 Hello and welcome to The Shakedown, where we talk about the criminal justice system from the inside out. Each week we discuss a question and talk about the criminal justice system and tell our stories relating to that topic. To start our podcast, we will be asking, who are we? My name is Ryan. I spent six years in Texas prisons, also known as TDCJ, Texas Department of Criminal Justice. But most inmates know it as TDC, Texas Department of Corrections, because that's the name they went by for the longest time. I spent six years there. I stayed in prisons across the state. I just last year got released on parole, which means I had a 10-year sentence, so I get to finish the rest of my four outside with some supervision. I also have 10 years of probation to do as well. I was allowed an interstate compact, which means I get to do my time outside of the state of Texas and in Colorado. While I was in prison, I also met Malone, who is here with me. Hi, that's my intro to come in. Yes. My name is Aaron Malone. I also was in prison in Texas for 30 years. I was locked up for murder in 1991 at the age of 17 and was recently released last year in April of 2021. I've received a 50-year sentence. I did, as I said, 30 of it and I'm allowed to do the remainder of it the last 20 years out here in the free world. I'm currently on house arrest right now, which means I have a GPS mugger on, so I'm not completely free. I still have one foot in prison, so to speak. I'm here because Ryan and I both saw a need. We saw a problem that no one is addressing, problems that are with CDCJ, with Texas prisons in general. So the idea behind this is to cast a light on those problems to discuss it and hopefully to get a ball rolling somewhere in this world to address those issues and fix them. That's true. And the big thing is that criminal justice comes up everywhere, not just in the news, but in movies and TV shows. And really, I don't see it presented in the way that I have experienced it when I got locked up. Everything, honestly, was a giant surprise from dealing with courts to going to prison. Everything was totally different than I expected. When I see people talking about it, it's definitely not the way I've understood it from my experience. And I really would like to present that to other people, and I feel like it has way more experience than me in this area. And he also has some great stories that exemplify exactly what we want to talk about. We both have a few stories. We want to present that to anyone and everyone. Podcasts will have stories. The podcast will have issues. Ryan is full of soapbox. I mean, he is just replete with causes that he wants to champion. He's never met a cause that he didn't like. There are a few causes. I guess you're right. But you know what I mean. He's an activist at absolute heart in his heart and soul. He's the real driving force behind what we're doing right now. But I believe in it wholeheartedly. And that's why I'm here lending my support and what help I can give. I will say a big part of me being an activist. I was not always an activist. So I was locked up for intoxicated manslaughter. And before my accident that ended up taking someone's life, I was not super into activism. I was really just super into my career and that was about it. What happened during my sentencing, first I led guilty immediately. I tried to take as much responsibility as I could. The only reason there was even a sentencing hearing is because I was facing 40 years in prison and I was going to try and fight for my freedom. That was the only way to do it was to just have a hearing. The prosecutors was not really offering me much. Prosecutor is the side that is representing the state and the family. State of Texas at the time. And the family is the family of the victim. When that ultimately, we had that hearing, the hearing is basically just going in front of the judge. Each side, so the prosecutor brought witnesses like the owner of the bar who saw me that night and police officers who dealt with it. This was only for a sentencing phase, right? Because the guilt was already, you already pled guilty. I pled guilty like a means. So this was a year, this was a year after the accident. I had pled guilty as soon as I could, which was like a... So you can't plead guilty right away because there has to be a grand jury has to come together and first say if there's enough evidence to see if there was even a crime committed. To indict you. To indict me, right? So the first phase is always going to be a grand jury. So anytime you're in the news and you hear about a grand jury, they're just seeing if there is enough evidence to see if there is a crime. That's the first thing. And I'm indicted, which means there's a crime that they say can point towards me as the person who committed that crime, possibly at that point. As soon as that happened, I pled guilty immediately. I said, I did it, it's me, that's... Yeah, I'm pleading guilty. Now, in Texas at least, it's broken up into two parts. There's the admitting your guilt and then there's the sentencing part. Some people do it. There's determining guilt. Right. Not everybody goes in there. I didn't go in there and admit my guilt. I lied through my teeth. When dealing with the criminal justice system, like especially