1. Toothpaste is a better glue than Elmer’s.
2. Ramen noodles can be the base ingredient in a gourmet meal.
3. RAP music is Really Awful Poetry.
4. Sometimes you have to pay extra just to get the basic free service.
5. You can’t trust authority. If you see their lips moving you know their lying.
6. You can educate ignorance, but you can’t fix stupid.
7. Privacy is an illusion and personal space is dimensionless.
8. The only difference between COs and inmates is that the COs lack conviction.
9. While the menu looks good on paper, the reality is something completely different.
10. Prison beds have more in common with a medieval torture rack than a place to sleep.
11. Not only is justice blind, it is deaf, mute, and retarded.
12. Inmates can be charged outrageous prices for inferior products because they are a captive market.
13. Common sense is not very common.
14. Prison health care services are careless, dental services are toothless, and the mental health services are crazy.
15. Prison is like Motel 6, they’ll leave a light on for you.
16. Mother doesn’t live here so you have to clean up after yourself.
17. Behavioral issues are best handled with diesel therapy.
18. Even when you are right you’re guilty.
19. It’s their house and their rules, I’m just a guest.
20. Floor sealer makes good shoe polish.
21. Coffee is the nectar of the gods.
22. Eating gas station vending machine food in the visiting room is like dining in a 5-star restaurant compared to the chow hall.
23. Silence is not only golden, it’s priceless.
24. I miss my Lazy-boy!
25. It’s pronounced “pole-ees”.
26. “Snitch” is a four-letter word.
27. Hygiene is not optional
28. Forty qualifies you as old.
29. Fifteen minutes on the phone goes by in a heartbeat.
30. Men gossip worse than women.
31. The truth will not set you free.
32. Beards are a fashion statement, tattoos are a fashion faux pas.
33. There is a direct relationship between a man’s IQ and his level of respect for women.
34. You are guilty until proven innocent, and since no one is innocent, QED.
35. There is no place like home.
36. The general public is not getting their money’s worth from the MDOC.
37. It’s the Michigan Department of Corruption.
38. Dogs at the pound get treated better than inmates.
39. Prison is no place for picky eaters.
40. The prison pay scale is criminal exploitation.
41. Lawsuits are cheaper than proper health care.
42. Inmates are like mushrooms: Kept in the dark and fed BS.
43. Low expectations lead to poor outcomes.
44. Might makes fright.
45. If you don’t get your hopes up you won’t be disappointed.
46. You can’t force someone to change; they have to want to.
47. Harsh prison sentences punish more than just the guilty party.
48. Some fashion statements should be revised before being made public.
49. Dental floss can mend anything.
50. The way to claim success is to keep changing programs before the failures become too evident.

An homage to Jeff Foxworthy

1. You try to buy things with Ramen Noodles.
2. You call out in a restaurant “Cookie for a burger!”
3. You send a written request to your doctor for an appointment.
4. Three times a day you stop what you’re doing and go sit on your bed.
5. You never make phone calls that last more than 15 minutes.
6. All the outfits in your closet are identical.
7. You can tell military time but you don’t salute officers.
8. You get signatures in your day planner for every appointment.
9. You get your hair cut with children’s safety scissors.
10. Instead of being chased by a posse, the posse travels with you.
11. You wish your gin had been brewed in a bathtub.
12. You sleep with the lights on for safety.
13. You gossip worse than women about other men.
14. You expect and accept “No” for an answer.
15. You are willing to stand in line at the worst restaurant in town.
16. You work for only pennies an hour.
17. You have to pay your roommate to get him to take a shower.
18. You paid for your tattoos with coffee.
19. Convictions are something on your rap sheet, not something you believe.
20. Earning a GED is considered a significant achievement.
21. You answer when people call you by a number instead of your name.
22. Instead of working 9 to 5 you have hard labor from 5 to 9.
23. You use a Bible as a doorstop or a wedge for your bunk.
24. You think HOPE is a four-letter word.
25. You think that instant coffee is the elixir of the gods.
26. You think that life and death is just fun and games.
27. You watch free cable but are not staying in a hotel.
28. The way you say ‘Thank you’ is “Good lookin’ out” and mean it literally.
29. All your worldly possessions fit into a duffle bag but you don’t deploy overseas.
30. The majority of the furniture in your room is bolted to the floor or walls.

