Everyone knows living conditions in prison is not easy but have you ever listened to how is life in prison by an ex-inmate? Jessica Kent was in prison for 6 years because of drugs. Now, she is living in Chicago, has two daughters, and sober for years. She told the living conditions in prison and here are the most important points of this story, especially for women.
1. Inmates Are Chained Even When Receiving Treatments
“Do inmates get shackled to the bed if they go to hospital while they’re in prison? Well, that’s a really good question. And they 100% get shackled to the bed. I gave birth while I was in prison and that was the most traumatic experience I’ve ever gone through in my entire life. And as soon as my daughter was delivered, my legs were shackled to the bed. And I was in prison for drugs, if you guys don’t know that. She was born healthy, then she was placed in the foster care. After I got out of prison I worked for over a year to get full custody, I have full custody of her now. But the image of holding my new born baby, with chains and shackles on my leg, is forever seared into my memory and that was the reason why I completely changed my entire life. I looked down and I saw that beautiful baby and those light chains and I just decided, I just knew that I was done. I was never going back to prison, I was never picking up another substance and I now have 9 years sober. It was dehumanizing and terrible and I have PTSD from that.”
2. Medical Needs Are Often Neglected
“This is really hard because there’s a lot of bad things that happened in different categories, I think. So I will have to make this part 1, part 2, part 3… The worst thing that I saw correctional officers doing was neglecting the medical needs of inmates, including but not limited to, women having their period and bleeding everywhere. Sometimes it would take them hours to bring them clean clothes, sometimes they wouldn’t if the stain was not big enough or it wasn’t a big enough mess, then they wouldn’t give you clean clothes. So, ignoring the inmates’ medical needs is a big deal. I saw woman have a seizure and we’re pounding and pounding on the doors, this was in a county jail, we’re pounding on the doors for 5 hours before they came in to even assess the situation. Paramedics were finally called. And she did not come back. I don’t know if she passed away, I don’t know what happened, no one ever saw her again after that night, though. And I think that’s a major problem. Many correctional officers think inmates are faking everything cause they’ve been lied to.”
3. Women Get Only 2-3 Pads Per Day, Tampons Are Forbidden
“So, I was serving time in a prison in Arkansas and that prison did not want to give women tampons. So, they would give each woman 2 or 3 pads per day, if you asked for them. But sometimes a correctional officer said “No, sorry, we’re all fresh out. Can’t get one.” And then, what do you do right? So, because they did not want to provide tampons and they would only provide 2 pads in a 24-hour time period, we had to take it upon ourselves to take the pad and turn it into a tampon, which is unsafe, don’t recommend, not a good idea. But we didn’t know what else to do. So we had to take the outside of a pad, where it’s protective from the cotton, and use that as the outside of the tampon, put a cotton in there, wrap it up and make our own tampons, just so that we had period products so that we were not bleeding all over the place. In New York it was a non-issue, we got as much as we needed because blood creates danger for everyone. So yeah, we need a prison reform and we need it now.”
4. Officers And Inmates Might Get Into Relationships, But There’s A Huge Power Gap
“Do officers and inmates get into relationship, from a former inmate, let’s go! In a nutshell – yes. People that are there for a long time, they are human beings and they get lonely, and they want that intimacy and that feeling from another person. And that definitely happen to correctional officers. I’ve seen it, most inmates have. And it starts out very small, with a look or a smile, if you walk by them and touch them, which I would never do. I wouldn’t even talk to them for toilet paper. But I have seen it happen. And guards take advantage because inmates are in survival mode. We’re just trying to have basic hygiene items and food items and we’re hungry and lonely. We are starved for affection and attention, and it’s a very tough situation on both sides. It’s a crime and correctional officers that do that will be charged when they’re caught. Cause they always get caught; all inmates see everything, we know what’s going on and you will get caught and go to prison because this is essentially rape.”
5. Prison, Like Most Things, Has Its Own Social Ladders
“What’s the hierarchy or social ladder in prison? Who has the most respect? Who has the least respect? Let me tell you right now, I did not create this, this is not up for debate. Your feelings and your opinion on this don’t really matter. Cause this is going on every single day in prisons across this country. So, who’s at the top of this hierarchy? That would be lifers, people who committed murder. And I’ll do an entire video on all the different ways that people have committed murder that I have done time with. That’s the worst day of their life and they’re spending the rest of their life in prison for that. So, if you don’t have a release date and you didn’t hurt a child (we’ll get there), then you have respect. The bottom of the totem pole are child molesters, predators, people that hurt innocent child or a woman. In between, second to murder – drug dealers have a lot of respect in prison because we all know the war on drugs is complete bullsh*t. Robbery charges, you have respect. Top of the totem pole is people who don’t have release dates, adult that killed another adult, not an innocent child. And the bottom is chomos.”
