 Hello and welcome to the shakedown where we talk about criminal justice system from the inside out. My name is Ryan and coming to you live from my phone from Houston, Texas is Malone. Hey, I'm Aaron Malone. Each week we tackle a different question and try to answer it. This week we're going to ask the question Do we need prisons? This question is a big question. We're just gonna start by saying this is probably gonna come up more often Everyone is probably gonna have thoughts. We're happy to have this as an ongoing debate But for this episode, we're just going to start with our initial thoughts about prisons Why they're why people think they're here. Do we need them do? Why do people think that we need them and just based on our experience of from being in them for an extended period of time? So most people their argument for having a prison is that when people commit a crime, what do we do with them? We have to put them somewhere We don't want them in society if they do something horrible We need to get them off the streets. That's by far the standard and because prisons have been around, you know Prisons are the standard right now That's where we want to put them. We just want to put people Yeah, and most people think that prisons have always been here, right? Your average modern individual never lived in a day and age where they did not have prisons and doesn't know anyone who ever did His great-grandmother did not live in a day and age didn't have prisons So people think that there's something that's always been here and it's something that's just a part of life It's not right. You're relatively new thing. Yeah Adam and Eve did not have a prison in the Garden of Eden where all the bad people went This is a relatively new invention along with police and other things surprisingly enough even nowadays Actually, not all places have prisons. Not all societies use prisons That's not where they that's not how they deal with people who have deviant behavior Eskimos I've read about they all actually have like these kind of singing duels When when there's some sort of conflict that they need to resolve, but they don't they definitely don't have This is a funny. It's a form of conflict resolution. So if there's some sort of debate if you did some sort of wrong Then that's how they determine Reparations, this is how they determine it. It's been a while since I have read this book now I've got now I'm gonna have to on it's on human destructiveness by Eric from that's the one who wrote on human destructiveness They talked about societies like the Eskimos that don't use prisons. They talked about Societies that are like in I Think they're outside of Russia That are just like small colonies if you're a small farming community, you're not going to build a prison You know, there's no point in that they have to find other ways of dealing with disputes a big dispute is Are you harvesting on somebody else's land? You're stealing from them. That's a lot of a lot of stealing That's a lot of stealing. It's a lot of stealing. I mean, that's grand larceny You know going through and stealing a whole plot of somebody else's harvest These are the work that's doing right the the big thing. I've I got from reading about these cultures is that it's not really even about the Where what happens when there is a dispute or when something happens and And the fact that they don't use prison the bigger part is that the whole community is involved They get communities involved and that's a big part of it I've read some very interesting Things on this as well of different societies and in the past and how they dealt with criminals or people would even behavior or For that matter the insane a couple of the more interesting ones that I found the one that captured my imagination The most was when the Shaolin monasteries were the most prominent Sort of center of communal life in China whenever every little city or village Surrounded a monastery had one in its vicinity in some of these places They would get somebody that you just couldn't they couldn't deal with they couldn't get him to stop their their behavior You know, so what do you do with them? They would bring them to the monastery They'd bring them to the monk and these monks would take them under there would sort of take them in They would assign a month to this person Some to be there next to him and someone that had exemplary behavior that they wanted to instill within them Of course these monks are like comb through masters So I mean the guy's not gonna get away from the guy's not gonna be able to beat him up He's not gonna be able to just to not do the regiment and all that I mean if he decides he's gonna get violent Well, then or try to run or anything the guy was more than capable of stopping them from anything and they never heard Hurt the person any further than was absolutely necessary Then to get them back on track and whatever they felt that the person was ready to go back to their families They brought the brand new man out of their monastery to the family oftentimes very enlightened that story I read right there I can remember whenever I was in prison, especially in the early 90s and things were very violent and dangerous and the place was a The place was a lot crazier than the prison that you came to I said and I was At one point was writing a book on this subject on how to turn Texas prisons into a situation like that in my mind then I still thought that prisons was an absolutely necessary thing Didn't need to be done away with at all I just was was trying to come up with a way in which prisons could actually accomplish the said goal of making people better Of course, I did not really know at the time or really think that people don't really at the core of the Problem is that people don't care if you get better matter of fact, they don't want you to get better They don't like you and they just want to be rid of you right that is a huge part Is that it's just it is an easy thing to just throw someone into into a prison you remind me about when I went to county and Into jail, which is where you're held until before you go to prison When I was in jail and I was in an ag tank Which is when you have when you have a serious crime when you have when you've had an assault or a murder Or an a manslaughter or something with that where you where you've harmed someone you go to What is called an ag which is like an aggravated Aggravated as in you are aggravated, of course probably everybody in jail is a little bit aggravated right aggravated as in the charge that you Therefore is considered to be more severe than some common misdemeanor, right? So when when I was there because my charge was manslaughter I went to it was an aggravated charge So I went to the to the ag tank is what they called it with all aggravated offenders one day Most the guys there they're 20s and up is what I'm looking at in there Most the guys actually are even are that's let's late 20s and up and then all of a sudden this 16 year old shows up in the ag tank and we're all wondering what the heck's going on with this kid He is scared out of his mind when he gets into this tank guys Start coming up to him and start talking Well, what had happened with him was that he had been doing drugs and stealing and his mom was sick of it This is the first time he got caught by the police when he made his call to his mom His mom was so sick and tired of it. She said you know what told the officer said you know what you need to Send him to jail so he'll learn so they did that and they made they made sure You went to the ag tank this kid didn't his dad wasn't around his mom was the one who took care of him He comes this tank and he tells the story and these guys are all over him They they love him They all want to look out for him this kid has been getting no attention and has no father figure in his life now Yeah, like everyone wants to be his dad they want to go out to the wreckyard and Play basketball with him and they're laughing and playing jokes with him He's playing pranks on like these big these big ass dudes like Yeah, big-ass like I'm talking like yeah These are guys that I'm not messing with in the county jail and they're and they're he's sitting around playing pranks on them Like at chow time big ass dudes on your podcast. Well, you know, we're keeping it real here. So Uh Yes, it's actually very clean Compared to how we talk exactly how I thought Yeah, I Considering we're going back to those days. Yeah, I I expect plenty more More prison talk prison slang and cursing to come out. So that's how I'm sorry to cut you off. No, that's a good point And I'd also like to point out if you hear Malone refer to someone named brain forest He's talking about me. Just so everyone is aware Brain forest rain forest, you know your name. Did you say brain forest? I said rain forest But I like I kind of like brain forest now. I kind of like that name I think you need to roll back the tape and see if you actually said brain forest. I'll we'll check it in editing I'll verify there forest is Ryan's Prison nickname often times people come to prison. They get a second name or some in some cases They get in multiple names, right? And if you've noticed well, you probably probably haven't noticed because you're only listening to them, but Ryan Rain forest has very red hair and he could have become just another red in prison of which there are Myriads of red. No, I nicknamed red in prison. I was read I was red beard for yeah, that was one distinguishing way Yeah, he was red. He was red beard. He's had a lot of he's had many names, but the one that's stuck the one that's uh, is best associated with him is rain forest because his name is Ryan Forbes and so Ryan Forbes sounds like rain forest Rain forest, that's what you'll hear me call him from now on because I have no other name for my calling him Ryan It's very cumbersome for me. Yes, it does sound kind of weird hearing you call me Ryan And I did that for the first podcast and it just did not roll off the tongue at all No, so now people will know who