Preparing for Prison (2016)

I only know from what I've heard from people who have worked in jails/prisons in the US (and maybe things are different in the UK although I doubt it) but the one thing anyone can expect which is not mentioned here, if they are reasonably young/physically acceptable appearance, is to get raped.

From what I understand, there's really no getting away from it either. There's the myth that you just have to stand up and fight and they'll leave you alone but it's not really true. You might fight off the one guy today, tomorrow there will be four of them.

Even the young kids coming in who might be gang members and think they are 'tough' or connected end up getting it, their outside status really ends up meaning very little.

Not to seem like I'm derailing what the author of the article is talking about, but the fact that he doesn't mention what will likely be the most brutal part of anyone's experience in prison makes the other advice seem almost trivial and irrelevant by comparison.

> Witnesses might not say what you expected them to; you might not fare well under cross-examination and there is always the risk that some unexpected piece of prosecution evidence might be served on the day in court (I’ve seen this happen more than once). Your barrister might screw up your case too. Finally, the jury – 12 random men and women – may simply not believe your defence and vote to convict you, even if you are genuinely innocent. Even if two jurors have doubts, the votes of the remaining ten are sufficient for a conviction.

As screwed up as our justice system is, having rights of the accused (such as to review evidence before it's presented and needing unanimous votes for a conviction) makes these errors less of a concern in the US. Not impossible, but less likely.

> you will be locked into a holding cell – a very bleak room indeed – but also offered a cup of tea.

A useful reminder that this is about prison in the UK. I suspect this little touch of sympathy is absent in the US.

Very interesting story. He has been outed later as a child sex offender (http://barristerblogger.com/2017/08/09/unfortunate-silencing...).

In Russia there is an old saying/adwise how to live in prison:

Don’t trust, don’t fear, don’t ask for. (Не верь, не бойся, не проси.)

This was a very humanizing read and provides a good perspective of how devastating any prison term can be.

I find myself asking whether other forms of rehabilitation can be more effective than prison terms.

This is really interesting to read and this website is a great resource. I wish I had seen it before I went to prison (in Australia, pretty recently for nonviolent drug related crimes).

Once you get over the dehumanisation and anxiety of being locked in a box helplessly for many hours at a time, the most challenging thing is navigating all the complex systems and processes for doing anything (e.g. finding a time to go to the gym, doing your washing, collecting meals) - there are deeply engrained and often arcane / nonsensical rules around these things.

Some examples:

- When doing washing, speak to the washing billet (different prisons have different systems around this). When the washing in front of you in the queue is finished, it's your responsibility to put it in the dryer or queue it up. When drying, you must fold the washing which you take out before putting yours in, and take it to the person who's nametag is attached on the bag.

- The "screws" (guards) are "dogs" (the worst kind of thing you can possibly be). Never be seen to have any more contact with them than is absolutely required. The line here gets a little tricky and difficult when you start applying for jobs and trying to improve your living situation by petitioning for a single cell etc. How much contact you have with them before you are a "dog" yourself basically depends how much time you've done and how respected you are yourself.

- Never call someone "boss" (this is what a lot of people call the screws, somewhat ironically) or "champ", because it rhymes with "tamp" which is a shortening of "tamperer", as in "kiddie tamperer".

In Australia I think the prisons are closer to UK than US, although we are going down the route of privatisation and the system is deteriorating in a similar way to the UK.

The strangest thing is how calm it can seem on the surface most of the time around the prison yard. A casual observer could think it's a holiday camp. Right until some guys pull you into a cell and beat the shit out of you or cut your face with a knife because of some minor infraction or rumour.

Find someone you trust and sign over power of attorney if you have legal or financial issues to deal with while incarcerated. Floated on a tax return for months this way. (Former inmate in the US)

Some background on the Blog Author:

http://barristerblogger.com/2017/08/09/unfortunate-silencing...

I'm not judging, just found it interesting.

A very relevant link, albeit from an American perspective, is the AfterPrisonShow on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSonmKTLAPC2bTCF4JHQ1lg

If I went to prison, I'd stay in my cell 24/7 and read books and math papers. Up to the point of refusing to eat unless guards brought food to my cell. I'd actually prefer to go into solitary confinement and completely stay away from all human contact for the duration, and I'd do what I could to arrange that.

