Life in the prison economy

[Timsup2nothin]

Christmas

Four o'clock Christmas day, and Christmas Eve. Good try, but no.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I think recidivism has a whole lot more to do with dehumanizing conditions outside of prison rather than in it.

Do you have any opinions of what could be done to reduce stigma of employers not wanting to hire people with criminal records? It seems like it could be a vicious cycle because if someone is unable to get a job they more likely to return to crime.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Count done early on super bowl Sunday?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Count done early on super bowl Sunday?

Score one for Bamspeedy!!!!

Indeed, count is done early, box picnic dinners are handed out so the chow hall can be closed down and the chow hall crew freed from duty, and everyone settles in in plenty of time for the game.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wait Bamspeedy still posts? o7.

 

[EnglishEdward]

@Timsup2nothin

Thank you for your story. I find it quite enlightening.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Chess sets, dominoes, cribbage boards, and decks of cards could be bought at commissary. Board games could be checked out from the rec department, but I don't think they had much of a selection and I didn't personally have any involvement with that. D&D is basically books, so it could have been available though you'd have to come up with alternatives to dice, or get some made.

Someone I met on the RPG forum that was my first internet home 15 years ago was upfront with the forum owners, both in the game's monthly letter column and when he joined the forum. He'd been in prison for several years, and one of the things he did to pass the time and have some kind of social life was to run a D&D game. His family got him the books (you can make do with just the core ones of DM guide, Player's guide, and Monster Manual), and he made the dice by folding and gluing paper into dice shapes. They were filled with salt to make them sturdy and better able to roll. Apparently they worked quite well.

He actually posted instructions on how to make these, though it's so long ago now that I have no idea if it's still available (I haven't been part of that forum for over a dozen years).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If someone made dice in my prison I suspect they'd have made them from wood in the furniture factory. Or possibly clay in the rec department's pottery class shop.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

If someone made dice in my prison I suspect they'd have made them from wood in the furniture factory. Or possibly clay in the rec department's pottery class shop.

My friend (we did become internet friends and co-admin'd a breakaway forum after things went to hell on the original RPG site) didn't have access to such things. Paper (would have had to be a bit heavier than regular paper, I would think) was all he had.

Polyhedral dice can be an art form now. They're even made of chocolate, and I have a ceramic cup and bowl that are roughly in the shape of a d20.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nice wooden table. Players turn up with metal dice.

No.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have copper and silver dice, but they're made of plastic. I've never heard of anyone using real metal dice.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

They're even made of chocolate

But then if you didn't like your roll you could just eat them

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Do you have any opinions of what could be done to reduce stigma of employers not wanting to hire people with criminal records? It seems like it could be a vicious cycle because if someone is unable to get a job they more likely to return to crime.

I've been intending to get back to this, and here I am, but it's still hard to figure exactly what to say about it. As usual, rather than a particular opinion all I really have is things that happened to me.

Being in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons can take many forms. For up to six months at the end of my sentence I would be eligible to be sent to a contract facility halfway house. At the halfway house I would be eligible to be assigned to home confinement under their supervision. Needless to say, every inmate is interested in this possibility, and I was no exception. So, with something close to six months left to serve I was tossed out the gate with a bus ticket and a deadline for when I had to check in at the halfway house. Well, actually they gave me a ride to the bus station, but it sure sounded more dramatic to say I got kicked out. Just for the record, "when do you kick?" was pretty standard prison slang for "how much time you got left?" and other variations on that question.

When I checked into the halfway house, yes, on time, the first thing they told me was "You have two weeks to get a job. If you don't we have to send you back." It's important to note that this place was contracting with the feds and with the state of California and even though there aren't that many federal inmates hitting the streets on any given day the California Department of Corrections is gigantic and has a much faster turnover. People arrived at that halfway house just about every day, Monday through Friday, and we were all told the same thing. Picnic tables in the courtyard with people poring over the want ads is my most vivid image of that place.

So, here's the process. To get out the door you have to have an itinerary on record. "I'm going here to turn in an application, then here to apply, then here to see if they are taking applications at all." When you turn this plan in to your counselor you have to justify these stops. Things like "my gf picked up an application and dropped it off for me, it's right here filled out ready to turn in," "they have an ad in the paper," or "before I went to prison I was in that line of work so maybe if they are taking applications I'll have a chance there."

My cash was kept in the office, and when I checked out they gave me whatever we agreed would be a reasonable amount for the day's mission; bus fare, enough to buy lunch. Bus fare because riding in privately owned vehicles was strictly prohibited, and there was at least one person on the payroll whose job was checking on inmates as they went roaming the town. Might or might not be following you anywhere, but almost certainly watched everybody going out that day to see that they did go to the nearby bus stop and get on a bus.

