Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: as if you're surprised. Uh, and that makes this stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, right, Chuck, Yes, we are here, Josh,
Speaker 1: and uh can we talk about prisons? Now? We can
Speaker 1: talk about prisons. Remember in the Presidential Pardons episode, I
Speaker 1: was talking about how people have been calling for President
Speaker 1: Obama to reduced to basically issue a blanket pardon for
Speaker 1: people who are convicted under the mandatory minimums for crack
Speaker 1: where there's a huge disparity, and I said it was
Speaker 1: like five to one. It's actually it was I think, um,
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty to one disparity. Right, boy got
Speaker 1: that one wrong, did well? He did it like pretty
Speaker 1: much as we were recording that he signed this law.
Speaker 1: Congress was passing this law that reduced the mandatory minimum
Speaker 1: and basically, in a effect, overturned the sentences of first
Speaker 1: time offenders who are convicted and we're given these five
Speaker 1: years and anybody who was convicted under the old mandatory
Speaker 1: minimum laws. So there's gonna be a lot of people
Speaker 1: coming out of prison looking for crack. Well, that's one
Speaker 1: argument that's not very fair to say. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: But I mean, isn't that kind of the the way
Speaker 1: that Americans and probably people in general view prisoners. It's like,
Speaker 1: you did something wrong, so you deserve to be where
Speaker 1: you are. But that's without having any real concept of
Speaker 1: what prison is like. I mean, I know I don't
Speaker 1: want to be in prison. Have you ever seen the
Speaker 1: movie An Innocent Man? Remember we talked about that Tom Selleck,
Speaker 1: very scary scene. That was it for me. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to go to prison ever. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's about all I knew about it until we
Speaker 1: started researching for this very robust podcast on how prison works.
Speaker 1: So Chuck, um, I guess Apparently when this article was
Speaker 1: written by Grabanowski, it was I think two thousand five
Speaker 1: ish or that was the latest stats he had, and
Speaker 1: it said he said that there were like more than
Speaker 1: two million people in prison, right, and it's actually decreased. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got one point six million at the end of
Speaker 1: oh nine. But when I look at these stats there,
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of stats. Um. You know, one in
Speaker 1: thirty one adults is in the correction system, but that
Speaker 1: includes jail, prison, probation, and supervision. So they narrowed that
Speaker 1: down to only in prison. One and every one hundred
Speaker 1: Americans is in prison. I know. And that crazy. Did
Speaker 1: you see what fair state topped the list for the
Speaker 1: most number of adults in prison? That's right, Georgia, Georgia
Speaker 1: one in thirteen people, one in thirteen adults, and Georgia's
Speaker 1: in the correctional system. That's crazy. Yeah, we live in
Speaker 1: a state of criminals. Either that or some like a
Speaker 1: real police state, one of the two. Uh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna comment on that, said, Chuck, we should probably
Speaker 1: calm down. Let's settle down here. Let's talk about prison.
Speaker 1: Prisons a deterrent, it the punishment, and it's hopefully there's
Speaker 1: increasingly it's becoming a place of reform and rehabilitation. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit um. But in the US,
Speaker 1: there's pretty much three three types of security levels for prison, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: with one extra little added measure that we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: It's a big extra though. Yeah, you got a minimum,
Speaker 1: you got medium, and you've got of course everyone's favorite
Speaker 1: maximum security prisons and uh minimums security prison were we're
Speaker 1: mainly going to cover maximum because that's really the most interesting.
Speaker 1: Even though I think they said like only or in max,
Speaker 1: is that right? Well, according to the two thousand five stats,
Speaker 1: but um, minimum is more like like a college campus
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's like that weekend that you
Speaker 1: did orientation at the college you eventually went to. I
Speaker 1: would think that's like minimum security prison, right, uh, And
Speaker 1: that's definitely non violent offenders with pretty clean criminal records,
Speaker 1: or may be you've served time in a medium and
Speaker 1: you were really good and they were like, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: bump this dude down to maximum a minimum. Yeah, right, right,
Speaker 1: then you've got medium, and that's the one that actually
Speaker 1: you you would see most um on like television shows
Speaker 1: or something, people think that's maximum, But when you see
Speaker 1: prisoners able to like move around and play cards and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, that's generally medium from what I understand. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have like dorm room style accommodations a lot of
Speaker 1: times with you know, eight or ten guys to a room.
Speaker 1: Um and like you said, the little social day rooms
Speaker 1: where they hang out and trade cigarettes and like on oz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly do horrific things to one. We'll get to that too. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course the granddaddy of them all is
Speaker 1: the maximum security prison. These are the violent offenders, guys
Speaker 1: that have escaped or tried to escape. We're gonna say
Speaker 1: guys a lot. Yes, I think less than ten percent
Speaker 1: of the prison population is female. So it's not like
Speaker 1: we're not trying to give the ladies their due. We
Speaker 1: know you can do awful things as well, so props
Speaker 1: to you, but we're gonna say dudes a lot. Well,
Speaker 1: there's and then there's a subcategory that it was pretty rare. Um.
