I have been reading with great interest the reporting of the Clarion-Ledger’s Jerry Mitchell on the conditions of prisons in Mississippi. Mitchell, who has built a reputation as the state’s foremost investigative reporter, has painted a grim portrait of life behind bars in the state, a portrait so disturbing that Mississippi Department of Corrections director Christopher Epps felt obliged to respond to the claims.
Through Mitchell’s investigation, a picture has emerged that portrays Mississippi prisons as a dangerous, unhealthy place where the inmates call the shots and guards and staff are often compromised through bribery or intimidation.
While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of Mitchell’s reporting, I will say that many of the conditions he describe are consistent with my own prison experience, especially when it comes to the power inmates hold over day-to-day life inside the prison walls.
Regular readers will recall previous columns where I noted that I had spent four months in the Arizona Department of Correction in 2007 for aggravated DUI.
I served the first 34 days of what turned out to be an 122-day sentence in Maricopa County’s infamous county jail system. The remainder of my sentence was served at Florence West Prison, an enormous prison complex that also home to Arizona’s Death Row.
You probably don’t have to go to prison to understand that prison can be a violent place, of course. The movies tell that story.
But what you probably don’t realize is that prison, based on my experience, is governed primarily by the inmates themselves. That’s not to say that correction officers are absent, of course. They still make rounds, perform bed checks and administer the basic rules governing prison life.
But there is a far greater internal system that dictates what an inmate can or cannot do, something I learned as I progressed through the system.
On my first day in captivity, I was told to come to the cell of a 20-year-old inmate named Sammy, who informed me that he was the “head” of the “Woods.”
Woods? That’s the name given to white inmates. Each race had its own slang name: Kinfolk for Blacks, Chiefs for Native Americans, Chicanod for Hispanics and Paisas for Mexican Nationals (yes, there was a distinction drawn between native Hispanics and “illegals).
Sammy informed me of the “Rules.” There were six or seven, as I recall.
1. You never inform on another inmate; 2. If you find yourself in a dispute with a member of another race, you take the matter to your “head,” and he would consult with the “head” of the race of the man in question to find a solution (which did not rule out violence); 3. The exception to Rule No. 2 was if the offending inmate called you one of a list of certain derogatory names. At that point, you must fight that inmate. If you chose not to fight, your own race would discipline you for not “standing up for your race”; 4. You are not allowed to share food with a member of another race; 5. You must not sit with a member of another race during chow; 6. If your “head” calls for a group fight against another race, you must participate. If you do not fight, your own race will discipline you.
As you can see, prisoners were as segregated by race much as reasonably possible. The reason given was that it greatly reduced the possibility of race-on-race violence and, whatever your feelings about it, there was some evidence that it did produce the desired effect.
Each group had its own hierarchy – head, No. 2 and torpedo. The torpedo was the group’s enforcer, usually the most violent man in the group who had no problem with beating down anyone who violated the rules.
There were two basic forms of discipline, meted out on the basis of how serious the offense might have been. The first was called a “chin-check,” where the torpedo delivered a single punch to the offender. The more serious discipline was the “beat down,” which involved the torpedo choosing several other inmates to beat the offender. Beat downs generally meant the offender was soon headed for the hospital.
All discipline was administered in the bathroom, the one place where there were no cameras. Beat-downs generally resulted in a lot of noise, mostly screams and the sound of a body being thrown around the bathroom, which was sort of an echo chamber. You could not help but hear these noises and I am certain our correction officers heard them, too. But I never saw a correction officer enter the cell block to investigate. It was understood.
When I got to Florence West, my new “head” went over the rules, which were much the same as those I had been given in county jail. There was one new rule, though: Don’t let your drug debt go over $300.
I thought it an odd rule at first, but it didn’t take long to understand the necessity of it. Drugs were everywhere. It was at Florence West that I first saw someone inject himself with heroin. Marijuana and crack cocaine were plentiful, too.
What I learned is that prisons have their own economy, generally administered by the various “heads.”
I wasn’t interested in drugs, wasn’t interested in gaining power inside prison. I minded my own business. I followed the rules. The closest brush I had with violence was when I once tried to drop off a letter in the mailbox. I had neglected to bring another inmate with me and I was soon summoned into the bathroom, where the head and the torpedo pushed me against the wall and informed me of my transgression. They wanted to know if the letter I had mailed was my attempt to rat out another inmate.
I feigned ignorance, promised never to mail another letter without having someone go along with me and got off without punishment.
But during my 122 days in custody, I saw dozens of inmates who were beaten, some very badly.
The inmates ran the show. They knew it. The correction officers knew it, too.
Prison is not intended to be a pleasant experience, I understand. But the level of violence common to prison life often goes far beyond what any decent person could assume to be appropriate punishment.
It’s a violent, dangerous, miserable existence. I was in prison just four months. For those who serve long sentences, being subjected to that sort of animal existence is certain to follow them long after their release, I suspect. They emerge as different men, and likely not for the better. Florence West was called by the inmates “Gladiator School” and for good reason.
So what I read about prison life in Mississippi is hardly a surprise to me.
It rings true.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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