Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with prison

A job for a smart, annoying, musically gifted ex-con?

verevi — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:55:50 -0800

What career paths are available for someone in their 60's who has spent much of his life in and out of prison? (the long, not too gory details inside) An old acquaintance has been out of prison for a few years on various drug charges and is looking for gainful employment. I want to help guide him towards something other than the temp work he is occasionally getting.

His most obvious skills are:

1) Crazy-talented guitarist/musician
2) Basic MS office skills

His drawbacks:
1) He's hard to be around--he's not good in social situations and tends to annoy people.
2) He's been in and out of prison most of his life due to drugs.

He wants to do something with computers, but I feel 'liking to use a computer' is not a sign of computer skills.

Any clear-cut paths he could take to earn a living? Ie, take x class, and then get a decent job doing y.

Warden threw a party in the county jail!

sourwookie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:57:27 -0800

Any idea where to find a black-and-white horizontally-striped t-shirts reminiscent of old style prison outfits--like what Elvis had in Jailhouse Rock? I've found whole costumes (jumpers, etc.) but I just need t-shirts.

I can see you.

greytape — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:14:54 -0800

Why haven't (or to what extent have) prisons embraced video technology? From time to time I hear about prison violence, and it disturbs me. Seems to me that prison fucks people up a lot more than it helps them, and that can't be much good for society.
But I'm surprised that cctv cameras haven't revolutionised prisons. Simply install cameras to cover every square inch of space in the prison, and if any inmate is caught breaking the rules they are taken to solitary confinement. No beatings from the guards, no exceptions. Wouldn't this be a great idea?
We have the ability to construct the Panopticon yet as far as I know, it just hasn't been taken. Am I wrong? Or are my ideas just wildly impractical for a few obvious reasons? And just how are prisons being reformed for the 21st century, or are they not?
Thanks in advance.

A short story from grade school textbook

timsteil — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:14:11 -0800

Can you identify a short story I read in grade school? It was set in England, and involved a fellow taking a bet he couldnt break out of a prison. He's sort of a Sherlock Holmes/MacGyver type, who uses all sorts of improvised stuff to get out. Only thing I truly remember was he used the tip of his shoelace and some polish i believe, to write a note or something. No author or other clues I can think of.
thanks

How do I find a companies Fed Tax ID online?

lattiboy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:57:39 -0800

How to find a company's Federal Tax ID # (in a hurry!) I went to click "finish" on the ol' turbotax and realized I hadn't entered the info for a 1099-MISC from a company (ABC Networks, Disney). I (still can't believe I) somehow lost the tax receipt since filling out all the other info and now I'm screwed. Please help (if possible/legal). Also, if this isn't possible, is it advisable to file without the number?

PS I know how stupid this is.

Do female prisoners get conjugal visits?

gnash — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:15:04 -0800

[Prison Filter] Do female prisoners get conjugal visits? If so are they required to use some form of birth control? This question occurred to me when I heard on the radio that 5% of female prisoners are pregnant when they enter prison.

Getting jail time in california?

SECONDHANDSMOTE — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:04:56 -0800

What would a person have to do in order to get a one year jail sentence in the California penal system. I'm working an idea, and I need someone to disappear. What sort of crimes could a person commit that would have a high probability of landing them in the slammer for a period of (around) one year. I'm thinking California, but I'm not set on it. Non-violent crimes would be useful.

What are some good books about life in captivity?

Telf — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:00:19 -0800

Help me find literature written about life in prisons, work camps, concentration camps etc. Can you guys please suggest some interesting works of fiction or nonfiction focusing mostly on life in prisons, prison camps, concentration camps, DP camps, refugee camps or any similar settings. Stories that take place in war ravaged occupied areas also fit the bill, think postwar Berlin etc. I'm finding myself very interested in this sort of thing recently.

I'm particularly interested in how people survive these situations. Profiles of people who managed to make it to the top of the ad hoc hierarchies of camp life are especially interesting to me. I'm also deeply interested in the bartering and general economies of camp life.

In no particular order, here are some works that I have read and either enjoyed have been deeply affected by:

King Rat by James Clavell. Historical Fiction. Story about life in Japanese-run POW camp in South East Asia. Profiles one low ranking American soldier who claws his way to the top.

Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard Semi autobiographical. Recounts the experiences of a wealthy British child living in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. Reveals lots deal making and bartering.

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. Autobiographical memoir about life in Auschwitz. Extremely honest, shows competition between prisoners.