you are rain forest. There we go. And you are a hippie. Yes, but you're a very good You're a very good hippie. I will take it. That's I don't mind being hippie. I just don't have I don't have the cool long hair though You just got the cool soul. Hopefully so this kid you got the most important part of it So the kid is there for like a few days or a week. He came in Scared out of his mind and then he's leaving given everybody hugs I don't think whatever lesson was supposed to be learned about how awful Jail is and how scary this place is. I don't think any lesson was learned from that Would you have actually did you feel that if he went in there and The worst possible outcome could have happened. He was traumatized by it Do you think that would have helped either? No, I don't think that would have helped his situation I think as soon as he would have gotten out. He would have done a whole bunch of drugs Cuz it's a bad idea all the way around all the way around because it's not it is not an environment for that Understand a mother so frustrated with her child's behavior and I've been able to get through to him that they're you know seeking Seeking something to help you dream, you know Measures and all that I mean and everybody can sympathize with that type of thing Yeah, I know what you're trying to say is is that it that wasn't a good idea, right? And my mother my mother did something similar to me And in my background Whenever I was a teenager at the age of 13 my mom was arrested went to prison for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamines and At that tender young age, you know, I'm 13 So I'm just at that phase where I'm entering into my teenage years, right? So I'm going through my whole entire life from day one all the way to 13 Living with bikers and my gangster mom and people living in this crazy environment where there's There's there's drugs everywhere. There's there's there's party. There's crime and there's all these tough mean people These bikers that are surrounding me all the time, you know, you know fights violence all this type of stuff Yeah, I didn't experience violence against me the bikers are that kind of people They're not the type of let me use children and so forth, but you know, the environment wasn't necessarily what you would consider a stable environment for for most children But because that was that was where I came from after 13 years of life. That's all I knew So my mom gets out of jail and she's now on part of her deal that she made was that she was gonna get 10 years of adjudicated probation point of this adjudicated This is federal time by the way point of this adjudicated probation is if you mess up again You're going to prison for a long time. They can stack a lot of time So they dangle this sword over your head and they force you to get yourself straight with the threat of You're going to be doing 10 years in prison type of thing so my mom suddenly got a very good motivator to To get cleaned up I talked about my mom about this and she's very open about it She's not the same person that she was back in so please don't judge my mother. She has Completely changed her life But in this early stage of her changing her life, she really didn't know what to do She had told me that prior to her getting arrested. She had just simply resolved herself to this type of lifestyle She's like look I like drugs. I like this lifestyle. You know, this is who I am. This is what I do I can't do anything else. I can't get away from it. I'm just gonna, you know, just give myself over to it and do it She wasn't a bad mom. She didn't neglect this. She made sure that she went to nursing school And she she always had a roof over her head and paid for her stuff, you know that I Lived a much better life than some other people around me So I'm not complaining about that the whole point that I'm trying to make is though Is that she made a very radical change of 180 change at that point and she expected all of us to just all of a Make this 180 change to her. I'm like I had no idea where this came from. So my mom's in my mom's mind she saw the direction I'm going or that I'm still, you know, kind of I'm smoking weed and I'm out there living this, you know, running the streets and all that and I can't be Gotten to you know, because my mom's life changed so radically. It was so unstable for me I had to I had to get away I had to run away from home and go live with my cousins or other people that I was familiar with To feel comfortable. This caused my mom great to start She didn't want me to go to go down the same road that she did so in an over reaction She went and had me put on probation She there's a thing in Texas where you can call voluntary supervision or something where you can take your child down there into the probation Office and and say oh, I can't deal with this kid You deal with them and have them put on probation. This is such a bad idea Don't ever do this to your kids all you've done after that point is put your kid in the same position that you're My mom was there. You know what was once something that would get me grounded There's now something that can get me sent to jail and that gives you a criminal record and then start in just it's a snowball effect from there I'm I am not doing anything that all the other teenagers around me weren't doing as well By the way, you know, I'm not doing anything that's so extreme that everyone else is not doing it But every time I got in trouble. I literally with the juvenile detention and then eventually started going I Lost my freedom completely after my mom got out of prison I ended up going to orphanages and and and homes and all this other type of stuff and it was a very counter productive measure to try to include the criminal justice system in your child's behavior management Let this be a lesson to you. Do not do that to your kids. It's not gonna work out How you think it is maybe desperate just hold on your kids probably not nearly as bad as you think he is Well, the other big thing is that kids their brains are not Formed yet their brain. It's not even just not that their brains aren't formed yet Like when you're a teen a teenager's brain works completely differently than a than a an adult's brain If adult is thinking like a teenager, then they're they're insane. They're they're an insane person. There's something wrong There's probably a diagnosis in the DSM because the way a teenager Just like you were saying the way you were looking at it when you're a teenager is like Everyone around me is doing this thing and I want to be with these people around me And that's that's gonna be top priority for you at the moment right for two because teenagers are all about bonding That's the time where you're making your friends Everything is revolving around what social group you're in and that's how your brain forms if someone is doing something It's more important to go do that thing Even if there's dire consequences for doing it, you're absolutely right consequences or something that You know the undeveloped immature brain There's it quite fully grasped You know that the perspective on time and so forth else and and that something could be so detrimental They could cause harm irreparably those things aren't really registered in the brain of children and teenagers and on top of that Then there's the other side of it that the over important making mountains out of molehills type of thing that teenagers do out of every little issue So, you know things that that as adults you look back and you see teenagers and how they I didn't get to go to the concert It's the end of the world type of thing. I broke up with this boy You're my my niece is do this all the time they break up with some boy at the end of the world You know, they're all the verges suicide because they'll never find anyone else. You're nine. Come on Get over a girl type of thing that is the other side of it as well It's a matter of perspective earlier I think that the young young brains just don't have the depth of life So to speak the kind of a properly processed the consequences of any baby or any outcomes of event, right? There's that there's that aspect of it, but there's also One big thing that it's true for adults and for children is that everyone is kind of vaguely aware of prison and Punishments and even capital punishment if you ask the person Somebody out on the street if you go out and drink and drive right now. What's the punishment for it? What what would you be arrested for what would the charges be unless you've been you've been caught drinking and driving? I don't think you're gonna know the answer to that question Most people don't know the law in their area. They don't they don't know what the laws are They don't know what the charges are they even for the bigger offenses You unless you've dealt with the legal system. You don't know what the specifics are I mean I have an intoxicated manslaughter charge I cannot tell you in the county. I got arrested in or even in the county. I'm living in right now What a DUI would get you it's different everywhere. It changes in every situation. It's not consistent This is supposed to deter people which To me is unbelievable. Yeah You're talking about jails as a deterrent in the how punishments are just meet it out with between one person and the expert the exact same crime And in a way that's just it doesn't even make sense to me I mean we talked a little we mentioned before you know, well, we've been talking about my past a little bit I did 30 years in prison that was mentioned in the in the last podcast and I didn't have to do 30 years in prison I only had to do 12 and a half years. I came up for parole after 12 and a half years in prison I went to prison when I was 17 years old at the age of right at the cusp of turning 30 I finally came up to parole and I got turned down over and over again for 17 years I did 17 years longer in prison than I had to for what reason for there was absolutely no reason whatsoever I wasn't because of any kind of of a disciplinary action or anything