in Texas, in general, you want to say not guilty just because the next phase is the sentencing phase. So if you say not guilty to start with, that actually gives you room to bargain. And it gives you time. So if I had said not guilty to start with, then the prosecutor could have come back at me and said, all right, if you plead guilty now, I'm going to give you less time. But what I did was, as I said, guilty right away. So the prosecutor's like, well, I'm just going to throw the max at you. Sounds good. The flip side is also true of that as well. If you go in there and you refuse to plead guilty, then the prosecutor says, I'm going to make sure that you get the maximum or at least a much harsher sentence than you would have gotten otherwise. Right. And the prosecutor can, the way I thought about it too, is I assume everything is based on the judge. I thought everything, like, you know, I really need to suck up to this judge. But the judge is not determining anything until the very end. Basically, what happens is, is like if I took a plea deal, which is a instead of going in front of the judge and having a hearing to begin with, and I just signed a piece of paper, an agreement with the district attorney to do this much time, instead of going to trial, the judge would just, just has to agree to that, which they like 99% of the time they do. So really the person who had the most power, really who has the most power is going to be the district attorney or whoever your prosecutor is. And there's not usually, there's not one district attorney. In my situation, I didn't deal directly with the district attorney for my county. I dealt with actually a junior district attorney who was really trying to make a name for herself with trying to move up into, in the ranks, which was definitely not the situation that anyone wants to be in because it doesn't, a district attorney does not look good when they give someone the minimum sentence or they just get probation. It does not look good on the district attorney. What looks good is when they just totally shut out the defense, when they give someone the maximum, when they, when they get someone a whole lot of time. That makes the district attorney look really good because they're now, they're, especially in Texas, because then they're tough on car. Tough on car. Yeah. That somewhat depends on the county that you're in. True. It changes by the county that you're in, but in Texas in general, it is that way. And to all the bigger counties, I mean, all the biggest counties that we have in Texas, Dallas and the Dallas area, the Houston area, it is certainly that way. It is the places that have the highest level of death penalty cases. I mean, death penalty convictions in the world or at least in the United States for sure. And strangely enough, they also have the most amount of DNA exonerations. I cannot believe I brought the death penalty because of that. No, that, I mean, that's the last thing, that is the last thing I want to talk about on this show. Well, this isn't going to become the prison show where we talk about the death penalty for 90 minutes, but it's a good factor to bring up in Texas, especially around Houston and Dallas. There's a huge level of convictions, a huge level of capital punishments, which is death penalty, and a huge level of exonerations. So they're being super hard on them. Just DNA exonerations. You have to absolutely be able to prove your innocence to get one of these exonerations. DNA is one of the very few ways that that happens. There are a couple of exceptions to that, but not many. This topic, see, we can go on this tangent for a while because, and this might be a good future topic, because DNA has been proven very unreliable in a lot of different ways. And it can say a lot of different things. And, but the, Oh, really? I did not know that. Yes. DNA is a lot of experts that do not like using DNA because it can, it can, it's very easy to misinterpret the data and it's, it's, it's by no means perfect. Not, definitely not as perfect as crime shows lead it up to be. And, and it's used many times to, like, to convict people. They love to go to DNA. And it's a, and like, if you want exoneration using DNA, it's a very expensive process. And the people getting locked up and getting these capital punishments generally don't have a whole lot of money to do, do this. Most people getting locked up, they're not going to, not going to get funds for that, especially since like in Texas, you do not get paid for the work you do when you get locked up. In fact, if you're making money while you're in prison, other than people sending you, putting money on your books, so you can buy stuff in the prison, like from commissary or phone minutes, then they will punish you for doing that. Really? Yeah, they will. If you have like a business, an outside business going or something like that, then you will, they will punish you for that. You're right. They will make the attempt at law. Well, I mean, they will punish you if they find out about it. I've actually met someone who, who beat that and he did in a very interesting way, but that is a subject for another day. Yeah, I, I agree. So like any negotiation you want to have, like something in your back pocket, sometimes the admission of guilt