Speaker 1: M Hi, everybody, Chuck here, Welcome to Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know selects. Every week, as you know, we pick out
Speaker 1: curated episodes that were some of our favorites, and this
Speaker 1: week I'm gonna go with Prisons Colon Not as Fun
Speaker 1: as you think. This is from August twelve, two ten,
Speaker 1: and quite frankly, this could have been probably a two
Speaker 1: part episode. We may follow up at some point, but
Speaker 1: it's a really good, honest look at prisons in the
Speaker 1: United States and uh, just sort of the state of things.
Speaker 1: And it was very eye opening for me and Josh
Speaker 1: I remember, and it's got a good title to boot
Speaker 1: courtesy of Mr Josh Clark. So here we go with
Speaker 1: Prisons Colon Not as Fun as you think. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
Speaker 1: as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant as if you're surprised, Uh,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should know, right, Chuck, Yes,
Speaker 1: we are here, Josh, and uh can we talk about prisons? Now?
Speaker 1: We can talk about prisons. Remember in the Presidential Pardons episode,
Speaker 1: I was talking about how people have been calling for
Speaker 1: President Obama to reduced to basically issue a blanket pardon
Speaker 1: for people who are convicted under the mandatory minimums for
Speaker 1: crack where there's a huge disparity, and I said it
Speaker 1: was like five to one. It's actually it was I think, um,
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty to one disparity. Right, boy, Well
Speaker 1: he did it like pretty much as we were recording
Speaker 1: that he signed this law or Congress was passing this
Speaker 1: law that reduced the mandatory minimum and basically in effect
Speaker 1: overturned the sentences of first time offenders who are convicted
Speaker 1: and we're given these five years and anybody who was
Speaker 1: convicted under the old mandatory minimum laws. So there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of people coming out of prison looking
Speaker 1: for crag. Well that's one argument that's not very fair
Speaker 1: to say. No, it's not, But I mean, isn't that
Speaker 1: kind of the the way that Americans and probably people
Speaker 1: in general view prisoners. It's like, you did something wrong,
Speaker 1: so you deserve to be where you are. But that's
Speaker 1: without having any real concept of what prison is like.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know I don't want to be in prison.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the movie An Innocent Man? Remember
Speaker 1: we talked about that Tom Sellick, very scary scene. That
Speaker 1: was it for me. I was like, I don't ever
Speaker 1: want to go to prison ever. Um. But that's about
Speaker 1: all I knew about it until we started researching for
Speaker 1: this very robust podcast on how prison works. So chuck, um,
Speaker 1: I guess apparently when this article was written by Grabanowski,
Speaker 1: it was I think two thousand five is short. That
Speaker 1: was the latest stats he had, and it said he
Speaker 1: said that there were like more than two million people
Speaker 1: in prison, right, and it's actually decreased. Yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: one point six million at the end of oh nine.
Speaker 1: But when I look at these stats there, they're all
Speaker 1: kinds of stats. Um. You know, one in thirty one
Speaker 1: adults is in the correction system, but that includes jail, prison, probation,
Speaker 1: and supervision. So they narrowed that down to only in prison.
Speaker 1: One and every one hundred Americans is in prison. I know.
Speaker 1: And that crazy. Did you see what fair state top
Speaker 1: the list for the most number of adults in prison?
