Ex-Prisoners of Reddit, what was the worst thing you saw inside the prison walls?
I spent 6 years in prison.
One month in I watched a Crip on Crip gang stabbing.
They stabbed the guy 60+ times while he was curled up in a ball screaming "HELP!"
but nobody could because you'd be a target next.
He somehow survived but I couldn't tell you how.
I think about it every day.
Saw someone break a small branch off a tree in the yard, dry it out in the sun, sharpen it down to a point on the concrete and then stab a guy in the back with it 4 times, he had to be airlifted to hospital because it punctured his lung
English female prison
I saw a woman get held down by two others while a third woman proceeded to shove her hand up the woman’s vagina to check if she had came in with a parcel ( drugs ) this was in the communal showers so yeah addicts don’t give a beep
I turned 6 months into 3 years of juvie time.
While not really bad, this one kid supposedly fell in the shower and hit his head.
Not sure if it was a planned ruse, but after he came back from the hospital he suddenly forgot how to talk and lost his memory.
He'd communicate with whimpers.
This went on for a few weeks.
Every month you'd go in for evaluation and your remaining time and your progress would be reviewed.
I'm assuming he thought this act would get him sent home.
The staff eventually grew tired of it and in his review, told him since he didn't remember anything than he'd have to do all off his time again because he obviously hadn't learned anything to be rehabilitated.
His
memory miraculously returned that day.
Edit: Holy beep Thanks for the arrows and awards.
Second edit of how 6 months turned into 3 years.
I went in for burglary at 16.
The sentence was a 6 month program.
Kinda like a boys summer camp in the middle of the woods.
They had a point system where you'd start with 650 points at the beginning of the week.
You'd earn or lose points based on your behavior.
You'd gain points for doing chores and behaving or lose them by fighting and other stupid stuff.
Above 650 points was a "positive" week and you'd get candy and extra
privileges like movie night and field trips.
Less than 650 was negative.
So throughout your sentence they kept track.
If you didn't have enough positive weeks when you went to your review, you'd get more time.
My home life sucked and I wound up having fun hanging out with other boys and finally being able to be a kid.
The food was good.
I was smart and maxed out the placement tests so didn't really have to do school work.
Ended up doing enough stupid beep to wind up at the first program a year.
After a year you go back to the juvenile detention center and they reassess your needs and send you to another program as they can keep you until 18 if they want as I didn't catch
another charge.
Just didn't think I was "rehabilitated".
I spent another year at another program.
Same kinda beep but pushed a staff member, caught a charge, and got sent to adult jail because I'd just turned 18.
Spent a year in the county and was free after.
I made a friend early on who was sentenced to life for killing a man that had touched his niece.
He'd been locked up for about 5 or six years when I'd first met him.
Talked to him every day for three years and one day he comes up to me and says he needs to talk to me about something.
We do a lap on the back 40 and he tells me his old lady is leaving him, and isn't bringing his daughter up to come see him anymore.
He's actually crying.
I didn't know what I could do to help him, so I let him cry and told him to not let it bother him, maybe she'll come around.
We go on about our day, and everything seems normal.
That night he woke me up (he bunked across the hall) crying.
I got up to talk
to him and he says he wants to die, and that he's glad I'm up because he doesn't want to be alone.
I start hitting the panic button for my cell and screaming for a guard, but no one comes, and I have to watch while he prys his mirror off of his wall.
He put on his linens and blanket like a big robe and he cuts his stomach with his mirror.
It was hard to see much because of the blankets and the dark, but I could smell his blood.
Then he lit his blankets on fire.
The co's got there when the smoke alarm went off, but they were too late.
I still have nightmares about it, screaming for him to stop, to just talk it out, but he never does.
I've seen a lot of beep up beep man, but this was probably the
worst.
Or, at least, it stuck with me the longest.
Edit: Thanks for the hugs and support everyone.
Makes how I feel after sharing hurt a little less.
I appreciate it.
I remember people kinda turned on each other out of boredom.
I mean, you made friends and all, but you had it hanging over you that you were a bad guy, and some people took to being assholes and provoked others seemingly out of boredom.
It was an unpleasant situation to be on the other side, because you wanted to stay out of trouble too, but at the same time had to stand up for yourself.
Maybe not the absolute worst I saw, but something I remember.
I saw a guy get in a fight with his cousin over a 50 cent bowl... this escalated more and more until they starting fighting.
