been to prison once for a while you lose the fear of going back. I have enough going on in my life now that I am not going to go back but I can very, very easily see how someone could just say gently caress the system and reoffend constantly.
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Sep 7, 2015 00:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It also doesn't help that some areas of the States set ex-cons up to fail deliberately. Sometimes it's literally impossible for people to not go back so some just go "whatever, this is my life now." Yes and there's a big overlap between the two. Once you have a felony and have done prison time you have stepped over an edge that you can't un-step. It's not even so much getting a job or housing or education because there are resources for that and a lot of probation/parole office can genuinely offer help with that although those are legitimate problems. It's more a mentality than anything; like I've been treated like chattel inside and am now a second-class citizen outside so why should I give a gently caress about your society. There is no rehabilitation going on although I imagine everyone in this thread is very aware of that.
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Sep 7, 2015 09:45
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I think it's if you get a drug charge while you were taking student loans. I wasn't taking student loans when I got my drug charge but now I go to culinary school and I get it paid for through the FAFSA.  It's at a community college and not a 4 year though.Jesus Christ I almost feel like I'm defending the system. No I'm not it's as completely hosed up and evil as you guys describe. Two facts that work in my favor in regards to being an ex-con are that I'm white and middle-class and I live in California. I can only imagine how hosed up my circumstances might be otherwise.
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Sep 7, 2015 20:57
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HOLY gently caress they put you in GP with a sex charge? The first 10 months of my sentence I was in county and they had a policy of automatically putting anyone with anything that could even be remotely construed as a sex charge in PC. I'm sorry. I've been on the other side of your situation and it's really 1 or 2 sociopaths who want to get at you and the rest of the people are joining in just so they don't get accused of anything themselves but you already know that. Socially jail/prison is middle school on ultra-steroids. I was lucky in that I actually had a drug charge and I was able to navigate the politics and social situations prison presented fairly easily. Also my entire sentence I was separated from sex offenders so I honestly can't say how I would have reacted if I was in with them. I hope I would have had the courage not to be a degenerate bully.
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Sep 8, 2015 01:18
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Al Kiyan posted:You will not be able to hide being a middle class white boy if you are a middle class white boy. I never fully relaxed until I was outside of the jail house, I just subconsciously got used to the constantly heightened state of anxiety. Yeah that's true. I don't know why they told you to fake a drug charge, they should tell you to fake some sort of white-collar crime since most county jail inmates aren't gonna really understand that unless they get suspicious enough to check your paperwork which obviously they did in your case. And yeah telling other inmates you can't talk about your case is a done deal, you can't say that. I'm glad you made it through ok and that you got help and are remorseful for your crime. That's something I haven't accomplished- I don't feel much remorse for my crime since it was a non-violent drug crime although I am now working with a psychiatrist and a therapist to address my drug-addiction issues paid for by federal probation. I understand what you mean by the heightened state of alert- hell to this day, nine months after I was released I still get extremely jumpy when people approach me from behind or do other small stupid things that wouldn't really phase someone who hasn't been to the places we have.
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Sep 8, 2015 09:37
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Polygraph tests generally aren't admissible in Federal court because prosecutors are very much aware of how much of a clusterfuck they can be and don't want to chance them. It's law-enforcement types that have a boner for polygraphs, the courts usually want absolutely nothing to do with them.
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Sep 8, 2015 19:33
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Yeah the main area of the justice system where polygraphs are used are Law & Order re-runs
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Sep 8, 2015 23:44
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Let's also not forget that "public urination" is also a sex offense in some places. So if you were homeless and got caught pissing in an alley California will treat you like a pedophile forever. Once again, I don't know if that's entirely true. I had a friend who was busted for public urination in a small college town in California and he was given a public urination/indecent exposure charge and had to do a bunch of community service hours and pay a fine but he definitely didn't have to register with the life-time sex offender list. Also before I went to prison I was a social worker with the homeless and of the many, many legal challenges my clients faced on a daily basis this was not one I ever heard of them encountering. Maybe it was true in California at one point, because I have heard the exact same thing before as well but I am 99% positive that that is not the case anymore. Not many people know that when you are convicted of a drug felony in California at least you have to register as a drug offender. I had to do this and about the only difference between this and a sex offender is you don't have to notify your neighbors and all that bullshit. Both of the lists are draconian as gently caress, especially the SO list which, like nm said, doesn't even provide for the option that some people might be able to get better and change. They're stuck with that scarlet letter for life.