Speaker 1: That's right, Georgia, Georgia one in thirteen people, one in
Speaker 1: thirteen adults, and Georgia's in the correctional system. That's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we live in a state of criminals either that or
Speaker 1: some like a real police state one of the two. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna comment on that. It's a chuck. We
Speaker 1: should probably calm down. Let's settle down here. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about prison. Prison is a deterrent, it's a punishment, and
Speaker 1: it's hopefully there's increasingly it's becoming a place of reform
Speaker 1: and rehabilitation. And we'll talk about that a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: But in the US, there's pretty much three three types
Speaker 1: of security levels for prison, right, Yeah, with one extra
Speaker 1: little added measure that we'll talk about. It's a big
Speaker 1: extra though. Yeah, you got a minimum, you've got medium,
Speaker 1: and you've got of course everyone's favorite maximum security prisons
Speaker 1: and uh minimums security prison. We we're mainly going to
Speaker 1: cover maximum because that's really the most interesting. Even though
Speaker 1: I think they said like only or in max is
Speaker 1: 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 likeum security prison, right, Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: definitely non violent offenders with pretty clean criminal records or
Speaker 1: maybe you've served time in a medium and you were
Speaker 1: really good, and they were like, yeah, let's bump this
Speaker 1: dude down to maximum or minimum. Yeah, right, right, then
Speaker 1: you've got medium. And that's the one that actually you
Speaker 1: you would see most um on like television shows or something,
Speaker 1: people think that's maximum. But when you see prisoners able
Speaker 1: to like move around and play cards and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: that's generally medium from what I understand. Right. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: have like dorm room style accommodations a lot of times
Speaker 1: with you know, eight or ten guys to a room. Um,
Speaker 1: and like you said, the little social day rooms where
Speaker 1: they hang out and trade cigarettes and like on oz. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: do horrific things to when they We'll get to that too. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course the grandaddy 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. It's so
Speaker 1: props 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 at the maximum security prison
Speaker 1: in um Marian, Illinois I think not Juliet Marian, right um.
Speaker 1: Two guards were murdered in two separate incidents on the
Speaker 1: same day and the prison went into lockdown, which bad coincidence.
Speaker 1: Is that what they called it, and that's what I
Speaker 1: call it. The prison went into lockdown, which is where
Speaker 1: you're in your cell all day, you can't move around,
Speaker 1: you can't do anything, you have no freedom of movement. Um.
Speaker 1: And it remained in that state ever since. So it
Speaker 1: basically gave birth to the super max prison, right uh.
Speaker 1: And since then a lot of prisons have been opened
Speaker 1: as super max prisons. They're in a state of lockdown.
Speaker 1: And if it sounds a bit familiar, basically the entire
Speaker 1: prison is a series of solitary confinements there the whole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they call it officially, it's called Security Housing Unit and
Speaker 1: s h U, but everyone calls it the whole, just
Speaker 1: like in the movies. And as far as prisons go,
Speaker 1: solitary confinement and then especially super max is extremely controversial,
Speaker 1: right um Uh. Solitary confinement originally was created in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty by a warden and a prison in Pennsylvania, with
Speaker 1: the lofty goal of giving a convict nothing but time
Speaker 1: to contemplate what he'd done, the bad thing that he'd done.
Speaker 1: I think anything that was supposed in eighteen thirty is
Speaker 1: a good way to punish people. You might want to
Speaker 1: review that notion again here. And so, yeah, they basically
Speaker 1: found out that actually these are they don't sit around
Speaker 1: and think about all the bad they've done. They kind
Speaker 1: of go nuts, and not just kind of go nuts,
Speaker 1: they go clinically insane as anybody would, right, or they
Speaker 1: go in sort of insane, and they really go off
Speaker 1: the deep end. Right because prison has also and still
Speaker 1: remains used to Um, how is the mentally ill at
Speaker 1: times not as much or as overtly as before, but
Speaker 1: still you find the insane in prisons, right. Um. The
Speaker 1: other problem with a super max facility, besides the fact
Speaker 1: 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 the worst of the worst, But a super
Speaker 1: max prison may have a couple hundred cells. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta fill the cells somehow, So you have relatively minor
Speaker 1: offenses or convicts, um going into super max prisons killing
Speaker 1: themselves in a really horrible way. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: big build up in the nineties. I think they said
Speaker 1: by the end of the decade and of the nineties
Speaker 1: that um, thirty different states had a super max prison.
Speaker 1: And you said that each state only has a handful
Speaker 1: of dudes that even qualify. So, like you said, they
Speaker 1: get put in there, they kind of go through a
Speaker 1: zookosis of sorts, like weird behavior like the bears walking
Speaker 1: in circles. Um, except way way worse, way, way worse.
