this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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56
what is your best story from jail, prison, rehab, or psych ward? (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I was working for an HVAC contractor and we did a job at a prison. We would work at night while all the residents were locked up and sleeping. We had a corrections officer escorting us the whole time. The hallways were all on the exterior of the building and lined with large windows. That allowed the guards in the towers outside to watch people moving within the building.

One night, in the wee hours of the morning, we're walking down the hallway when a red laser dot appears on the wall next to us. All of us contractors freeze instantly. We don't know what is happening and we DO NOT want to get shot. Our escort gets on his radio and tells the guys in the tower to stop fucking with us. The little red dot disappears and we go on with our night.

We were briefly afraid for our lives because some bored asshole prison guard couldn't resist flagging us with the muzzle of his rifle and teasing us with the laser sight.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 2 months ago (2 children)

"Haha I'm pointing my gun at you" is exactly the kind of garbage-tier humor that only a moron in law enforcement could appreciate.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'll make him think he's about to die haha this will be so funny.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

And to asshats like that, YOU'RE the asshole for not lightening up and getting over yourself.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Murrica

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I worked with a guy who said he was one semester from finishing his degree but never finished it. I said "you should go back and finish it!" and he replied "dude, I was working on that degree in prison, I'm not going back to finish it!"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

I guarantee you he was offered little to no transitional support when he left prison, which plays a reason why a lot of people don't finish the degrees they worked on in prison. Trash system and then supporters of it have the nerve to blame incarcerated people for not magically improving their lives like [exception to the rule].

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Can't he transfer to a campus without bars on the windows?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah, and that's what I said next. That wasn't the funny part of the story though.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I was connecting network ports in a psychiatric ward hub room when a patient out in the hall started aggressively humping the door. I paused to watch, though to myself "this is still better than talking to doctors" and went back to what I was doing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lol I forgot to include psych wards!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I was locked up in one for a couple of weeks after I tried to kill myself, and the only thing that experience did for me is to make sure I keep the ideas to myself next time so no one can interfere. Must be something about the locked doors that turns psychiatric nurses into prison guards mentally, but none of them apart from a trainee from abroad was pleasant to deal with and one was a proper nurse Ratchet. I'll give you a snippet of her professional behavior and care for the mental wellbeing of the patients.

I was laying on a sofa in the common area reading a book after lunchtime, and had not seen a single other person for about half an hour. Also there was another sofa just like the one I was on and two armchairs in the room. Enter nurse:

-I have to ask you to get off that sofa.

-What? Why?

-Someone might want to come in and sit on it.

-But there's plenty of other places here to sit, also I've not seen anyone around for a good while anyway.

-But they might want to sit right there anyway.

-What about me wanting to be right here now?

-Stop being difficult!

-Did you want to sit here?

-You have five seconds to get off that sofa or I'll get the orderlies and we'll sedate you!

Fuckin power tripping bitch.

edit: So many typos...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I had a teacher like that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

holy shit I can edit the title of my post

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

For what it's worth, most guys who've been in prison have little to no interest in revisiting their time inside for obvious reasons. There's of course some (relatively) happy times but they're largely outweighed by the bad, often traumatic times that many former inmates understandably downplay because they're used to the "suck it up" attitude.

Also, talking about prison with people who've been in prison is one thing but talking about prison to people who have never been in prison often just results in the same tired old questions, many of which come with a very morbid but almost gleeful curiosity. That said, most people who've been in prison aren't too thrilled about talking about it even with other formerly incarcerated people.

Obviously there's some former inmates who love talking about prison but I think guys like that just want someone to listen to them more than anything. Those are also the types of guys who lie their asses off about their prison experience and were probably known inside as a bullshitter.

There's other exceptions, like inmates who are outspoken about their experiences specifically to open peoples' eyes about how the supposedly "correctional" system is nothing but a sick form of traumatic retribution that only increases the rate of recidivism (and likelihood of people becoming victims of crime, I'll add). So even if a person doesn't give a fuck about inmates, they kind of should because the crueller and inmate is treated, the more likely he is to offend or re-offend in the future.