1. We lock our closets but we can’t lock the bathroom door. In fact, in many prisons there isn’t a bathroom door.
2. The best food you get to eat is vending machine food in the visiting room or gas station food from the commissary. The chow hall food is practically inedible.
3. The windows don’t have any curtains but still fail to let much light in.
4. It is dark in the housing units, yet people complain when you turn on the lights.
5. When you do turn on the lights they are still not bright enough to read by.
6. Bath soap and shampoo are used to wash your personal dishes.
7. The day room is most crowded at night.
8. We use chairs as a ladder to climb unto the top bunk instead of sitting on them.
9. Emergency count is never an emergency and always takes longer than regular count.
10. In the chow hall they feed grown men kid’s meal portions.
11. Disposable plastic silverware is used over and over forever.
12. Guys talk about the ugliest women as if they are beauty queens when they would never give them a second thought out in the world.
13. We refill the ink barrel of our favorite disposable pen.
14. We recharge disposable batteries.
15. Laundry comes out of the wash looking dirtier than before it was washed.
16. Headphones are used to block out sound.
17. The family we were tired of listening to can’t talk long enough on the phone.
18. We sometimes have to lock-up to get free of a bad situation.
19. New flat screen TVs have smaller screens than the old CRTs and cost 50% more.
20. Some work only to steal.
21. The MDOC pays students to go to school.
22. Some inmates have their people put money in other prisoner’s trust accounts because they can’t have any in their own.
23. We brush our teeth before meals.
24. No good deed goes unpunished.
25. Bad behavior is expected.
26. We learned that the truth will not set you free.

 The British comedy troupe Monty Python made fun of government bureaucrats in a sketch called ‘The Ministry of Silly Walks.’  In it they portrayed a number of characters with striding characteristics each more outrageous than the next.  If you spend any amount of time in prison you will quickly come to understand that life is stranger than fiction.

The Chain-Gang is the standard method of transporting prisoners outside of the facility. It involves not only the use of handcuffs but also belly chains and leg irons.  The intention is to make it impossible for a person to escape by making it impossible to run. Your hands are cuffed at your sides so that you can’t even scratch your nose.  Your ankles are cuffed together with about 16 inches of chain.  The result is that you cannot take a full stride but must shuffle your feet along.  To see a line of men walking this way is like viewing the March of the Penguins.  Arms hanging limp at their sides, straight legged they shuffle single file at the direction of the officers.  After only a couple of steps the bruises will begin to form as the front leg jerks the cuff of the back leg.  The cuff rests on the ankle bone making it very uncomfortable, especially for those with cankles.

In level IV you are locked down 20+ hours a day.  When you have the opportunity to get out of your cell to go someplace like the chow hall you tend to take your time in order to savor the fresh air and every possible minute outside of your cell.  The Level IV Shuffle looks a lot like the Chain-Gang except that there are no restraints involved.  Hands shoved into pants, legs straight, feet dragging as you slowly move in the intended direction. Progress needs to be sufficient so as to not incur the wrath of the guards who are impatiently escorting you in a scene that looks a bit like herding cats.  Men who have been locked down separately from their associates group up to carry on conversations from their last promenade at the slowest possible pace.

With the closing of state mental hospitals, the prison system has become the dumping ground for the mentally disturbed.  Without adequate mental health care, they end up in trouble with the law for trying to self-medicate or anti-social behavior.  Psychiatric care in prison frequently devolves in sedation.  When they are not sleeping the day away on their bunks you can spot them by their slow, zombie like walk known as the Thorazine Shuffle. At some facilities there are whole units dedicated to housing those participating in outpatient therapy.  At chow time it looks like a scene out of “The Night of The Living Dead” as they stagger to the chow hall.

In prison, how you walk can be part of your fashion statement or possibly a result of it. There is a fashion trend known as “Sagging” in which young men wear the waist of their pants on their upper legs thus exposing the tops of their boxers.  The pants tend to be extra-large and as a result the crotch sags down to their knees.  This fashion statement is meant to defy authority since it is against the rules and could result in a ticket.  The practice of Sagging occurs both inside and outside of prison and is an anti-authority statement.  To keep the pants from falling down one hand must be occupied holding the pants in the designated position.  Activities that require both hands place the individual at the risk of dropping their pants.  One time I had an older gentleman tell me that he had warned his son that if he didn’t keep his pants pulled up properly that one day it would be his downfall. Sure enough, the son tried running from the police with his pants sagging and they fell down and he was captured.  In prison the fashion statement is taken to the extreme with pant waists below the butt exposing two pairs of prison shorts plus boxers in a multi-layer effect.  This fashion faux pas knows no bounds because I have seen guys wearing extremely over-sized sweat suits jogging on the track with one had desperately trying to hold their pants up.  You’d think they’d learned their lesson the first time when they originally got caught.