Speaker 1: This one guy in Wisconsin, he was a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old car thief. Another guy, twenty year old David Tracy,
Speaker 1: hanged himself in a Virginia super max and he was
Speaker 1: nineteen and he had been there for two and a
Speaker 1: half years for selling drugs. No, he'd been there for
Speaker 1: a year and he had a two and a half
Speaker 1: year sentence and he still hung himself. He couldn't even
Speaker 1: make it a year halfway into a two and a
Speaker 1: half year sentence because he was immediately put in solitary confinement. UM,
Speaker 1: and then it gets worse. Apparently, UM people have um
Speaker 1: been known to swallow razor blades. One guy uh in
Speaker 1: in Indiana super max prison choked himself to death with
Speaker 1: a washcloth, and another guy, twenty one year old mentally
Speaker 1: ill prisoner in that same prison, set himself on fire
Speaker 1: and later died from those wounds. Yeah. The good news, though,
Speaker 1: my friend, is that um, a lot of supermaxes have
Speaker 1: been downgraded since then, Like the current trend is to
Speaker 1: downgrade your supermax to regular max. So they're kind of
Speaker 1: getting the message a little bit that we really don't
Speaker 1: need that to this many super max prisons. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: the nineties were bad. Yeah, but there was only one
Speaker 1: federal super max, only one, which one a d X
Speaker 1: in Florence, Colorado. A d X Florence. But like you said,
Speaker 1: it's mostly on the state level. That's for like the
Speaker 1: really really bad tax evaders. I imagine a d X
Speaker 1: is not the kind of place you want to take
Speaker 1: a tour. Think that the single federal supermax is not
Speaker 1: the kind of place you want to be. It's a chuck, you, buddy,
Speaker 1: have just been popped. Say, growing marijuana indoors. You're going
Speaker 1: to prison. Let's come to terms with that, okay, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways that you actually get to prison,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and there as follows. You can take a taxi,
Speaker 1: which apparently is more routine than we would imagine. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. Um, you can be dropped off by
Speaker 1: a friend or family member. That's what I would choose,
Speaker 1: as in, I think that's what Edward Norton. I'd have
Speaker 1: my 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
Speaker 1: uh bus liner. You know how nice as greyhounds are.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're nice. It's not like that. You know that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cramped and nasty and smelly and it
Speaker 1: sounds like a a locker room on wheels. Well, not
Speaker 1: just that. They you go take yourself to the sheriff's
Speaker 1: department and um, you know, curse your family member for
Speaker 1: not being like, really, couldn't just take me the rest
Speaker 1: of the way to the prison. Um, So you get
Speaker 1: to the sheriff's department and you basically just wait there
Speaker 1: for the prison bus to come pick you up. And
Speaker 1: then you know, you stop at sheriff's department, after Sheriff's department,
Speaker 1: after Sheriff's department. That's the insulting party. You're like, all right,
Speaker 1: can I go to prison? Can I just start this please?
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, we gotta make six stops on
Speaker 1: the way. Hold on, and the bus is going to
Speaker 1: break down in exactly minute. We're gonna go pick up
Speaker 1: your future boyfriend first, So Chuck, you um finally get
Speaker 1: to prison, right, Thank god, those cookies that your mom
Speaker 1: gave you have been taken away from you. I mean
Speaker 1: just immediately. You didn't even get to eat one. They're
Speaker 1: showing down on those, the guards are and you have
Speaker 1: a new moniker. You have a new name, a new
Speaker 1: catch all name that describes you as a newly inducted prisoner.
Speaker 1: You're a fish. Yeah, yeah, just like in the movies.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of this. I thought, that's just
Speaker 1: like in the movies, And it is just like in
Speaker 1: the movies because they know a lot about prison. So
Speaker 1: why would you make a prison movie that was you know,
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 lowsed 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 tank like you're on
Speaker 1: full display, like for thirty days. Dudes are sizing you up, hungry. Well,
Speaker 1: like in Shawshank when they took bets on who was
Speaker 1: going to be the first guy, first fish to break
Speaker 1: down and cry that first night, it was that fat
Speaker 1: guy broke down and cry, and then he got beaten
Speaker 1: and bad things happen to him. I always confused that
Speaker 1: in The Green Mile, I didn't like that one. No,
Speaker 1: Sean Schenk was definitely better, but I often confused scenes
Speaker 1: they were shot almost exactly the same. Yeah, agreed. So uh,
Speaker 1: once you get out of your fish tank, you get
Speaker 1: your cell assignment, you may get your job right and
Speaker 1: again for about ten cents an hour. That's what you're paid.
