According to data from the Prison Policy Initiative, more than 1.9 million people in the United States are incarcerated in prisons, local jails, and other detention facilities. Additionally, one in five incarcerated people in the entire world is being held in the US.
Yet, despite America’s large prison population, most people’s ideas of what it’s like on the inside come from TV shows and movies.
Evgeniyshkolenko / Getty Images
Recently, on Reddit, a former inmate invited other users to ask her anything about her experience, and it led to a very eye-opening conversation.
She opened the conversation by writing, “First time, non-violent drug offender here. I was in the only federal supermax for women in the country, FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. I wasn’t allowed to go to a prison camp for any part of my sentence because I absconded for twelve years before being rearrested, pleading guilty, and receiving an eight-year sentence. They (reasonably) classified me as a potential flight risk from a low-security camp, and I served one year in county jail before sentencing and four years in Carswell.
I used my time productively and completed a ton of programs. I earned my paralegal certificate through a correspondence school and did a ton of free legal work for other women on the inside. Saw lots of crazy stuff inside, lots of tragedy and injustice, too. Violence, corruption, abuse, you name it.
I got out in March of this year, went to a federal halfway house, and then my judge granted me a sentence reduction, so I got to go home, and now I’m just on federal probation.
I’ll answer any question about any of it!”
Here are some of the most interesting questions and answers from the thread:
1.Q: What do you wish more people knew about prison?
A: The federal government has a 99% conviction rate, which should make people think. The reality in the federal system is that if they charge you, they are going to convict you one way or another. If you take it to trial they will sentence you the absolute most years possible. We call this the trial penalty. Girls with my same basic crime are doing 30-year sentences in prison because they took it to trial. Basically, if you make them go through the hassle of due process, they are going to make you pay a very high price.
FMC Carswell is the only medical center for women in the country as well as being the only supermax. It’s full of terminally ill women and little old ladies in wheelchairs and walkers. Women die there all the time due to medical negligence. The warden is supposed to file for compassionate release if a prisoner meets certain conditions but it hasn’t happened in a decade there. Probably longer. Women sometimes are able to get compassionate release through their judges, but that is rare, too. Most of the time it doesn’t matter if you are a non-violent offender, they will just let you die there.
Hulu / Jacinta / Via youtube.com
2.Q: Your first day in prison, what was it like?
A: My first day in actual prison was actually a relief. I had been in county jail for a year. Prison is much nicer than county jail. I got transferred with several other girls. We had to be shackled hands and feet. Then you go in, and they get you your uniforms and all of the stuff they issue you, your bedroll and hygiene products. I was shocked that my cell was so small and that I was going to share it with three other women.
3.Q: How are people in federal prison different than in county jail, and how is food different?
A: People in prison are a lot more respectful typically than people in county jail. They are more institutionalized, so they keep things much cleaner. Prison has a lot of unwritten rules, whereas county jail is just chaos. You don’t have super long sentences in jail, so people come and go a lot; in prison, there are a lot of people serving long sentences. Some are serving life, and prison is their home, so it creates a different mindset. People build lives in prison, they have jobs, they go to church, they have hobbies, they get into long-term relationships, they go to the gym, they go to school, they participate in programming to better themselves, lots of different things, and everyone does their time differently, but there is definitely a more long-term mindset.
Food in federal prison is pretty decent. County jail food is awful. I am a vegan, and they had veggie options for every meal.
4.Q: Were you brought in with other individuals beginning their sentences as well?
A: Anytime there are new arrivals, you are definitely getting checked out and sized up by the population. People want to know your charge, your sentence length, and do you like girls? Ha! Mostly, the women were really nice and gave me some basic stuff to start me off, like dishes and casual clothes that they wear in the commissary, so you don’t have to wear your full uniform all the time. People came to warn me about known thieves, child molesters, and tough guards. Really, they were pretty welcoming.
