Okay, so I really messed up. My first time on holiday to the US from Jolly Old England, and now
I’m being convicted on federal drug trafficking charges, just because I left my bags with that
seemingly-nice man while I was in the airport bathroom. Thankfully, I’m not in Singapore,
so I won’t be hanged for my stupid mistake, but I am gonna be doing hard time in a US federal prison
until my next appeal. But don’t worry – I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption twice, and I’m pretty
sure I watched a couple episodes of Prison Break. It’s not like there are ten super important rules,
right? This should be a piece of cake… 10. In prison, do not refer to the
other guys doing time with you as “inmates”. Of course, on my first day, I want to make sure
I make a good first impression. After all, I’m potentially staring down the barrel of a ten-year
sentence, so it’s definitely a good idea to make friends. That’s why, on my first day in the yard,
I walked up to the nearest group of prisoners and decided to lay my British charm on them.
“Hello, my fellow inmates!” I said. They looked at me like I was an alien. I figured
it must’ve been the accent, so I tried again. “How about we go from in-mates to good mates?”
I said, and sadly, nobody laughed. They just kept staring at me.
That night, as I was helping scrub down the tiles in the showers, someone whacked me on
the back of the head with a bar of soap inside a tube sock. Ouch! Next thing I knew, I was in the
infirmary. When I told the prison doctor the whole story, he just shook his head and said.
“Word of advice, buddy. Don’t call your fellow prisoners ‘inmates.’ It’s a sign of disrespect,
or shows that you’re softer than Wonderbread. Use ‘convicts’ next time.”
Well, that’s one lesson learned the hard way… 9. Don’t “PC up.”
After only one day in prison, I’d already decided that being locked up with a bunch of
murderers and hardcore career criminals really wasn’t for me. These men could be real brutes,
and I’ve always been more of a soft touch. I thought that it was probably best to get
myself a little protection from all the scary men with cheeks covered in tear-drop tattoos. That’s
why I approached one of the guards, and asked him if I could be put under protective custody.
He asked why, and I told him my tale of soapy woe. But the guard just laughed,
and rudely told me that my concerns just weren’t a priority right now. Worse still,
one of my fellow inmates- Uh, I mean, convicts, saw me get rejected. How humiliating!
It literally added injury to insult when that convict, along with a few others,
cornered me in the yard the next day and kicked me several times in the head. I just can’t win!
Later, in the infirmary, the doctor told me, “You were lucky it was just a beating.
You really shouldn’t PC up unless it’s life or death, cause if you get seen doing it,
you’ll make it life or death.” 8. Do not gamble, borrow,
or use drugs that you get ‘up front' with the promise that you'll pay later without knowing
beyond doubt that you'll be able to pay. After my frankly quite shoddy first few days
as a convict, I must say, I was really feeling sorry for myself. Not only was I going to miss
out on the release of the PlayStation 5 because of the length of the sentence,
they didn’t even have so much as a PS3 on the inside! It was torture! That’s why I decided to
score myself a bit of the old Bolivian Marching Powder from my cellmate, Hector. He gave me a
quizzical look when I asked, and said: “Are you sure you’re good for it?”
“Yes, yes, of course, whatever,” I said. “Just give me my drugs. I’m miserable here!”
So, Hector obliged me, and I spent the next few hours feeling pretty darn good. Until,
of course, Hector pushed me up against the wall and held a shiv up to my throat, asking for
his money with language I can’t really repeat here. When I told him I couldn’t pay him back,
he thankfully only beat the living hell out of me. “Don’t gamble, borrow, or take any drugs you
can’t pay for, you stupid, British jerk,” he said, before going to bed.
I spent that night in the infirmary. Again. 7. Never Back Down from a Challenge.
By mid-week, I’m not gonna lie, I looked like a mess. I was so bruised up that I looked like
a dalmatian, and I was feeling lonely since Hector was sent to solitary for beating me up.
I decided to just sit quietly in the yard and read the only book the prison
library had available at the time, which was sadly a copy of a Justin Bieber biography.
So, you can only imagine my frustration when a man they called “Aryan Nation Steve” – on
account of all the Swastika tattoos and racial hatred – came over to me, jonesing for a fight.
He said, in his deep, intimidating voice: “You and me right now, little man, let’s go!”
Of course, he was twice my size and way, way angrier, so I didn’t much fancy a fight.
“Can’t we just talk about this like civilized men?” I asked.
When a few of the other convicts heard me say this, they apparently took offence,
and started crowding around us. Aryan Nation Steve challenged me again.
“I’m sorry, Steven, but I’m just not feeling it!” I said.
So, I got beaten up by seven guys instead of one. And while Aryan Nation Steve was punching
me in the face, he said “Word of advice: When someone challenges you, you take that challenge,
or things will get a whole lot worse!” Duly noted.
6. Defer to, and show respect to the older convicts. You do not get
to survive prison to old age by accident. Needless to say, after all these beatings,
I was feeling pretty powerless. I needed a sense of retribution,
or my self-esteem was going to take a real nosedive. I vaguely remembered something about
asserting dominance by taking on the strongest guy in the yard, but the strongest guy in the
yard – a Russian gangster who went by Big Boy Boris – would probably use me as a toilet brush.
That’s why I decided to instead take on Toothless Bill, who – at 75 – was probably the oldest guy
in the penitentiary. As a spritely young lad of 22, I figured I could probably take the old
codger – and after all, as I’d learned yesterday, you can never turn down a fight in prison.