Speaker 1: You should. I read the letter real quick. There's actually
Speaker 1: a site on the web called prison talk dot com
Speaker 1: and it's not as hot as you would think, but
Speaker 1: you can go to forums there and read x cons
Speaker 1: and maybe even some current cons if you have internet
Speaker 1: access and like a minimum security talk about things on
Speaker 1: these prison 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, the not by
Speaker 1: 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 prison. And he didn't even mention the fecal matter. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's implicit. Well I just made an explicit chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: So that is one example of a prison job that
Speaker 1: you can get um and then you're off to your room,
Speaker 1: which I would encourage everyone out to walk off eight
Speaker 1: ft by six ft wherever they are and get a
Speaker 1: good look at how large that is. And that's about
Speaker 1: the size of your prison cell. That's close to what
Speaker 1: we're at right now. Yeah, that's small, and that's a
Speaker 1: little claustrophobic. Usually, well it depends. The most prison cells
Speaker 1: are designed for one guy, and then as prisons have
Speaker 1: grown increasingly overcrowded, they'll go and like both a bunk
Speaker 1: to another bunk to the wall, and then while you
Speaker 1: have a cell for two and then sometimes there's three whatever.
Speaker 1: Usually if it's designed to house more than um one
Speaker 1: or two people that it's a dorm and it it
Speaker 1: can accommodate about eight guys per cell. Right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we could do a whole podcast on overcrowding and
Speaker 1: the issues there. That's like a very deep problem, but
Speaker 1: we'll just mention it and say it stinks. I'm beat
Speaker 1: literally and otherwise right yeah, um, so chuck, the you've
Speaker 1: got the general population cellblocks, right, which are all of
Speaker 1: the cell blocks aside from the fish tank and maximum
Speaker 1: security which is also known as the whole right, and
Speaker 1: you've basically did you watch OZ a little bit? I
Speaker 1: think from what I understand that that's really accurate. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it is. So there's like a centrally located guard
Speaker 1: and like loose sight or whatever. They're like, you can't
Speaker 1: get through this, you know, operating the all the cell
Speaker 1: blocked doors and like letting people in and out, and
Speaker 1: they have a three and sixty degree view right well,
Speaker 1: and each one I thought this is interesting, is fully
Speaker 1: each wing is fully staffed in case you need to
Speaker 1: lock down that wing. You've got all the dudes there,
Speaker 1: you need to take care of it, and it can
Speaker 1: be sealed off from the rest of the prison because apparently, um,
Speaker 1: the riot mob mentality can spread like wildfire among the
Speaker 1: president population. Yes, yeah, so um, and you would think,
Speaker 1: you know, people try to escape, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: there's a a double check. There's a stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class podcast about Alcatraz and the Great Escape.
Speaker 1: They escape from Alcatraz, great movie. So if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about that one, you can check that out,
Speaker 1: all right, if you're so inclined. Um, But to make
Speaker 1: sure that no one has escaped at any given point
Speaker 1: in time, they do counts through about the same time
Speaker 1: every day, probably the same time every day. They just
Speaker 1: do a head count where you have to like line
Speaker 1: up and they say, okay, everybody's here, right. Then at
Speaker 1: night they walk around and count you while you're sleeping, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then not only are you there, but you where
Speaker 1: 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: they the one guy could slice the garlic so thin
Speaker 1: it would 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, shank is
Speaker 1: a verb and and doun and shiv is also another
Speaker 1: 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 now, 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've 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: you go work for a month People from January, Sexiest
Speaker 1: Man Alive. And actually they debit each Each prisoner has
Speaker 1: an ID card that is linked to basically their prison
Speaker 1: work account. That's when they take their their debited credits
Speaker 1: or given credits, and then it's debited from their account
Speaker 1: when you buy stuff from the commissary. I learned about
Speaker 1: that from Snoop Dogg. Really, so that's the fancy modern
Speaker 1: 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: bag 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: right and chuck um one of the things that I
Speaker 1: would imagine goes for a pretty high price, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a dozen cigarettes or so. Um is prison wine, right, Yeah?