The average age of prisoners is increasing in Michigan and is now over 40 years of age. This is the result of both the increased length of sentences keeping in prison longer and the number of seniors now coming to prison, many for the first time.  As a result, there is an increasing number of prisoners with physical infirmities that either need a cane or a wheel chair to get around.  We refer to these as Sticks and Wheels.  Now just about everyone in prison is looking for an edge and having a medical disability is a frequent way guys attempt to get that edge.  Having a wheel chair or cane may qualify a person for a special early chow detail and use of an assistant to carry their meal tray.  And not two hours later the same guy may be spotted in the weight pit doing squats or running on the track. I’m not saying that everyone in a wheel chair or using a cane is faking it, but I’ve seen more than my share of miracles.

At the other extreme I’ve seen guys in such poor health that moving from a bunk or toilet to a wheel chair is almost borderline impossible.  Broken bodies that cannot run the gauntlet of double doors, narrow halls and over-crowded living situations.  Men in such poor health that they need to be in assisted living watched over by a nurse and not a guard.  Those who can no longer care for themselves let alone hurt another person.

Putting an air of confidence is important but it can be taken a bit too far on occasion resulting in a walk straight off a Paris fashion runway or a 1970s Superfly movie.  Long leg stride with loose hips and wide slung shoulders, one arm thrusting sharply down. Head erect, eyes forward checking to make sure that all eyes are on him.  All that’s missing is the purple pimp suit with the felt hat and feather.  Someone who knows they’ve got it all going on and are “too cool for school.”  This walk is usually associated with a person who sees them self as a gangster living the hip hop lifestyle.  It is a walk meant to impress, but in prison we’re still not sure who.

As mentioned before there are a lot of seniors in prison and early mornings on the big yard look a bit like early mornings at the mall.  Mall Walkers are health conscious seniors who walk as a primary means of exercise.  Since there are no malls or indoor tracks they have to go out to the big yard and walk the track in the early morning, which allows them to beat the crowds of younger people later in the day.  Since the seniors tend to be early risers and the younger people sleep in it is just part of their natural cycles to separate themselves.  To be a true Mall Walker in prison takes dedication since you’ll be outdoors in all kinds of weather undeterred by only the most brutal winter weather or monsoonal rains.  Mall Walkers tend to walk alone with their thoughts.  They are not the fastest people on the track and probably don’t work up a heavy sweat, but have heeded their doctor’s warnings and will get a couple of miles in before retiring to a park bench for the rest of the day.

The middle age counterpart to the Mall Walker is the Power Walker.  More than likely many Mall Walkers are retired Power Walkers.  Power Walkers are people who can no longer run due to health conditions like bad knees. They follow their doctor’s advice to get their heart rate elevated for at least 30 minutes 3 to 5 times per week.  Many Power Walkers remember their youth from 5-10 years ago when playing softball on the weekend didn’t take all week to recover from it.  Brisk walking with swinging arm motion really gets the blood pumping, burns calories, and reduces stress.  It is also a good way to get out of the house.  Out in the world many of these people would probably have a large dog to walk.  In prison they walk singly or in pairs and are forced to weave in and out of traffic as they move at a higher rate of speed than the average track walker.

The most dedicated athletes on the track is the Weekend Warrior.  They run laps, do calisthenics and play sports, but this is a fair-weather crowd.  If it is rainy or too cold and snowy they prefer to stay indoors and play cards.  They have a well-rounded exercise program easily distinguished from the Weight Lifters and Body Builders who are in the weight pit or doing calisthenics religiously, but rarely if ever run.  This group is least likely to continue their regiment once they get out of prison.

The Body Builders are distinguished from the Weight Lifters by their goals. Weight Lifters brag about the massive amount of weight they can lift while Body Builders are regularly seen in front of the bathroom mirror flexing. The Weight Lifters and Body Builders are the most prone to sports injury and suffer long term disability because of their “no pain, no gain” philosophy.

The Average Joe out walking the track however isn’t there for any health benefit.  They are there because there is nothing else to do.  They walk in groups of two to six people wandering aimlessly around the track.  They gossip, joke, tell tall tales, and brag about what brought them to prison. They promenade around the track making it difficult for all the other groups by turning it into an obstacle course.  At times the track looks more like rush hour on a Detroit freeway than a NASCAR race because of them.

Communication with friends and family in the free world is very important to those serving time in prison.  There are four primary means of communication available to inmates: phone calls, email, snail mail, and visits.  For some visits are a rare treat to savor, while these other forms of communication take precedent and occur at greater frequency.

In the housing units and on the yard are phones that can be used when the housing unit or yard are open.  Collect and pre-paid debit calls can be made to a limited number of phone numbers each month (check for change to the phone policy).  Except for calls to lawyers, the calls are recorded and possibly monitored.  A phone call can last 15 minutes.

