After being sentenced to 2 - 5 years in prison, I was taken back to the county jail to wait for the ride out to prison quarantine. This means I had 3 days to think about what I was now going to have to face. I was scared to death! How had my life gotten to this point? What was I going to do?
Riverside Quarantine
Our county jail rides out to Quarantine on Friday morning, and since I was under 21, I was going to Riverside Quarantine in Ionia Michigan. Michigan tried to keep everyone under 21 in the same prisons at that time, and I guess it was for the purposes of education and programming, but all it really resulted in was chaos. I mean, think about it, every knuckle headed kid in the state with no education went to the same prisons. Fun times.
The purpose of Quarantine is to get you classified in regards to your level of confinement, tested for disease, and in general get you acquainted with the prison environment. They actually gave you a class on how to avoid getting raped in the prison system. In Riverside, the Quarantine prisoners couldn't smoke because there were kids as young as 14 that had been tried as adults. The only problem with this was there were also prisoners from Quarantine that worked in the kitchen and other areas with the general population guys. This resulted in cigarettes being smuggled in at a greatly inflated price, causing debts to be owed, and violence to happen as a result.
Walking in the Door
The first thing you see when you get to Riverside is a set of giant copper doors, and when you go in, there is a vestibule with a steel cage. When you get in the door you are locked in the cage and asked to strip naked. Then you wait.
Eventually, other counties deliver their inmates, and when they have what they feel are enough, they come in to body check you. I had been waiting naked in a 10x10 cage with around 10 other guys for around an hour when I got checked. They come in and have you line up, facing away from them, in a line next to each other. Then they have you bend over and spread your butt cheeks, lift your feet, run your hands through your hair, open your mouth, and lift your scrotum. After the body inspection, they give you an oversize white "Ghost" jumpsuit and a pair of oversize shoes with no laces, and you wait some more.
One at a time they call you out of the cage to go to a window where they take your picture and give you an I.D. You must carry your I.D. on you at all times while in prison, and present it on demand, or face consequences. They also give you your prison number at that time, something you will never forget all the days of your life.
On your own
After getting my I.D. and number issued to me, the lady at the window told me "Now go through that door and up the stairs, then turn to your right." My first thought was "What? By myself?" I was so scared, I just knew I was going to die horribly as soon as I went through that door, but I put on my big boy pants and went.
When I got to the top of the stairs, there was another room like a laundry. I found out later they call it the Quartermasters, and it is where you are issued your actual uniforms and bedding in the form of a bedroll. I was then processed through a medical exam and given a Tuberculosis test on my forearm. Last, I was give my cell number and directed where to go to check in with the Corrections Officer (CO). At that point I was on my own.
I went down the hall and around the corner to the CO's desk. It was rec. time (recreation) and everyone was out in the day-room either watching T.V. or playing cards. I have never felt so many eyes on me in my life. I could just feel the other prisoners sizing me up to see if I was going to be someone that could be punked out or not. One thing I was thankful for was my days running with the gang at this point, as it gave me a kind of swagger in the way I carried myself that told them I was not one that would be easy. I checked in with the guard and he keyed my door for me so I could get in and get settled.
Not long after, my cellmate came in from rec. and fortunately he was a pretty cool guy. There is nothing worse than having a cellmate that is either a slob, a bully, or worse of all, a sissy. Nothing against gay people, but in prison it just brings drama and you get in too just for living there. In prison you can't just get a new room, you get what you get and you deal with it.
Going back to my roots
It didn't take long for someone to know me from the streets and tell others that I ran with the gang I had run with. They approached me and questioned me, and I had no real choice but to tell them who I was. There would have been severe consequences for not "Standing on my Flag" as they say. The gang I had run with was a Black Muslim gang and I was a white guy, this means I was a "Mission Man" while I was in prison. Anything that needed done that nobody else wanted to do was delegated to me. Collecting debts, holding "Shanks" (home-made prison knives) or drugs and any other thing needed was mine to do. Fun times. Doing the gangs bidding was going to cause me no end of trouble later in my prison career, but at this time it provided me with protection and what I though were friends.
Craziness on a daily basis
Riverside Quarantine was a zoo to say the least, especially if you were a white guy. I am not a racist in any way, but the truth is, white guys are the minority in prison and the black guys know it. I guess if I was treated as a second class citizen all my life, I would treat those I saw as oppressors with contempt when I had the chance too. Doesn't make it right, or an enjoyable experience.
The banned cigarettes did not help. The inflated price created a black market that the gangs controlled. One of the things I was famous for was asking new guys who we knew had bought some cigarettes if I could buy one from them, and when they pulled out their pack I would just snatch them from them. If they resisted I would call my crew and we would beat them.
I saw guys get raped in the shower simply for not being able to defend themselves. I saw guys get robbed for owing debts they did not pay, and I saw guys get put in the position where they had to call their family to have money sent to avoid getting stabbed. One day, I saw a guy get yanked off a wire cage where they kept the cleaning supplies, dragged out on to a patio breezway that we had access to, and beat mercilessly with chairs until he was unconscious, then they beat him some more.
Fun times
Classification
The day you wait for in Quarantine is the day you get classified. This is when they tell you what level prison you will be going to based on the amount of time you are doing, and how you have behaved in the past and since coming to prison. The lower your classification, the better the prison, and the more freedom you will have in the prison. Level 1 prisons have gate passes where you can go outside to work, and level 7 supermax prisons basically bury you under the prison. I was given a level 1-2, a secured level 1, no gate pass, but not too horrible.
A few days later they called me to pack up for transfer. They don't tell you where you are going but they put a tag on your duffel bag which has a 3 letter code, and if your smart enough, you can ask around and find out where that code is. Turns out I was going to the Ionia Temporary Facility. Temporary Facilities are triple fenced prisons and they are called temporary because they are on leased land. This one had a nice track, wight pits, a big store, and even super Nintendo in the yard house. Most important to me, they had a class for learning how to run a printing press and a good library.
Like always it seems, things were not going to go as I planned...
As Always...
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