So, in examining the challenge of finding a job as a former, technically still, prison inmate, consider "Here's my application. By the way, could you sign this pass to verify for the halfway house that I actually came here?" Consider "Hey, this guy has a pretty good application, call him and set up an interview...what do you mean that number answers as "Inmate Transition Facility?" And yet, in the time I was there I saw some people sent back for disciplinary reasons, usually involving getting picked up in a car, but I didn't see a single person sent back for failing to get a job. A lot of guys "got a job" by being listed as a regular client at a temp place where if you showed up at four in the morning to be close to first in line you had a decent chance of being sent out to some sort of brutal manual labor in the oil fields for minimum wage when they contracted "gap filling labor on short notice" for about twice minimum wage. Other places were somehow connected to or at least aware of the halfway house and saw it as a source of cheap desperate workers. A telemarketing boiler room that charged you for use of their phone against commissions on your sales, for example. Most people who worked there in the evenings spent their days looking for other work since to my knowledge no one ever actually collected a dime in wages, but they could be counted on to hire anyone if that two week deadline was looming large.

So, on one hand it sometimes crosses my mind to say "if you are willing to do anything for a job you will find one." On the other, what I said about being out of prison is more dehumanizing than being in is a pretty easy claim to defend, and it's hardly surprising that recidivism rates are so staggeringly high.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I have copper and silver dice, but they're made of plastic. I've never heard of anyone using real metal dice.

I've seen them. They are really expensive compared to regular plastic dice, but they were definitely a status thing at one point.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But then if you didn't like your roll you could just eat them

That wouldn't cancel the roll, at least not in any game where I was the DM.

I had a set of molds to make chocolate chess pieces. The project I had in mind was to make a board and two sets of chess pieces, one of dark/milk chocolate, and the other using yogurt dipping wafers (easier to work with and tastier).

The project never happened, but can you imagine the players having to eat the pieces they captured?

Anyway, back to the thread here...

 

[FriendlyFire]

So, on one hand it sometimes crosses my mind to say "if you are willing to do anything for a job you will find one." On the other, what I said about being out of prison is more dehumanizing than being in is a pretty easy claim to defend, and it's hardly surprising that recidivism rates are so staggeringly high.

Cali still has its three strikes and your in laws ?
Do you think it helps at all ?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Cali still has its three strikes and your in laws ?
Do you think it helps at all ?

Depends what you mean by "help." Truthfully, as a felon myself, I know that it is a pretty hard thing to turn away from. The world hands you an even crappier deal than most and probably crappier than you had the first time you opted for a criminal option, so it's really hard to turn down. Nobody really seems to have the inclination or the knowhow to make life in general less crappy, and they REALLY don't seem to have any inclination to incentivize criminals to choose a regular life. So, with that in mind once someone has been through prison, gets out, opts back in and then gets a second trip to prison, gets out and opts in yet again there's really no reason to expect that the world of get a regular job and lead a normal life is going to be really appealing. So maybe there's something to the "if someone tells you who they are, believe them" idea that applies.

Personally, the only thing that I would believe would really make a great difference is making "normal" life generally more appealing.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I was thinking as a deterrent for people whom have offended twice already to try and avoid the third strike.
Its been quite some time since I read up about some guy stealing about $20 worth of stuff and ending up with a 20 year sentence. One of our states here in Australia also experiment with the same thing, mandatory sentencing for repeat offenders
Its something I can support but only for violent criminals.

I also watched on Vice the supermax security prison all of the prisoners were put in solitary, and were only allowed to exercise in the prison yard one at a time.
This is what I did in prison architect, with my violent prisoners whom would attack guards and other prisoners

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was thinking as a deterrent for people whom have offended twice already to try and avoid the third strike.
Its been quite some time since I read up about some guy stealing about $20 worth of stuff and ending up with a 20 year sentence. One of our states here in Australia also experiment with the same thing, mandatory sentencing for repeat offenders
Its something I can support but only for violent criminals.

I also watched on Vice the supermax security prison all of the prisoners were put in solitary, and were only allowed to exercise in the prison yard one at a time.
This is what I did in prison architect, with my violent prisoners whom would attack guards and other prisoners

That's what you have to do with violent cases like that, and it's what supermax facilities are for, but those are gigantically atypical. Less than one percent of inmate population requires supermax level security, based on California. I think the feds are probably similar.

The thing about the "third strike for stealing a pizza" stories is that strongarm robbery is defined as not only a felony, but a violent felony. I am dead certain of this, because had I been charged by the state that's what I would have been charged with. It's really easy to sit somewhere talking criminal justice reform saying "aw, dude was starving because as a felon no one would give him a job and now he's getting a third strike for nothing and going away for probably the rest of his life." Even I am sympathetic, but one of the things I had to acknowledge about myself was that when I walked up to a bank teller and said "give me the money" if they weren't terrified on at least some level they wouldn't have done it. So all of my "sure I robbed banks but I'm really a nice guy" posturing was BS.

Suffice to say that if some guy with prison survival skills walks up to my gf as she comes out of McDonalds and says "gimme that bag, _____" I'm not gonna be saying "well, he didn't show a weapon so it's just strongarm robbery, and it was just a burger and fries, no big deal." Locking him away somewhere is the only way the authorities are gonna keep him out of a hole in the desert, so I can't fault them for doing it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Personally, the only thing that I would believe would really make a great difference is making "normal" life generally more appealing.

what would make life more appealing?