is something you can use to barter with. I gave that up right away, even though I was trying to, you know, thought it was the right, the moral right thing to do. That was a, that was a big part of the thing is there's, there wasn't much I had to barter with. And there, and for the DA, they're like, there's, you know, I can, I can give you, they're like, how about 15 years? And that was about it. There's nothing, nothing else. He came to you with 15 years first. I think that's, that was his initial, that was like 15 years. So I, I honestly, it's been a long time. So according to the, for a long time, I'm like, I don't remember ever getting told about 15 years, but supposedly, but I could totally see myself like someone coming up to me and saying 15 years early on. And I immediately, me immediately saying no, because I was really hoping because the minimum that I could have gotten was two. I had two charges, which were both two to 20 years, which also could have been stacked, which would have led to 40. But, you know, I'm trying to do the right thing. You know, this is a first offense, but I also didn't know that the county I was in, this is a, this, when this is what we were talking about earlier, different county, each county is different. I was in Collin County, right next to me was Tarrant County. In Tarrant County, there was a very famous case where a teenager got drunk and drove his car and ended up killing four of the passengers in the car. And his case was dismissed. Basically, his defense attorney argued that he did not know the difference from right from wrong. That got dismissed. He got probation on another charge and that was it. And he, he did not have to do any time for the people who died due to his drunk driving. They called it affluenza. That was the, the name on the media. Well, I remember that case. After he said affluenza, everybody knows that. And six months later, Kade got in trouble again because he was seen on Facebook drinking, violated the probation he was on and his mom took him and went to Mexico. And that's the last I heard about that case. So he did get, well, he did get some kind of punishment if he was on probation. He was on probation. I don't know if it was for that charge though, because he did not know right from wrong, which was insane. That's, that's a whole nother problem with Texas prison is the fact that people, I mean, that's not just Texas prisons either. That's prison, that's criminal justice in general in the United States of America is susceptible to being bought. Right. I will tell you that was one thing that was mentioned to me a couple of times while I was out on bond was maybe I should slip some money to the judge, which me trying to deal with the fact that I had killed someone and trying to do the moral upright thing in response. It's like, no, you can't do that. That's wrong and all that kind of stuff. By the way, people who don't know Ryan Ford's as well as I do, Ryan is one of the most upright and upstanding people you will ever meet. He literally has a tattoo saying to live with honor and integrity on his wrist to keep them to constantly remind him to do the right thing. I do. Then this is the thing that drives me crazy is that dealing with the justice system totally turned me upside down because what ended up happening. And the reason I bring this up is when the sentencing hearing ended up happening. All these things I thought I was doing to present that, that I am a moral person and I thought that's what needed to stand. I thought that was what was going to be on trial was that that Ryan that is a moral person who contributed to society and I'm trying to do the next right thing and all that kind of stuff. I thought the system would recognize that and it's not that I wouldn't be punished but that it would show up. It would be looked at through the lens of the person that you are. Yeah, it would be recognized in that courtroom I guess would be the biggest thing. And I will tell you what ended up happening in that courtroom that day and during my sentencing it wasn't just that I felt like the punishment was unjust or whatever. What happened was I watched the district attorney. She's trying to make a name for herself. She wants to prove herself. It looks good the more time I get. So she was eviscerating me and I'm an easy target. No doubt. I mean I killed someone and I admitted to it and I wasn't saying I'm sorry because I'm sitting there saying this is too big. This is too big of a thing to apologize for and I don't know what to do. So I'm just a deer in the headlights and she is taking advantage. I'm watching as my family is on one side of the courtroom and this victim's family is on the other side of the courtroom. It is tearing them apart. That did not need to ever happen. That was just harm on top of harm. That feeling that I felt in that courtroom that just everyone getting burnt at the same time and it's being hurt and I started this hurt and then it just everyone continuing to get hurt over this. That's where the soapbox comes from. The soapbox is why I start throwing down soapboxes and wanting to stand on them and why I wanted to do this podcast and talk about the criminal justice system because I'll say it a million times. I don't want people to do what I did. I made way