We all kinda watched out the corner of our eyes bc it was in the cell while the doors were open.
Well the guy that was pissed about the bowl grabbed the dude by the hair and bite a huge hunk of his cousin's eyebrow off... like about half of it.
If that wasn't bad enough me and my cell mate moved into the cell bc it was further away from the TV.
So we are cleaning up the cell and my cell mate goes " holy beep look at this!"
he lifts up what I thought was a dead hairy bug... nope, furry ass eyebrow n skin.
Doesn't haunt me, just crazy to think a guy lost half an eyebrow
over a beep 50 cent bowl
It’s not the craziest thing I saw but it’s a social norm in prison that goes on daily ..I’ll never forget how socially acceptable “jackers” were....
Like somebody would be wearing a coat or hoody etc and stare at a female C.O.
And jack off.
Sometimes sitting on a bench , sometime the tv room , and nobody bats an eye.
One time a dude was like “ hey man can you move a row over , she know I’m watching” and didn’t skip a beat cranking off to an ugly 60something yr old woman.
It’s beep up but after a while you just accept that some people went nuts in there.
I spent 8 years in prison, in the state of Georgia.
There was a guy who made a hustle of holding a hiding illegal cell phones for the Mexican gangs.
When a shakedown/search occurred, this man was responsible for the loss of many of those cell phones.
He was confronted on the yard, and tried to escape by climbing the fence.
He got stuck in the razor wire, shredding his forearms, while 7 or 8 Mexican gang members were stabbing him all in the back of his legs and his ass.
Done 11 years myself, one of the worst things I've seen is 2 members of a gang called Goodfellas (aka 40Deep) jumped on a Blood on the way back from pillcall.
One used a large knife, the other had a fan motor in a net bag and used that as a flail.
Also seen/heard multiple people being raped.
A friend of mine admitted to me after a year or so that he had been actively raped every night by his roommate (a OOOG from the Bloods) for about a 5 month period.
There's more just what I could think of atm.
Not prison but jail.
6 months pregnant and her water broke.
COs didn’t believe her and waited to take her to the hospital until she was hemorrhaging.
The baby died and the woman was released because they didn’t want to pay medical costs.
This was 2004ish.
I was a prison guard, briefly, at an all male prison in Virginia.
It didn't suit me.
I don't have enough testosterone, I guess.
I just didn't like the entire process.
I also couldn't get used to walking around, on my own with 180 men when I did rounds.
The men were loose just walking around watching.
The stares were penetrating.
If any of those guys grabbed me, I had no gun, no mace, nothing, and Virginia prisons will never negotiate with prisoners for the sake of a hostage.
I'd have been screwed.
It messes with your head a bit, but I still did it.
Yeah, the food's gross, but the place was clean.
The worst day for me was when one of the guards blew his brains out in the
watchtower.
He was in his early 20s.
While not prison and certainly tame by comparison, the worst thing I saw in jail was refusal to allow people to use the restroom.
We (6~ of us) were all waiting 12 hours for processing in a small town in NC and were put in a concrete cell with a toilet.
Every time we stood up to use the toilet, an officer would yell at us to sit back down.
For those who disobeyed, they were forcibly handcuffed and moved somewhere else often pissing themselves during the ordeal.
Editing to add some detail and hopefully answer some questions I've seen in the comments- I was a first year in college going to Campbell University.
I was arrested and taken to the Harnett
County jail where I was eventually served an "Ex Parte" restraining order.
That order was thrown out less than a month later, but "charges pending" existed on my record for years after until I could get it expunged which cost me quite a few jobs.
Not a prisoner but worked in a prison clinic for a few weeks while in med school.
Was under the mentorship of the prison GP.
Had this one guy come into the clinic for a routine visit who had a colostomy.
We did our physical, blah blah, and the guy was about to leave.
The GP mentoring me said, hey, check out his colostomy real quick.
The guy awkwardly peeled part of his bag off and he has these red blisters weeping fluid around his colostomy stoma.
I was totally confused and the guy left super quick.
GP just shrugged.
Later that day, I asked the GP what was up.
Apparently the other prisoners beep that guy's colostomy hole, and he had
gotten herpes of the colostomy from the other prisoners.
Haunts me to this day...
There was talk about a guy assaulting his own daughter.