It was the reason I was given was his nature of authoring the thing that got me the time that said that I should only have 12 and a half years, which was the office that the jury determined that okay 12 and a half years is enough for the parole board comes back and decides that Hey, okay, we don't think you've done enough time But then there's the guy that's sitting right next to me who came up for parole the exact same time I had I do I mean I seem to sobering over again It's not just one individual because I came up for parole seven times But you're sitting whenever you do come up for parole You're generally you get a lay in remember we talk about land and you go into a room And you're and you're gonna go down there to a differs on the unit that you go to but you're generally gonna go to somewhere Where they have offices on a prison unit and there's gonna be a little inmate area So it's probably like where they have disciplinary actions or so no tenants office that type of thing And you're gonna sit down with this group of inmates and they're all coming up for parole And so everybody's talking about their particular circumstances. Oh, I sure hope I make it I did this much time on this and I sure hope I make it You know, what do you think do you think they're gonna hold this case against me? Everybody's like talking in the room, you know, the big buzz where you're gonna see the on-unit parole person Yeah, well, you're hearing all the different all the different Circumstances of everybody's particular life. So here it is. I've got 50 years aggravated for a murder for a murder which arguably Had some kind of a you know, I was attacked by the guy I took his knife from him. We didn't have to kill him But we did I'm sitting across a room from a guy who has a life sentence or a home invasion murder where he was going To break broken to someone's home to steal from them. They surprised them and he ends up killing him He's got a year or two less done on his sentence than I have on mine He makes parole and I don't Less time than this guy's got the lesser offense than this guy's committed More time done on the offense than this guy's got He gets parole. I don't you're sitting there looking at this art This is I can only you can only assume it must be completely arbitrary The way they meet out punishments the way they meet out rewards who gets what and where because it just seems like it makes Absolutely no sense. So if you're trying to use Prisons as a deterrent I gotta admit that most criminals most must think that they're gonna get away with it begin with And if they don't think they're gonna get away with it They can they at least kind of cling to the hope that they're gonna be one of the lucky ones That make their first rule or get a light slap on the wrist because there's because all of that is a All of that is there. There was a guy that was on the string fellow before He was one of the guys that left with the evacuation in 2017. So whatever I met you is after it was after the evacuation. There's the before string There's a before evacuation and the post-evacuation string fellow brain force. So So you'll hear me refer to that sometimes. Anyways, this guy's name was Niko. Niko lives out here in Houston somewhere Niko also had a intoxicated Drug driving case like you Niko was dry. It was high as a kite. He's in the car He's with a friend. The friend is also high. This is a car wreck. The friend that's in the car with him is Injured not killed injured Gravely injured. He's badly injured, right? So Niko sitting in jail his court appointed attorney comes to him and says the DA is offering you 21 years He has a prior record not for drug driving not for intoxicated But he has been he has been the person for some minor offense before I'm assuming that's why they came to him with the stiff sentence that they did 21 years for something like this seems very very string But they weren't willing to come off with it. He can't believe it 21 years I mean, he's gonna have to do 10 and a half years just to see for whole on this Niko he leaves from his visit with his lawyer He goes back to his cell and there's a newspaper in his cell. It's a local newspaper. He's reading the local newspaper and there's a recent case It's been tried in this very court that he's in that that he's now currently in where there's a guy Drug driving hits a nun on the side of the road and kills a nun and got eight years Kills the nun and got eight years So he cut this article out right he calls his lawyer back He gets his lawyer back in there and he hands him the he hands him the article He says read this and the and the lawyer reads it in his face. He's kind of drops. He says Oh the nun case he says well, look there's things about he starts immediately Doing the lawyer thing where he tries to start uh where he starts trying to make up, you know, the There's things you don't know about this case. Blah blah blah. He says, what is there to know? He said the guy killed the nun I didn't kill anybody the guy that got hurt in the car with me was high as a kite too he said He killed the nun got eight years No one died in my case the bad injury of a guy that was also high He willingly got in my car 21 years. How does this work? I mean, what's going on here? And uh, it actually that argument worked in the end of getting the plea bar to reduce down to 11 years Still more time than the guy that killed the nun That is a very good point you're making about the arbitrariness of criminal justice All together in Texas you can you could talk about that subject for years on end and never exhausted That was a case of something that happened in the same county. We're dealing with the exact same judges prosecutors and all that I mean, it's just it's badly it makes you mean did somebody get paid under the table? I mean, there's got to be something else going on. I assume that it's not as arbitrary as I think I want to believe that there's some kind of reasoning behind it that they're just not telling me So somebody knows somebody type of thing Does it really matter one way or the other right the perception of the arbitrariness of it is the point The point on any punishment for it to to be successful is it has to relate to whatever happened and It can't be seen as arbitrary if it is seen as arbitrary I'm sure anyone who has kids can tell you if a kid does something wrong And then you punish him a week later for it They they're going to have no idea what you're punishing them for And it's not going to make a difference in the behavior Because you're you're taking so long to punish them right that makes a lot of sense You'll go to jail like a lot a lot of times you'll get caught you'll go to jail immediately after the Whatever happens, but then the whole process of going to prison that takes years To to do that. So so the whole thing about going to prison there that first off the direct correlation It doesn't relate and it also is not it doesn't seem related Well, let's go into the arbitrariness because if your kid is caught shoplifting and you if your child feels like he's going to get punished One way or the other Whether he does something or whether he doesn't do something or if you feel like you know punishments are made it out More extreme for things that that are that are less severe or you know, whatever, you know Yeah, he's not he's not likely to understand the consequences of any kind of behavior Yeah, if if you're unpredictable with your punishments if the if the if you're totally unpredictable when handing out your punishments Then it's not going then your punishments are not going to prevent anything They're just going to do anything and then the person is just going to If they get they're just going to try not to get caught that's going to be the whole the whole name of the game And we know from being in prison that that's the name of the game in prison Yeah, that is with the way that The the way they write rules and so forth in prison is just ridiculous She can't possibly live by the rules and anytime and they're written in such a way that if they want to They can always just come in there and find some some rule you're violating And do and punish you for it. I had the hardest time explaining this today I had to I had to try and explain this today With how when covet hit and first off I had to explain that that are For both of us the hardest time that we had to do in prison was at um When we made parole and then we got to the treatment like the The part that was supposed to be rehabilitation the like the pre-release rehabilitative thing. Yeah, the pre-release so Here's the thing about prisons at least in texas They're There is very little they offer as far as rehabilitation that the state offers They have their own it does change depending on what units you're on But like the ones that we were on or just places to throw people away Stringfellow unit is just a toilet for humans. Yeah, but like stringfellow think about what they offered Everything they offered was either from like religious groups like from the church or from the jewish program or from or from an outside group or like like uh Bridges to life or whatever that was that's from a church. That's not that is not something offered by the state um The only things that you could maybe say were offered by the state Were like changes in cognitive intervention But those are technically offered by windham school district, which I guess you could say, okay Maybe that's part of the state and you could say carpentry plumbing and trades trades and then if If you're on one of the two units that have college and the whole and all all of the hundred units That are in tdc. There's two units that have college on it Um, but that that's your rehabilitation. You have two classes that are on Most every unit cognitive intervention changes changes. You can't even get to until you've made parole cognitive intervention You can take once Every like 10 years the the trades and everything are not available on every unit Maybe there's maximum of two on any given unit from what i've seen