too many mistakes. So I don't want it to happen again and I don't want other people to experience it and it shouldn't have to. And the only way that you... I mean there's no way that you can put an event like that. I mean once you've done something like that, like kill somebody. You can't go back and not kill somebody. No matter how bad you wish you could go back and reverse what you had done. The only way forward if there is a way forward is to take that event, that negative thing that whatever it is that someone has done and try to use that lesson to take it and talk about it and to try to, like you said, keep it from ever happening to anyone else again. Not just the experience you had in the courtroom but the general experience of your mistakes that you made that led you to that courtroom. I feel that way about my crime. My crime was horrible. It was a violent crime. And there's a whole lot that goes into it. And that's the story for another day and maybe we will tell that story someday. Like I mentioned earlier, I started off my prison career lying to myself silly about what happened later on in life. You know, after there was any reason to lie anymore because I had no more appeals or anything like that. Well then I started being forthcoming with what really happened or telling the truth that I was guilty of this crime and so forth of murder. I realized that as long as I was lying, no good could ever come of that crime. Nothing good could ever come of it. To turn this around, to salvage some good from this horrible event is going to require me first and foremost to be honest about it and to open up about it and let other people know to speak about it. And that's a lot of what we're doing right here too. Right. You have to talk about it to bring something out of it. If you don't talk about it. I learned that early on because I was in treatment and I went to, was going to 12 step groups and that's how you deal with everything. You just talk everything out. You talk about, you throw all your baggage on the floor in front of everybody and then you find out real quick that it actually helps people because it lets other people know that they, when they're dealing with something similar that there helps them deal with it. But on the flip side of it, I don't see any representations of what we were seeing or trade in any sort of media. I've seen sort of, there have been close ones. There have been some... What do you mean? The closest one I can think of is maybe Ear Hustle. They'll talk about what happens inside but they're talking about what happened in San Quentin. And the reason that Ear Hustle even exists is because they have a journalist who comes in, started a podcasting workshop inside the prison and they are allowed to record it, not only with permission of the warden but they have an officer, a lieutenant come in and do the sign off every episode, giving his permission. Which, can you imagine that happening at a Texas prison? No. Exactly. Like, just a journalist once... Getting journalists inside of Texas prisons is nigh unto impossible in the modern age. The only way a journalist is coming into a prison is if they're going to film a religious, like a Christian ceremony, like some sort of Christian event. And if the church that funds it is spending a whole bunch, like puts a whole bunch of pressure outside of it. It's the only way any sort of media is coming on to a prison. I'm sure you can ask journalists about this but like Texas prisons are a black hole for them. They don't have access. And we've been in there and we've seen it. I mean, it's actually gotten much better. It really was. I mean, it used to be an absolute, just total isolation from everybody and they control every single method by which anybody would be able to communicate with the outside. They still do that. But they have many more avenues of communication available now. I mean, they have the phones and that type of thing and they're getting tablets now. In the past, it was nothing but mail and you had a mail room full of book burners. You still have the book. We decide whether or not you're allowed to receive a letter or to send one out depending on what it says in there. And what Malone means by book burners is it's very accurate. Any all mail comes to the mail room. Let's be clear. When you're inside prison, nothing is private. Everything is out in the open. No secrets. Yeah, there's absolutely no secrets. You are surrounded by people at all times. There's zero privacy and then any mail that comes in gets searched by the mail room. Read by the people in the mail room. Read by the people in the mail room, maybe. Very early on, my ex-wife wrote me a letter. The first page of the letter was denied and the rest of it because it was written on notebook paper got approved and got to me. So I got to read the last part of the letter. I was really upset about that because I really wanted to hear from her and we had been trying to get back together before prison and she... I get this and I look at it and I find out from the context that her mom had just died and that was on the first sheet. I'm like, what the... So I go to the mail room the next day and I'm like, I got this. You said this is denied. How could this possibly be denied? And I explain what happened. She