I was a happy guest at a Chinese Jail facility for a couple months. It's a short-term jail, and the Law in China forbids any Chinese citizen to be sentenced for more then 20 days(yes, it's less then 1 month) in the said kind of vip SPA. For some reason of the destiny, there is a loophole in the Law, where the law doesn't says clearly what to do with the somewhat unlucky foreigners, and the many conflicting regulations can lead a foreigner to stay up to 9 months there!(Lord have mercy on his soul, because after 9 months there, your soul will stay there forever the day your physical body walks out of there to know what the Sun is again) This soul I mention is from Cameroon, or Nigeria, It is not clear, and this is exactly the reason he stayed 9 months there, It wasn't clear! And said soul must be still wandering around those cells there to this very Night, wherever the physical body is now, so, in my case I was lucky. Now what I will say will sound like I am a regular Jail frequenter, but I am not : D , Well, If I had to choose between that jail in China, where you are completely(and this means 100% no less) deprived of Coffee, Cigarettes, Anything to smoke at all, not even pure toilet paper, forget about smoking, you will not even remotely see it or smell it from far, anything to drink but water or sometimes home-made WangLaoZhi(what is superb, I have to say) and sometimes you can get some brown sugar that they sell for the Girl's jail for alleviation of menstruation discomfort according to Chinese ancient predictions, and where you are almost completely deprived of Salt, and if you have never try this deprivation, it isn't nice at all. I have asked the doctor for Salt, please. He could gave to me or to any other inmate any painkiller I or anyone asked for, but "I don't have Salt". I will not talk about Sun. But, a Big But with a capital B, Those beautiful and sexy cop girls that you can see running in the Jail's athletics track (like those from the olympic games, but smaller, not for the inmates, seems that they use the Jail as an training place of the Police Academy too, so those young angels are probably still Student cops) these girls will never let anyone, anyone, ever touch a hair of yours, actually If anyone touches anyone, the angels will see it on the camera and Shout by your room's loudpeakers: "Physical contact is forbidden, you both have lost one point in your point's score record"(Actually usually they are much more human then this, sometimes they called me by my given name, Stockolm syndrome and all other theories in this field don't even begin to scratch the surface of the deepness and intensity of the human relations and the feelings involved in the jobs of these girls, with their parents expecting them to have the dream husband that they cannot, and don't want to find, and the Society expecting them to be Model Citizens and They, the girls themselves, expecting to fulfill their true belief, the sheer and crude and nude and absolute belief in the Written Law, and that their lives have a meaning and a reason, a important contribution to the Development, Improvement, Justice and Freedom of the Chinese Society, and they are doing exactly this, my friend, even going a milimeter or a meter out of the written Law, for the sake of their believes in Human Fraternity and the bright unwritten Justice itself and at the same time to have to witness and look with maximum attention to all the literally nude misery of the human animality(maybe neologism, but you get it) and see the "lowest" level of people taking shower and hearing these men speak all kinds of dirty things and talk about these same watcher girls as sexual objects sometimes and sometimes even whistle at them if they see them doing the guard, of course not too much, and never if the girl can spot who was the guilty one, because people were scared of them too, off course, but Freedom of Speech there was complete, even political, some people were there because of somewhat political reasons, and people support them freely and everyone give him advice about how to go on with his political activism, this is surprising but completely true, it was about the government seized this poor people property to make a big real state Business and they go to protest in Beijing from all over the country, this is common there, so after some years the Beijing City gov got tired of handling them and now just send them back home with a few days jailtime in his own hometown as a trip souvenir. People who was caught with a lot of drugs or selling drugs gets 7 days jail or so first time, second time 20 days(maximum legal stay allowed by Law at a specially designed to be unbearable for more then 20 days concentration SPA) Third time you go "real" jail (lord have mercy on you) China is much more relaxed then people think, don't try anything weird on my advice, surely, but even the Death Penalty is probably going to be abolished rather sooner then later(someday I explain why the Chinese people is the boss of the Chinese government, and not otherwise, when you hear is an ancient cultured People, you underestimate, I only realized that in my 12th or 13th year in china, call me dumb and the majority of Death Sentences passed today in China is scheduled for 2 years from now, with some little clause on it, and if you behave well 2 years later your sentence will be silently changed to Life in Prision, unless you are a political communist authority(will be executed the next morning after trial), or you sold unsafe food and some kid died, or you killed someone and don't show regret in front of the Court Judges, or you show regret but killed a child, then you will be executed right away. ((I have lost the pairing of the parenthesis here already, this isn't a code editor) Brazilian Jail, by the other hand, you get Marijuana, other drugs, sometimes booze, visit of professional girls(woo-hoo!) Sun, Music and Barbecue, but 1 time in 2.8 years will happen that you look around after a fraction of a second and everyone is dressed like Ninjas with their shirts covering their heads and touching the ground with 1 or the 2 hands like Stressed Monkeys, so the guy next to you says: " Dress all clothes you can find quickly, so you will have less black bruises and it will let less scares on your skin when it has all finished..." but this is another story, this tale is ridiculously long already.