A&E / 60 Days In / Via youtube.com
5.Q: Did it hit you immediately that this would be your life for the next eight years, or did that come later?
A: I got sentenced when I was still in county, so I had some time to make peace with my sentence. I bawled my eyes out the day I got sentenced, though, in the shower so no one would see.
6.Q: With your 12-year “break” in between, were you able to set up your life and better handle the later sentence, or was it always looming over your head, and do you believe you should have just gotten it over with right away?
A: I can’t regret the time I took. I had kids during that time and got to raise them when they were little. Also got married to the love of my life. I was able to stack some money, and that provided for my kids while I was inside.
The charges were definitely always hanging over my head. I would have nightmares about being arrested.
As rough as it was, I think everything happened the way it should have. Several sentencing laws changed while I was gone, and I ended up benefiting from that. I got a sentence reduction, which my original judge definitely would not have granted.
During my time in prison, I did a lot of free legal work for other women and was able to get five women released through my efforts, and I am proud of that. Out of hundreds of motions that I wrote, only a few resulted in sentence reduction or release, but it meant a lot to those women, so my time was not entirely in vain.
7.Q: Was it hard to survive there? I can imagine how many bullies are there.
A: Girl prison is very different from men’s prison. Most fights are between romantic partners. There is more gossip and drama than anything.
I did have the occasional run-in with bullies, but I have always hated bullies and am not easily intimidated, fortunately. Really, you just don’t want to look like an easy target. I’m tall, I work out, and I make friends pretty easily, so I always had people around who had my back. You have to be willing to stand your ground. People will test you. If a girl got loud, I got loud. If she got in my face, I got in hers. If she told me to come fight her in the bathroom, I’d say sure and head that way. No takers on that. You just have to call their bluff most of the time. The only fight I ever had was in a stairwell, and I hit her first because she kept disrespecting me in front of others, and that is a no-no in prison.
CBS / 60 Minutes / Via youtube.com
8.Q: How many fights did you get in?
A: Several episodes of spit boxing, where there is just yelling and getting in each other’s face. It’s unfortunate but necessary, as you do not want to be seen as weak in prison. The only time I got physical was with a girl who had been harassing me for a while. She had been talking trash, saying I was a chomo, which is slang for a child molester. Which I am definitely not. The problem is that I didn’t really fit the mold as a drug offender because I was never an addict, I was actually a mule. So people would see a quiet, kind of nerdy white girl with glasses and assume that I must be a chomo. So we fought in a stairwell. I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t let that stand because, again, in prison, you can’t look weak.
9.Q: Damn, what was the point of her starting a rumor like that anyways? Was she just trying to get something out of it, or did she just simply not like you? Or is that kind of thing normal in prison?
A: A lot of people in prison are pretty messed up mentally and emotionally. They don’t play well with others, and that’s why they are in prison. A lot of women in prison have been terribly abused in their lives, and so they don’t take kindly to people who hurt children. She just didn’t buy that I was a drug offender. I didn’t look like one or talk like one. I ended up taping my sentencing sheet outside my cell the next day. It had my charge on it so people could see the truth. I didn’t have any problems after that. I probably should have done that to begin with.
10.Q: How did you struggle mentally?
A: The mental struggle for me was missing my family; it felt like I had a gaping wound in my chest because I have kids, and they are really, really important to me. I talked to them every day, had video visits three times a week, wrote letters, and they came to visit in person once a month. That was the hard part, really.
A&E / 60 Days In / Via youtube.com
11.Q: A bit left field, I saw that you mentioned you were a drug mule. Are you happy to talk more about that? How’d it get started? Was it straightforward, or did you use secret compartments and stuff?
A: Nothing sophisticated. I just agreed to deliver a package to a person at a car wash for $800. That person turned out to be an informant for the feds. He did the setup to get a sentence reduction. I was arrested on the spot. They really wanted my friend, but I was dumb enough to fill in for her that day and caught the consequences. So yeah, world’s worst drug mule, hahaha, caught on my first time.
