The Prisoner Benefit Fund, or PBF for short, plays an important role in the daily life of prisoners in the MDOC.
Tag: Prison Life
Green Dot
Green Dot or its financial equivalent is what many of the “haves” use to maintain their lifestyle while in prison. By purchasing these cards with cash at grocery stores they can be difficult to trace but as good as cash to settle debts. Easy to acquire and use, it serves a purpose that its creator never envisioned.
Butt Naked Fish
Not much needs more to be said about food service in the MDOC than to mention “Butt Naked Fish.” This will elicit a visceral response from anyone who has served appreciable time as a prisoner. BFN is an unbreaded fish fillet that has more in common with particle board than Van de Kamp’s.
Sabotage
A guy with a parole in his pocket gets caught with spud juice. (Happens more often than you would think.) His “friends” tried to talk him into closing his brewery, but he told them that he needed to stack up coffee bags since he was going to Detroit Reentry Center (DRC) for a residential substance abuse program and he needed to be able to buy heroin while he was there. His friend’s comment was I guess he didn’t really want to go home.
Educated Guess
I worked as a tutor in the GED program for nearly 5 years, under three different teachers at two different prisons. There isn’t much that was more rewarding then when one of my students would point me out to his family in the visiting room and say, “That man is helping me get my GED.” And there wasn’t much that was more frustrating than seeing a student who could get his GED fail to apply himself and leave prison with nothing to show for his time.
Breaking and Entering
No one in prison likes a thief. They target those they perceive as weak or look for targets of opportunity. When lockers are open there are always eyes watching to see what you’ve got. Being inattentive even for a few seconds can cost you. Not padlocking your locker or footlocker even for a brief time and leaving it unattended will provide an opening for theft.
50 Things I Learned in Prison
1. Toothpaste is a better glue than Elmer’s. 2. Raman 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.
You Might Be A Prisoner If:
An homage to Jeff Foxworthy: 1. You try to buy things with Raman Noodles. 2. You call out in a restaurant “Cookie for a burger!” 3. You send a written request to your doctor for an appointment.
Everything Is Backwards In Prison
We lock our closets but we can’t lock the bathroom door. In fact, in many prisons there isn’t a bathroom door.
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.
The Ministry of Silly Walks
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.