6. On Your Last Day In Prison, It’s Recommended You Give Away Your Things
“So, what does your last day in prison look like. You have to pack up all your stuff, give away your stuff. Now, it’s a little disrespectful if you take things home, like deodorant or shampoo stuff, hygiene items, makeup, if you have it. Food, especially. It’s disrespectful if you try to take that stuff to the free world. So, you would give away your stuff to your people, give them everything that you possibly could that doesn’t have your number on it because a lot of prisons don’t let you have anyone else’s property, that’s a whole charge. Then you go up to intake and you change out, and you put your stuff on, you sign a bunch of stuff that says “I’m leaving”. Sometimes they give you gate money, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you have to take a bus, sometimes your family or friends will come pick you up. And it’s a very nerve wracking time, you don’t know if you’re gonna get out at 8 A.M. or 2 P.M., you just never know and you’re nervous and stressed. I was especially nervous last time because I was homeless and I was an addict and I had nowhere to go. So it was a very challenging thing.”
7. You Cannot Terminate Pregnancy While Incarcerated
“If you find out you were pregnant in jail, can you terminate the pregnancy? Well, in my personal experience, no. That was not an option for me. Not that I would have wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but I’m just letting you guys know the reality of it because I get this question every single day. Women don’t get options like that in jail. Especially in the south. I was in a jail that refused to get women period products, you had a pad or two a day, maybe, and there were no tampons. Also, that country jail that I was in, waiting to go to prison, didn’t give the women underwear or sports bras. Because they just don’t care. So, I can have a pad, but I can’t have underwear – where am I supposed to put it? So, back to the abortion question – you cannot terminate pregnancies. It took me three months to even get prenatal vitamins, cause they hope you’ll be out of their facility before you have a baby. I was absolutely terrified to have a baby alone in dirty jail cell, which I have seen time and time again on the internet. F*cking scary place to be pregnant in jail. I went to jail for drugs, thank you for asking, I am 9 years sober and I have custody of my kids.”
8. Inmates Are Served Mystery Meat Called “Meatwad”
“Do you wanna hear a prison story in my office that has terrible lighting and horrible audio? I thought that you might! The last prison I was at would serve us something called “meatwad”. Makes me noxious just thinking about it. This was not just what the inmates called it, it was written on a menu as “meatwad”. It was a ball of mystery meat, it was hard and weird and smelled bad. Sometimes it would have, I don’t even know, like fibers in it or something. And they would serve it with cold beans straight out of can and then some kind of thing they called cornbread. That wasn’t cornbread. And I would starve those days.”
9. The First Day Of Prison Is Very Rough
“What does your first day in prison look like? Well, it’s a really rough day. Every state is different, every place handles it differently. But usually you’re transferred from a county jail. You’re chained and handcuffed and sent to prison in a van or a bus. That’s usually a really long ride because prison’s in the middle of nowhere, no you can’t stop for bathroom breaks or food. That was very difficult when I was pregnant because you have to pee every ten minutes. For four hours I had to sit there, having to pee, it was really painful for me but you can’t stop. Then you get to prison and they strip you naked. They cover you in lice shampoo that smells for three days. You have to squat and cough to make sure there’s nothing inside of you, that’s really traumatic, really awful and humiliating. You sit there naked as they either photograph or write down your tattoos, every place handles it differently, like I said. Intake is like, “If you die, who do we call?”, then you have to go to medical and tell them if you have any issues. Then the psychiatrist is like “How are you feeling today?” and you’re like “What?”. You look shell-shocked almost because it’s so traumatic to go through all that, and then you get your housing assignment and it’s just weird and you have to understand when they’re screaming at the barracks what they’re actually saying – that’s a learning curve.”
10. Some Prisons Have Their Own Version Of Chain Gangs And Labor
“I was in a chain gang in prison. Yeah, that happened. So, when you get in trouble in this prison, they bump you down into a class 4. Class 1 means you’re not getting any tickets, you’re not getting any write-ups and you’re good. Class 2 is when you’re brand new and if you get in trouble and you’re bumped all the way to class 4 you have to work your way up (but that’s a whole another story). But I was put on a chain gang without a chain and basically, for hours and hours a day, I was outside, in the blistering Arkansas heat, I couldn’t get water breaks, couldn’t really take bathroom breaks, but I did get an extra glass of water in the chow hall and my hands were all cut up and bleeding and I had to have a gardening hoe, you know, like a tool hoe. So call it field squad of chain gang whatever you wanna call it, and you have to hit the grass over and over again with the back of your boot, to the middle of your boot over and over. And they play “Break the Yankee” which means they are really f*cking hard on me because I’m from New York. And my hands are all cut up and bleeding and I’m like, “this is illegal!”, cause in New York they don’t do sh*t like that, this is crazy. I was miserable and I absolutely hated it.”
11. Prisons Have Psychiatrists, But It’s Hard To Get An Appointment
“Do prisons have psychiatrists on the ground? It’s a good question and yes, it is the law that they have to have medical staff and mental health professionals in the prison. Unfortunately, you don’t see them that often. You have to fill out a sick call to go to mental health other than the entry process where you go through medical and see a mental health person, then you get sent to your dorm. That’s a very brief interaction. Beyond that, you have to ask to go see them and you can be waiting for a long time. If you say you’re suicidal, you’ll be stripped of everything, put in a cell and monitored for 72 hours until you verbally say you no longer want to take your life. Because protecting your physical life is all they care about. Mental health is a very low priority. I did time with women who would self harm and psychiatrists would give them rubber bands and they would snap them if they felt anxious and prison guards were taking these rubber bands from them. The psychiatrists wanted to do so much more than they were allowed to do. But unfortunately, per state law and the guidelines, they can’t do what they want to do.”