Speaker 1: Which prison wine? PRUNEO. 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 down, you're really not supposed to do that
Speaker 1: way not supposed to. You get searched and um, and yes,
Speaker 1: we are talking about visitation as well, now right, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that UM visiting hours are basically like business hours.
Speaker 1: I thought it was like one day a month and
Speaker 1: everybody came at the same time on the same day.
Speaker 1: But that makes zero sense. UM. Prisoners are assigned a
Speaker 1: set number of visits per month, and I think the
Speaker 1: maximum number of visits you can get per month is
Speaker 1: for the most exemplary prisoner on the planet. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would imagine that that's something that they take away pretty
Speaker 1: 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 paperwork and red tape. Yes, right, Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think you have unlimited visits from investigators, your lawyer, and
Speaker 1: that's about it, right, Yeah, but they still keep track
Speaker 1: of all that and your search coming in and the
Speaker 1: prisoner and the and the visitor both searched coming in
Speaker 1: and out. I don't know if it's a full body cavity.
Speaker 1: It probably depends on the max level or your crime.
Speaker 1: I think kind of follows you around in prison, like
Speaker 1: what you did, what you're convicted of, Like if you
Speaker 1: were convicted for smuggling things in your butt, and I
Speaker 1: check you a little more careful. And of course, now
Speaker 1: since we're talking about um, oh, and during visitation, like
Speaker 1: just regular visitation, right, Um at a minimum security remember
Speaker 1: this is just like college orientation weekend. Um. It looks
Speaker 1: 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: conjugal visitation. Right yeah, it's it's one of the two
Speaker 1: ways that you can have sex in prison. Right. This
Speaker 1: is far more the um the I guess more governmentally
Speaker 1: defended way of having sex in prison. Um conjugal visits. Actually,
Speaker 1: we're um. Originated in nineteen eighteen in Mississippi at a
Speaker 1: state prison in Mississippi, where they remain in effect. But
Speaker 1: originally they were created as a reward for hard work
Speaker 1: on the chain gangs and stuff, right well, and to
Speaker 1: incentivize them to work harder to write um, and it
Speaker 1: worked really really well. UM. Nowadays that's not used quite
Speaker 1: as um overtly as an incentive or reward. Um. It
Speaker 1: is a reward for for good behavior or you have
Speaker 1: to be like, you know, the one who can get
Speaker 1: as many visits a month as one possibly can level
Speaker 1: of good behavior prisoner. But um. It's generally defended in
Speaker 1: two ways. One is a basic human right, like you
Speaker 1: 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, being love by your kids, and to make
Speaker 1: that that 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 the weirdos that
Speaker 1: writes you and you mary and then you marry them,
Speaker 1: they can't come and visit you and have sex, right right, No,
Speaker 1: Okay no. UM. If you were gay, however, and you
Speaker 1: have a domestic partner and you are in Mexico City,
Speaker 1: Brazil or California, you are entitled to conjugal visits as well,
Speaker 1: which is pretty significant in California because in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven you could have a conjugal visit if you were gay,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't get married if you were gay, thanks
Speaker 1: to Proposition eight, which was just overturned. Yeah yesterday. It's
Speaker 1: not over yet. The proposition night was overturned yesterday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's the that's the skinny on conjugal visits. Not
Speaker 1: not quite as again like arrested development, I don't think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they don't use it a whole lot anymore. They
Speaker 1: say that it's pretty uncommon. There's only six states, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um. The one thing I thought was funny though,
Speaker 1: that one of the rules for the visiting UM person
Speaker 1: is the dress appropriate. And they said on the list
Speaker 1: of rules was no transparent clothing or bare middriffs, strapless attire,
Speaker 1: or anything with obscene or offensive language. So your wife
Speaker 1: can't get all dolled up in her baby doll lingerie.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think they're like, can't you just
Speaker 1: put a trench coat on like everybody else? You know,
Speaker 1: have you not seen the movies exactly? And I think
Speaker 1: the mix that's it's a mixed bag on whether or
Speaker 1: not experts agree or they disagree 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 s y s game that you should know.