Night by Elie Wiesel. Holocaust memoir. Perhaps more inspiring than many of the Holocaust memoirs.

The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz. Has less emphasis on prison/camp life than other listed books, but does profile survivors of the camps and how they lived.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Fiction but semi autobiographical. Account of life in Stalinist prison camp.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. Collection memories about concentration camp life.

Maus by Art Speigelman. Graphic Novel. Extremely powerful for a graphic novel. Depicts and contrasts the behavior of the author's father during and after life in a concentration camp.

If anyone could suggest more works in this vein, I'd really appreciate this. Bonus for providing a brief synopsis. Double bonus if you can provided some varied time periods/locations of such life.

Thanks.

A Novel Method of Escape

Tube — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:45:04 -0800

Has anyone ever escaped from jail or prison using this novel method, either in fiction or in real life? As a child I remember hearing about an escape by a prisoner using string and an abrasive to saw through the steel bars of his cell. I believe the story involved the string being coated with soap, which was used to adhere powdered mortar or concrete. The improvised "saw" was then pulled back and forth against the metal bar until it cut through.

I honestly can't remember where I came across this idea, whether I was told it as historical fact by my father, or if I read about it or perhaps saw it on TV as a work of fiction.

Has anyone else heard of this? I'm not so much interested in speculating whether it is really possible or not, rather if anyone can provide any specific examples.

crazy people go to prison?

DillonArt — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:53:39 -0800

can a paranoid schizophrenic be put in prison for having an attack in a bank and tearing up the place? No one was injured, but I did destroy many tables, chairs and television sets before I was detained. I was having both auditory and visual hallucinations.

Why the drop in incarceration for public order crimes?

painquale — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:43:18 -0800

According to these pages on the U.S. Bureau of Justice site, imprisonment for public order offenses suddenly fell by a third in 2002. Why?

Got an electrical outlet?

gbinal — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:57:38 -0800

I have heard that prisoners will use a trick involving sticking a bit of metal in electrical outlets to get a spark in a rather Macgyver-esque process of lighting a cigarette. Is this more urban legend than reality. It shouldn't surprise you that part of the reason I'm asking is that I entered a bet on this subject, telling the other party that this seemed rather like an urban legend.

I wouldn't guess most jail cells have electrical outlets; in the commons areas as well. I would also guess that with so much smoking that goes on in jail, there would be plenty of matches going around.

The idea that a process involving lighting some lent or cotton off of sparks made by sticking pieces of metal in electrical outlets... well, I'll just say again that it reminds me of grand daddy long legs supposedly being the most poisonous spiders except that their mouths are too small.

I've googled all around but not found anybody addressing this. Thanks in advance for any thoughts and if we cross paths, I'll buy you a cup of coffee with the $10 bucks you folks help me win.

cardio + shivving=dead?

Bookhouse — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:35:42 -0800

Would getting a person to exercise before stabbing them cause them to die faster? In the nonfiction book Mexican Mafia (pretty good read, by the way), there is a story about the Eme deciding to kill one of its members who is in prison. The killers asked the man to play a game of basketball. After the game is over they stab him in the chest, the idea being that his raised heart rate will cause him to bleed out before the guards can get him medical attention. The man does die, but would the exercise really cause him to bleed more?

I'm not planning on shanking anybody, by the way. I want to use this in a short story, but I want to make sure it makes sense first.

The Rotating Prison in the Mountain

aeschenkarnos — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:29:49 -0800

I'm looking for the title and/or author of a story I read years ago. It was about, or had in it, a description of a terrible kind of prison, a vast multilayered cylinder carved inside a mountain, that would rotate slowly around its course from the efforts of the prisoners inside. The only way to free those inside was, according to the story, to keep adding new prisoners to the vacated cells to keep pulling the thing along. Obviously, it was an allegory for self-perpetuating undesirable institutions in society; while everyone might want it to be abolished, without a steady flow of new arrivals those inside would be trapped. I don't remember much in the way of other details, except that there was some mechanism for getting food and water to the prisoners and removing waste (maybe it involved passing food and water along, for everyone's survival was required to keep the cylinder moving). The ruler who built it may have ended up in it himself.

Human cost of the drug war?

Riki tiki — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:13:09 -0800

Approximately how many people are in prison and/or dead (or not) because of the drug war? This is more complicated than the FP text would suggest. Google-fu provided me with tons of statistics about the number of people in prison for drug-related charges, etc. However, some percentage of those people would presumably be in prison for other offenses if drugs were legal, right? Sure, dealers would be doing fewer drive-bys without a lucrative illegal market to fight over, but not all of them would have exactly become doctors or lawyers otherwise.