was writing about her mom dying. They go through and look at it again and they said, we can't give it to you. But we're going to give you a copy and mark out the obscene section. The obscene section was she'd written it on stationery that had a picture of a statue that was naked. A statue, do you mean like a classical type of statue? Yeah, it was like a Greek statue. I'll grant it. It was a drawing of a statue. But it was clearly a statue. It was not anatomically perfect. Something that nowhere else in the modern world would consider pornography. Right. No. Yeah, that's absolutely not. You could show it, you know, in prime time. No problem. They took a marker and crossed out the boobs which drew more attention to the boobs than the letter did. That was actually an act of mercy on their part because the policy is they don't even do that. Right. I know. It was an act of mercy and that's I think the only reason I got that letter is because when I explained to them like look like this is about someone, also they messed up. You understand what happened. My ex-wife had written that someone had died and they didn't call me in. They had messed up too on the policy. If a loved one or family member dies they're supposed to contact you for handing you the letter. They're supposed to contact you and call you in because they don't want you freaking out in the middle of the day room. People have extreme emotional responses to that type of thing. It can be dangerous. Right. And usually they'll have like the chaplain go over the news with you or however that goes. And the day room, just so everyone knows. What is the day room, Ryan? You have to know how the prisons are set up. Each prison, in Texas every prison is set up differently and I'm sure in other states they're set up totally differently too. There's in your cells where inmates sleep. They can be, some of them have bars, some of them just have doors. And some of them you don't even have bars or doors. You don't even have cells. You sleep in cubicles. You've just got a bunk inside of a cubicle and they're all piled in next to each other. And then there's a separate room where inmates can go where there's the TVs and tables that are usually cemented down into the floor so nobody can pick up the table and throw it at anyone or anything like that. Solid stainless steel tables. Right. Or if it's an older unit or an older part of a unit it can be, there'll be a wrought iron table with a concrete, with a two inch concrete top. In other words, they're pretty hard and unforgiving and they're just used to play dominoes on and for people to sit around. Yeah. Writing letters here, drawing pictures. Which if you sit on that for a long period of time your back will feel it. It is uncomfortable. And I have done hours and hours of writing on those tables and writing and drawing and that was not fun for my back. And then on top of that you're going to have, you're usually going to have two TVs in the day room that are usually on full blast and even though you're sitting right in front of them you can't hear them but you can definitely hear them from the hallway. Very strange phenomenon in prison. You can't hear the TVs directly in front of them in the day rooms. He is absolutely right. Something like that. What do they call that? The effect that they have in those symphony halls and all that where like a sound wave has to happen. The things are up. The TVs are up full blasts but you can't hear them where you're sitting. Everywhere else that doesn't want to hear them can't do anything but hear them. Over their headphones and everything. Well, and a big part of that is it's almost as if TVs were not designed to work like that. And a big part of it is because a lot of the times the TVs are not like when you put a TV in your home which is how they are designed you put it on a wall in your living room and then you put the and you're supposed to put the couch where you watch it from the diagonal distance plus half that's how far away your couch is supposed to be. So if you have a 72 inch TV then your TV should be so half of 72 is 36 so it should be 108 inches away from the TV which ends up being what about six feet. So it should be about six feet away and but in prison the benches are like two feet away and though the TV is if you're over on that seven and eight dorm where we were it can be even closer and closer together. That's true, yes because there's not your day room is your... Those were redesigned those were dorms originally meant to be dorms they were repurposed to be dorms just from gymnasiums and cow halls and that type of thing from the 30s. Right and like yeah everything was jam packed in there so you've got your TVs just hanging over you and there's nothing behind the TVs so instead of the sound bouncing off the back wall and then coming back to hit you the sound just goes back and so that's why you can usually hear it out in the hallway crystal clear but then you're sitting right in front of it and you have to hold up your ear to the TV to hear the words. The best part is like in seven and eight dorm the TV is going to be on full blast and people are going to be sleeping right next to it too. Trying to sleep. Trying to sleep, right. Well if you're like me you've gotten used to it and you see we're