Speaker 1: Scaly should know knows. But so check. You mentioned there's
Speaker 1: another way to have sex in prison, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I don't want to go to prison,
Speaker 1: because actually there's two more ways. Oh yeah, well, you
Speaker 1: can have consensual sex with another man if you're in there,
Speaker 1: which doesn't necessarily mean you're homosexual. A lot of guys
Speaker 1: just there's nothing wrong with that, Like I just just
Speaker 1: do that because they're in there. And uh, there's also
Speaker 1: rape that happens in prison. That's the reason I don't
Speaker 1: want to go to prison, just one reason. In two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Josh, we have a statistic from the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Justice says four point five percent of state and
Speaker 1: federal prisoners reported being raped in the past year, and
Speaker 1: that is um seventy thousand prisoners in a year. We're
Speaker 1: sexually abused by either guards or other inmates. See, that's
Speaker 1: all over the place because there's other I've seen other numbers.
Speaker 1: UM one one two thousand four study found that zero
Speaker 1: point zero zero five percent even reported being raped while
Speaker 1: they were incarcerated, and then a lot of those were probably,
Speaker 1: you know, untrue. Well that's the deal, is reported. That's
Speaker 1: the key. Like rape goes unreported a lot, just period,
Speaker 1: but it definitely goes unreported in prison because you don't
Speaker 1: want to be a snitch. Well sure, but no, I
Speaker 1: 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 Act.
Speaker 1: Did you know about that? UM and the number they
Speaker 1: used just thirteen percent and estimated of prisoners are raped
Speaker 1: during their incarceration and their goal is zero. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you have to have a zero tolerance
Speaker 1: policy on UM. Inmate to inmate rape, UM and guard
Speaker 1: to inmate or employee to inmate, sure rape that kind
Speaker 1: of thing too, because it's not just inmates raping one another.
Speaker 1: Guards at correctional facility 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. But if you're caught doing
Speaker 1: something a little less offensive, um, you can go to
Speaker 1: the whole. They can um remove your good behavior time,
Speaker 1: transfer you to to a scarier prison, or like you said,
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 needed 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, but 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 guy's 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 arden. 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 you permission, 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. I didn't understand that one, and I
Speaker 1: double checked, and it says at prisoners, not just fire
Speaker 1: shotguns like up in the air something. It's just like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's you guys are scuffling, kaboom. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: about that one. Yeah, this is indoors. Uh. So, like
Speaker 1: we said, um, snitches are not you don't want to
Speaker 1: be a snitch in prison. Um. It's very much that
Speaker 1: mentality that you see in the movies where keep it quiet,
Speaker 1: don't rat on anyone because if you do, then I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows what's going to happen. Well, I can tell
Speaker 1: you what's gonna happen. You're likely to be shanked or shipped,
Speaker 1: which is the same thing, or raped and shaw shank. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember Andy's problem there with the with the sisters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he got back. That was one of the great
Speaker 1: redemption seems of all time. I think the whole movie
Speaker 1: was great, Like, oh no, I'm sorry, I was thinking
Speaker 1: of the Green Mile. Sorry, but the funny thing is is,
Speaker 1: and it's not funny to the guards, but they're way
Speaker 1: way more prisoners than guards. And every once in a
Speaker 1: while in history we've had these big uprisings where the
Speaker 1: prisoners have actually taken control of the prison. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you work at a prison, you don't want to hear
Speaker 1: the word attica sounded out by like enchant form by
Speaker 1: one or even more one or two prisoners. Is that
Speaker 1: what they use? Now? Is that the signal? Well, no,
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 it was like attica. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a signal. Is more like a call to arms, you know,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden there's toilet paper on fire