Speaker 1: That came about in nine three at the maximum security
Speaker 1: prison in um Marion, Illinois I think not Juliet Marian
Speaker 1: right um. Two guards were murdered in two separate incidents
Speaker 1: on the same day and the prison went into lockdown,
Speaker 1: which bad coincidence. Is that what they called it, and
Speaker 1: that's what I call it. The prison went into lockdown,
Speaker 1: which is where you're in your cell all day, you
Speaker 1: can't move around, you can't do anything, you have no
Speaker 1: freedom of movement. Um. And it remained in that state
Speaker 1: ever since. So it basically gave birth to the super
Speaker 1: max prison, right uh. And since then a lot of
Speaker 1: prisons have been opened as super max prisons during a
Speaker 1: state of lockdown, And if it sounds a bit familiar,
Speaker 1: basically the entire prison is a series of solitary confinements
Speaker 1: there the whole. Yeah, they call it officially, it's called
Speaker 1: Security Housing Unit and s h U, but everyone calls
Speaker 1: it the whole, just like in the movies. And as
Speaker 1: far as prisons go, solitary confinement and then especially supermax
Speaker 1: is extremely controversial, right. Um. Solitary confinement originally was created
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty by a warden and a prison in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania with the lofty goal of giving a convict nothing
Speaker 1: but time to contemplate what he'd done, the bad thing
Speaker 1: that he'd done. I think anything that was supposed in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty is a good way to punish people. You
Speaker 1: might want to review that notion again here. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: they basically found out that actually these are they don't
Speaker 1: sit around and think about all the bad they've done.
Speaker 1: They kind of go nuts, and not just kind of
Speaker 1: go nuts, They go clinically insane as anybody would, right,
Speaker 1: or they go in sort of insane and they really
Speaker 1: go off the deep ends. Right. Because prison has also
Speaker 1: and still remains used to um, how is the mentally
Speaker 1: ill at times, not as much or as overtly as before,
Speaker 1: but still you find the insane in prisons, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The other problem with a super max facility, besides the
Speaker 1: fact that it amounts to torture, psychological or otherwise, is that, um,
Speaker 1: these things, these places are reserved for the worst of
Speaker 1: the worst, supposedly, and in any given state there's a
Speaker 1: couple maybe of the worst of the worst. But a
Speaker 1: super max prison may have a couple hundred cells. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta fill the cells somehow, so you have relatively
Speaker 1: minor offenses or convicts, um going into super max prisons,
Speaker 1: the killing themselves in a really horrible way. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a big build up in the nineties. I think
Speaker 1: they said by the end of the decade and of
Speaker 1: the nineties that um, thirty different states had a super
Speaker 1: max prison. Well, and you said that each state only
Speaker 1: has a handful of dudes that even qualify. So, like
Speaker 1: you said, they get put in there, they kind of
Speaker 1: go through a zoocosis of sorts, like weird behavior like
Speaker 1: the bears walking in circles. Um, except way way worse, way,
Speaker 1: way worse. This one guy in Wisconsin, he was a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old car thief. Another guy, twenty year old
Speaker 1: David Tracy, hanged himself in a Virginia supermax and he
Speaker 1: was nineteen and he had been there for two and
Speaker 1: a half years for selling drugs. No, he'd been there
Speaker 1: for a year and he had a two and a
Speaker 1: half year sentence and he still hung himself. He couldn't
Speaker 1: even make it a year, Kim halfway into a two
Speaker 1: and a half year sentence because he was immediately put
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement. Um, and then it gets worse. Apparently,
Speaker 1: UM people have um been known to swallow razor blades.
Speaker 1: One guy uh In in Indiana super max prison choked
Speaker 1: himself to death with a washcloth, and another guy, twenty
Speaker 1: one year old mentally ill prisoner in that same prison
Speaker 1: set himself on fire and later died from those wounds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The good news, though, my friend, is that UM, a
Speaker 1: lot of supermaxes have been downgraded since then, Like the
Speaker 1: current trend is to downgrade your supermax to regular max.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of getting the message a little bit
Speaker 1: that we'd really don't need that to this many super
Speaker 1: max presents. Yeah, apparently the nineties were bad. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there's only one federal supermax only one, which one a
Speaker 1: d X in Florence, Colorado. A d X Florence. But
Speaker 1: like you said, it's mostly on the state level. That's
Speaker 1: for like the really really bad tax evaders. I imagine
Speaker 1: a d X is not the kind of place you
Speaker 1: want to take a tour. I wouldn't think that the
Speaker 1: single federal supermax is not the kind of place you
Speaker 1: want to be. It's a chuck, You buddy, have just
Speaker 1: been popped, say, growing marijuana indoors, You're going to prison.
Speaker 1: Let's come to terms with that, Okay, okay. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of ways that you actually get to prison, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and there as follows. You can take a taxi, which
Speaker 1: apparently is more routine than we would imagine. I had
Speaker 1: no idea. Um, you can be dropped off by a
Speaker 1: friend or family member. That's what I would choose, as
Speaker 1: in I think that's what Edward Norton. I'd have my
Speaker 1: mom take me. Do you drop me off at prison? Right? Well?
Speaker 1: And um, you can also take the prison bus. Right
Speaker 1: It's called the diesel to Diesel tour because they'll you know,
Speaker 1: it's a prison bus. It's not like some luxury greyhound uh,
Speaker 1: bus liner. You know how nice as greyhounds are. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're nice. It's not like that, you know that it's
Speaker 1: kind of cramped and nasty and smelly and it sounds
Speaker 1: like a a locker room on wheels. Well not just that.
Speaker 1: They you go take yourself to the sheriff's department and, um,
Speaker 1: you know, curse your family member for not being like, really,
Speaker 1: couldn't just take me the rest of the way to
Speaker 1: the prison. Um. So you get to the sheriff's department
Speaker 1: and you basically just wait there for the prison bus
Speaker 1: to come pick you up. And then you know, you
Speaker 1: stop at sheriff's department, after Sheriff's department, after Sheriff's department.
Speaker 1: That's the insulting part. Yeah, You're like, all right, can
Speaker 1: I go to prison? Can I just start this please?