So when you finally you make parole now all of a sudden you have they'll a lot of the condition of parole Is that they'll put you into a program upon release Which is also arbitrary not everybody gets that some people get walk out the door For whatever reason some people walk right out the door and other people have to go to some kind of program I mean unless you like some kind of sex offender or something like that all sex offenders have to go through a program They have a much different condition. I'm assuming that most uh, most people that are there for some kind of uh, drug related offense also Have to go through some kind of uh treatment before they leave Although that's like ben david didn't do it the guy that we know so a guy that we know Ben david could have his own episode right there But yeah, he could But yeah, he never did it. But then again, he just discharged his time That's the thing is it's if you're trying to leave early if you're trying to make it basically like when I say leave early It's make parole Most people though that are that are in prison for those type of offenses though don't have Kind of time. They're not going to make parole anyways. You're just there for too short a period of time You get less than two year sentence Then they're probably going to hold you for the overwhelming majority of that sentence, right? people with double digit time 10 to want to try and get out like like double digit years worth of time They're trying to make parole so they can leave because that is a very long time To be in prison But there are guys who are in there who have like three year sentences in prison time That's in and out. They'll probably stay on a transfer facility throughout the entire time most of the time They're not trying to hear it. They'll get they'll they're happy to just get a whole bunch of cases So they can stay off a field And plus their whole entire experience in prison is radically different than that of someone else I mean, that's that's a whole another episode. We didn't have it self as well, right? The difference between me I have to make parole to get out So I'm walking this razor this tightrope every day in between what inmates expect of me And what the state expects of me to not catch any cases But at the same time not not be some not be victimized by by inmates and so forth Whereas, you know, the next guy who's not gonna doesn't have any time at all to have to worry about parole That guy could come over there and knock my block off. He can come over here and just I mean violently assault me and it'll be with no consequence whatsoever. So, you know, you have to We had to you have to navigate this landscape of insanity You're trying to avoid those kind of a at the trustee camp It was We this is what we would see all the time trustee camp is minimum security So we would there's no fence. Well, there's usually no fence bound it There was a fence around the trustee camp at string fellow But it's the minimum security for inmates. I was on the trustee camp and a lot of guys at the trustee camp They usually don't have a whole lot of time either or they're usually not there very long. They're usually They're about to make parole like I couldn't even go on to the to the trustee camp until I was close to making parole I saw happening all the time is There'd be a guy who'd be walking on cloud nine He'd be telling everyone how excited he is to make parole he'd be telling them everyone about his plans He'd be talking about, you know, oh, I got into my girl outside. She wants to get back together He'd be showing all these pictures and then all of a sudden you'd hear Oh, we got locked up because what's his face came over and just freaking knocked him out right in front of the lieutenant Like I'm Blame the camp to try to uh to keep this guy from being able to make his parole because Because some guys can't if you're if you're a guy who's on that trustee camp For and you have, you know, 10 more years, which there was there were a few of them You know had 10 more years left and then this guy is going home and is all excited And you're you don't want to hear about it anymore. Well You can do that you can go you can You'll lose your trustee status for for hitting that guy But you can go back You'll you'll drop your status. You'll go back to You'll go to either medium custody or general population But you'll move back up real quick and you'll become a trustee. You know Within usually a year. Um, you'll be back at the camp Actually, a lot of times I saw that within like six months. It's crazy, but you do see that occasionally I we saw it a lot. I saw that like a handful of times before I left I'd see a lot of times guys would right before the end they'd be smoking k2 in the bathroom They'd still be able to make parole like You know, they get That's what I'm saying about the difference between someone in the position of he's going on no matter what I'm discharging my sentence in the matter of months compared to someone like me who I mean For some reason or another just could not make full vote no matter how good I would right you're dealing with that kind of service Actually talked quite a bit, but I don't think we've kind of hit the main points on this But we've talked about a good good a bit about Yeah, you're about the issues Doesn't need to be prisons that prison need to exist Here's my main thing about prisons when you're when you're inside prisons You've got officers who are constantly just beating you down It's just wearing you down telling you what to do trying to write you cases or going through your stuff Or you're working for free For the state and you're always in the wrong library. Yeah Uh, you're you're you're always wrong You're you're you're always you're always wrong You're always assumed to be wrong if you say something that you are assumed you're you're a criminal And that is how you're seen they actually That's part of the training of of a tdc guards at the academy They literally tell them that everything we say is a lot and you it comes off never to believe anything It is very abundant if if I listen to anyone out here the way that they listen to us Or don't listen to us that person would never want to deal with me ever again because they would choose to The only reason we dealt with the guards is because we had to are the officers That's prison and in prison like you were the big thing I want to point out that you said was that is that when you're in there We don't learn to follow the rules. We learn how to get around them We're constantly. Yeah, because we really you have to that was that was the whole point of this long feel Yes, really a learning how to manipulate and navigate around the Circumstances you've been put in but not necessarily to become a better person how to put on the facade of a good person But no one in tdc believes it anyways They don't believe it and they're always looking for you It's basically how to go undetected and I will say they're like one of my favorite phrases Laced up getting laced up That was I had to get laced up about how to break the rules and when to break the rules because I didn't want to I was under like my whole thing when I came to prison was I want to make for all as soon as possible. So I'm going to do everything right You came to prison or I should say let me not necessarily the prison I think you were a little bit disillusioned by the time you got to prison But you went into the courtroom initially with the idea That everything that you'd heard on seen on tv about the motivations of the courts and prison and all this other type of stuff Is about rehabilitations about becoming a better person about Remorse it's about this it's about that and you went there with every intention of doing exactly the right thing And becoming the person that you that they wanted you to be and then you and you found out in the courtroom You found out that that's not what it was about and then you really had to drill it into you No, I by the time you got to prison. I thought no that's you know It's the crazy part even as bad as the courtroom was I still I went in when I was locked up. I'm like, all right that courtroom was bad That was just the courtroom Now I'm going into prison and now I'm going to show them how You know What a good person I am and that I'm trying to work on myself and that I'm trying to be a good person and when I got in there and I try tried to go to Like classes and things like that That backfired going to class going to anything to actually try and help improve yourself It means more interactions like classes class. So I call like academic classes or are you talking about? There's no academic classes and when I was in county, there was no academic classes These were my options in in uh, in county So this is like like religious things or something. Yeah, so so I'll go through them Monday church Tuesday bible study and you're Jewish by the way. I'm I'm Jewish right so and it's it's not like it's It's it's not non denominational It's just but these are this is what you get. This is it period So Monday church Tuesday bible study Wednesday Catholic church Thursday Thursday is a a which was that was very exciting and then Friday's church again So those are my options and that's what I call classes And so I'm going to I'm not going to church But I I'm going to this bible study because I do want like I want to The Old Testament is part of the bible and I want to study it some more I actually go in there and I'm asking One thing was these volunteers that are coming in and doing the bible study That was hard times for all of us on that one, especially be especially me being Jewish I was like, I oh gosh I need I'm gonna have to remember the story About me asking questions and the Aryan nation guy right behind me with the swastika tattooed on his head following up But that but we're gonna we're we're gonna save that story for another day. Those are what I'm calling classes It's nothing really no one's recording any of this either the only person who would record it would be me And I'm not