Things like AMAs are rare because that requires verification which for a million opsec reasons is a horrible idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious what you think of the Nordic prison system, in Norway for example. I once saw a docu about the head of such a prison visiting an American one and they just had such different perspectives.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Funny you should mention that documentary...

I'll just say it was (and still is) very popular among inmates and many are outraged when they find out what the Nordic system is like, specifically in Norway. Guys were losing their shit when they saw the humane living conditions, especially when it was explained that yes-- even Norway has hardened criminals who are nonetheless treated with decency and the ultimate goal of reintegration/rehabilitation.

I'm really glad you asked about that documentary. I'm guessing it had to have been the same one-- at some point they show the apartment-like living quarters and show the inmates living a very normal looking like, not even dressed in an orange jumpsuit.

But yeah, a lot of guys felt a mix of emotions watching that documentary. Happiness for Norwegian inmates that they actually aren't being treated like shit, happy that even the COs there seem to be genuinely rehabilitative-minded, but outraged and very sad that all this time we've been told all the "soft" approaches like Norway's isnt effective and that Norway doesn't have hard criminals like N. America (low-key racism is implied IMO), only to find out Norway does have hard criminals, many of which are able to turn their life around when they're not dealing with state-inflicted traumatic retribution.

Guys are more likely to open up about their prison experience if they know there's a chance it could perhaps help guys currently inside. Not every formerly incarcerated person is open to this but you might be surprised.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah it's kinda weird that the American system is eye for an eye eventhough people like to picture themselves as Christian over there.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

the guys I met in intakeWhen I was in the intake prison I was around a lot of people going down for multiple decades. People who were going to max.

Ate lunch across from a guy who had murdered his gf while paranoid on meth. He burned their house down trying to cover up the crime.

One of my cellies was in for stealing atms and shooting at the cops during his arrest.

My other cellie for sex trafficking. Would pick women up at the bar and take them for a motorcycle ride. Then sell the women to a biker gang. He said he knew it was wrong and that he deserved the decades he had, but would do it all again.

There's really no best stories though. It was all pretty shitty and depressing.

Once I got to medium it was pretty smooth. Read a lot. Wrote a lot. Meditated a lot. Tried to avoid mindless self indulgence so I wouldn't be fucked when I got out.

And it was still very difficult to reinitgrate with all my family living out of state.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

what are the triple colons at the beginning in the end?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's a spoiler. Your Lemmy client isn't rendering it correctly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Maybe because I spoilered it and the tags are done on different instances? I don't know. It looks normal for me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

aw man, she could have started a lucrative smuggling operation

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I recommend this documentary.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Weirdly enough, this quote is hilariously accurate if you consider COs to be IRL dementors.

From the wiki:

"Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you."

Replace "Dementors" with "Corrections officers" and I bet most people who've been to prison would say that's an accurate statement.

The only thing that sucks about this Michael Scott scene is that very few people remember the reference :( Prison Mike is fucking hilarious

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

i have tons of em, been a heroin addict since i was 20

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

nice. I was from 18-26

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Working in corrections requires NDA signatures. You’re not going to get much.

Edit: referencing The States

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

I wasn't asking the COs

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I think the question is asking actual people, not the-pigs

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's a whole other 50% in the buildings that didn't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Way more than 50%. I'd say closer to 90%. In countries like Norway they have far more COs per inmate and it generally works out better for everyone, although that's only one small reason why. That place gets it right when it comes to prison in ways inmates in N. America could only dream of.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

You're not wrong but I was speaking more generally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Good. Disgusting COs can fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Please, COs break protocol on a daily basis. They just don't leak shit so much to the public. Instead, they do stuff like take highly inappropriate photos of inmates and share them in their little group chats.