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, we gotta make six stops from
Speaker 1: the way. Just hold on and the bus is going
Speaker 1: to break down in exactly a minute. We're gonna go
Speaker 1: pick up your future boyfriend first, so chuck. You um,
Speaker 1: finally get to prison, right, thank god, those cookies that
Speaker 1: your mom gave you have been taken away from you.
Speaker 1: I mean just immediately you didn't even get to eat one.
Speaker 1: They're chowing down on those, the guards are. And you
Speaker 1: have a new moniker. You have a new name, a
Speaker 1: new catch all name that describes you as a newly
Speaker 1: inducted prisoner. You're a fish. Yeah, yeah, just like in
Speaker 1: the movies. You know a lot of this. I thought,
Speaker 1: that's just like in the movies. And it is just
Speaker 1: like in the movies because they know a lot about prison.
Speaker 1: So why would you make a prison movie that was
Speaker 1: completely unrealistic right when you can make the real deal
Speaker 1: and it's very compelling. Yeah, and we'll talk about movies too,
Speaker 1: But yes, you are a fish, Josh. You're all your
Speaker 1: stuff is taken and cataloged, hopefully kept. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that later as well. Some of it might be lost
Speaker 1: along the way. Uh. You are allowed to bring in
Speaker 1: like your reading glasses and maybe a few books. No cookies,
Speaker 1: no cookies, you're legal papers if you you know, were
Speaker 1: into that. And so you're you're processed, right, and you're
Speaker 1: actually processed often in full view of other cons in
Speaker 1: the fish tank. And they call it, yeah, they call
Speaker 1: it the fish tank because all the guys who are
Speaker 1: already in prison can sit there and watch right. Um,
Speaker 1: but they keep you segregated for about thirty days or more.
Speaker 1: You had no idea what was that long? I didn't either.
Speaker 1: I thought they allowsed you. They sprayed you at the
Speaker 1: fire hose, gave you an orange jumpsuit and threw you
Speaker 1: in there. That's what I imagine. But yeah, no, for
Speaker 1: thirty days you're basically segregated. I imagine what the other
Speaker 1: fellas on the diesel tour you know, and um, you
Speaker 1: are assigned a job most likely, but you're about fish
Speaker 1: tank like you're on full display. Like for thirty days,
Speaker 1: dudes are sizing you up. Well, Like in Shaw Shank
Speaker 1: when they took bets on who was going to be
Speaker 1: the first gut, first fish to break down and cry
Speaker 1: that first night, it was that fat guy broke down
Speaker 1: and cry, and then he got beaten and bad things
Speaker 1: happen to him. I always confused that. In the Green Mile,
Speaker 1: I didn't like that one. No, Sean Shank was definitely better,
Speaker 1: but I often confused scenes they were shot almost exactly
Speaker 1: the same. Yeah, I agreed. So, uh, once you get
Speaker 1: out of your fish tank, you get your cell assignment,
Speaker 1: you may get your job right and again for about
Speaker 1: ten cents an hour. That's what you're paid. You should
Speaker 1: I read the letter real quick. There's actually a site
Speaker 1: on the web called prison talk dot com, and it's
Speaker 1: not as hot as you would think now, but you
Speaker 1: can go to forums there and read x cons and
Speaker 1: maybe even some current cons if you have internet access
Speaker 1: and like a minimum security talk about things on these
Speaker 1: is in forms. So I found a letter of I
Speaker 1: was digging around about jobs, and this one guy said
Speaker 1: the worst job he had was being a dorm janitor.
Speaker 1: He got paid forty cents a day. This is not
Speaker 1: by the hour. Forty cents a day, five days a week.
Speaker 1: There were four dorms total, about sixty guys in each,
Speaker 1: two bathrooms in each. You don't want to have a
Speaker 1: salaried prison job as a convict. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: that hit home. Sixty guys sharing two bathrooms and this
Speaker 1: guy was in charge of cleaning that on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you repeating that. So he swept off
Speaker 1: in he said he kept the dorm rooms clean. You've
Speaker 1: never seen a battleground of chaos until you've seen a
Speaker 1: bathroom after thirty guys take a shower, mud dirt, torn, tissue,
Speaker 1: blue State soap, so I guess they get SOAPA signed
Speaker 1: to them and never really thought about that. So anyway,
Speaker 1: tobacco spit in the in the hangout room, garbage um
Speaker 1: cigarette butts from roll ups. Basically, this dude had to
Speaker 1: clean that stuff up for forty cents a day and
Speaker 1: he said that was the worst job you ever had
Speaker 1: in for his all right, and he didn't even mention
Speaker 1: the fecal matter. Well, I think that's implicit. Well I
Speaker 1: just made an explicit check. Yes, So that is one
Speaker 1: example of a prison job that you can get um
Speaker 1: and then you're off to your room, which I would
Speaker 1: encourage everyone now to walk off eight ft by six
Speaker 1: ft wherever they are and get a good look at
Speaker 1: how large that is. And that's about the size of
Speaker 1: your prison cell. That's close to what we're at right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's small, and that's a little claustrophobic. Usually, well it depends.
Speaker 1: The Most prison cells are designed for one guy, and
Speaker 1: then as prisons have grown increasingly overcrowded, they'll go and
Speaker 1: like bolt a bunk to another bunk to the wall,
Speaker 1: and then while I you have a cell for two,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes there's three. Whatever usually if it's designed
Speaker 1: to house more than um one or two people that
Speaker 1: it's a dorm and it can accommodate about eight guys
Speaker 1: per cell. Right yeah, I mean we could do a
Speaker 1: whole podcast on overcrowding and the issues there. That's like
Speaker 1: a very deep problem, but we'll just mention it and
Speaker 1: say it stinks. I'm beat literally and otherwise. Right, um,
Speaker 1: so chuck the You've got the general population cellblocks, right,
Speaker 1: which are all of the cell blocks aside from the
Speaker 1: fish tank and maximum security, which is also known as
Speaker 1: the whole right, and you've basically did you watch OZ
Speaker 1: a little bit? I think from what I understand that
Speaker 1: that's really accurate. I'm sure it is. So there's like
Speaker 1: a centrally located guard and like loose sight or whatever.
