Trip Report : Do not pass go, do not collect $200 (real long)

[Andrew Karpinski]

I have been incarcerated a number of times in my life. Most were one night or shorter stays in the drunk tank and I was guilty in all cases. At the moment I have served my debt to society and (finally) have no outstanding warrants.

Around three years ago I was caught, red handed, for theft of a carton of cigarettes and possession of seven ounces of marijuana. The details of my capture are relatively embarassing and show the idiocy of criminals quite well. At the time I was mostly supporting myself from the sale of marijuana and lived on my own in a small rural community while attending high school. We did our drug buys in a city about an hour and a half away. This time, me and my friends decided to get drunk before going to do the deal, which is obviously a very intelligent decision. In a random small town along the way we stopped at a convience store and I ordered a carton of cigarettes. The lady placed them on the counter and the following dialogue ensued :

Me : How much are the smokes?
Her : $64.95
Me : Wrong bitch they're free!

And I grabbed them and hopped in the car. We took off, did the drug buy, then drove through the same town on the way back where a cop was waiting for us. We were arrested, tossed in the county jail, and then around six hours later a cop drove me back to my place.

Over the next few months I got finger printed and stood trial. I chose to represent myself and pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. It took about five trips to the court house to do this, despite saying "I just want to plead guilty" at every opportunity. I am relatively sure that everyone else in the car (some of whom had bought drugs with me) got off scott free or with probation and I took the fall. Since my sentence was 15 days in jail, served on weekends, of which I had to serve 4 this didn't bother me horribly.

My first trip to the jail house was terrifying. I ate a delicious meal, had sex with my then girlfriend, and left for a weekend of adult summer camp. It's not like I imagine you think it is. You arrive voluntarily, they open this large gate, you walk up to the jail and then they process you in these holding cells until you are admitted in. For the weekend you share a cell with 2-3 other guys, in bunk beds or a mattress on the floor. The food is decent. You have 6 hours a day out of your cell in the 'range', which is like a big living room with three tables, a shower area, and a television. Mostly people played cards. I had very little trouble and played non gambling card games, although I did cry the first night.

When I came back for the second weekend they decided, for some reason, to ship us to a jail two hours away for the weekend. They felt it was neccessary to handcuff us for the trip, despite the fact that everyone voluntary showed up three hours earlier. This second jail was in a major urban area, and the food was a little better. There were no individual cells, just a range with alot of bunk beds.

I snore. In the middle of the night someone threw soap at me; it hurt but I kept my mouth shut and slept on my stomach.

The next weekend I decided I didn't want to go through that so I showed up two hours late, when the bus would have left. They gave me a warning but everything was ok. The guards also strip search you and make you 'bend over and touch your toes' which is a little humiliating.

So, after this whole experience I was put on probation, which I faithfully attended for around six or eight months, then I stopped going. Eventually I was arrested again for this, and sentenced to additional probation, which was to be served concurrently, meaning no actual punishment on top of that.

I also didn't go to this probation (yeah, I'm smart, I know), and then moved around and hoped the issue would die out on it's own. It didn't. Eventually there were warrants issued for my arrest. I managed to dodge any encounters with officers of the peace until approximately last year, around this time. I went to the park to play a game of soccer with my friends but the park was taken over by some sort of eight year old soccer league. So I hung around waiting for the games to stop and my friends to arrive, eating some food I had picked up at the grocery store on the way. Apparently the soccer mom's weren't cool with this, so rather than talk to me ask me what was going on they called the cops.

When the police did arrive, the soccer league had ended, and I was in the middle of kicking the soccer ball around with my friends, when the police came over to talk to me. The mother who had called the cops realized what was going on and apologized to me, and then the cop asked to see my I.D. I gave it to him and was promptly arrested. The guy seemed apologetic about the situation.

So I was taken to the courthouse, denied bail (I had no money), taken to the jail, taken back to the courthouse, granted bail (my friend vouched for me), and let out. I was given a court date. I didn't show up for it. (Yeah, I'm mad smart). I was still living at the address I gave them, so they came and picked me up. At the bail hearing I told them to send me to plea court, they did, I plead guilty and got 45 days (which means basically 1 month). It was alot different.