able to sleep through it. True yeah and that takes some takes some skill and for me take some time and some ear plugs. The other thing is that is also where that day room where those TVs are blasting usually there is a phone right behind the TV or right in the general area so it will be in the day room area yeah so it's going to be in the day room that's where you go to use the phones too there's usually going to be a long line because there's usually only going to be one phone for every 50 or 60 inmates and it's going to be a and that is besides the mail that is going to be your main source of contact with the outside world and because everyone works for the day without pay everyone usually works from 8 to 5 slavery slave labor right so call it what it is and we can go we're going to have a whole other episode to we're going to have a lot of episodes about that we won't take it on that so far yeah we're going to talk about what like what working in prison is like and why we're saying it's slave labor and you're and anyone is welcome to say to argue that point with us but we will make our case oh I can't wait exactly but everyone comes back at 5 so at 5 if you want that phone a lot of people will come right through that door and go right to the phone and grab it and then that phone is until the phones turn off at 10 o'clock it's lines of people trying to get on that phone one phone for about 30 inmates so okay you got to imagine and phone calls are what 20 minutes, 15 minutes a piece do the math from 5 o'clock till 10 30 actually the phones went off at 10 o'clock didn't they they went off to 4 30 minutes or 4 right now 5 hours with approximately you know so many people whoop whoop whoop you can imagine it's a jam pack and a lot of guys are trying to double up and get more than one phone call right and their group friend, their mom and someone else their homeboy that got out of prison all three of those people need to be called and the TVs and the phones those are good places where fights can break out and that's not I got a flight by the TV yeah I mean that TV isn't easy super easy that is the place where you're going to see the most fights my breakout is I didn't even change the channel right it was just on a cartoon and they assumed because I draw comic books it must have been me to change it awesome kind of funny they're funny now yeah it's funny now the one thing to know to I was wondering when I was on medium custody yeah no oh so there's two things there one thing about TVs is that the TV what is medium custody Ryan? I'm going to get into medium custody I just want to quickly add this just because I it's always this blew my mind when I first came in TVs are on sports and movies you can change the movie TV but if you touch that sports TV there will usually be hell to pay that's exactly what happened in my case somebody changed the sports TV to cartoons right and a big part of that reason is because of gambling gambling that in many times even the officers are on they'll tell you that they don't support gambling or anything like that but they have no problem making sure the game is on and they'll even make it a late night rack if there's a good game on that night but far be it if there's a good movie on so that's not happening the games are sacred in prison if Dallas is playing that night you're getting a late night rack that's how that's how it goes playoff games are generally allowed people are generally allowed to stay up late and certainly any kind of well you're not going to have a championship game on late so you don't have to worry about that right alright now let's talk about custody levels you start off at your general population custody level but when you are they have new names for them now it's like S4, S2, S1 all that type of stuff I still don't understand all that but that's not what it used to be called it used to be called line class and all that type of stuff the custody levels are the G4 and that type of thing those are the G letters whatever that stands for and then the your class has something to do with your custody level is the S4, S1 line 1, line 2, line 3 they did not change that that is still the same the custody levels they changed they used to be close custody, medium custody, mental custody and of course administrative segregation or the only other custody level that they had other than that was protective custody those were the major those were all the custody levels they had in Texas Department of Criminal Justice and then Texas 7 happened and those guys broke out in late 2000 the first thing everybody asked was these guys were minimum custody they were minimum custody inmates you had all these people with life sentences no wonder they broke out they were minimum custody and the sound of that minimum custody made it sound like they weren't being guarded properly like there were trustees and being allowed to throw them around outside the fence and that's how they broke out which wasn't the case it was just how it made it sound instead of actually changing anything that was real they just changed the name of it so that if anybody else broke out that was already minimum custody now they were a G2 instead of minimum custody I have written up here that we definitely have an episode about can you get locked