Speaker 1: They're like, you can't get through this, you know, operating
Speaker 1: the all the cell blocked doors and like letting people
Speaker 1: in and out, and they have a three and sixty
Speaker 1: degree view right well, and each one I thought this
Speaker 1: is interesting is fully each wing is fully staffed in
Speaker 1: case you need to lock down that wing. You've got
Speaker 1: all the dudes there, you need to take care of it,
Speaker 1: and it can be sealed off from the rest of
Speaker 1: the prison because apparently, um, the riot mob mentality can
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire among the president population. Yes, yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: and you would think, you know, people try to escape, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, there's a a double check. There's a
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class podcast about Alcatraz and
Speaker 1: the Great Escape. They Escape from Alcatraz, great movie. So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about that one, you
Speaker 1: can check that out, all right, if you're so inclined. Um,
Speaker 1: But to make sure that no one has escaped at
Speaker 1: any given point in time, they do counts through about
Speaker 1: the same time every day, probably the same time every day.
Speaker 1: They just do a head count where you have to
Speaker 1: line up and they say, okay, everybody's here. Then at
Speaker 1: night they walk around and count you while you're sleeping,
Speaker 1: right yeah. And then not only are you there, but
Speaker 1: you where you need to be. So if they say, well, Josh,
Speaker 1: you're in Chuck cell again, you know where you need
Speaker 1: to be, so they'll beat you down and take you
Speaker 1: to your own cell. Right, I'll feel like I need
Speaker 1: to be here, don't you hear our podcast? The Chuck
Speaker 1: is my partner. I wonder what the good fellas uh
Speaker 1: that had to be minimum or was that just a
Speaker 1: sweetheart deal? That was a sweetheart to remember when they
Speaker 1: were all in the same room, like cooking steaks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the one guy could slice the garlic so thin
Speaker 1: it was liquefying the oil so great. So Chuck, let's say, Um,
Speaker 1: you've become acclimated. You're no longer fish you. Um, you've
Speaker 1: shanked your first guy. Um, and you you're settled in
Speaker 1: for a nickel right, shank of verb? Yeah, it's shank
Speaker 1: is a verb, and and down and shiv is also
Speaker 1: another name for a shank, right, which is a homemade knife. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to get that clear. I don't know
Speaker 1: that it is clear. Well, a shiv and a shank,
Speaker 1: I know, can both be nouns for the knife. But
Speaker 1: I've also heard that you can shank someone and you
Speaker 1: can show someone you can. I think they're both nouns
Speaker 1: and verbs very loosen prison for the same one. They're
Speaker 1: very understanding. Yes, with the vocabulary. Um, so you settled
Speaker 1: in and you are living your life in prison behind bars,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, it's it's I would imagine, fairly horrible.
Speaker 1: But there are bright and shining moments and those basically
Speaker 1: consist of the trip to the commissary, right, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I don't I didn't know this, they don't. You don't
Speaker 1: see this a lot in movies. All you see is
Speaker 1: the black market stuff. But there is actually a commissary
Speaker 1: where you can you have an account where you your
Speaker 1: little prison money goes into your account. They obviously don't
Speaker 1: give you cash, that wouldn't be a good idea. And uh,
Speaker 1: you go to the commissary and say, hey, I like, um,
Speaker 1: whatever is approved on the list, you know, like a
Speaker 1: pack of smokes and uh, People magazine and they're like,
Speaker 1: well that's you know, three and a half dollars, So
Speaker 1: go work for a month people from January? Yeah, who
Speaker 1: sexiest man alive? And actually they debit each Each prisoner
Speaker 1: has an ID card that is linked to basically their
Speaker 1: prison work account. That's when they say their their debited
Speaker 1: credits or given credits, and then it's debited from their
Speaker 1: account when you buy stuff from the commissary. I learned
Speaker 1: about that from Snoop Dogg. Really, so that's the fancy
Speaker 1: modern prisons have it all electronically hooked up, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: But um, like we said, there's also a black market
Speaker 1: which you have seen in every prison movie ever, there's
Speaker 1: dudes trading cigarettes for favors or for protection, or for
Speaker 1: better books or better people magazines or whatever. And there's
Speaker 1: also visits from out of doors. Yeah right, sure, you
Speaker 1: get the bad stuff in a lot of times. Again,
Speaker 1: good fellas, You remember Karen snuck in like those huge
Speaker 1: bagged pills. I mean just like like in her purse
Speaker 1: or in her bra or something. Yeah, they clearly didn't
Speaker 1: check her. Again, I think that they got special treatment
Speaker 1: and chuck. Um. One of the things that I would
Speaker 1: imagine goes for a pretty high price, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a dozen cigarettes or so. Um is prison wine, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which prison wine? Pruno? Have you ever seen the site
Speaker 1: where the guy eats nasty things, Steve, Steve, don't eat it.
Speaker 1: I think it's called um. It is really funny and
Speaker 1: I saw this years ago. This guy made Pruno prison
Speaker 1: wine in his house and it's made with like fruits.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a Sangree type of thing. Then
Speaker 1: you put like moldy bread in a sock and it's
Speaker 1: like soaking all together in a bag till it ferments,
Speaker 1: and it's imagine pretty disgusting. Steve said it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1: He drank it. He did a white and a red.