I first signed in to general population. It was pretty good at first. A few of the tough guys on the range played bridge (and played decently, although their bidding was weak), so I played with them and was generally left alone. I was also into gambling at this point, so I started winning alot of meals and deserts, which was pretty awesome. In the first hour I was there, I was sitting at the back table, playing solitaire, when I heard a thud and looked behind me. Some guy's head had been smashed against the wall. I jumped up and moved to another table and my heart was pounding. The guards never came in, and the guy who's head was smashed never said a word.

In a situation like this, where you're stuck with the same people 24 hours a day you get to learn alot about them quickly. There were three of us in the cell to begin with. One was a middle aged vaccum salesman who couldn't stop talking about smoking crack, and the other was a crazy guy, who claimed that he was part of the U.S. army and also a vampire. I quickly scored the top bunk and got the vampire to pass me all my meals (which were served, classically, through a slot in the door) and take away my dishes. The old guy and I played alot of crib; he was good but I still won his deserts.

As I mentioned I played alot of bridge. I also played a game called "Bid Wiz", which is sort of like bridge for idiots. You bid how many tricks you are going to take, then your partner bids how many he is going to take, and you try to take the tricks. Trump is pre-decided (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, no trump). This was my bread and butter game and I decided early on to talk alot of trash in a joking manner to not give off the scared little bitch image. My nickname for this period was BHB (Bushy Haired Bushman) because I've got alot of facial hair.

There were only four bridge players on the range, and my partner was predecided early on. He sucked but was in on attempted murder charges, so I felt it was best not to point that particular fact out to him. We played mostly for push ups and deserts and we lost constantly. After a week of winning during breakfast and lunch at bidwiz and losing it all back at dinner time to the veterans I finally said "That's it, I'm not playing anymore" and walked off. The old native american who was one of my opponents said "If you're not playing you're off the range". I felt it best not to argue this point, and when the guards came around I told them that I wanted to leave the range because "I felt like I would be hurt".

There was another factor that made this decision alot easier. After all I was getting along pretty good with most of the people, and if all things were equal probably could have came back to the game. The night before, the old guy I kept beating at cribbage was replaced by this younger guy as one of my cell partners. He was trying to tell me what to do and in a conversation about women and cunnilingus he blurted out "I love to eat ass". Needless to say, this made me a little uncomfortable.

So I talked to the guards and requested protective custody.

Protective custody is pretty much the exact same set up, except with people who have requested protective custody. There was a bidwiz game going which I immediately jumped in on. There were alot of books on both ranges, and I spent atleast four hours a day reading. My new cell also had a radio which was a huge plus. This lead to my coolest cell partner of the entire ordeal, called "Brooster". He was in for domestic assault but seemed like a decent guy and the way he told the story he wasn't at fault. I'm not saying I know what happened but I am saying everything I saw about him was good and decent. He was small, nice and very considerate, in the sense that when they gave us five pieces of bread, he'd offer me three.

I was back into the gambling immediately and we finally got a poker game going. The buy in was one desert and if you think party games are loose you have no idea! Most hands were all in preflop multiway. Brooster and I started eating really well. This was also the start of my first real problem at the jail. There was a young punk, called J.P. to protect the guilty, who was starting alot of problems on the range. One day he was hasseling a german guy who was on the phone. I walked up to him, stared him in the eyes and said "You don't bother him anymore" and walked away. This was probably a bad idea but sometimes you get tired of bullies and make a stand. He started challenging me to fights from then on, saying "Let's take to this to the washroom". I declined, but remained alert for any violence. At one point I did yell to him one of my favourite lines, which is "Are you going to bark all day little doggy, or are you going to bite?"

At this point I started writing letters to my friends and received a few replies. Getting mail is an incredible experience when you have nothing to look forward to.