Speaker 1: and guys are coming at you and it's just not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that didn't work out too well. No, it was seventy 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 yet, 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 UM and
Speaker 1: then in eight there's one in New Mexico, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the New Mexico State pen uh near Santa Fe was
Speaker 1: another uprising, and that was where thirty three inmates were
Speaker 1: killed and no guards were killed, but seven of them
Speaker 1: were captured and beaten pretty severely, right, and apparently some
Speaker 1: of the inmates that were killed died from torture. Really
Speaker 1: just pleasant. I mean, think about it, Chuck. It's bad
Speaker 1: enough to go to prison, but one of the aspects
Speaker 1: of prison is that there's an end of your sentence. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a light at the end of the tunnel if
Speaker 1: you can make it. Dying in prison is about as
Speaker 1: bad as it gets, especially dying of torture in prison,
Speaker 1: I say, it's pretty bad. So Josh, let's say you
Speaker 1: don't die. Let's see you serve your time and you
Speaker 1: do get out. What what what goes on there? Well,
Speaker 1: you would be like of all prison inmates get out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why you want those
Speaker 1: family bonds in there, because you want to keep people
Speaker 1: on the up and up rather than Prison represents a
Speaker 1: real double edged sword. Either it reforms people or it
Speaker 1: makes them worse, and a lot of that depends on
Speaker 1: how a prisoners treated and the option get into them
Speaker 1: in prison. UM. One of the big trends now is
Speaker 1: education as part of rehabilitation. So I think every single
Speaker 1: state prison in the US UM offers a G. E.
Speaker 1: D Course and some of them require it for parole,
Speaker 1: which is good. Yeah. Right. There's also vocational course. Is
Speaker 1: that kind of thing? Right? Yes, But once again, like
Speaker 1: in shaw Shank, you can take that course and pass
Speaker 1: the test, but if you have a jerk warden, you
Speaker 1: still might get shot. You know, we should have done
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this podcast. We should have just said, everybody,
Speaker 1: go watch Shawshank Redemption. Everybody'll see you next week. Everyone
Speaker 1: loves that movie. Can we talk about the movies now?
Speaker 1: Are we there? Not quite? Okay? Um, chuck. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there who don't think that prisoners
Speaker 1: should just be left to rot, that they there there
Speaker 1: should be prison reformed, that there shouldn't be any rape,
Speaker 1: that that Congress shouldn't have had to have passed a
Speaker 1: law requiring zero tolerance on prison rape. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: actually been a prison reform movement going around since I think, uh,
Speaker 1: possibly earlier than that, I don't know. Yeah, the Quakers
Speaker 1: are huge on prison reform as well. Uh. And again,
Speaker 1: you want prison reform, you want your prisoners treated in
Speaker 1: a way where there is the potential for rehabilitation. Um.
Speaker 1: Because of recitativism, right, well yeah, I mean that's why
Speaker 1: they pay them to work these jobs, because they want
Speaker 1: to give them some semblance of normal life so when
Speaker 1: they get out they can say, oh, well, I held
Speaker 1: a job in prison for the first time in my life.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were like a drug dealer, what have you? Right, well,
Speaker 1: think about it. Recitativism. The highest rate is among property offenses,
Speaker 1: and that is a crime of the poor breaking into
Speaker 1: someone's house and stealing their stuff. That's what you do
Speaker 1: when you're poor, and that's got the highest rate of recitativism,
Speaker 1: so it would seem like some sort of education or
Speaker 1: occupational program wouldn't help deter that. Well. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: other stat though, that kind of makes me feel weird,
Speaker 1: is that I think sixty seven percent of people who
Speaker 1: commit crimes to go back into prison. It's an entirely
Speaker 1: different crime than they commit. Oh yeah, which was like,
Speaker 1: that was really discouraging. I would think maybe if the
Speaker 1: guy just can't not steal TVs, he gets out and
Speaker 1: steal TVs, you would think, so at least go back
Speaker 1: to what he knows. But yeah, that's a little staggering.