recording it because I'm like once again I'm just trying to show that I'm a good person every time I try and leave, you know You because they call out They call out when one of these things is going on and then I go with the group But then you have to interact with officers along the way if someone acts up in your group Then the whole group is in trouble. That's not just one person or whatever Maybe a riot just started and now you're going to be locked down in the hallway And you're going to be sitting there for an hour. You don't know what's going to happen No one's recording and going man, Ryan's a really nice guy and I think he's really rehabilitated No, and no one's from the parole board. Is there parole board is None of the guards are recording your behavior None of their opinions about you would matter anyways, even if they were no one from parole knows anything about you whatsoever other than There's some basic statistics that they're seeing on a piece of paper that have no Reflectional reality whatsoever, but if you asked your average inmate that was living on a dorm about ryan 4 It would be a completely different story The opinion you could get from there would be very accurate The people that are I could pinpoint people that were going to come back to prison very easily It's not hard to identify if you're living in a prison environment with someone who's learning their lesson The new has it who's coming back and who's not I totally agree with that oddly seems like They oftentimes choose To send the person home Who's a 100% guarantee that he's coming back to prison over the person that 100% not You were the one of the rare cases that made your first parole that was a certain T not to come back But then again, there were some extreme circumstances that were surrounding that as well That was that yeah to me the only reason I made parole was the planets lining That's a good breakdown of what's going on in prisons as an alternative before I went to prison. I went to treatment Why did you go to treatment ryan? I went to treatment because I was I was drunk when I killed someone And I went to treatment not because I chose to Um, I went through treatment because my lawyer recommended to my family that I go to treatment And then my family recommended to me Why did your uh, why did your lawyer recommend this rainforest? Was this a part of this as a legal strategy for your courtroom? He thought it was it would reflect well upon you. He thought it would look good I think in the courtroom He thought honestly, I'm not entirely sure but he probably did think it would be a good What my lawyer was thinking of is he what he wanted I think most of from me Was he wanted to take my trial to a jury in front of a jury? and if I went to to Like went to treatment That is something he could have presented in front of a jury that would have looked very favorable for me After the like of immediately after the accident. I went into a treatment facility. That would have looked very favorable for me Now I wasn't thinking about that because at the time I'm just trying to stay out of prison Like I'm just in I don't want to go to prison I'm going to do everything that I think would be the best thing for me I'm not thinking about the my any issues with alcohol or anything like that Because it wasn't like I was drinking every day in my case It was the fact that I was when I did drink I would drink too much and on top of that I had epilepsy and seizures And so I'm I'm kind of my family and I are kind of blaming the seizures at this point Like I had a seizure and blah blah blah blah blah But then I am vol untold To go to this treatment treatment. I killed the epilepsy Argument yeah argument. Yeah, so they so when I go to treatment you have to volunteer to go to treatment That's the biggest thing even if it's because everyone around you wants you to go You have you have to be the one who says yes You have to say yes I'm going that I have some sort of issue With drugs or alcohol with some sort of substance or whatever. So I went and I'm like, all right Yes, fine, then I had to start going over everything The first thing is when you go into treatment is all in different levels And the first thing you have to go into is you you basically start in a hospital room Where you detox I hadn't drank in weeks at this point But I still have to spend 24 to 48 hours in this detox and just sit there And then I'm integrated into the inpatient facility with the groups when I go in there The thing is is even from the moment of detox everyone is worried about me. They're worried about what's going on They're worried about how I'm doing. They're making sure that I'm all right It's like any other hospital stay. They're checking in on me making sure I'm okay When I move to the next to inpatient same thing. They're all concerned. I've got a counselor I work with one-on-one, but I'm also working in groups and there's a bunch of people like everyone knows me So just like in prison, there's a group of people who know me inside and out But unlike prison, there is a staff member who is always there with me So like like always there with all of us So they know us inside and out too like they know us too and they're also they're very well educated and addiction And substance abuse and all that kind of stuff They understand so what's going on with each of us and not only that I find out that all these people Every single person from the person who's running the pill window to the purse the From medical to my counselor to all like all the different counselors the people running the group So the people running the food line they all meet At the beginning of the day and they discuss what issues they're seeing and all the different patients And they're discussing everybody and what they're seeing what's going on to make sure that everyone's on the same page Wow Yeah Pretty intense It is super intense. And so they know exactly what is going on and who's pulling what look very personalized treatment there There was one time where there was this one guy who he had was super antisocial he He had a lot of issues going on. It wasn't just Substance abuse was like a side issue from the the mental health stuff that he had going on and no one wanted to deal with them He reminded me a lot of my cousin who has like autism So I went and talked to him and I was trying to like I tried like when I talked to him He calmed down a lot because I had a lot of patients with him I remember one day one of the nurses actually got fired Because one of the patients said that she had violated HIPAA, which it's really easy to violate HIPAA I never knew how easy it is to violate HIPAA on that if you say something That you're not supposed to know to someone else or just something like that or to one of the count Like I said because they're always talking to each other all the time If she says something about a patient that the that they're not supposed to know Yeah, they're walking a tightrope with the with the information right they gave but she She let something slip about this person's illness or situation that she should not have and it cost her a job Right and so she got let go and then right as she's leaving she finds me right after talking to him And she grabs me and she goes she goes I see what you're doing out there Don't think that people don't see what you're doing and it means a whole lot Then she had to walk off. That's when I knew that like people were all watching all of this So there they were like they they were watching that. So inpatient your day is scheduled You're gonna have meetings You've got your meeting with your counselor You've got your meeting with you have several groups each day Then you have outside groups coming into the to the facility your day is pretty much scheduled from beginning to end Do you have lights out at a certain time all that stuff? There's really there's you've got a couple hours of free time But there's no time where you're sitting in like a day room with tv's blaring playing dominoes There's no time for that. You're too busy. There's too much stuff going on Basically the treatment facility is too involved and then you move to the next level Which is you're starting to get back involved with community. You're You can now start doing stuff in the outside world. You're still doing groups. You're still meeting with your counselor But now you're starting to set goals for yourself You're starting to look at jobs And you're starting to to get ready to leave like permanently you're you're starting to look for housing Where I was I was on apartments on the hospital ground But I could leave the hospital grounds pretty regularly So when I needed to look for a place to live when I needed to go look for work I could do all of that stuff along with going to the regimented meetings Which you only have half as many when you're at this next phase Then the next thing for me was then I would move out to sober living Which is a house out in a community where The main thing is is I have a certain number of hours of work A certain number of hours of volunteering and as long as I'm keeping up with that And as long as I do my house my chores I'm good and sometimes they have like random uas and things like that rainy rain forest I don't mean to cut you off because I know you're in the middle of a flow of thought here But I would like to know exactly how this relates to prisons being necessary or not The point I was trying to say with all this maybe you need to jump jump a little bit ahead No, no, I was about to wrap it up the the point is is that so as opposed to prisons This was taking me from society Taking me out of society and then slowly reintegrating me back With better behaviors. I was 100 percent better by the end of it than I was from the start of it And I was slowly reintegrated back in after being in treatment whereas in prison I was pulled right out of society taken into to prison then introduced to a whole bunch of bad behaviors Then basically thrown right back out into society and then hope for the best There already