What 24 Hours in Prison is Really Like
July 21, 2018 12:37 PM   Subscribe

A Day in the Life of a Prisoner People are constantly asking me: What’s a day in prison like? Is it boring? Or are you busy? So the other day, I toted a pocket-sized notebook with me everywhere I went, scribbling down every single thing I did. I thought I’d share my findings with you to show you that we prisoners aren’t deadbeats — our days are, in fact, incredibly full.
posted by strelitzia (14 comments total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm curious whether counting the prisoners so often serves an actual security purpose or if it just exists to make their lives particularly unpleasant.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:01 PM on July 21, 2018 [13 favorites]


Good article. If you're interested in this sort of thing, there's a great podcast called Ear Hustle that's actually produced by inmates of a prison and they get into a lot of the banality of imprisonment.
posted by selfnoise at 1:19 PM on July 21, 2018 [14 favorites]


I also really liked Newjack, a participatory journalism project where the author trained and served as a prison guard in New York's Sing Sing prison.
posted by mmascolino at 1:30 PM on July 21, 2018 [5 favorites]


I'm curious whether counting the prisoners so often serves an actual security purpose

Well, obviously it lets you know if someone is missing... And hey, maybe you're thinking "They're in prison where are they gonna go?" but then some enterprising person hollows out a 5 foot tall stack of food trays, hides inside (after deliberately losing 30lbs), and escapes a moving truck while the trays are being transported back to the off-site kitchen facilities.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 2:21 PM on July 21, 2018 [20 favorites]


I’m kind of curious about how the author has a service dog for the bulk of the day.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:39 PM on July 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


JoeZydeco: Several prisons have programs where inmates train service dogs.
posted by haruspicina at 3:02 PM on July 21, 2018 [6 favorites]


JoeZydeco, it looks like the author has several other articles on the site, including one about the service dog program.
posted by bluloo at 3:02 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


This was great. Another resource, along with a volunteer opportunity, is Between the Bars, where inmates write, and volunteers transcribe their letters, poetry, essays, etc. Gives you many views into incarcerated lives.
posted by greermahoney at 5:22 PM on July 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


Thanks. I'll have to find those other articles about the service dog to get more detail, because from reading this article it sure looks like the poor pooch got 40 minutes of training at 10 in the morning and then sat in the cell until 8:30 pm.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:29 PM on July 21, 2018


Definitely the dog's wellbeing should be the focus here
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:55 AM on July 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


I was a service dog trainer in prison. The dogs have free run of the place, usually. All those things that the author did throughout the day, he was more than likely bringing the service dog with him. I used to take mine to the gym, to the library, to the cafeteria, to classes and to visitation.
posted by youthenrage at 1:22 PM on July 22, 2018 [13 favorites]


> Definitely the dog's wellbeing should be the focus here

Ah, sarcasm. I heard tell of it. Well done.

I'll just say that this has fundamentally made the (abstract, hopefully) idea of prison seem less scary to me. Why? Well, give me a book and a dog, and I believe I could be kind of OK. This seems to be one of the less inhumane prisons though, so who knows.

But also, if I read this correctly, it's not like you get to bring your support animal. Training a service dog is very different from having a pet: you take care of the dog for the first two years of life, teach it basic doggy obedience and get it used to just hanging out for long periods of time. After two years or so, the professionals take over and do the real training (like what explosives smell like, or not walking under things that a human would bump into etc.

Handing over the (your) dog to go to doggy boot camp can be tough , obviously. And usually, if the dog flunks out of the program (often), the volunteers get dibs on buying the dog they took care of. Which I imagine is not an option in prison. So that would suck.

So no, what's awesome about this is not that it's so great for the dog. I can't imagine the dog cares either way about growing up in prison. Which is the point. Having a friend who can't tell the difference between who's a convict and who's a guard seems to take some of the indignity out of the situation...
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:26 PM on July 22, 2018


give me a book and a dog, and I believe I could be kind of OK

A book, a dog, the threat of violence, the looming spectre of death.

Still OK?
posted by dazed_one at 9:50 PM on July 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm curious whether counting the prisoners so often serves an actual security purpose

Mostly, it serves to remind them, "your time is NOT YOUR OWN; we control where your body will be at all times." It does have some security value, as prisoners who really really want to escape have basically nothing else to make plans for, and multiple checks per day mean those plans have to work quickly or they won't work at all.

But mostly, it's about control. The number of prisoners who could implement a functional escape plan between morning and evening checks, but not between 5x/day checks, is incredibly small; if prisoners were assumed to have the right to be treated as human, or even if the goal were rehabilitation, the expense and hassle could not be justified.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:13 AM on July 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


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