up in prison this is exactly what I want to talk about so I think on that episode we definitely need to talk about different custody levels we will break those down we will break down what we also need to break down the Texas 7 because the Texas 7 we should be explaining what minimum custody or minimum custody or all that minimum custody is where you go when you get locked the first place you go when you get locked up in prison so if you basically so you can get cases in prison alright cases disciplinary actions disciplinary actions and they have a hearing and everything right and your hearing is in the middle of the night generally no not always depends the major cases won't be the major cases will always probably be in the morning well fortunately I never got a major case so I didn't have to experience that so I only had to deal with being woken up in the middle of the night or this maneuver which was awesome get called out right before count they love that yeah when you get counts so one thing is when I say get called out what is a count line? a count is they have to count you all the time all day long they are going to count how many times do they count you in prison on the daily basis? I think it was 8 times a day I mean try to count how many times a day that's 8 times twice a shift yeah I think that's I think it might even be more than that well that's not including special counts special counts are sometimes on holidays and stuff like that so well special count is when they just say we're just going to count right now just because and they do that for just sometimes they just need an extra count they need to do a certain number of special counts each year but on holidays they actually add more counts to the day because inmates more often commit suicide around the holidays yeah holiday spirit so they do more counts to make sure inmates are still alive it was what they're supposed to do but that a lot of times inmates in general aren't working as well so the way that they've designed or done the counts is kind of around the busier times of the day I think at night they do a count every other hour I think every other hour on the night shift they actually do a count I think that's how it is on the holidays they don't ring the bells or the alarms you're right you are right that they do that they do a count because they know nobody's gone anywhere they'll just mark down a piece of paper the same as it was the hour before and hide it there and then when something happens and they forget to mark someone who's moved they get in trouble for it we're getting close to time and let's talk about I still haven't explained what medium custody is medium custody is so if you get three cases that goes major a minor case my first minor case was missing a mailroom lay-in which is if you have to we're going into everything now the mailroom is where the mail comes in if you get a book or something they're going to call you in the night before they send you a slip of paper that allows you to leave at a certain time because you can't just leave the cell block whenever you want an official lay-in is what it's called I'll actually say lay-in on the piece of paper right I'll say lay-in and then you can show that to the officer and if they are willing to listen to that lay-in they'll let you out the door but sometimes they will say no, you have to be called out for that lay-in and you'll argue with them and it will do you no good and you'll just have to sneak your way out which that's something we can cover in another episode and that's a minor case you know, no big deal and you'll get some sort of reprimand I don't know, I couldn't go to Wreck for a week go outside and lift weights and stuff like that I wasn't allowed on the Wreck yard for a week and if I had gone to the Wreck yard that would have been another minor case and would have been another punishment if I had done it twice would have been three cases that case right there would have gone major case now I'm facing going to medium custody medium custody is where you get sent off and you're separated from the general population inmates you're in your cell pretty much all day you do have day room times so they will basically pull certain cells out and take you to the day room at certain times they will take you to Wreck at certain times if you have that permission inmates do not and you will just sit there basically in your cell most of the time when you go to meals and stuff like that you're separated from other inmates you also have a lot less access to phones you don't get contact visits anymore with your family no more contact visits you can't spend as much money on commissary you're not allowed you're probably going to be on restriction for the first two months you're over there anyways yeah you'll be on restriction which like commissary you can buy commissary is where you can buy certain items and like you can buy tortilla chips and refried beans and candies and cookies and whatever they sell some necessities like shampoo and deodorant shampoo and deodorant and drawing paper and pens and pencils and things like that but if you're on restriction though you can't buy most of that you can buy one bottle maybe shampoo you can buy soap you can buy a toothbrush yes you can buy a toothbrush but