Speaker 1: It is that would shot any quaker up. And what
Speaker 1: what is the rate I saw? I can't get like
Speaker 1: the most recent stat but it looks like between fifty
Speaker 1: and six somewhere in there from year to year for
Speaker 1: recidivism rates. Yeah, though in two and ninety four it
Speaker 1: was sixty seven point five, right, I think it's gone
Speaker 1: down since then. Yeah, And and that's surprising because the
Speaker 1: incarceration rates have gone down too, which is totally bucking
Speaker 1: a trend. I think, um, they're going down, that's what
Speaker 1: you said. Remember in two thousand five that these stats
Speaker 1: are based on. It was two million and changed too.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it was two million, um one hundred ninety
Speaker 1: three thousand prisoners in the US. You said it was
Speaker 1: less than two million in two thousand nine. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think that's people that are currently incarcerated. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean more people aren't being incarcerated on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, because I think that's true because the mandatory minimums.
Speaker 1: I think more people than ever are being incarcerated. So
Speaker 1: 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 that's huge, and we spent I think fifty
Speaker 1: one billion dollars to incarceerate people in prison in jail,
Speaker 1: whereas um, I think that comes out of twenty nine
Speaker 1: thousand per mate per year. And remember a bail podcast. Uh,
Speaker 1: it costs twelve hundred and fifty dollars per in mate
Speaker 1: per year for probation. How much hundred dollars rather than
Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand dollars. But these minor offenses throwing these guys,
Speaker 1: especially like the car thief that was in a super
Speaker 1: max 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 on my I've got
Speaker 1: Escape from Alcatraz because I saw that when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and it's still like an awesome movie. Papillon
Speaker 1: Classic with the Dustin Hoffman with the glasses, with the
Speaker 1: glasses and and Steve McQueen. Right, it was in The
Speaker 1: Great Escape to also a great prison movie. Cool Hand
Speaker 1: Luke was probably the funniest one of the lot. The
Speaker 1: Longest Yard. Actually, that might have been the funniest one.
Speaker 1: I never saw either of them. Really, You're nuts. Bad
Speaker 1: Boys Classic with Wilsmon and the Sean Penn went about
Speaker 1: the Juvi detention. That's when Sean Penn was like, you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen years old and he was in juvenile detention and
Speaker 1: then he he filled a pillow case up with a
Speaker 1: soda cans and just annihilated this dude one night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's called a slock by the way. Now, that's one's
Speaker 1: in a sock. Okay, I imagine this is me. It's
Speaker 1: called a slaice UM American History X. That was pretty brutal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that 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 ye Midnight Run was pretty depressing.
Speaker 1: And UM Animal Factory is the one I'm going to
Speaker 1: say 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 Dafoe is in it.
Speaker 1: It's really good and it's of the animal factories, so
Speaker 1: you have a pretty good idea that it's realistic. I
Speaker 1: saw a Taxi to the Dark Side last night, and
Speaker 1: it's not. It's about the US's policies on torture and
Speaker 1: how we implemented him post nine eleven. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of prison stuff in it, like Abu Grab and
Speaker 1: bog Room and stuff like that it's pretty disturbing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't get into I mean, there's so much about
Speaker 1: prisons that we didn't get into. Here. We could do
Speaker 1: like three more podcasts that we wanted to and if
Speaker 1: it seemed like we danced around something, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Capital Punishment, Yeah, I didn't go there. That's coming. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to do that one. It's gonna be sweeping.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be top hats and like people doing like
Speaker 1: the can can and stuff at the beginning. It's going
Speaker 1: to be enormous. Yeah, I think we have the rockets
Speaker 1: lined up for that one. We do in prison Garbent. Yes,
Speaker 1: so Chuck's telling me he's given me the double wink,
Speaker 1: which means there is no listener mail. It was too
Speaker 1: long and too full of goodness. You know what that means.
Speaker 1: That means we just haven't gotten any listener mails. So
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you. Just type some stuff
Speaker 1: out that we would find interesting. Spanking on the bottom maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: talk 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