Most of us hope to never see the inside of a prison, but we are certainly intrigued by
what seems like an entirely different world.
The fictional ladies of Orange is the New Black would have us believe that prison is
comprised mostly of reading and kissing, but we’re going to tell you the truth.
Find out what really goes on when the cell doors close and it’s lights out.
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They’re Watching New prison guards often feel honored to protect
society from dangerous criminals.
Yet they soon realize that they spend most of their day acting as nothing but entertainment
for the prisoners.
While the guards are observing the prisoners, the prisoners are watching them right back.
Because the prisoners don’t have to worry about maintaining order, they are free to
look even more closely, and often try to learn information about the guards that they can
use to manipulate them.
They’ll even memorize the guards schedules to figure out when they are at their most
exhausted so that their weaknesses can be exploited.
We have all come into work in a bad mood and ranted to a sympathetic coworker.
Now imagine that conversation gets overheard by a group of criminals.
Even just one prisoner finding out about a personal problem you’re having means that
your experience is going to spread around the prison like wildfire.
Suddenly, that prisoner that has a problem with you knows about your marital trouble,
or that your car got a flat tire on the way to work.
Other inmates will try to use this information to gain sympathy from the guards and convince
them to smuggle contraband or give them extra privileges.
Don’t Snitch While there are, of course, guards out there
who are committed to keeping inmates safe, that can be hard to accomplish when many inmates
are terrified of being perceived as snitches.
Sure, we have all heard that “snitches end up in stitches,” but even the rumor of ratting
on a fellow inmate can have disastrous consequences.
Many prisoners refuse to even say the name of their peers due to the risk of their comments
being misconstrued.
In fact, unless you have a certain amount of power and prestige and are pulling some
sort of con, it’s not advised to be seen alone with a guard behind closed doors.
So what do you do if you have a problem with a fellow inmate but you can’t talk to the
guards about it?
Why, you get other inmates to help you deal with the situation.
This is one of the many reasons that prisoners organize into groups; so that you have someone
who has your back when you can’t get help from someone with actual authority.
If prisoners truly fear for their lives, they can opt to go into protective custody, which
is basically volunteering to be segregated for an unspecified amount of time.
Hidden in Plain Sight We know that prisoners sneak contraband into
their cells, but few people realize how truly clever they can be when it comes to being
undetected.
Body cavities are a common tv trope, but in reality they’re used all the time
because it’s hard to find during a common pat down.
Once prisoners get in their cells, they’ll hide contraband in any space possible.
Toiletries such as deodorant, or lotion containers make great hiding spots for small objects.
They’ll also hide things in what appears to be trash, such as potato chip bags or candy
wrappers.
Since their cells are rather small, being able to hide things in plain sight is essential
if you don’t want to get things confiscated by prison guards.
Many books have been hollowed out in order to hide cigarettes or other items, and this
includes the Bible, which is a common and inconspicuous book in prison.
Inmates will also hide their personal belongings in common areas.
This is risky because they can get stolen, but if they are discovered by the guard it’s
easier to have plausible deniability about how it got there in the first place.
Things can be shoved down shower grates, wrapped in trash can liners, or tucked under sinks.
Bathroom Habits If you feel shy using public restrooms and
you find yourself heading to prison, you’d better get over that fear quickly.
Even in your own cell you’re expected to give a courtesy flush for the comfort of your
roommate.
Laying in your own bed while someone is going to the bathroom about a foot away from you
sounds like a nightmare to most of us, but prisoners admit that they get used to it pretty
quickly.
Many former prisoners claim that they maintained the total lack of concern about privacy even
after being released.
When you had to use communal showers in college you probably donned a pair of flip flops first,
but in prison it’s often better to risk a bit of foot fungus.
Running in wet flip flops is a recipe for disaster, and in prison you never know when
you are going to have to run for your life.
Since there is virtually no privacy in the toilets or shower, inmates generally get really
good at just ignoring each other in these situations.
Sure, because guards patrol less during these times they can be dangerous, be often everyone
is just focused on minding their own business during shower time.
Released Prisoners like you to believe that they are
tough and have everything under control, but many wonder what they will actually do once
they are released.
Even if you have a place to go afterwards, you’d better hope that you have someone
willing to give you a ride, or enough money for bus fare.
Many people in prison have burned a lot of bridges with the people they knew before their
arrest, so they can easily find themselves with tons of freedom but no resources on which
to live.
Not to mention, the challenge of adapting to freedom if they do manage to find a place
to lay their heads at night.
Many prisoners report feelings of low self esteem and a loss of personal identity upon
release, which can lead to them reoffending and ending up back in prison.
Some tell themselves they’ll just commit minor crimes until they are back on their
feet, but that day never comes.
If an inmate struggled with drug or alcohol addiction in prison, staying clean is an even
bigger challenge when faced with these other issues as well.
How well do you know what really goes on behind bars?
You still can’t escape your debts, even if you are in prison.
Many prisoners owe money for state fees or victim compensation fees, and any money their
friends or family try to send them for basic needs goes straight to their debts.
What is this called?
We’ll tell you at the end of the video.