12.Q: And that got you eight years in jail? Seems excessive!!
A: I got eight years because I absconded. Basically, after I was arrested, they held me for three days, then they let me out on a personal recognizance bond, which is where you have to go once a week to sign a paper, and you aren’t supposed to leave the area, you are awaiting trial. But I got scared and took off. They rearrested me 12 years later, and they added time for obstruction of justice because I fled.
13.Q: What was your job in prison? Did you get paid?
A: I had two jobs. I was a GED tutor, so I got to teach women math all day, and that was really awesome. I was also a suicide watch companion which is an on-call job, basically companions sit outside the suicide watch cells when a woman has attempted to hurt herself or threatened it. That was a tough job but also really rewarding because you are able to be there for women who are going through really tough moments in their lives. As companions, we were the only non-cops present, so we kept an eye on our inmates and also kept the guards accountable for how they were treated during their watch.
I got paid 40 cents an hour for each of those jobs, which is the maximum pay at Carswell for an inmate worker.
Hulu / Jacinta / Via youtube.com
14.Q: How true is the TV show Orange Is the New Black?
A: Ah, this I can answer. It’s fairly accurate. I watched most of the seasons prior to going to prison, and a lot of it is spot-on. I read the book that it was based on while in prison; I will say that the author’s experience was doing one year in a pretty low-security prison camp-type setting. This is obviously going to be pretty different from a woman’s experience in a higher-level prison. But she touches on a lot of the tough parts about being a prisoner, like how you are dehumanized in so many ways, large and small. I hated the pat searches. I hated having to strip down, squat, and cough in front of strangers. I hated the way I became a number.
15.Q: What are your plans now that you’re out? I saw you say you got some qualifications in there, that’s awesome!!
A: I’m working remotely now and doing pretty well. I went back to college because I want to be a data scientist.
16.Q: Is there any part of being locked up that you miss?
A: There are good things about prison. The routine was nice because I have always struggled with sticking to routines. I actually liked wearing a uniform because it just simplifies getting ready each day. I got in very good shape in prison, learned to play the guitar, and made some very good friends. I read a lot of really good books, too. So it’s not all terrible.
CBS / 60 Minutes / Via youtube.com
17.Q: Did you retain any of the friends you made, or did those connections go away right when someone was let out?
A: It’s tricky because we are not supposed to communicate with other felons once we get out. And we definitely are not supposed to contact people still in prison. But there are ways to keep the friendship, and people do. I made some really good friends there, and I love them still. That’s all I can really say here.
18.Q: You say the federal prison food is pretty decent. Everything I’ve heard and read on the men’s side is pretty bad, and the calorie intake is minimal. Some say if it wasn’t for commissary, you’d be hungry a lot. How do you think it compares?
A: Portion sizes could definitely be better. Food in the feds can vary from prison to prison because kitchen staff is either more inmate-friendly or less. We had a kitchen boss for awhile that was stealing a lot, and that made our portions smaller; quality suffered, too. I think if you are comparing prison food to jail food, prison food, at least federal prison food, wins pretty much every time, but it’s still not as good as eating in the free world. It’s still not going to be great food.
19.Q: How did the guards interact with the inmates?
A: The guards were a mixed bag. Some of them are psychopaths, and some are really nice. Most are just there to do their job and make a living.
CBS / 60 Minutes / Via youtube.com
20.Q: What has been the most positive experience that you have learned from being in prison?
A: After going through everything that I have been through, I feel like there is nothing I can’t survive. I feel like you could airdrop me anywhere on earth, and I’d figure out a way to survive and thrive. That’s pretty empowering, actually.
21.Q: What are some of the most culturally sequestered terms and concepts you learned in prison? Could you provide a lexicon of words and phrases that only exist in the prison ecosystem or that have a completely different meaning on the inside?