Speaker 1: He said the white smelled like wrecked um, but he
Speaker 1: said it tasted just like alcohol. And he said the
Speaker 1: red actually wasn't that bad at all. He said, he
Speaker 1: said it tasted wine like and got him drunk, which
Speaker 1: is which is the deal? And uh so that that
Speaker 1: was the deal with Pruno. Wow. I wouldn't recommend trying
Speaker 1: in this at home, by the way, No, but that's
Speaker 1: the whole point. I mean, you're not at home, you're
Speaker 1: in prison, and you want to get drunk, so you
Speaker 1: make pruno. Yeah, unless someone wants to. Like you said,
Speaker 1: with visitation, you can sneak things in if you're you know,
Speaker 1: on the download, you're really not supposed to do that
Speaker 1: way you're not supposed to. You get searched. And um,
Speaker 1: and yes we are talking about visitation as well, now right.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, UM, visiting hours are basically like
Speaker 1: business hours. I thought it was like one day a
Speaker 1: month and everybody came at the same time on the
Speaker 1: same day. But that makes zero sense. UM. Prisoners are
Speaker 1: assigned a set number of visits per month, and I
Speaker 1: think the maximum number of visits you can get per
Speaker 1: month is for the most exemplary prisoner on the planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that that's something that they take away
Speaker 1: pretty pretty routinely if you, you know, are being disciplined, yes, Josh.
Speaker 1: And you also have to have a list when you
Speaker 1: go in of who you say can and can't visit you.
Speaker 1: And if you're not on that list, you can eventually visit,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna take a long time and a lot
Speaker 1: of paperworking tape, yes, right, yeah, And I think you
Speaker 1: have unlimited visits from investigators, your lawyer and that's about it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they still keep track of all that and your
Speaker 1: search coming in the prisoner and the and the visitor
Speaker 1: both searched coming in and out. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's full body cavity. It probably depends on the max
Speaker 1: level or your crime. I think kind of follows you
Speaker 1: around in prison, like what you did, what are you're
Speaker 1: convicted of? Like if you're convicted for smuggling things in
Speaker 1: your butt, check you a little more careful. And of course,
Speaker 1: now since we're talking about um, oh, and during visitation,
Speaker 1: like just regular visitation, right, um at a minimum security
Speaker 1: Remember this is just like college orientation weekend. Um, it
Speaker 1: looks like a waiting room. Um. And then in maximum security,
Speaker 1: visitation is like through that bulletproof class on the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty accurate. And then there's a different kind of
Speaker 1: visitation that I think everybody likes to think about, at
Speaker 1: least thinks about whenever they hear prison. And that is
Speaker 1: kind of goal visitation, right, Yeah, it's it's one of
Speaker 1: the two ways that you can have sex in prison. Right.
Speaker 1: This is far more the um, the I guess more
Speaker 1: governmentally defended way of having sex in prison. UM. Conjugal
Speaker 1: visits Actually, we're UM originated in nineteen eighteen in Mississippi
Speaker 1: at a state prison in Mississippi, where they remain in effect.
Speaker 1: But originally they were created as a reward for hard
Speaker 1: work on the chain gangs and stuff right, well, and
Speaker 1: to incentivize them to work harder to write um. And
Speaker 1: it worked really really well. UM. Nowadays that's not used
Speaker 1: quite as UM overtly as an incentive or reward. UM.
Speaker 1: It is a reward for for good behavior or you
Speaker 1: have to be like, you know, the one who can
Speaker 1: get as many visits a month as one possibly can
Speaker 1: level of good behavior prisoner. But UM. It's generally defended
Speaker 1: in two ways. One is a basic human right, like
Speaker 1: you have a right to have sex even if you're incarcerated,
Speaker 1: just like you have a right to food and water
Speaker 1: and being kept clean, sure, right um. And then the
Speaker 1: other way, and this this appears to be much more
Speaker 1: legitimate in the eyes of the correction system. It's a
Speaker 1: way to maintain the family bonds throughout a stint in prisons.
Speaker 1: Right sweet. And that's what it's even officially called as
Speaker 1: the Extended Family Program, right, So it's not just about sex.
Speaker 1: Like you can have your whole family come over and barbecue.
Speaker 1: In some states it's UM. In Canada, I think they
Speaker 1: have there there. I guess visitation areas look like apartments
Speaker 1: have barbecues. There's such wisses you can have. You can
Speaker 1: have up to three UM family members at a time visit.
Speaker 1: Or you can just have your wife and it has
Speaker 1: to be your wife and you have to have been
Speaker 1: married before, because that's the whole point they want. They
Speaker 1: don't want you to turn into even more of a
Speaker 1: deviant than you were going in. They want you to
Speaker 1: keep talking to your wife and keep you know, loving
Speaker 1: your kids mean love by your kids. And to make
Speaker 1: that the transition back out into the normal world that
Speaker 1: much easier, right, Right, So, if you're one of those
Speaker 1: serial killers and you have one of those weirdos that
Speaker 1: writes you and you're marry and then you marry them,
Speaker 1: they can't come and visit you and have sex, right right, No, Okay? Now, Um,
Speaker 1: if you're gay, however, and you have a domestic partner
Speaker 1: and you are in Mexico City, Brazil, or California, you
Speaker 1: are entitled to conjugal visits as well, which is pretty
Speaker 1: significant in California because in two thousand seven you could
Speaker 1: have a conjugal visit if you were gay, but you
Speaker 1: couldn't get married if you were gay, thanks to Proposition eight,
Speaker 1: which was just overturned. Yeah yesterday. It's not over yet.
