I’m in the Hobby Unit in Texas and my view on things is crazy but very realistic. It’s like someone picked a bunch of convicts from different walks of life and said we’re going to place them here. They just brought the streets inside.
I hear many women say this is a vacation. No responsibilities. A “pit stop” in their criminal life. I’ve heard women say prison has preserved their bodies. Women who are 40- or 50-something look like they are in their mid twenties. I’ve heard women say prison has either saved their life or someone else’s – a life they had once planned to take. Some women believe it was divine intervention from God, all part of his plan.
I’ve been in prison 2 ½ years now and I think I’ve learned more criminal skills than I had when I first walked through intake. Survival is a big thing in prison. It’s crazy but astonishing how some women survive.
Some of us get money from family and friends. Some from strangers we meet on websites developed for prisoners. I look at these ads run in the prison newsletter – the pages of individuals and businesses that sell sexy photos of women that prison women in turn use and refer to as tricks. People whom they write erotic letters to and send provocative pictures. I ask myself, is this the Texas prison system trying to pimp us out? Do they have us on some secret escort service? Are these things run by the government or by individuals who are also criminals trying to make a dollar? Or by pimps looking for potential hoes? Or is this some kind of set up to slap a new charge on us? Or is the state so cheap that they allow this as a means for us to get out there and take care of ourselves so they don’t have to come out of pocket and do it?
I see women selling make-up that can be bought on commissary for a $1.40 and they turn around and sell it for $5.40. Women buy a pack of cookies and a candy bar that cost them maybe $2.50 and they make cookie patties and turn around and sell maybe 10 of them at three stamps at piece. They make like $12.00.
I have learned to take nothing like a map pencil and 30 cent pen and flip it for some eye shadow and turn around and flip the eye shadow for five dollars in flags. These women have many ways of hustling such as doing hair and charging $3 a head, putting money on people’s book and commissary to get extra shit. People pay people to go to medical to get whatever it is they need or want. They drop forms to medical, law library, dental, religious classes so they can meet their woman or handle business.
They pay SSI or troublemakers who just don’t care to make stuff. They make jewelry, make-up, clothes, sexy panties and bras that are dyed bright colors. They make wife beaters for the studs and boy shorts for the hoochies. And it’s crazy because all this contraband and these things are available to us, if not we make it available through visitation.
Or crooked laws. Yes we have those here. Men and women who mess with the inmates. We have laws that are so crooked and ghetto that they’ll get out there and throw down with the inmate. There are no cameras on Hobby so everything goes. People get caught up. So you won’t sell razors on commissary but you hand them out once a month and don’t even do a trade off?
We are constantly wrapped up due to the shortage of staff. It’s like payday and holiday. Everyone parties and no one comes to work. What do you expect when all you hire are people from the streets who are young, ghetto and irresponsible individuals?
There are so many ways we are manipulated and abused but in the same way there are so many more ways we abuse and manipulate the system. Women gamble, they have their families send magazines for perfume samples they either wear themselves or sell at a flag a piece. You have your commissary hoes, you got your pimp who shares their own women with their partners. You got your gamblers, hustlers, cons who wash laundry in the toilet and slap them on the wall to air dry or those who got money and are too lazy to do it for themselves so they pay others to do it. You got your salons that hired strippers for birthdays and holidays, personal tailors, the list goes on and on.
It’s like I’m at home minus my family and drugs and alcohol but I’m sure they got that in here too. Most of the officers come high or drunk themselves. Any and everything for the American dollar. We walk around with homemade purses or wallets loaded with stacks of flags that we use as money.
A lot of these women are getting wiser in the criminal world and making future plans to get out and recommit. They abuse the education system to get out of the hoe squad, some women even break fingers and sprain ankles. Rec is a big orgy, an all you can eat buffet. Women have sexual relations with their partners in broad daylight, in wide-open spaces while sitting next to a woman reading a Bible. Wash off, that’s what’s street whores do. Me? I’m lucky I got a good roommate who doesn’t have a psycho woman. She’s young but has an old soul. We’re different but she’s also very criminally minded so really how lucky am I? Prison is prison. We inmates shape and form it. The laws try to intervene and maintain it but it depends on the person, situation or surroundings and how they choose to adapt to prison. Point blank. It is what it is.