So I guess my question is, has anyone ever come up with an estimated human cost of the drug war, compared to a statistically-suggested U.S. in which drugs are legal? In other words, the result would take the form "7,000,000 more people are in prison than would probably have been otherwise. [source]" If not, how would one go about creating such an estimate and giving it some legitimacy?

Please, no chatfilter. This isn't hypothetical, it's for a personal project of mine. I'm trying to visually express the consequences of the drug war in ways that can't be dismissed as hyperbole, and this is part of one of them.

i'm going to jail (for 2 hours).

twistofrhyme — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:04:27 -0800

what fun, performance-related activities would you teach in a high-security prison? i have a background teaching & working with under-served youth, mostly in the field of drama / performance. next week, i am leading 2 guest workshops in a high-security british prison. the content can be whatever i want- communication, improv, acting, group dynamics, whatever. it should have some performance component, and it should be fun and playful.

i'm allowed to use audiovisuals (although i'm not sure what i'd use, nor how compatible my DVDs would be) and handouts (although at least 50% of the inmates can't read).

i will have 2 groups of 20 inmates for 2 hours each.
group 1 are "vulnerable inmates" facing threats from the mainstream prison population. apparently they like this kind of guest speaker session a lot and tend to be engaged & participatory.
group 2 are the mainstream population, who tend to also be pretty open to this kind of stuff but are a bit more rowdy and disruptive.

i thought i'd like to do stuff involving improv, acting, self-expression, comedy, or performance.

i want the inmates to have fun, feel that i like & respect them, and feel safe with each other in the workshop. i want them to all feel talented & successful at the end, and maybe get to practice some kind of communication skill that they can apply to their daily life or get some sort of self-esteem boost from (like "hey, i didn't know people thought i was funny!" kind of feelings). and i want them to be able to laugh good-naturedly at each other in a way that won't exacerbate any tensions that may exist within the group. i worry that i'm overthinking things a bit, but that's how i feel. frankly, i'm a little nervous- i'm a young, innocent-looking canadian woman, i speak in a kind of nerdy overenthusiastic cadence which usually makes "tough" people tease me (good-naturedly, and it doesn't hurt my feelings, but i don't want to come off as some nice, clueless suburban girl who thinks she can teach MEANINGFUL LIFE SKILLS or whatever- even if that's kind of what i am), and i'm not particularly street smart, especially compared to prison inmates.

i like the idea of them doing performance stuff, typical improv games like clap-focus, freeze/switch, hotseat, and those games where 2 people tell a story simeltaneously or one-word-at-a-time. simple open scenes, maybe, make-a-story, genre opera, etc. but i don't wanna limit my options to just improv, i feel like there may be other activities that will work well in this context.

in short, my questions are:
1. what kind of performance, expressive, or group dynamics stuff would you teach in this situation?
2. is there any meta-advice you can give me, about what to expect, or how to think about my position in this situation, that will help me relate well to the group?

any advice would be so helpful- thanks in advance!

In a hundred years, they'll be looking for people who had something, anything, to do with Beanie Babies.

history is a weapon — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:40:30 -0800

Where can I find people who have some relationship to convict-leasing in the southern United States? Are there historical societies (African American or otherwise) that can direct me to older people who can talk about what it was like? Where else can I look? I'm putting together a documentary that has a component on convict-leasing. I want to find people, besides professors, who can talk about the issue of convict leasing, ideally as to how it touched the lives of themselves, their families, or their communities. But where do I look? Is there a secret treasure trove of lucid elderly people who can reference convict leasing? Or, for the creative types out there, is there a better way to help visualize it with doing a poor Ken Burns impression?

What's the total number of death row inmates and the average cost to hold them?

sipher — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:19:45 -0800

How much money could be saved if California executed all the prisoners on death row tomorrow? What about the country? So I've been trying to find state or national prison statistics on the number of people currently on death row and the average cost per day to hold them. This is unsurprisingly difficult. Most of the statistics I can find are either outdated by many years or don't include anything related to death row.

Any ideas?

Has anyone ever served a jail sentence for harassing a whale?

jason's_planet — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:23:55 -0800

Has anyone ever done time in prison for harassing a whale? In America, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 makes it illegal to harass whales. My understanding is that bringing your boat closer than 100 yards to a whale or engaging in any kind of conduct that disrupts the whale's behavior constitutes harassment.