Given the ratio of inmates to phones there is almost always a line of people waiting to get on the phone.  There is no privacy in prison and the phones are no exception.  The phones are clustered together making it easy for other inmates to overhear half of the conversation.  Many prefer to use the outdoor phones since it tends to be a little quieter than in the housing units.

Phone service is under contract with a private service provider that is responsible for the upkeep of the system.  It seems that at any one time at least one phone in four is out of service.  Men in prison experience high levels of stress and frustration and tend to take it out on those they are talking to on the phones and when that is not good enough they take it out on the phones themselves.  The current carrier is Global Tel Link (GTL).  Phone rates are a national issue and both the FCC and the federal courts have gotten involved trying to set fair rates.  Prisons are captive markets and almost every vendor under contract to the MDOC to provide services and products to inmates take advantage of that by charging significantly more than what the general public normally pays with a free market. With the MDOC these higher prices generally translate into so portion of the proceeds being shared by the department.  In the real world we would call this a kick back, but it is business as usual for Corrections.  In the case of GTL, they offered to set up a fund where the states portion of the revenue proceeds would go to buy cell phone detection and blocking technology to combat the growing problem of contraband cell phones in prisons.  (At the time of the contract award it was against federal law for the states to utilize this form of technology.)  The result is that prison phone calls cost $0.34 -$0.37 per minute, depending on whether they are collect or debit calls.  Long distance and international calling rates were even higher.  Now this is far better than the county jail were calls could cost $1.00 per minute, which is outrageous and far beyond what calls cost in the free world.  It is clearly a case of the state and counties making profit from those that can least afford it.  At one point the courts ruled that it was predatory pricing and ordered that phone rates be reduced, however the phone companies that provide services to prisons and jails successfully lobbied to get a stay while further study was done.

Either an inmate can put money on a disbursement to GTL to setup a debit account to pay for phone calls or those that receive the calls can either contract with a phone carrier that will allow them to receive collect calls and then bill their account or they can put money on a debit account of their own with GTL.  When I was in the county jail the hardest phone call I have ever had to make in my life was to my mother.  Fortunately, it was a land line and the carrier allowed them to accept the charges.  Cell phone carriers don’t work that way and you have to set up the prepaid debit account.  I was fortunate enough that I had the luxury of calling home collect and put money on a debit account so that I could call my family’s cell phones in case of emergency or vacation. Most people in prison don’t have that luxury.  I made it a practice to call home for 15 minutes once a week for the 8 years that I served behind bars.  This probably ran into the thousands of dollars in order to keep the lines of communication open.  Not everybody in prison will be able to afford this, although I knew several married guys who called home daily to talk to their wife and kids.

Being able to have the ability to pick up the phone and make a call is a major comfort to people in prison.  I knew a lot of guys whose priority was putting money on the phone instead of purchasing commissary items.  If you have a loved one in prison the best thing you can do for them is to set up a pre-paid debit account so they can call your cell phone and talk to you any time they can.  In a place so full of stress and hostility, being able to hear a friendly voice is a comfort and a blessing beyond words.

Starting around 2010 the MDOC brought in another vendor JPay to provide a form of electronic communication.  Friends and family can register on the JPay website and buy “stamps” to send what amounts to email to prisoners.  In the housing units, prisoners can then use a kiosk with a monitor and a keyboard where they can send and receive JPay messages.  The inmate can only send messages to people who have registered on the JPay website to communicate with them. The inmates can also buy “stamps”.  It costs about $0.50 per “page” to send a message.  Messages can even have photo attachments.  These messages are subject to the MDOC mail policy.

Snail mail through the good old USPS is also a good way to keep in contact with inmates. In 2017 the prisoner mail policy was updated due to contraband being sent to prisoners. Envelopes are discarded because of drugs being hidden in the adhesive under stamps, flaps, or address labels. Also, black or blue ink only, no colored ink, borders, or water marks.  Photos printed on plain paper only are permitted.  Forget sending stuff like newspaper articles, magazines, church bulletins, etc.  Greeting cards also have restrictions.

Children will longer be able to send their daddies refrigerator art.  It is as if the MDOC wants to discourage people from sending snail mail to prisoners.  The same thing has occurred in county jails where the only permissible format is a postcard.

Prisoners can purchase letter sized envelopes with metered postage.  The story is that back in the day, prisoners actually purchased postage stamps but that these would be treated like currency and used to pay prison debts among prisoners who would send the stamps to people in the free world who could return the stamps to the USPS for cash.  I can’t verify this but it was told to me by a lifer bunkie who had been down since the 1970’s.  It is an example of how those held against their will will attempt to find ways to circumvent the system.  And that a few will ruin it for everyone.