The Worst Time of the Month Women can have trouble getting the proper
equipment to deal with their monthly period outside of prison, so you can just imagine
the difficulties when they’re imprisoned.
One inmate, Tara Oldfield-Parker from upstate New York, asked officers for a sanitary pad
and they responded by calling an ambulance.
After waiting for an hour and a half, Tara received a rectangular sterile gauze pad with
no adhesive.
It seems baffling that prisons wouldn’t have plentiful supplies of these items on
hand, but in many prisons simple things like tampons are worth their weight in gold.
Many prisons leave handing out supplies to the discretion of the officers, who use them
as a bargaining chip to keep prisoners in line.
Leaving it up to individual officers mean that some prisoners get what they need, while
others have to beg or resort to trading with their fellow inmates.
Not only is this experience dehumanizing and can cause women to resent their own bodies,
but it can also interfere with what little freedom they have.
Women have been known to reschedule important meetings because they had their period and
no proper supplies to deal with it.
The idea of springing a leak while speaking to their attorney has been known to prompt
many women to reschedule.
Health Care If female inmates struggle to get enough supplies
during their periods, you can imagine the health care received by inmates in general.
Because they lack basic preventative care, they’re at a high risk of conditions such
as heart disease and cervical cancer.
One inmate in Arizona, Ferdinand Dix, complained of symptoms for over two years without receiving
proper treatment.
He cited a chronic cough, and shortness of breath.
By the time he was properly examined, what had started out as lung cancer had spread
to his major organs and proved fatal.
What did the medical team and guards do when Ferdinand was gasping for help for two years?
They told him to drink some more energy drinks.
Another Arizona inmate named Manfred Dehe weighed 200 lbs when he entered prison, and
had soon wasted away to 150 lbs.
He was on a special diet to help him put on weight, but once the time allotted ran out
and doctors couldn’t be bothered to renew it, he started losing weight.
Oh, and the reason he was losing weight so quickly was because he had prostate cancer,
which wasn’t discovered until it had already metastasized.
Mental Health Mental health care comes with a serious stigma
that thankfully seems to be dwindling in most progressive areas.
But in prison, inmates will often pretend to have mental illnesses in order to avoid
being transferred to harsher or more unfamiliar facilities.
One therapist who worked in a prison estimates that about 25% of them are feigning
their afflictions because of a rule against sending mentally ill inmates out of state.
Their fake symptoms range from depression up to hallucinations.
This is also a way that they hope to score some medication from naive therapists.
Aside from the quarter of his patients he believes are faking it, he estimates another
10-25% of his patients genuinely suffer from mental illness and it’s to those people
he can actually provide the most help.
Unsurprisingly, what most people in prison deal with are issues with impulse control.
They need to work on appropriate ways to deal with their anger instead of resorting to yelling,
cursing, or using violence.
Delayed gratification and impulse control are something most of us learn as children,
but some people struggle with their entire lives.
The Smell Shows that take place in prison leave out
a lot of details, including the fact that prisons all come with an absolutely terrible
stench.
It makes perfect sense if you think about it; there are hundreds of people in one place
that doesn’t exactly leave the doors and windows open to let air circulate through
the building.
Not to mention that despite having copious amounts of free time, some inmates let their
personal grooming habits lapse, to say the least.
One prison guard with two decades worth of experience in prisons compared the smell to
“microwaved bologna,” and claims that it also has notes of “burnt hair and industrial
soap.”
We can’t detect the scent of our own homes, but we can easily recognize a friend’s house
just by smelling it.
In a similar fashion, long term prisoners get used to the smell and don’t notice it
after a while.
While most of us would be mortified if someone went to the bathroom a few feet away from
where we were sleeping, inmates have grown shockingly used to the smell of other humans
and it barely even registers after a while.
Commissary In movies, cigarettes and drugs seem to be
the preferred form of currency among inmates.
However, not everyone smokes or does drugs.
But there is one unifying thing that all prisoners go crazy for: junk food.
Prison food is notoriously poor quality, and eating the same bland, tasteless, slop everyday
gets old pretty quickly.
Although they’re marked up to absurd prices in the commissary, prisoners are obsessed
with getting as much tasty, salty, or sweet junk food that they can get their hands on.
Sure, you can bargain with a pack of cigarettes, but it turns out that a sleeve of Oreos works
just as well.
Many prisoners are able to work from behind bars, but they are paid pennies for their
labor.
They would barely make enough to buy snacks outside of prison, let alone at the commissary
where prices are inflated to 3 or 4 times what they would be on the outside.
Not only that, but all those phone calls you see prisoners making in movies?
Those are expensive as well.
A couple bucks for a phone call may not seem too terrible to those of us on the outside,
but it adds up, especially for prisoners with minimal sources of income.
What is it called when an inmate’s income goes straight to pay off their debts?
It’s known as encumbrance, and it makes life even harder for already struggling inmates.
The next time you watch a movie or television show that takes place in prison, we bet you
will view it a bit differently.
All of those steamy scenes in Orange Is The New Black will seem slightly less enticing
when you remember that prisons smell like microwaved bologna.
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