A Prison Primer

    For those of you who have never been to prison, here’s a prison primer — some firsthand knowledge that can give you a brief peek into the wicked world of incarceration. From the start, you’ll experience things that are designed to dehumanize and humiliate you. Take for example, the process of being stripped naked and told to bend over and spread your cheeks so that another man can get a full view inside of your ass.

     It’s suppose to be done to check for contraband, but you can tell that they wield this power to shame and degrade you as well. And the sad part is, before long, it’ll happen enough times until it doesn’t even bother you anymore.

     However, something I can never get used to is the sick gleam of joy that a lot of the guards have when performing such a dehumanizing task. Then once they’ve stripped you of your dignity (pun intended) you’re tossed in and bunched together with hundreds of strangers that have met the same fate for whatever reason. Some will try to befriend you, some may try to rob you, and a few may even try to rape you, it’s all a roll of the dice.

     You’ll learn quickly that the weak and stupid don’t stand a chance, so you’d better become strong and wise, or at least appear to be if you’re gonna have any chance at survival. Speaking of survival, the food you’ll be forced to eat in order to survive will of course be of the lowest grade and quality and could be labeled ”one step away from gruel.” However, if you’re one of the fortunate ones that has loved ones that send you money, you can supplement your daily gruel with some overpriced, equally unhealthy, canteen from the commissary.

     And for those who don’t know what commissary or canteen is, it’s where companies provide us with food, hygiene, clothes, and other items that are low grade and defective and mark the prices up one hundred to two hundred percent or more depending on the item. Isn’t that price gouging you might ask? Yes, yes it is.

     Now if you thought that dehumanizing you, starving you, and taxing you to the fullest was all there was to worry about, well guess what, there’s more. See, most prisons have a clique of officers that love to be very ”hands on” with the prison population. So as if you didn’t already have enough to worry about, you also have to be on guard against the guards who, for any number of reasons are just waiting to kick your teeth in at the slightest provocation. And please be made aware that many prisoners have not only been beaten, but also killed as well.

But aren’t the guards supposed to be there to protect you and keep you safe? Yes, yes they are.

     Now, in the midst of you fighting to stay alive, to not be raped or maimed, and to not lose your sanity from all of the chaos that surrounds you, you must also find a way to rehabilitate yourself as well. Wait a minute, I thought that all of that taxpayer money that the Department of Corrections gets was going towards programs, classes, and things of that nature for rehabilitation, reform, and a lower recidivism rate. What do you mean find a way to rehabilitate myself?

     See for those who don’t know, the biggest thieves, robbers, murders, and crooks aren’t the prisoners or inmates, it’s the elected officials and staff that oversee the budgets, run the prisons, and who are entrusted to do the “right thing” with the funds and prisoners that are allotted to them. They always have these great well prepared speeches and spiels they give each time it’s time to fatten up the budget to make you think that they’re doing what’s right. But it’s all to get you Mr Jonny good citizen and Mrs Jane do-right to continue to vote for them. Because your vote and support is what keeps them in these offices and positions so that they all can continue to line their pockets with your hard earned cash.

     And they’ll continue to feed you the lies about how they’re making it a safer, better world by keeping all of us hardcore criminals locked up, and are reforming us for the better. But truth be told, if an individual doesn’t self-educate, self-motivate, and self-reform, then the cycle of destruction will continue on. Because you can’t take a person, strip them of their dignity, feed them gruel, beat and punish them on every turn, give them little to no incentive to change or grow and say you’re reforming and rehabilitating them.

     But let’s look at this from a common sense standpoint. If one is making and running a multimillion dollar industry off of the cycle of incarceration, wouldn’t it be in their best interest to make sure there’s never a shortage of inmates? Yes, yes it would.

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Michael Philpot #105377

Mayo Correctional Institution
8784 US Highway 27 West
Mayo, Florida 32066-3458