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Sep 9, 2015 02:28
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SumYungGui posted:If you REALLY want to burst a blood vessel look into how much prisoners are charged for phone calls. Ya know, those people who spend years upon years isolated from contact with the outside? Well that means there's a demand so the glorious free market has decided that just offering phones to use will not do. No sir that poo poo has to be subcontracted out by the (for profit) prison to a third party that totally pinky swears they won't ever possibly price gouge the ever living gently caress out of people who have no choice in service providers, high desire to use it and are social punching bags to poo poo on and not care about. Fortunately the invisible hand of the free market comes to the rescue with such fantastic services as allowing the family to put money into an account for that inmate to use to call them. Note I did not say "allows them to pay for the phone calls" and said it goes into an account. Let your imagination run wild with every dirty, bullshit trick accounting firms use on credit and debit cards. Go on, you can do it. After I was released from prison and in a halfway house I made ten collect calls to my family "long distance" when in reality I was ~80 miles away and I racked up a phone bill of close to $300.
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Nov 2, 2015 07:38
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reading posted:In Oregon a prisoner can get paid as little as $23 a month for dangerous full-time work. That's much better than the Feds. I made approximately $19 a month getting up at 3:30am every day to work in an industrial bakery. They were too cheap to even give us non-slip boots too. I was in a couple different private prisons (CCA, MTC) and it's an amazing racket they've got going. Get the prisoners to do 99% of the labor on the prison grounds, pay them slave wages and then watch as all that money comes right back into the company store (commissary) to buy loving toothpaste, tuna fish, protein bars whatever.
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Nov 6, 2015 16:01
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reading posted:I assume the reason prisoners don't just refuse to participate in their own oppression and not work is because they need the money, paltry as it is? Yes thats one of the reasons but more than that it is that refusal to work is a 200 series offense that would send you to the SHU. Also, believe it or not, most inmates wanted a job because it gives you something to do and some sort of purpose. Another interesting fact is that any discussion whatsoever of a strike or unionizing was an even higher 200 series offense that would lose you more good time and keep you in the SHU longer. They took that one really serious.
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Nov 9, 2015 12:19
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EvanSchenck posted:There have also been some cases, I'm mostly thinking of Ireland here because they've done it several times, where other countries have refused to extradite to the USA on the simple basis that the US prison system is so cruel and inhumane that it would violate their own constitutions to give people up to be imprisoned in it. There was a guy with me in County who fled the country after being indicted for mortgage fraud in the US and ended up in Ireland. Long story short the dumbass starts providing for himself by growing massive amounts of weed in a warehouse, gets raided by the Irish version of the Feds, spends 1.5 years in Irish prison for the weed and then was extradited back to California to stand trial in Federal court for the mortgage fraud scheme. From what he told me Irish prison didn't sound much better than the US prison system I experienced. I had a friend of a relative do time in a Scottish prison and it sounded every bit as hellish as the prison system here. I really don't know if the UK/Ireland has much room to criticize our prison system, as hosed up as it is. I feel like we kind of learned it from them.
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Nov 9, 2015 21:46
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CellBlock posted:Most countries do refuse to extradite to the US for capital crimes unless there's an agreement to not seek the death penalty. If you are charged with a Capital crime and flee to Mexico you will be put in Mexican prison and not extradited due to the fact that Mexico has no death penalty. From what I heard from my various paisa buddies Mexican state prison sounds fun as hell, Mexican federal prison sounds like literal hell.