About five days into this range, with nothing untoward happening to me, aside from me winning a bunch of lunches, and this guy yelling at me, I made a huge mistake. A bidwiz game opened up and someone asked me to play. Turns out J.P. was going to be my partner and we were gambling. Idiotically, I accepted. Early on it was clear he was both an idiot and trying to sabatoge it so we left, so I conceded the game with the maximum penalty (four breakfasts!), and got really, really angry. I paced back and forth for a while with my fists clenched. At lunch time I did leave, and I told the guard it was because J.P. was threatening me. He got sent to the hole for two days. This may have been the wrong move; I'm still not sure.

So I got sent to new range, which was my last of the trip. It was on lockdown when I got there but they let us out by lunch time which was excellent. My cell mate in this one was pretty crazy, but he gave me his pills, which was pretty cool. They were very valuable. He said some weird [censored] and I talked alot of nonsense at him really fast to get great reactions. I also tried to tell him his deserts were poisoned so he would give them to me but he wasn't buying it.

There was some bridge on this range, but my opponents were cheats so I wouldn't gamble with them. There was poker too, which they didn't cheat at, and I won a bunch of meals and chocolate bars. It was a pretty decent range. We set up a UFC P.C. championship, which was hilarious. We got four teams of two people to fight it out. I declined to enter but 'watched six' and laughed at their dumb asses. There were some great fights and one horrendous body slam. Then the champions fought this young really tough black guy two on one and he kicked their asses.

Towards the end of my stay was my first encounter with violence. I was playing chinese poker heads up with this fat degenerate gambler and lost my desert to him. I then played dominoes and BROKE the black dude's (who kicked two peoples asses above) diminoe set. He was less then pleased. I let one of the tough guys 'Teddy' who I was on good terms give me a shot in the arm for it but this guy was still not appeased. The day before he got sentenced to twenty years in prison and was soon to be transferred; I think this might have had something to do with it. He offered me a proposal, I could give him my food for the rest of my stay (2 days) or I could let him hit me in the arm. I choose going hungry but this presented a problem; I owed fatty my desert.

At dinner time, fatty asked me what I was going to do, I told him some stuff and he said 'you better pay me or I'll kick your ass'. I told him 'if you're going to talk to me like that you get nothing'.

When we came out he walked up to me and said 'so Atheist' (that was my nickname, because I got into a few religious debates), 'we gonna talk about this or what'. As he finished saying what he took a sucker punch at me, and with my ninja lightning skills I somehow got an arm in the way. I then took off like a scared little rabbit. Teddy came up to me and said 'You don't want to fight?' and I said 'I really don't'. So he walked over, talked to the guy, and things were settled.

The next day I was due to be released in about an hour, and was hanging around in the range when fatty came after me. Teddy said something like 'I only arranged your saftey for yesterday' and sorta laughed, so I started running away. He kept coming, I kept running. It was pretty comical. Then the black guy gets in the mix and they're both after me so I shout "guard!" and they both stop and start laughing. The guard never came but they didn't hit me, so it's a wash. I got let out, called my buddy, enjoyed the most incredible bus ride you can imagine and was re-offending (smoking pot) within 1 hour and 34 minutes.

Coles Notes :
I went to jail, didn't get hit.

[Elevens]

This was well worth the read.

[NSchandler]

That was a pretty good read.

My favorite part was your line when you stole the smokes.

[guids]

Sadly enough, this sounds like the all male catholic highschool I went too. Just replace the word guard with Brother.

[Borodog]

You write much better when you just write instead of trying to write well.

Good read.

[His Boy Elroy]

Fun times. Good story.

[Buckmulligan]

karpinski-

solid. Thanks for posting this. I'll read it now and give my thoughts.

[jzpiano]

[ QUOTE ]
That was a pretty good read.

My favorite part was your line when you stole the smokes.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Buckmulligan]

yup. nice read.

I really never thought that people served short sentences in pound me in the ass prisons. Why were the guards so helpful?

[Andrew Karpinski]

It was a city jail, not a prison. The guy on attempted murder was awaiting trial, which was why he was there, and the guy that got twenty years was getting shipped off to a prison soon.

As for the guards, I'm not sure but I sure am grateful : )