I’ve got two options. I can do my time, learn something and make a change or I can develop new criminal skills and continue to shift through the revolving prison doors.
Amber Massey has been released.
5 Comments
I was at Hobby in 1999. Hootchie shorts and dying bras, etc. ? Not. I changed. Quit drugs. That’s wonderful you got a BS. But I had a child when I was released. Unfortunately for me, even though I changed, did my time, and was doing the work of being the person I wanted to be. Which I had been all along with the exception of spurts of substance abuse. But my partner and his criminal gf decided to make ME look like doo doo to everyone to justify their relationship and keep me isolated and easy to control, abuse and use for a BIG payoff. Told everyone I’d been in jail…when they were doing what tgey were doing? In fact, that began 1/2/2000. The last incident of someone acting like law and calling a Bank to tell them about my 25 yr old criminal record was 5 days ago.
I was released 5 years ago from TDCJ. Since then I have obtained a college degree in forensic social work and am in the graduate program at Louisiana State University (LSU). I also am the first social worker to ever be implemented at the district attorney’s office. I am a passionate advocate of criminal justice and prison reform. I spent 8 years inside those walls. Not a day goes by that I do not remember pieces of those moments. To sit back and think about how far I have come… it is amazing, yet I can’t help but tear up for those who are still there. When I came home I had transformed a small closet we have in our home into a cell. I spent every waking moment in that closet striving to maintain the same routine as I had when I was inside the prison. It is ironic because when I was in prison I believed I hadn’t allowed my mind to conform to that “way of life.” I was one out of six women (at that time, it has since changed) who had a “free-world” job that I was paid for working and I was blessed to be in the dog training program Paws in Prison. I was exposed to “free-world” people more so than I was not, however, we humans have an innate behavior of adjusting to our environment whether we want to or not. When I realized that I had unconsciously recreated a prison cell in my own home- I took charge of my life. I knew what I wanted for myself and my family and I worked endlessly to make it happen. The journey has not been one without extensive barriers, but it has been beautiful. I hear so many students, professors, professionals, etc. say such wonderful things about me as a person and the work I do. People have invested in me even after learning that I am a convicted felon, because of my work and dedication. That feels good. I know that I am not a product of my past, but there is a purpose for it. My mistakes It does not define who I am. That life inside those prison walls was not meant for me, it’s not meant for any of us. We can not use excuses to justify our choices or deny the fact that what we do today will impact the future. The rule of law is important and there are consequences for not adhering to it. Utilize your time to change, learn, and grow. Utilize your past and become a vessel of change for others. Change starts where you are at. Don’t wait until you get out or you are free to take action- no matter where you go, there you are!
Life is what you make of it inside or outside.
I was on the Hobby Unit and praise God I was released 25 months ago. It’s known to be the most violent women’s unit in Texas. I saw more women get murdered or get their throat slit at Hobby unit than anywhere else. It it very inhumane and we were treated like filthy animals and everyone got away with everything, I witnessed many officers beating the fuck of out inmates for no good reason and walk away laughing about it. We were refused showers for over 12 days at one particular time. It’s a reality check. It’s real. But it changed me for the better and I met some amazing women. And of course it made me an extremely smart criminal. But yes, it’s an entirely different environment and absolutely nothing like freedom. In prison, we simply existed, we weren’t living. And prison preserved me. I did 6 years. I’m almost 29 and I am constantly asked if I’m 21 or 22. But Hobby is no joke. You gotta be tough to make it out. -Cayce
I am doing research for an article on bad Texas prisons and randomly found this. I don´t know what you did or what you are going to do with the rest of your life, but you sure are a writer. Maybe writing can be your refuge. It is for many people. Good luck