you're given a toothbrush anyway what do they call it? hygiene items and correspondence correspondence that's what it was so you can buy envelopes and a certain number of stamps because stamps are currency in prison so you can only buy a certain number of them because they know we can use them to trade for those chips and things that you know those good items the good good you can trade almost anything you can trade toilet paper which some people do and it's questionable that could be an interesting subject for a future date because it was the prison economy prison economy is a great one and I know we've got some great stories about the work supply and I got to see a lot of that I don't think I ever got access to the red cups you'll have to remind me what the red cups are the black cups the cups they had they were handing out to everybody but I couldn't get one I wanted one of those black cups too and I couldn't get it for a long time until later on I was about I had one for you then COVID hit I actually want to talk about COVID in prison and how that all went down at Stringfellow because that was a real fun that was fun for everybody I can't wait to talk about that I got a story to tell with Ellen I want to hear that poor Bornstein almost died over there you know all about that that was crazy I was over at the trustee camp at the time which I'll have to explain trustee camps at a different time because we're getting close I'm isolated all on my own almost at another unit and then finally restrictions lift up enough that I can go back to the building I go back I see him alone and then all of a sudden they're like oh yeah Bornstein almost died I'm like what? and it's like yeah and this person gone and this person gone and meet this guy and I'm like what the heck happened over here because we couldn't move like most of we were like locked down that entire time over where you were at so that was that was crazy that was a very erratic period of time that was unusual of every respect there was a lot of good stories to tell from that period I mean you talked about how you got me out how you were instrumental in getting me out of prison literally as they shut the phones off and locked down the unit for covid you gave me the vital piece of information I needed to get myself out yes that is a whole episode I want onto its own because what we went through to get you out that was a miracle and I'm not taking any responsibility for that because you played your part for sure because just so apparent that it was a miracle by the fact that the timing of which it happened a minute more and it wouldn't happen right we're going to talk about that and this is one of the things as we're wrapping it up right now I really want to tell everyone is that the criminal justice system is not like a well-oiled machine where everything happens the same and it's based on some sort of logic or whatever there is so much luck and happenstance and things that just collide you don't see that you don't see how these things come together and you don't see how just this one little thing over here affects so many different things and that is what I would really like to one of the many things I would like to show on here and one of the biggest things that I would like to see is that just watching the code of law in order what you learn from watching that even if you don't even realize it that one thing is affecting 100 other things in the background because you're making a whole bunch of assumptions off of that about the people that are in prison and so forth you're right that's a good that's a very good point that you're making yeah what would you like to say before we call this one a day we were all over the place on this one we're trying to just introduce y'all introduce the world to the concept of this podcast and what we're all about and what we'll be talking about in the future which is going to be all about these crazy incongruencies and illogic and ironies and everything else that go into Texas prisons and the injustice that's being done to some people and the just insane opposite of that the mercy that's given to others over and over again that's what I'll be here to talk about and to tell you a bunch of stories about my 30 years of incarceration yes lots of interesting stories to tell where Paul Malone well uh prison historian will start talking the idea for this podcast the whole idea for it I had this while I was in prison listening to one of grandpa Malone's stories I was like no one hears stories like this and it was because I was like it was so much it's fun to listen to it's fun to hear them and listen to them and learn from them I don't know why they don't tell these actual stories because they're way crazier than a lot of the than the stories they do tell and there's a lot more depth to them there's just so much more going on and I really want to get like I've told you before there's the one story about the escape that I want to talk about I want you to tell so badly but we're going to get to that another day I'm really excited about this podcast I can't wait to do the next one just got our new setup here really excited to get this out there I can't wait to see what it looks like guys have been listening to the shape down and we will talk to you next week