Some guys made him a cup of *morning-coffee*
Morning-coffee is basically taking a kettle, pour cooking oil in it, heat it up and add a lot of sugar and then throw it in someone's face.
It was very uncomfortable to see and hear.
Edit: Woah.
First comment to really blow up like this
Not exactly prison but how about being laughed at when asked to show a guard that your molar just broke in half with one part in your hand and the other profusely bleeding.
"I'll ask the dentist for an emergency visit"
Paperwork came back for a visit in 6 months.
beep Fresno County Jail
Dudes thinking no one notices their bedsheets ruffling during lights out.
Seeing someone on the 3's jump to his death.
Just missing ppl on the deck
Saw a dude get his face turned to hamburger over a card game.
Dude lost so he sucker punches the guy scross from him a minute later, gets in top of him, and probably get about 10 hits in by the time the CO broke it up.
Blood everywhere I was like holy beep was like my first month there and it made me kinda not wana leave the cell...my bunkie was a blood and jacked hes like dude nobody will beep with you im like ok I hope not...I'm pretty sure he smashed his eye socket in
Edit holy beep i didnt expect this many upvotes lol
Cool story.
I was a small-time criminal in my youth.
Got locked up for some weed for the weekend.
I never experienced much kindness that I could remember from people but I did in jail.
I couldn't use the bathroom in my cell because I was too scared and these guys started talking to me and distracting me so I could go.
It was the strangest and coolest thing I'd ever seen.
Been intrigued by behavior ever since.
Coworker of mine here in delaware during a riot got his teeth stomped in and while he lay there bleeding some of the dudes on death row surrounded a female guard and protected her from all the other dudes who wanted to rape her.. honor among thieves how about it.. they actually got their sentences reduced I believe.. not the worst but I hope its uplifting
Edit: I shouldve said "the dudes who had life" not death row my bad
My uncle was in for 17 years for Marijuana related charges.
He was in a ward with two other guys with the same name as him, both of them in for 7 years.
One of them killed a guy and the other was a child molester.
One day when my uncle was in the showers, a group of guys who mistakened him as a child molester were about to serve prison justice on the wrong guy.
He quickly realized the situation, sprinted naked out the showers to grab his papers to show the guys they have the wrong dude.
Saw this in a similar post.
Some guy was doing a 2 year stretch for something.
Anyway he was laying awake his first night when he heard the microwave.
He didn’t think much of it and ignored it.
Then a few minutes later he hears this bloodcurdling scream.
Apparently the guy using the microwave heated up a tub of vaseline To boiling point then he pores it on some guys face.
I think it was revenge for the guy talking smack about him.
I did 3 years inside HMP Belmarsh, when I was 18, having just transfered out of YOI Cookham Wood.
I was in for a non-violent but serious offence, so I was put on HB1 with all the lifers.
I saw a lot of beep go sideways quickly there, dudes having heads cracked in with pool balls out of nowhere in the lunch queue, but that all became pretty commonplace.
What I will never forget is the feeling of surprise as three guys push past me on the stairs, and wonder what the hurry was.
Then watching them all barrel into a single cell, still not sure what was going on.
The screams that came from that room were horrific.
It turns out they held down the guy - a big dude too -
on his bed, threw boiling water on him and repeatedly stabbed him.
We all heard the screams but no one would alert a guard.
It isnt done.
Then, from my spot on the stairs next to the cell, I watched a guard walk over.
His name was Mr Geebad.
He saw what was going on through the window in the door.
And turned around and walked off.
beep doesnt describe him well enough.
EDIT - Because some people seem to be defending him, let me tell you what happened after.
The guys ran off upstairs and
flushed or chucked their razors and blood stained clothes.
Because Mr Geebad didnt get close enough to ID anyone, they got nothing other than being put on basic.
If he had opened the door they could have been positively ID'd.
If the CCTV worked on the wing, they could have been ID'd.
Mr Geebad was one person in a string of safeguarding failures.
Doesnt mean he isnt at fault too.
There was a guy i was locked up with in Baldwin County, AL who went into our Blocks common area library
(just a bookshelf with about 50-60 books) and ripped out the last chapter of every single beep book.
“Inside the prison walls”?
Asbestos.
A guy get is face beat in by a dude with a cast on his arm because guy took dudes ketchup pack off his plate on hotdog day.
In small concrete build room with no windows, they put 25 of us for 72 hours.
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