A: Hmm, I think a lot of prison lingo has moved out into the mainstream, but let me think. A cupcake is a prison girl you are sweet on. If you walk around with one pants pocket out, it means you are single; two pockets out means you are looking for a hookup. Being out of pocket means you are out of control.
A tent is when you hang a sheet or blanket on your bed so you can have private time with your girl. Never sit on someone’s bed without permission. If you have a girlfriend, you shouldn’t sit on anyone else’s bed or make anyone else coffee or food without your girlfriend’s okay first. A pillow princess doesn’t give; she only receives. Some girls have an in-house which is a girlfriend on their same block or housing unit, and they might also have an out-house girl on another unit. Girls in prison are vicious about being cheated on, cutting the cheater’s face is a common retaliation especially if the girls have long sentences and not a lot to lose.
You must courtesy flush in prison. You must wear shower shoes in prison. People run stores and will give you credit on commissary items between shopping days; usually, you pay back two for one. So you give me soup today, and when we go to commissary, I have to give you two soups back. A few days before commissary, you get bills from other inmates stuck to your locker. They are shopping lists written on Post-it notes. There are lots of hustles and ways to make money in prison. Some girls iron clothes, and some girls make special desserts like prison cheesecake to sell. Some girls run stores, and some girls do arts and crafts to sell.
22.Q: How can we make life more tolerable for those inside?
A: Being someone’s person on the outside is something really kind. Many people in prison don’t have an outside support system. My mom was that for me. So like, I needed something looked up (no Google in prison), or I needed something related to my outside life taken care of (like locating medical records). There are things that are very hard to do in prison.
An example: A friend could not go to a halfway house because she had a traffic ticket warrant out of another state. She needed someone on the outside to call that courthouse, find out how much she needed to pay, and coordinate that payment being made from the money she had in her prison account. That small favor made the difference of six months of sitting in prison for her, as she could not go to the halfway house with the warrant. My mom did it for her, because the girl had no family on the outside she could reach out to.
There are lots of groups online where you can find prisoners to write. Getting mail is always amazing. Just knowing that someone out there is thinking about you while you are in there is huge.
CBS / 60 Minutes / Via youtube.com
23.Q: I dated a formerly incarcerated loved one. She had developed some maladaptive behaviors as a coping mechanism while in prison, which turned out to be dealbreakers for me. Have you developed any maladaptive behaviors, and do you think they will be a burden for your loved ones to deal with?
A: I definitely have some leftover issues from being incarcerated. I’ve had to work on my temper. In prison, you have to be constantly vigilant; you can’t be weak, and so my temper goes from zero to sixty in a heartbeat. It’s getting much better with time. It’s a fear-based response. You know about fight or flight? Well, in prison, there is nowhere to go, no option for flight. So, if I feel threatened, I automatically go into fight mode. Not with violence but just aggressive speech. I was never like that before, and I am working hard to overcome it. I’m sorry that you went through that with your loved one.
24.Q: What would you tell young women who are on a path that will land them in prison?
A: I’d tell them not to do anything that will invite the government into their lives because once they are in, they can never go back to the way they used to feel. I had a little panic attack on the way home from work today because there was a big accident and tons of police cars with their lights on. I’m terrified of the police because of my experience. I can never go back to feeling like I did. It will always affect me.
Being a felon means I can’t volunteer at my kid’s school. It means some employers won’t give me an interview. It means I can’t vote, own firearms, or travel to certain places. Every cop that ever pulls me over will probably look at me differently because of it. It has permanently changed many parts of my life. And this happened because I needed to pay the rent and thought that delivering drugs wasn’t a big deal. I committed that crime in my early 20s, and over a decade later, I’m still paying for it.
Were you surprised by any of her answers? Or do you have any experience either spending time in prison yourself or visiting someone you know? Tell us all about it in the comments.
And if you’ve had a life experience that you’d like to answer questions about for a future BuzzFeed post, let me know in this anonymous Google form.
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