- Here at Cracked,
we like to disabuse you of all the misconceptions
Hollywood has put into your pretty little head.
One glaring lie: prison sex.
- Warm flesh and blood behind cold iron bars.
- Oh, it happens.
But it's much less glamorous,
and much more on-the-go
than pop culture would have you believe.
- So, if two girls decide
hey, let's go have some fun,
they just go to the pavilion bathroom,
which is very much like an outhouse.
- That's Nancy.
She spent 18 months in a minimum-security prison
after helping her boyfriend steal drugs,
but she's out now,
and she's sharing her hard-won knowledge with Cracked
starting with.
- What they usually do is
okay, one goes in, hangs out for a little bit.
Their friends are sitting there playing cards,
so their friends are watching out for 'em.
The other one will go in.
They're not getting totally naked.
(buzzer) Generally the way
they do it is
one will stand on the toilet seat
while the other one pulls your pants down
and there you go, you're having some fun.
(party horn)
- The guards are well aware
of all the raw, unwrapped prison poundings.
That's the reason for particularly humiliating procedure.
As part of their intake,
prisoners are subjected to a battery of STD tests.
The ones who don't pass that entrance exam
with flying colors are housed separately
from uninfected inmates.
It should be noted that this strategy was found
to be seriously ineffective.
The prisoners by and large are still not given access
to condoms or other safe sex supplies
(buzzer)
for fear that it will condone sexual activity.
Hey, you know what else might be seen
to condone sexual activity?
Guards actually (bleep)ing the prisoners,
but that happens.
And Internet, before you start porning,
you should know 70% of women's prison guards are men,
the kind of men who become prison guards.
- When I first got there,
there was the inmate and the guard.
It wasn't like she was going by his office
and sliding a note under the door.
They were sending it through the general mail service.
The guard would be like, okay, we gotta go do some
heating and air-conditioning work today.
So, let's go down to the boiler room.
And then, you know, they're having fun in the boiler room.
(party horn)
I think that what some people don't realize is
if a guard has sex with an inmate no matter where,
if you get charged for it,
you will have to register as a sex offender
for the rest of your life.
- The fact that one party
in the prisoner-guard love equation has access to weaponry
should highlight the fundamental power imbalance here.
And yes, it can be very dangerous
to friend-zone a prison guard.
- We had a new female guard come in.
She would make my roommate,
that had a fascination with another guard,
that same inmate become the target
of this guard's attention.
The guard would just give her a hard time
about every little fault.
She would have visitors every weekend.
After a visitation, that guard always made sure
that she would take her in and do a strip search.
It was more of just her,
I need you to pull your buttcheeks a little farther,
or, you need to cough a little harder.
My roommate was putting in complaints
but it was like, she blows everything out of proportion,
don't worry about it, and kind of covered the guard's ass.
- Contraband tampons are a thing in lady prison.
It turns out female hygiene products in general
are locked up tighter than the prisoners themselves.
(bleep)
Oh god, that absolutely was not meant as a double entendre,
Jesus.
Somebody roll the next title before I get.
- To shave your legs in a prison,
you don't get your own razors.
You have to go to a guard and say,
hey, I need a razor, I want to shave.
So they would give you a razor,
and you'd better not be in there longer than 15 minutes.
They don't stand there and time you,
but at the same time, they know you're in there,
they know how long it should take.
Once you're done shaving your legs,
you give the razor to the guard
and then the guard throws them away.
And it was a safety thing.
You don't want 'em breaking the razors
and melting 'em into a plastic handle
and using 'em as shanks.
- All right, girls.
Back in your cells.
- And as for feminine hygiene products,
which are ubiquitous in the Orange is The New Black universe
well, they're not actually that available.
- You know, you can smuggle stuff in
using a tampon or a maxi-pad, so you're only issued
what you needed.
So you're not gonna be able to stash away a bunch of tampons
or pads, 'cause they do locker checks to make sure
you're not hoarding things like that.
- The strict focus on tampon security
seems all the more baffling since, arguably,
filling vaginas would actually cut down massively
on the prison's smuggling problem.
- One of the most popular ways to smuggle in
goods is shooting it up your vagina.
There was one inmate, and I noticed she had a tongue ring
and she's like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.
And I'm like, well, how did you get it in there?
And she's like, well, I just stuck it up my (bleep),
brought it in that way.
So, you bury it up enough in there deep enough
and you cough, it's not coming out.
(Narrator laughs ironically)
- That's good fun.
Who doesn't love a good smuggling-stuff-in-an-orifice story?
Now, let's confront of stark realities of race
in American prisons.
- Racial tensions, they do exist.
I mean, there is intermingling, of course.
They don't totally segregate.
You can't talk to her 'cause she's white
or anything like that.
Blacks are treated significantly worse.
They get harsher sentences.
They get longer sentences.
A white inmate, such as myself,
I was in trouble for conspiracy to distribute crack.
My sentence was originally three years, 10 months.
I flipped, and got it reduced,
but you could see a black inmate there,
same situation, same circumstances,
but she'll have more time.
A black girl will get with a white girl
because the white girl has something to offer.
She's got commissary, she's getting money,
so they all can mooch off her for her money.
A white gal would get with a black girl
usually for, almost like bragging rights.
You know, oh, she's with that black chick
and that black chick's cool, so she's cool.
So it's more of, kind of like a protection thing.
Nobody gets together because they like each other.
It's always a motive.
- Okay, so prisoners have to deal
with heightened racial tensions.
They get their tampons from a cop
and they smuggle things in their vaginas.
At least, they've got sweet free government healthcare.
A year in prison might actually be pretty cost-effective
if you're already sick or pregnant.
- When it comes to a woman's health
and gynecology and all that good stuff,
you get your first exam when you come in,
and then you're lucky to get one every year.
They could care less if you have a yeast infection.
You basically go sick-call.
Hey, I think I've got a yeast infection.
All right, so, they'll do a quick exam,
but you would have to go to sick-call to get that every day,
for however long the directions say,
three days for three days.
If you still got a yeast infection, well,
then they're getting pissed.
Oh, she's just trying to get out of doing work.
Or, she's just making it up for attention,
that kind of thing, they don't care.
- Around 5% of women who enter prison
do so pregnant.
And yes, pregnant prisoners are on their own too.
Some of them give birth there.
- I remember a pregnant inmate.
She cried an awful lot,
but she started spotting really heavily,
and so, they're like, oh, you're fine,
just go on bedrest, don't do anything,
and she ended up going into labor early
and having some complications,
as a result of not getting care when she needed it.
- That's actually not even
the worst-case scenario.
In 33 states, you could be forced to give birth in shackles.
But hey, these women are prisoners.
They may face terrible treatment, but statistically,
most of them committed the horrific crimes of,
well, drug possession, like our source,
or self-defense, like Marissa Alexander.
She got 20 years for firing a warning shot
at her abusive husband.
Score one more for Lady Justice.
("Yankee Doodle")
- Hey, the Cracked podcast is coming to you live
June 10th at Upright Citizen Brigade Theaters, Sunset.
We're gonna have Tom Ryman, Daniel O' Brien,
comedian Jamie Loftus and writer Dave Schilling
talking about why all movies were insane behind the scenes,
every single one of them.
Go to UCB Sunset's website for tickets
and go have a great day too, man.