Speaker 1: The proposition night was overturned yesterday. Yeah. So that's the
Speaker 1: that's the skinny and conjugal visits not not quite as
Speaker 1: again like arrested development, I don't think, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: don't use it a whole lot anymore. They say it's
Speaker 1: pretty uncommon. There's only six states, right, yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: the one thing I thought was funny though, that one
Speaker 1: of the rules for the visiting um person is the
Speaker 1: dress appropriately and they said on the list of rules
Speaker 1: was no transparent clothing or bare middriffs, strapless attire, or
Speaker 1: anything with obscene or offensive language. So your wife can't
Speaker 1: get all dolled up in her baby doll lingerie. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think they're like, can't you just put
Speaker 1: a trench coat on? Like everybody else? You know, have
Speaker 1: you not seen the movies exactly? And I think the
Speaker 1: mix that's it's a mixed bag on whether or not
Speaker 1: experts agree or they just agree and disagree, whether or
Speaker 1: not it actually serves a really good purpose. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the studies on it have have shown mixed results
Speaker 1: about whether or not it prevents recitativism. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: bone head word. That's why s game a little bit
Speaker 1: that you should know, should know. But Josh Clark, so Chuck,
Speaker 1: you mentioned there's another way to have sex in prison,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the reasons I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to prison, because actually there's two more ways.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, you can have consensual sex with another
Speaker 1: man if you're in there, which doesn't necessarily mean you're homosexual.
Speaker 1: A lot of guys just there's nothing wrong with that, like,
Speaker 1: I just do that because they're in there. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's also rape that happens in prison. That's the reason
Speaker 1: I don't want to go to prison, just one reason. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, Josh, we have a statistic from
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Justice says four point five percent of
Speaker 1: state and federal prisoners reported being raped in the past year.
Speaker 1: And that is UM seventy thousand prisoners in a year.
Speaker 1: We're sexually abused by either guards or other inmates. See,
Speaker 1: that's all over the place, because there's other I've seen
Speaker 1: other numbers. UM one one two thousand four study found
Speaker 1: that zero point zero zero five percent even reported being
Speaker 1: raped while they were incarcerated, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: those were probably you know, untrue. Well that's the deal,
Speaker 1: is reported. That's the key. Like rape goes unreported a lot,
Speaker 1: just period, but it definitely goes unreported in prison because
Speaker 1: you don't want to be a snitch. Well sure, but no,
Speaker 1: I think these are people who have been let out already.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah. But then in two thousand three, the
Speaker 1: year before UM, Congress created the Prison Rape Elimination Actors.
Speaker 1: You know about that UM and the number they used
Speaker 1: was thirteen pent and estimated of prisoners are raped during
Speaker 1: their incarceration and their goal is zero. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're like, you have to have a zero tolerance policy
Speaker 1: on UM inmate two inmate rape UM and guard to
Speaker 1: inmate or employee to inmate. Sure, rape that kind of
Speaker 1: thing too, because it's not just inmates raping one another.
Speaker 1: Guards at correctional facilities have been known to um be
Speaker 1: a little heavy handed and possibly psychotic themselves. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I can say this because my cousin was a prison
Speaker 1: guard for a little while, a corrections officer. Cousin Wolfe.
Speaker 1: Was he high school grad? Well he had to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to go to college to be
Speaker 1: a corrections officer, No, you don't. You just have to
Speaker 1: know how to shoot a shotgun. But to be the
Speaker 1: warden you do. Yes, okay, Josh. Let's say you're in
Speaker 1: prison and you commit a an offense or you're caught
Speaker 1: raping somebody. Under the new zero tolerance policy, Well, if
Speaker 1: you're caught raping someone or murdering someone, you would actually
Speaker 1: go to trial for real, guess. But if you're caught
Speaker 1: doing something a little less offensive, um, you can go
Speaker 1: to the whole. They can um remove your good behavior time,
Speaker 1: transfer you to to a scarier prison, or like you said, uh,
Speaker 1: limit your visiting hours that I'm sure that's a good
Speaker 1: way to dig back at a prisoner. So you can't
Speaker 1: get visits, um, and you get demerits called shots, and
Speaker 1: they log those to your little file. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: take those into consideration when you're up for parole hearing
Speaker 1: or you're up to maybe get more visitations if if
Speaker 1: they're any time, they're looking at your behavior. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: they'll look at the shots and they follow you around.
Speaker 1: You don't want any shots. And that's official punishment. Is
Speaker 1: there's also unofficial punishment meted out by guards, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would rather have the official punishment, I think, because
Speaker 1: just like in the movies, the guards can shake you down.