exists a way to pull people who are having problems Out of society and then reintroduce them back in with better behaviors But we don't use that instead. We use prisons and that's what I'm trying That's where this relates allow me to try to throw out some arguments I would think that someone might have to your to your point possibly I could see that for more minor offenses But what would you do or say the case of more serious offenses like people that have extreme crimes like a bank robbery Or something like that or some kind of home invasion robberies or assaultive behavior or even worse killing somebody murder I think it's all going to be same But what happens when you go into treatment is they basically it's a full breakdown of what's going on with you It's breaking down with what's going on with you mentally and emotionally It's a breakdown of what's going on with your family It's a breakdown of what you've got in your bank account And what's going on there your job history and all that kind of stuff and all of those things you work on You look at where the problem area is and they're all pointed out to you if you're robbing a bank Why are you robbing the bank? What are you doing? What's the problems here? Why aren't why aren't you working at nine to five? Why do you feel like this is necessary? Why is this going on? If you're going around if you're a serial killer, why? Why is that appealing to you? What's going on in your head? They have access to CAT scans and and MRIs Let's take a look now I'm not going to say that all of these are solvable that all of these are going to be 90 day fixes in and out But I am going to say that treating them you can see that there are people that are That are extremely dangerous that quite obviously can't just be left to a roam our neighborhood. Yeah, there are people who Can't you can't just let them roam around in society. There are people who Need more help. I did 90 day treatment and that worked out great for me Okay, some people need 120 days some people We may not have a treatment yet developed that will that will get to the core of what's going on however Throwing them in a prison Doesn't do anyone any good because now that person that we don't have a treatment for Is now putting officers in danger putting other inmates in danger And we have to pay money like as a society To house them in this super dangerous situation So we're not doing anyone any good with the set that we have now negatively influencing the prison environment that he's in Right, possibly Which is going to spill out somewhere another back into the streets whenever those people that have been Subjected to that or let go even if he's not let go His negative influence is still there and of course well, then there's the other side of the argument That I see a lot of people making well then Okay, death penalty the guy needs to be just put down But I there again, I can't believe I just did that the second time I brought up the death penalty But that would be the next target the next logical argument some people would make I mean if they so agreed with such a Right, first off if we were perfect and we could make all decisions perfectly then we could talk about the death penalty But the thing is we keep on every time there's death penalty There's exonerations and we have yet to make perfect decisions on on guilts and things like that This also gets to the core of what I think is the problem This is this is one of the things that I would one of the points that I want to make I think that that the reason why we have prisons is one of the main reasons why we think prisons are necessary Is because what you're trying to say is is that there's a way of dealing with people where you come at it from a perspective of I I see that you're hurting you're something wrong. Your behavior is a symptom of something else I want to make you a good person and reintegrate you back into society It's sort of like a familial type of thing if you have a family member That is doing something that's harmful to themselves a drug act or something And you want to you want to they might be stealing money from you I mean, I mean they might be going into your mom's purse or something and stealing money You're gonna get mad at them for a second But ultimately everything is coming from a place of extreme care and wanting them to get better And come back to you and embrace them as a full-blown family member that's healthy and and living right That's where that's a perspective. You're coming from as a society. Am I correct rainforest? That is see that same concept. That is absolutely that that is absolutely correct We're not we're not seeing that we instead we have this very cold mentality of us and them And there's people that are bad. There's people that are good There's people I don't like and I like the idea of just being able to to get rid of those people Just being able I don't have to look at them anymore I think it's just this criminal and just as harmful as any crime that someone might do that attitude I think is a cancer in our society, right? It's a cancer in american society that goes to the beginning of the society where we had And us in the mentality about different races and so forth is the idea that someone could be so callous in their heart As to think that it's okay to enslave another group of people they wait people would wake up every morning go to work And it was just this is how daily life is. Yeah, I beat these people in the making them work for me And they didn't have any problem with it. They saw it as normal now. We're gashed at it We need to get to that point where we're a gas at the concept of sending someone into a cage putting someone in a cage I totally agree. And a matter of fact, we are Inslaving those people just as well. It is the exact same thing as slavery as far as the labor part goes We are doing exactly that. That's absolutely right And I want to say something else because some people it's hard for them to get the moral aspect of it So I'm going to argue from just the the productive aspect of it too. Like there was another guy I met at At ramsey and he very similar to the guy I was talking about in treatment. He was not mentally there In fact, the first time I met him He thought he was talking about how he was an alien from another planet ramsey Has a lot of cases like that anyone who's young and who's there is generally has a has a lot of mental health issues The reason he was there is because he had stabbed his uncle 45 times Yeah, yeah, so he had some serious time to do The the thing about him is that when he when he says that like you wouldn't believe it because he's small timid guy He he doesn't seem like he's gonna go out and go go into a rage But the thing is he's not mentally stable at all and you could see That he's very much affected by his environment and you could watch it change based on what's going on around him He kept on getting moved around because he liked to talk to himself and himself And he's got all these mental issues and you can only imagine living with someone who's got mental issues inside of a I've been doing that. That is horrible. Yeah, that is horrible people kept on getting out of the cell Well, finally this one guy thought he could tough him out of his mental issues be like look you're not gonna do this You're not gonna do this. You're not gonna talk to yourself like that. It's like i'm trying to sleep I'm trying to do this you like you he's gonna be the tough guy who owns the cell And then one day, you know the guy who's has mental issues was doing some drawing on his bunk And he spills all the ink in the pan goes all over his celly's bunk So now the celly walks in and there's ink all over the bed He's like next time you come in here. It's on know what time it is. This is it's He's panicking. He's he's panicking about this about the whole thing about what uh about what's happening He's in a total panic and he's sitting there just right outside the cell door the whole time Just talking to him just you know trying to to to plead bargain with him Please don't I don't want to fight you. I don't want to fight you and then count time comes around This old man is doing count and there he's trying to move everyone to the other side so he can count everybody And he won't get away from the cell door and the old man's yelling count count count Finally walks across the day room to get to get to this guy and he says hey And then the guy turns around and just knocks the officer out knocks him out Starts beating him down and then picks up the this clipboard And breaks the clipboard over the officer inmates start charging a panicked a panicked response This is having to He to have to rather than have to go back into a cell and deal with a cell right He was no long He was he was in a total state of fear like at this point because he knew He if he had to go back into that cell if he had to deal with anyone He was going to have to he was about to be attacked He beat that officer up that old man old man had to go to the hospital inmates Try to pull him off. He ended up getting more time probably more more than likely Assault charge and then went to seg and probably had to do about 10 years in administrative segregation before he was Oh, he's yeah, he's gonna get out of that. Yeah, he's gonna be in seg for a long time And also when he's alone, he's said it many times before like if he if you leave him alone He will torture himself. He hears voices He hears all sorts of stuff when he's left alone He likes being around a lot of people So to go to seg which is solitary would be the greatest torture of all for him I have heard stories of what happens to people people who self tattoo themselves and cut off Appendages and stuff like that and and seg we've had we've seen some issues like that and string fellow I was a for a while there in prison for years I was a janitor an ssi Which is is what the common colloquialism for a prison janitor is what that means I'm not really sure exactly what ssi stands for I was a for in seg on derrington and derrington