The Inside Scoop

The people employed to monitor us and who dictate most of our day activities are called correctional officers (C.O.s). There are normally three in every building. One in the tower and two on the floor. A good C.O will pretty much leave you alone. He won’t give you a hard time over petty things. He will make sure that you get what you are entitled to—like a shower and yard/dayroom free time. If a good C.O. searches your cell, he will respect your stuff by not throwing stuff on the floor or disorganizing everything. Also he won’t confiscate petty things like lines for hanging laundry out to dry. Basically, they will be respectful of the position we are in. We’re already separated from society so other than for security and safety risks, why should they make our lives any harder? For those C.O.s that do make our lives harder, it is seriously hindering people’s chances of rehabilitation. How can you feel confident and optimistic about going back out into society and contributing to civil...

Life in prison is never a walk in the park, but in the USA no one is to blame but ourselves. This is certainly not the case in third-world countries as well as a few others. If I had to speculate, I’d say that the quality of living in a country is directly related to the quality of living in its prisons. Most of them do not provide opportunities to better oneself. The gangs are given freedom to control what goes on inside and inmates are mistreated by staff. They are notoriously unsanitary, the food is sparse, and the justice system that populates those prisons are usually as corrupt as can be. All in all, I’m very happy I’m not doing time in a different country, even though it can be hard to have our human rights recognized, at least we have a fighting chance here. I would like to say thank you to all of the inmates and advocates who fought to have our rights recognized in the previous years. We are already separated from society—I don’t believe that there is any reason why someone ...

Ever since this pandemic started, all the prisons in the world went to some sort of modified program… among those is my prison (Sierra Conservation Center). A modified program consists of below normal amounts of yard, dayroom, and/or jobs, and self-help groups. We understand that it’s because of Covid-19 and we’ve gotten kinda used to it, but for the past couple months my prison has been going through some sort of bureaucratic bull-crap that doesn’t have anything to do with inmates—but affects inmates. Randomly, throughout the week, multiple correctional officers won’t show up to work and we won’t get yard, or any program at all, and sometimes this happens multiple days in a row. Now, I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I’ve heard a couple of rumors. One is that the union cut a deal so they can take away vacation days whenever they want, just because they feel sick. The other is that nobody wants to work with the new sergeant that took over second-watch. Regardless of all of this,...

So, imagine what your kid eats at meals and I mean like a 7 or 8 year-old. If you don’t have kids, just imagine a Happy Meal from McDonalds. That’s about how much food we get—just of lower quality. According to rumor, people used to eat pretty good in prison, but within the past ten years they have been slowly diminishing the size and quality of our meals. They say it’s for health reasons, but how is a 200 lb. young man with a high metabolism supposed to keep himself in shape when he barely gets 3000 calories a day? That might seem like enough to people who want to sit on their butts all day, but that’s not a healthy lifestyle. How can a 3000 calorie diet promote good health? On top of all that, they’ve taken sugar out which doesn’t prevent diabetes. People need to learn self-control—otherwise, too bad! The replacement for the sugar is much worse than the real stuff. I’ve personally stopped using sugar substitutes because people say they can cause cancer. I’ve had bowel issues, cog...