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Nov 11, 2015 01:18
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Gorilla Salad posted:The state of California is now free to start killing people again. Probably won't happen with Jerry Brown in the Governor's office, definitely won't ever happen if Gavin Newsom takes over. I think the last person we put to death in California was Tookie Williams and that was like, what, 10 years ago? The death penalty is dead in CA, just not buried. Sorry for the bad pun.
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Nov 13, 2015 15:50
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Yeah in the California case it was originally ruled unconstitutional due to the endless appeals process. If I understand correctly the 9th Circuit said the death penalty is still constitutional but the endless appeals process isn't going anywhere so I would be amazed if CA actually executed anyone anytime soon. Speaking as someone who spent a few years in prison I don't really understand the debate over the death penalty because I would absolutely choose an early death over the rest of my natural life in prison. I truly don't think I am kidding either because the US prison system really is that soul-crushingly horrible.
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Nov 13, 2015 22:02
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MA does not have the death penalty. To be fair while the Feds are absolutely draconian regarding sentencing for minor drug and financial crimes they are generally not very gung-ho as far as pursuing the death penalty in most cases. I dunno, I think Tsarnaev got the best possible outcome in his case. Give me 10 years and a quick death at Terre Haute than a lifetime in ADMAX in Florence. Just to clarify I am strongly against the death penalty. My time inside made me believe that there are some people who deserve no mercy for their crimes but it made me believe even stronger that the government should never have the power to put its own citizens to death.
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Nov 14, 2015 19:55
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"Taeke" posted:My objection isn't on the grounds of the death penalty as such being morally indefensible or anything like that but has to do with the complete unreliability of the justice system. It's both prone to abuse and much too fallible for something as absolute and irreversible as death. That's completely my argument too but I just worded it a little differently. I met a lot of people who just absolutely did not deserve a second chance in society but based on my experiences I'm saying I think an early death is preferable to life in a hellish prison system. I still believe the death penalty should be abolished but after spending time inside the issue became less black and white for me. It's a sad, complicated, hosed up situation for sure.
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Nov 14, 2015 23:51
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Gstu posted:For anyone interested in the prison system, this is an essential (long) read: This is a great read. I was in 4 different prisons, 3 of them private and the one CCA facility i was in was just the worst. The absolute loving worst.
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Jun 28, 2016 19:33
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The private prison I was in is on the chopping block. I have mixed feelings though. I'm glad to see federal private prisons go because GEO, CCA, MTC and all of them are awful, immoral corporations and I wish the worst for them. I'm conflicted because this will probably cause my friends who are still there will be relocated farther away from their families, not to mention a lot of the staff members will likely lose their jobs. Most of the COs and staff were just regular non-sadistic working people and it was made clear to us inmates that this was just a job for them and they wished us no harm. There's not a lot to offer employment-wise in areas that attract private prisons. Or regular prisons in general.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:40
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What I want to know however is what the Fed's stance on using for-profit correctional services to run their halfway houses is. I believe most of them are contracted out to GEO and the like. I was in one run by GEO and it was more degrading, humiliating and worthless than prison. I doubt these will be closed too as I don't think the BOP had the infrastructure to absorb all of the recently released inmates and halfway house time is mandatory in some cases.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:43
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reading posted:You got released from prison and forced to go to a place worse than prison? I was forced to go to a "residential re-entry center" in a city 100 miles away from my home where I knew basically no one. We weren't allowed to exercise and the food was terrible and maybe half the portion we got in prison. They put an ankle monitor on me after 2 months and allowed me to go home under house arrest. I had to make a 200 mile round trip commute at least 3 times a week to check into the facility. There was no warning either, they would call me at 6am and tell me I had to drive down there asap. Impossible to hold down a job with those kind of requirements.
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Aug 23, 2016 04:39
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reading posted:By the way, a nationwide prisoner work strike has been called for September 9, 2016. That's the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising. Even mentioning the word strike or having a vindictive inmate tell a guard you were talking about striking would get you 90 days in the SHU and possibly result in a loss of good time. Even if it was unproven. I honestly can't imagine this will have much traction on the inside.
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Aug 23, 2016 04:41
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