My google research has uncovered a case where someone was fined $10,000 for violating this law. But it's possible to be sentenced to jail time under this law as well.

So . . . has anyone ever served time in a Federal prison for the crime of harassing whales?

(I understand that Canada has a similar law, so if you know of any such cases from Canada or other countries, feel free to mention those as well.)

Many thanks in advance.

Not the dude in Tenacious D

The Castle — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:57:02 -0800

I'm looking for additional information about the author Jack Black I'm looking for additional information about the author Jack Black, author of You Can't Win. More specifically, I'm interested in his time in Ingleside jail, but any material about him besides his book would be great. On a side note, information about California prisons in the early 20th century would also help.

What should I expect at a parole hearing?

Anonymous — Wed, 02 May 2007 07:41:43 -0800

Many years ago I witnessed a murder and was the victim of attempted murder. The murderer was caught, and sentenced to 40 years-to-life. His first parole hearing is scheduled for 2008. I need to know what to expect. I have since moved out of the state (California) but I am planning to attend the hearing and speak about his previous prison sentences for violent behavior, the nature of the crime in which I was involved, and the simple fact he needs to be incarcerated for the rest of his life.

The possibility of this person being released back into society is bringing back many unpleasant memories and I'm nervous and apprehensive about revisiting the incident. I'm having problems sleeping and focusing at work, and I need to know how best to present to the parole board the reasons why this person must never again see the light of day.

I have several questions:

What should I expect at the parole hearing?
Will he be present when I testify at the hearing?
Will I be allowed to keep my face hidden?
How much credence does the parole board give to the statements of victims, and the reasons why they object to a prisoner's parole?

Please, no lectures about prison rehabilitation or why this person should be set free.

Private messages or personal experiences may be sent to anon_mefi_187@hotmail.com.

Old Venetian Prison Film

Dub — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:53:42 -0800

Does anyone know the title of old Italian film - Partly set in a Venetian Jail? I'm trying to find this film for an old friend - Who described it, but was very flaky about the details.

It's an old Italian film (poss. c1950's?)
Rough plot: A man is wrongly imprisoned (by the guilty person) in a Venetian prison. At one point in the film, water rises in the cell, and the man has to struggle to remain above the water.

I believe at the end of the film, the man is vanquished.

How to make life in a fish bowl tolerable

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:49:11 -0800

How to make life in a fish bowl tolerable I've started a new job -

I respect my boss, like the coworkers on my team, have a lot to learn, find it challenging, and if I can stick around for 1 to 2 years - hopefully I can move to freelance.

First few weeks were in a cube which was a new experience for me. I found it difficult to concentrate but an ipod solved that problem (no longer heard the latest sob stories on the phone)

However, now we have been moved to a real fishbowl. Glass walls. No cubes. We were told we will have 'half walls'. There are ten of us herded into a room like this.

I truly have a hard time concentrating and work efficiency is difficult for me (I can tell you, however, that my coworker owns four cats; or another one loves playing jazz). I find it dehumanizing and it makes me anxious to sit in an environment without walls.

Tips for survival? I like to cope sometimes with humor (and I will make my own jokes/but that time probably is limitted). Suggestions as to how to re-arrange the enviroment to make it conducive to work? Change my mindset? Make a profit from this (pictures and a blog or article?)

Anonymous since the 'owners' or managers with real offices put thought into this, designed it and I am assuming other work places don't have this 'yet'

Do private prisons like the one depicted in the movie Oldboy actually exist?

Ndwright — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 06:59:36 -0800

Do private prisons like the one depicted in the movie Oldboy actually exist? I've seen Oldboy a few times over the years (excellent film, highly recommended) and now I'm beginning to wonder if anything like the facility he spends the first 15-20 minutes of the film in actually exists. For those who haven't seen the movie, the facility consists of a floor of windowless hotel-rooms, each sealed with an iron door. A contractor rents out the "cells" to whoever has a person they need to store for a length of time (weeks/months/years). I can see how criminal organizations might need a service like this, detention facilities that operate outside of the legal system. Has anyone heard of anything like this happening in real life?

paroleFilter

lester — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:39:56 -0800

I have a friend who has served time for several DUI's, and is currently on parole. He is worried about failing a drug test, and being sent back to the slammer to complete his sentence. Are there any MeFis out there that have been on parole, failed a test for marijuana, and not been sent back to jail? This is in Illinois. It's also important to note that he no longer drives at all or owns a car. He owns his own home, and has been gainfully employed.