Speaker 1: They can quote unquote, um investigate what you have in
Speaker 1: your room, when what they're really doing is like destroying
Speaker 1: the things that you've grown to depend on to keep
Speaker 1: you saying, I know, have you ever seen Birdman of Alcatraz? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awful, and they take his birds away I know well,
Speaker 1: and then uh escape from Alcatraz. They took away the
Speaker 1: one eyes paints the old dude that painted. That was
Speaker 1: like the only thing he loved and they took away
Speaker 1: his canvas in his paints. Some jerk warden. It's always
Speaker 1: a jerk warden. Well, yeah, except Brewbaker. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that too. Uh. And guards can also beat you down,
Speaker 1: and if nobody sees it and no one reports it,
Speaker 1: then it's just what happens. Well, I think it's I
Speaker 1: think that's officially sanctioned. I don't think that they have
Speaker 1: to get permission to beat you down. If I permiss, say, hey,
Speaker 1: this guy is getting a little ordinary, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: break a river or too. But what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: I think they have a pretty wide berth as to
Speaker 1: what sanctions the beating and Grabmanowski put it, I'd like
Speaker 1: to I'd like to quote him here. It is not
Speaker 1: uncommon for guards to fire shotguns at prisoners whenever they
Speaker 1: see any commotion. Didn't understand that one, and I double checked,
Speaker 1: and it says at prisoners, not just fire shotguns like
Speaker 1: up in the air something. It's just like, hey, there's
Speaker 1: you guys are scuffling. Kaboom. Yeah, I don't know about
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, this is indoors uh so like we said, Um,
Speaker 1: snitches are not you don't want to be a snitch
Speaker 1: in prison, And um, it's very much that mentality that
Speaker 1: you see in the movies where keep it quiet, don't
Speaker 1: rat on anyone, because if you do, then I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows what's going to happen. Uh, well, I can
Speaker 1: tell you it's gonna happen. You're likely to be shanked
Speaker 1: or shipped, which is the same thing, or raped and
Speaker 1: shaw shank. Yeah. Remember Andy's problem there with the with
Speaker 1: the sisters. Yeah, but he got back. That was one
Speaker 1: of the great redemption scenes of all time. I think
Speaker 1: the whole movie with great Oh no, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of the Green Mile. Sorry, but the funny
Speaker 1: thing is is, and it's not funny to the guards,
Speaker 1: but they're way way more prisoners than guards. And every
Speaker 1: once in a while in history we've had these big
Speaker 1: uprisings where the prisoners have actually taken control of the prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you work at a prison, you don't want to
Speaker 1: hear the word attica sounded out by like enchant form
Speaker 1: by one or even more one or two prisoners. Is
Speaker 1: that what they use now? Is that the signal? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean like that that means that there's violent unrest
Speaker 1: right around the corner. I thought that was a signal.
Speaker 1: Now was like attica, I don't know if it's a signal.
Speaker 1: Is more like a call to arms, you know, And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's toilet paper on fire and
Speaker 1: guys are coming at you and it's just not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that didn't work out too well. No, it was one right,
Speaker 1: And apparently Atteka Prison in upstate New York was really
Speaker 1: really deplorable as far as its treatment of the prisoners went,
Speaker 1: which is really saying something because their prisoners to begin with,
Speaker 1: and to have like the prisoners even know like you
Speaker 1: can't do this, Um, that's pretty bad. So they took
Speaker 1: a couple of guards hostage, rioted, um held them, and
Speaker 1: demanded for better treatment. And the State of New York
Speaker 1: was like, okay, all right, we hear you, and we're
Speaker 1: going to storm the prison. And I think thirty three
Speaker 1: people died. Uh no, thirty nine guards. Yeah, thirty nine
Speaker 1: guards and prisoners died. And that was in Many one. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's one in New Mexico, right, Yeah. The
Speaker 1: New Mexico State pen uh near Santa Fe was another uprising,
Speaker 1: and that was where thirty three inmates were killed and
Speaker 1: no guards were killed, but seven of them were captured
Speaker 1: and beaten pretty severely, right, and apparently some of the
Speaker 1: inmates that were killed died from torture. Really just pleasant.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it, Chuck. It's bad enough to
Speaker 1: go to prison, but one of the aspects of prison
Speaker 1: is that there's an end of your sentence, right, there's
Speaker 1: a light at the end of the tunnel if you
Speaker 1: can make it. Dying in prison is about as bad
Speaker 1: as it gets, especially dying of torture in prison. Would
Speaker 1: say it's pretty bad. So Josh, let's say you don't die.
Speaker 1: Let's see you serve your time and you do get out.
Speaker 1: What what what goes on there? Well, you would be
Speaker 1: like nine of all prison inmates get out. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why you want those family
Speaker 1: bonds in there, because you want to keep people on
Speaker 1: the up and up rather than Prison represents a real
Speaker 1: double edged sword. Either it reforms people or it makes
Speaker 1: them worse, and a lot of that depends on how
Speaker 1: a prisoners treated and the options get into them in prison. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the big trends now is education as part
Speaker 1: of rehabilitation. So I think every single state prison in
Speaker 1: the US UM offers a G. E. D course, and
Speaker 1: some of them require it for parole, which is good. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: There's also a vocational course, is that kind of thing? Right? Yes,
Speaker 1: But once again, like in shaw Shank, you can take
Speaker 1: that course and pass the test, but if you have
Speaker 1: a jerk warden, you still might get shot. You know,
Speaker 1: we should have done at the beginning of this podcast.
Speaker 1: We should have just said, everybody, go watch Shawshank Redemption.
Speaker 1: Everybody'll see you next week. Everyone loves that movie. Can
Speaker 1: we talk about the movies? Now? Are we there? Not quite? Okay? Um, Chuck.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people out there who don't think
Speaker 1: that prisoners should just be left to rot, that they
Speaker 1: they're there should be prison reform, that there shouldn't be
Speaker 1: any rape, that that Congress shouldn't have had to have
Speaker 1: passed the law requiring zero tolerance on prison rape. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's actually been a prison reform movement going around
Speaker 1: since I think, uh, possibly earlier than that, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Quakers are huge on prison reform as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again, you want prison reform, you want your prisoners
Speaker 1: treated in a way where there is the potential for
Speaker 1: rehabilitation um because of recitativism, right, well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's why they pay them to work these jobs, because
Speaker 1: they want to give them some semblance of normal life
Speaker 1: so when they get out they can say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I held a job in prison for the first time
Speaker 1: in my life. Maybe they were like a drug dealer,
Speaker 1: what have you. Right, well, think about it. Recitativism. The
Speaker 1: highest rate is among property offenses, and that is a
Speaker 1: crime of the poor, breaking into someone's house and stealing
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, that's what you do when you're poor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's got the highest rate of recentativism. So it
Speaker 1: would seem like some sort of education or occupational program
Speaker 1: wouldn't help deter that. Well. Yeah. But the other stat though,
Speaker 1: that kind of makes me feel weird, is that I
Speaker 1: think sixty seven of people who commit crimes to go
Speaker 1: back into prison it's an entirely different crime that they commit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which was like that was really discouraging. I
Speaker 1: would think maybe if the guy just can't not steal TVs,
Speaker 1: he gets out and steal TVs, you would think, so
Speaker 1: at least go back to what he knows. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a little staggering. It is that would shut any
Speaker 1: Quaker up? And what what is the rate? I saw?