has one of those very uh old school Cell block have a four large cell blocks that they use for for seg and it's the old kind right the kind They don't have tables in them. You know kind of like you see on string fellow the cells there Except there's only one person living it and there were guys that were in there that had been in seg for 20 years or more They've been sitting in a cell by themselves for 20 years or more and I can tell you this there's a certain point at which Everybody gets a little there's a being alone by yourself in a cell like that all the time for years and years It's gonna have it's gonna have an effect on everyone It doesn't always like really severely damaged people, but no one comes out of their unchange some of those guys They were gone. They were just absolutely stark raven crazy It was the time alone that did it and the real Isolation the real kicker on this story about the about this kid is that he had asked he'd gone to the officers Like every day before that so many times multiple times a day asked saying hey, I'm having issues with my cellmate Can you please move me? I'm like and he broke it down for him He said he's like like look I have issues This guy doesn't understand and we're it's about to get real bad. Can you please move me and yeah That's another bad thing about Texas prisons is their classification situation and how they they don't care You know, whenever you come to them with with things like that the way that they do Put people in cells in prison or put people in any kind of living environment is completely at random You do not you I mean imagine this uh people out there in podcast land that have never been to prison uh Mood go and get your bed and take your mattress and move it into your bathroom And whatever else you want to take with you. I mean you could you could take your common, you know living items in there I wouldn't even make it more comfortable on you than we had in ourselves Take your tv take your take your cd player You know that type of thing and then go then drive down the street Find some complete stranger standing around that hits your guts more than likely and pick them up And then move them in there with you and stay in there for two weeks with that person stay inside that bathroom for two weeks With that person tell me how tell me how you think that would turn out. Well, what kind of uh, and that's what prison That's what no block situation at prison or what you need to find someone with a drug problem You have to have that uh, just find somebody that that is a absolute racist And that's of an opposite race of you Completely hate you. Yeah, that's absolutely. It has then you got to sleep in a room with this person Yeah, they can't be the same race. That's a requirement. That's uh, They're also disgusted by your race and everything you do is going to They uh, they feel as content. They're contaminating their environment with your whiteness or with your blackness or with your mexican This or whatever it is and you have to learn how to navigate this Right, I mean a guy like me if you want to go home You have to learn how to deal with this without you just have to learn how to deal with it You have to find a way around it or oftentimes there is no way around it You're just simply going to end up in some kind of violent situation and you can talk to the guard You can go talk to the rank whatever and they don't care. They ignore it. They want you to get into fight They want it to end up being a that kind of a situation I I would say this as someone who used to be married if you're married You and your wife have to live in the bathroom All your cooking all of your you change when you get back home from work You have to immediately go to the bathroom That's anything you do has to be with you with your partner in the bathroom Then you're going to have to live that way for an undetermined amount of time See how long that relationship lasts as much as you you love your partner right now That is kind of funny because there's been circumstances You know the way I over the years in prison one of the ways I learn how to just deal with that is just tune it out And that's got its own dangers and all that you can't you can't do that really altogether either One of the few luxuries that are allowed in prison are radios They sell radios on commissary that have headphones and so I Which is put my headphones on and completely tune out the rest of the reality I just put my blanket over my head tune it up and send myself into Some kind of meditative state where I'm imagining something else altogether But I got to tell you in those shake downs or the the lockdown times whenever you're stuck in a cell for Seven to ten days with the same person the lockdown starts They shut those doors and you're not going anywhere and you can be best friends with your cell You can you can have a silly that you absolutely get along with on almost every level and and are having a as good a prison relationship And uh cellmate relationship as you can possibly be having and by the end of that 10 days You're going to hate this guy's gut. There's just no way around it Can imagine if you go into the situation into in a bad situation with some with a person that is mentally ill Or whatever else it is a nightmare it is hell on earth right main point I wanted to say about that story is that that guy there's probably nothing we could do for him There's probably no treatment for whatever he whatever's going on in his head There's probably no cure for it There may be no way to make him safe outside in society where he's certainly a more compassionate way of dealing with Right if he's in an environment where he felt safe if nothing else even if you don't think that's more moral All right, even if you wanted to punish him or whatever But if he was in an environment where he felt safe where he was treated with some semblance of like at least listen to When he says hey, I feel like this this situation is not safe for me that guy would happily He would draw every day. He made crazy art He made crazy stories which sometimes were hilarious because they were so crazy He could produce things that could go out into the world and and they would be great So he could still contribute to society even though we couldn't have him in it And he would be happy to do that he would be thrilled to do that But prison is not a situation where he could do that in honestly I am scared to this day of what's happening to him in there because you're concerned for this person You think that uh the circumstances are one harmful to him and not making him better, but making him worse Yeah, I'm afraid if that some sort of harm will befall him because of the situation because oh, yeah Well, and you're right that that's a very real that's a very real reality in prison Like you described the silly that he had to deal with that's back to the core of what i'm talking about This whole thing I keep on bringing up about this systemic problem that is running Through the whole entirety of our criminal justice system from one end to the other Remember I mentioned earlier to you that even the inmates are affected by they get the same disease And that's what you're talking about right there when you're dealing with this inmate whose idea is I'll show you how to deal with this guy. I'll be just as hard as prison is on me I'll be just in the criminal justice system is on me Well, that's how I'll deal with this guy because for some reason I mean another I mean it gets in the head of everyone that that's how you handle these kinds of problems You just you punish punish punish. I remember watching the episode of the simpson where uh, they were passing Somehow or another the simpson's family was passing through florida And they committed some kind of accidental crime on their way through some small county in florida And they get sent to prison and so you have this very charismatic good-looking Like prison warden that's there as a southern accent And he's just the kind of person that everybody think to you know is is is charmed by But he's running this prison. He's like he's got the the simpson's out there Slave it away just enough the harshest possible labor field labor that you can imagine and whenever they would mess up He goes, huh, you know, uh, you guys are a real mess. I guess I'm just you know I wish I could quote this properly, but the point was he would say I guess I'm just not whipping you hard enough Right his response to everything was to pull out a bull whip and to start whipping people more That is texas and to some extent maybe the rest of america's way of handling all these problems They just want to violently assault it. They want to take their anger out on It's coming from a place of vengeance and anger and not from a place of compassion and really wanting to help Society as a whole or the victim or stop potential victim hood And it certainly isn't trying to root out the core of the criminal element Of what's the cause of the crime to begin with inside the person It's not trying to return a good person to society Which is it's crazy from my perspective that i'm in right now because as soon as you get out on get out of prison To get on parole they expect you to be this exemplary member of society Well, I mean, why did they expect that whatever they didn't whenever they they've absolutely thrown you away and told you that You'll never be that and the reason that was the excuse for throwing you away to begin with Is that you are not that at your root and core and can't be that and then wherever you get out Thanks, then all of a sudden it's completely expected of you Yeah, you're you're held to higher standards than anyone else in society about that is you need people like coming out To be better you I I totally agree need the people coming out of prison to be better than what they were Otherwise if they're coming out the same or worse, then you're damaged right then they are doing They're going to end up harming the society you're putting them in so it does I think a lot of what we're