This would be a perfect way to at least end up above someone on the food chain!
So, I approached him, and said, “Come on, Toothless Bill, it’s time to throw down!”
And without a word, he rose from his seat, and gave me a swift chop to the throat that sent me
crumbling to the ground, gasping for air. He gave a grizzled old chuckle and said,
“Respect your elders, kid. You do not get to survive prison to old age by accident.”
5. Maintain Good Personal Hygiene. It goes without saying that prison
really wasn’t going well for me. I’d learned five important rules, sure,
but at what cost? I was getting bloodied and bashed on an almost daily basis. And
ever since the soap bar assault on the first day, I was petrified of getting back into the showers.
As a result, my smell apparently became a little offensive to my fellow convicts.
And okay, maybe I’d been spotted leaving the bathroom without washing my hands a few times,
but I’d only peed! And with the constant threat of assault coming at me from every angle, maybe
some of the little things were beginning to slip my mind. But apparently all this wasn’t so little
to the other prisoners, as they weren’t nearly as accustomed to my brand of natural musk as I was.
I think that’s why I was hit over the back of the head with a rock, and dragged into the showers,
where they forcibly scrubbed me down against my will and then shoved a bar of soap into my mouth.
It was my first day all over again! They didn’t say much, save for a lot of very creative swear
words, but I still got the message loud and clear. Maintain good personal hygiene,
or have the snot kicked out of you. Understood. 4. Don’t Break The Chow Hall Seating Arrangement.
If the constant violence and degradation weren’t bad enough, the food in prison is terrible, too.
Just a random assortment of government-mandated slop on a TV dinner plate. After being handed
my so-called meal in the chow hall, I turned to take my seat, and suddenly noticed that – by what
seemed like pure chance – the convicts in the chow hall were all segregated by race. How strange,
I thought. Maybe they’ve been in prison so long they didn’t even know segregation had ended?
I decided I’d do the decent thing, and go sit in the African-American section to tell them about
all the amazing racial progress that’d gone on outside. They’d probably be delighted to
hear it! But as I sat down among them, they all just gave me some really strange looks.
I decided it was probably because of all the bruises, so I persisted with my pitch-perfect
retelling of the American Civil Rights Movement. I somehow ended up with a dining fork sticking out
of my cheek by the end of the anecdote, but in the process, I learned an extremely valuable lesson:
Don’t break the chow hall seating code. Oh, and don’t be condescending to people, either.
3. Mind your own business at all times, and use 100% of your common sense at all times.
Hector was back in the cell with me that night. Our relationship had definitely been a little
strained since the drug-fuelled violence incident, so we mainly kept to ourselves. But, in the night,
I heard strange noises coming from the top bunk. When I took a peek, I saw that Hector
had somehow obtained some contraband lipstick, drawn a crude image of a woman on his pillow,
and was passionately making out with it. Of course, I found this to be hilarious,
and decided to tell the story to a few fellow convicts out in the yard. They were laughing along
at all the right moments. Things were finally going well! I was being liked! Until suddenly,
I was being garrotted with a shoelace. Turns out, Hector had heard me talking smack, and wanted a
little retribution of his own. Thankfully, the guards intervened before he could finish the job.
It was another important lesson for the future: Mind your own business at all times,
and use 100% of your common sense at all times. 2. Do not fraternize with convicts of another race
than your own. If you do, understand that you are putting your life or your health at risk.
I was still feeling silly for my ham-handed attempts to bridge the racial divide in the
chow-hall, and decided to try it again on a much smaller scale in the yard.
I approached an African-American prisoner and struck up a conversation – you know, all the
standard prison small talk: His name, what he was in for, and whether he had a favourite video
from The Infographics Show. He seemed like a nice enough guy, if a little skittish about talking to
me. Maybe I was finally building up my cred! Though I realised the true reason for his
nervousness afterwards, when Aryan Nation Steve punched me really hard in the face and called
me a race traitor. That’s when I learned it was probably just best to avoid fraternising
with convicts who weren’t the same race as me. God, who would have guessed that
prison was such a prejudiced environment? 1. Do not tell on anybody, for any reason.
My American prison experience, on the whole, had been horrible. If you could give prisons Yelp
reviews, I’d definitely give this one zero stars. I’d made no friends, been assaulted constantly,
and just had a generally bad time. I decided I’d finally get payback the only way I knew how:
I’d tattle to a guard about all the sketchy things my fellow convicts had been doing, and watch the
warden rake them over the coals for it. I told them about Hector’s drug running,
about Aryan Nation Steve’s penchant for punching, and about the countless instances of
rule-breaking and contraband I’d seen on the yard. It seemed like a great idea, until that night,
when I was peeling potatoes in the kitchen. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by stone-faced
convicts, all of them carrying shivs. “I’m guessing you’re not here to help
me with the potatoes?” I asked. And one of them just sneered,
and said to me, “You forgot the most important rule of prison, kid: Snitches get stitches.”
And in that moment, before receiving a very painful Cell Block B acupuncture session,
I realised that there were not only ten crucial prison commandments that you have
to follow to save your skin, but that there was an unspoken eleventh commandment. A commandment
that is arguably the most important of all: Make sure you learn the other ten beforehand,
because if you have to learn them by experience inside, then you won’t make it out alive.
Check out “Man So Violent Even Other Prisoners Fear Him” and “Shocking US
Human Prisoner Experiments Revealed!” for more crazy facts about what goes on behind bars!