Your prison stories

When I was in prison, the guards refused to give me a typewriter because they honestly thought I would be able to hack into the prison security with it.

I will never understand the confusion of ideas that could lead to such a misunderstanding.

I had three cellmates I racked with for any length of time and a dozen or so more who were cycled in during transfers or when gen pop swelled over summer. Eventually, they ask you what you're in for. I always imagined there would be some kind of prison slang for this, like I'd be asked what I was in for but in some alien prison kant that I wouldn't understand. But luckily, you're just asked 'what you in for'. And then you and the other guy do a little dance around it, you ask him what he's in for, he doesn't tell you, you tell him maybe one of your charges, he tells you one of his and on and on. And then you both end up bitching about the criminal justice system. No one, and this is unexpected, no one is a total asshole to their cellmate. It's just counter productive. Even the biggest asshole inside will still show a degree of respect to the person you're going to be locked up with. Because you don't want bad blood in the cell unless you want to sleep with one eye open.

There was a guy we were inside with though, whose cell was on the low tier nearest the main door. So he was the first one to see the fresh meat. Anytime a new inmate would be brought in, he'd yell out 'he fuck babies, I seen him, he fucked a baby, I seen him before I went away niggers, he a baby fucker kill that baby fucker!' and he'd do this every fucking time a new inmate would be brought in. And he'd go on with it for about half an hour afterwards to. So the first thing a prospective convict would hear on being greated to the dorm would be this nigger, with this high pitched Canadian accent - like Steve Erkel - hollaring about how he'd seen you, and that you were a baby fucker.

So when the new inmate would be brought inside, he'd get the silent treatment the whole time this crackhead would be barking about the baby fucker. And then his cellmate would lean in real close and whisper 'you a baby fucker?'

Prison humour is never really funny. That's probably the closest thing we ever had to a running gag. I guess it was funny because we all knew child sex offenders ever got locked in with us... but the new guys didn't know that.