Prison Sucks

You probably know this already, but I just wanted to reiterate this again. Prison. Sucks.

Try not to break the law so you don't have to go to prison.

Anyway, yes, I went on the tour for a medium-security prison today. It was one of the most depressing places I have ever been to. I guess this is good. We don't want our prisons to be enjoyable or anything. But still, the place was smelly, dirty, and soul-crushing.

We looked at the cells where inmates stayed in. The lack of privacy is astounding. The guards could go into the inmate's cell at any time. To demonstrate to us what kind of stuff inmates can or cannot keep, one of the guards lifted the box inside the cell for us and showed us what things the inmate had inside. A few girls in our group cringed. Later, we said that we felt bad that we were going through other people's stuff. Then someone else pointed out that it wasn't as if the inmates had that much expectations of privacy anyway. In fact, it was part of their punishment. To live under a microscope.

They were strip searched when they came in. Everything that was sent to them goes through this central office where it is scrutnized. The state gives them the clothes, the sheets, the boxes and the shelves that they are allowed to keep. The state is also allowed to go into their room at any time for any reason to search their belongings.

The prison was an all male prison. The dress code was white shirt and gray pants. The inmates were not as restricted as I thought they'd be. They moved around in the hallways and had an almost collegial relationship with their guards, who seemed to know them by name.

All the inmates watched us as we came and went. They leered at the women in the group. There were a lot of catcalls.

I felt very self-conscious. One of the people in my section joked (very politically incorrectly) that our prison trip was as if we were taking a fieldtrip to the zoo. But somehow, we felt like the animal on display. The eyes of the inmates were hungry, stripping us down. It occurred to me that a few of these people are probably in the prison for rape.

I felt oddly grateful for the guards. They were all pretty courteous and also protective. Before we went into one of the hallways with cells on either sides, the guards stood at the door and told everyone to go into their cells. The way he stood, with feet apart, hands on his waist, was so authoritative and strong. I was glad that he was there.

The air was bad in the buildings. The whole place smelled like a mixture of body odors, urine, and the kind of cheap cleaners they used in my junior high school building. We later joked that it was probably bulit, furnished, and cleaned by the same contractors who does all these jobs for the government.

There were many minorities there. Our tour guides explained to us that the prison we were visiting was more of a transfer station, for newly admitted inmates who needed to be classified and then moved elsewhere permanently. For this reason, the average time the inmates spend at the facility was six months. Although they saw a lot of the same people there again and again.

In between the buildings was a big yard, fenced in by wires. Many prisoners were playing basketball there. They stopped and gazed at us as we walked by. I noticed that there was not a tree anywhere, nor grass. The ground was gray. All the buildings looked wind-swept and gray too.

Elsewhere in the prison, in a large room that was normally used for chapel service, several hundred prisoners were watching "Passion of the Christ." As we peeked into the room, they also turned and looked at us hungrily. The movie was showing on a small 14-inch TV in the front. It occurred to me that they couldn't possibly all see the screen. The damned movie is in Aramaic, too, and they couldn't read the subtitles either. What were they all doing in there? I wondered.

"You think this place is depressing?" One of the tour guides, the deputy superintendent of the prison, said. "Well, even this can't seem to keep them away."

I suppose none of this should surprise me, but it still did. I was very glad when I left that place.