Source: filtermag.org 12/11/24
Coming into the Tennessee menβs prison system nearly 30 years ago, I assumed that my murder conviction would make me the most hated of my incarcerated peers. I imagined a life of solitude, persecution and ridicule. I did not yet know that prison has a social hierarchy in which one type of conviction is always at the bottom, but it isnβt murder.
In the early years of my sentence, incoming prisoners with sex-related convictions would be taken straight to protective custody (PC), i.e. solitary confinement. These days, at least in this prison system, theyβre housed in general population unless they can provide credible evidence of threats made against them by other prisoners in general population, including names and dates. Of course, many are only able to do so after theyβve been beaten and raped.
South Central Correctional Facility, theΒ CoreCivic-run private prisonΒ where Iβm currently incarcerated, receives five or 10 newbies a week. When a gang selects someone with a sex-related conviction, the members essentially own access to that person and whatever they have thatβs of value. No one outside that gang is permitted to physically or sexually abuse them, unless a favorable deal is cut. βChecking inβ to PC voluntarily isnβt guaranteed protection either. Iβve seen gang members check themselves in just to follow someone, and punish them for trying to get away.
Before the era of contraband cell phones, gang-affiliated prisoners used to get their intel on new arrivals from staff. By the time you come off the chain bus, wearing your stiff new state-issue clothing and clutching your bag of property, theyβd already know not just whether you were affiliated but also what your conviction was. And if it was a sex-related conviction, they probably knew the names and addresses of your parents, your spouse or your children.
Β βI canβt sleep sound. Every little noise wakes me β¦ I just wait to get killed.β
When Robbie* began hisΒ de factoΒ life sentence a decade ago, he stepped off the chain bus shaking. During the year he spent in county jail after being arrested on sex-related charges, heβd been kept isolated in a single-man cell while detainees and staff hissed cat calls and talked about how he better βwatch his assβ when it was time to go to the Big House. One officer told him to order plenty of lotion.
His plan was to immediately request PC, and he did. He was denied, on the grounds that he had no proof anyone intended to harm him. That night, two prisoners raped him while a third watched the door. They took every piece of property he owned, from his radio to his shoes to his stamps. He spent the next four years isolated in PC, before being transferred to a different prison. Since he knew he didnβt have proof that anyone at the new facility intended to harm him either, he stepped off that chain bus with a different plan. He bought a shank and stabbed the first person who tried to take advantage of him.
In California thereβs no more general population theyβve mixed protective custody with general population, but still people forced to register have been making it home safe.
You donβt have to be a person forced to register to get put in a cell what someone who has the capability of taking your life.
People in there for life have nothing to lose theyβre gonna try to pilfer any person they can take a vantage of.
It’s probably harder getting through life on the streets than it is in prison.
California prison gangs do exist BUT because of the charges in the prison system they are busy trying to find out whoβs clean and whoβs not. I heard the blacks, the whites and the Mexicans had a meeting and they stopped all racial tension so they can comb through their people and find out who are snitches and who are people forced to register. So theyβre so busy processing their own race of people, they donβt really have time to deal with actual people forced to register.
Now thereβs the COβs who are crooked as Hell but not all of them are itβs possible to get moved if you asked.
Bottom line is just be careful and watch out for failure to register charges because those are death sentences because they use the California three strikes law for each failure to register charge so when you commit one, youβre definitely doing hard time in prison. Anything can happen in prison even the American federal government knows this thatβs why the double Jeopardy law says you canβt be put in harms way to lose life or limb more than once, and when they say harms way, they mean prison.
Since 2008, Arizona DOC has a completely separate system for SO’s due to a family suing the crap out of them because of their son being killed by GP. I was thankful for this when I refused going back onto Lifetime probation and served 3 years.
When I got to the yard, I was informed that due to my being over 50 yes old, no one could touch me unless they got permission from the heads.