Speaker 1: I can't get like the most recent stat but it
Speaker 1: looks like between fifty and six somewhere in there from
Speaker 1: year to year for recidivism rates. Yeah, though in two
Speaker 1: and ninety four it was sixty seven point five, right.
Speaker 1: I think it's gone down since then. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: that's surprising because the incarceration rates have gone down too,
Speaker 1: which is totally bucking a trend. I think, um, they're
Speaker 1: going down. That's what you said. Remember in two thousand
Speaker 1: five that these stats are based on, it was two
Speaker 1: million and changed to I'm sorry, it was two million, Um,
Speaker 1: one ninety three thousand prisoners in the US. You said
Speaker 1: it was less than two million in two thousand nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that's people that are currently incarcerated. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean more people aren't being incarcerated on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, because I think that's true because the
Speaker 1: mandatory minimums. I think more people than ever are being incarcerated.
Speaker 1: So maybe that was people that had left. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, there was a two hundred seventy increase
Speaker 1: between two thousand. That's huge, and we spent I think
Speaker 1: fifty one billion dollars to incarceerate people in prison in jail,
Speaker 1: whereas um, I think that comes out to twenty nine
Speaker 1: thousand per per year. And remember a bail podcast. Uh
Speaker 1: it costs d and fifty doll was per in mate
Speaker 1: per year for probation. How much rather than twenty nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. But these minor offenses throwing these guys, especially
Speaker 1: like the car thief that was in a super max
Speaker 1: that was sixteen. Let me come on non violent offenses.
Speaker 1: You can rehabilitate that kids with some work. Alright, So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I think it is movie time, don't you think so? Yes,
Speaker 1: Josh movies. I made a list of my favorites. Feel
Speaker 1: free to chime in. Shawshank Redemption that's number one for me,
Speaker 1: The Green Mile, and that's not mine. I've got Escape
Speaker 1: from Alcatraz because I saw that when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and it's still like an awesome movie, Papion classic with
Speaker 1: the Dustin Hoffman with the glasses, with the glasses and
Speaker 1: and Steve McQueen, right, it was in the Great Escape
Speaker 1: to also a great person movie. H cool hand Luke
Speaker 1: was probably the funniest one of the lot, the longest yard. Actually,
Speaker 1: that might have been the funniest one. I never saw
Speaker 1: either of them. Really, You're nuts. Bad Boys Classic with
Speaker 1: Will Smion and the Sean Penn went about the juv detention.
Speaker 1: That's when Sean Penn was like, you know, nineteen years
Speaker 1: old and he was in juvenile detention and then he
Speaker 1: he filled a pillow case up with a soda cans
Speaker 1: and just annihilated this dude one night. Yeah, that's called
Speaker 1: a slock. By the way, Now that's when it's in
Speaker 1: a sock. Okay, I imagine this is me. It's called slaice.
Speaker 1: UM American History X. That was pretty brutal. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was very brutal. Brew Baker, did you see that one.
Speaker 1: That's where Robert Redford went in undercover as a prisoner
Speaker 1: to sniff out how awful the prison was because he
Speaker 1: was going to be the next warden. You're talking about
Speaker 1: the natural And then most depressing, definitely Midnight Express for me,
Speaker 1: the Turkish prison one. Yeah, Midnight Run was pretty depressing.
Speaker 1: And um Animal Factory is the one I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: is the most realistic. I have not seen that one.
Speaker 1: That's the one that Steve Bushimmy directed and Um Edward
Speaker 1: for long and I think William dafoees in it. It's
Speaker 1: really good. And it's called Animal Factories, so you have
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea that it's realistic. I saw a
Speaker 1: Taxi to the Dark Side last night, and it's not.
Speaker 1: It's about the US's policies on torture and how he
Speaker 1: implemented him post nine eleven. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: prison stuff in it, like Abu Grave and Bogram and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. It's pretty disturbing. Yeah, we didn't get
Speaker 1: into I mean, there's so much about prisons that we
Speaker 1: didn't get into here. We could do like three more
Speaker 1: podcasts if we wanted to, and if it seemed like
Speaker 1: we danced around something. Oh, I don't know. Capital Punishment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't go there. That's coming. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: do that one. It's gonna be sweeping. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: top hats and like people doing like the can can
Speaker 1: and stuff at the beginning. It's going to be enormous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we have the rockets lined up for that
Speaker 1: list we do in prison Garbent. Yes, So Chuck's telling
Speaker 1: me he's given me the Double Ink, which means there
Speaker 1: is no listener mail. It was too long and too
Speaker 1: full of goodness. You know what that means. That means
Speaker 1: we just haven't gotten any listener mail. So we want
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Just type some stuff out that
Speaker 1: we would find interesting. Spanking on the bottom maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: talc it first and uh send it to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.