seeing you know, there's been a lot of changes in texas prison over the years Whenever I first came to prison, uh prison were a chaotic just crazy mad house of violence And just it was a mad dog kind of world that you got dropped into you were literally expected to just deal With on your own pin for yourself, you know strong survived type of mentality and the guards wanted it They they absolutely the guards the wardens everybody texas wanted it This is what was their their idea that they would make prison so bad and so violent on the inside that It would make people not want to go that that that's how they would deal with it They did these 90 day shock things where those kind of 16 year old kids are talking about right They just threw them into the dogs they throw they didn't have youth offender programs back then like they do now They just took teenagers and threw them into completely adult prisons with a bunch of psychopaths So they'll be assaulted and then what do they do? They don't come out of prison. Oh my god I don't ever want to go back. They don't they come out of prison 10 times crazier than they ever were before They come out of prison with the same with now this survival of the fittest mentality Do you remember the case of the of the guys that uh drug james bird to death in In jasper. No, they got the dragon the dragging case that happened I think it was either in the early 2000s or something like it was a group of guys that were part of the area in brotherhood They got out and they committed a horrible crime of dragging a black guy to death in jasper behind a truck They drug him behind a truck and he ended up dying horrible horrible thing and everybody I remember when it happened everybody was just don't found it What was the purpose of this crime and all that whenever they talked to the parents of the people Especially one of the guys one of the ringleaders the whole thing He was talking about how badly he was assaulted by blacks in prison This was a response to his anger that he built up from the outright racism that wasn't just allowed But was encouraged in prison in the early 90s. We're getting into a whole another area here But in whatever you came whenever I came to prison prisons were all self segregated the inmates Segregated themselves in every situation they could or cell blocks They inmates didn't have any control over who you had for a silly or things like that But when you went and sat down in a day room remember what a day room is uh rainforest? Yes, I remember what it is When when you went and sat down in a day room they had benches They they have these rows of benches and the inmates you'll notice immediately Well, there's all mexicans sitting on these rows of benches There's all blacks sitting on these rows of benches and there might be if you're lucky one If you're really lucky two benches in a day room Very small minority of white guys are able to sit and then there's another bench That's probably there's going to be another two benches in the back rows of where the blacks hit and where the white of where the mexicans sit And those benches were for those what they that's what they called ho benches Ho was the is the uh abbreviated version of a whore as if they're all pimps These are these are guys that they were forcing uh into servitude of some kind They would take white guys that came in because they were such a small minority And they would beat them into uh, they would beat them into submission if they couldn't fight back Or got to the point where they didn't want to fight back or it just wasn't worth it to them They either make them pay through commissary or they're like or turn them into some kind of personal house slave or something like that Or you know, uh in some more extreme cases, they would rape them and that type of things horrible horrible situation that you that these that people were getting thrown into That was the that was the living environment. That was the everyday thing So when you walked into the day room here it is you're looking at these benches, right? You had you literally had to fight just to sit down on any one of these benches unless of course you wanted to Allow yourself to be somebody somebody's a piece of chattel Well, then then you can go and sit down on one of those benches But if you if you wanted to maintain any kind of personal respect or or a semblance of security and safety Then you had you you you know what you're gonna have to uh, you're going to have to Fight your way on to one of these benches and you had to sit down to that was another thing By the way, the guards were going to yell at you to sit down Which is going to make a statement no matter where you sat down Where you sat down in the day room sent a signal to everyone else in the day room and the benches Here's another thing the benches that were segregated by race That was just the tip of the iceberg when you got within the races that the benches were all segregated either by gangs Or by the cities that you lived in so if you had two white benches You're gonna have one row of white benches It was going to be all Aryan brotherhood guys could sit on this bench and if you weren't an Aryan brotherhood You better not be sitting on that bench and and maybe the front bench would be guys that weren't Affiliated of any one of the Aryan groups that they had in prison and and similarly with all the other ones You know the crypts the bloods had their benches the Dallas had their bench Houston had their bench all this type of thing. How do we get on that? I'm starting to lose. I know It's such an extreme memory It seems it seems nightmarish whenever I think back on it on on how that stuff was we're talking about that I got on that James bird thing right now people came out of prison Much worse than the way they went in And there were so many extreme examples of people that were went in for minor crimes and came out came out of prison Psychopaths because of that situation. I mean the racism. I can't tell you how many just from the perspective of I mean, I'm white. I'm Jewish. Um from the perspective of a white guy that came down to prison at a young age You come down and you're in this extremely racially charged environment And you're going to be brutally beaten up several times by members of other races that hate your guts just because you're white I sit in these dayrooms and listen to conversations from guys that are in the Nation of Islam and stuff like that where they're arguing amongst themselves Whether it's okay to kill white babies because they might grow up and come a cop and arrest one of their kids or something I mean that was like that was the level of of what was considered a moderate amongst these people Whether if you would not kill a white baby within you you were soft on white people Type of thing you're in this environment where you're surrounded by people like that and they are treating you horribly horribly So you see these guys and they join these games people are aghast at the name of these games Oh the Aryan brother that how could you possibly join something like that? But it's because of the of the situation that they were put in and what it does to your mind The way that you feel like you need to deal with that whenever you come from the you know From the free world and you don't have any racism or any severe racism at least within you And you might know a lot about black friends, you know this that and the other and then you get there and all of a sudden You're completely hated and you're you're brutally abused all sort of stuff and you have to Harden yourself extremely psychologically physically in a lot of ways that and you have to do so really really quickly And one of the ways that they do that is by Adopting these extremist points of view that they would not have ever had otherwise No one would they know these most of these guys would never have come to those kind of conclusions otherwise But they do and then they end up joining they end up becoming true believers in it They get brainwashed by it They get out the they get out in the free world and keep this kind of ball rolling It was horrible It was horrible what it was doing to people people were not coming out of prison Well, people were coming out of prison being extremely dangerous and harmful I mean harmful to others. There's a whole other side of it of the sexual side of it I mean, uh, there's a real problem with sub would people masturbating in public and prisoner at one point There would be You masturbating on the female guards and all that that's that's still an issue But that's that's I mean that it is still an issue But it's not nearly the issue that it used to be but it's still an issue I mean that's that also depends that it was doing it depends on the unit Yeah, it depends on the unit, but I think let's hold off on that. We're gonna we're gonna have to wrap it up On this on on this one because we're going we're going all over the place right now We are talking about our prisons necessary And we I mean we started out trying to cover the fact that they weren't that they're not Absolutely necessary. You know that because they didn't always exist, right? But now we're showing that not only they're not necessary, but they just don't accomplish Their stated goal. They don't they don't accomplish anything all they accomplish the only thing prisons accomplish Is satisfying the darker side of all of our natures The aim the side of anger that just wants to to be rid of people and harm people because you feel like you've been harmed And it's a vicious cycle that ends up affecting all of our society Yes, absolutely And I think that that's what all these stories are trying to illustrate is that if you sit back and listen to this podcast And peace that peace all these random Dispartate thoughts together. I hope you come to that conclusion And on that note, we will call this one a day and we will continue on next week. Thank you so much The shakedown is recorded in luxurious long mob public media studios and our theme song shakedown Is provided by emboto elements