The Inmate Congress

Locked down again. They go from days to weeks, even months sometimes. Depends on whatever the prison administration feels that day or how their home life is going... or maybe whatever the Magic 8 Ball tells them. Anyway you cut it, it’s a vacation for them. It’s usually something that 2-3 people did, and maybe in a whole other building, and we all suffer for it.

A lockdown means we’re locked... down... In our cells all day, given a shower every 3-4 days, fed worse than usual, and not allowed to buy food, hygiene or even prescribed OTC medication. ITs all part of the punishment as they see it. Some of these things you could stretch and say it’s for security reasons, but they also turn off the TVs and that gives away their true purpose of inflicting punishment every time.

The way they punish all of us for what less than 1% do has always made me wonder... do they think we have an inmate congress or something? Meet every day, discuss things like "today, we have a motion to fight after a sports ball game, no matter who wins." or "so its decided: we let the racquet ball hit Crazy Dave and he attacks the nearest person. Any new business?"

The guards act as if they’re surrounded by stoics and college grad badminton players rather than violent prisoners, some of whom have been locked in cages since they were children. We’re not exactly known for impulse control and the vast majority either had or have developed a pretty healthy disrespect for authority. Imagine the guards' surprise when this group of people they’ve treated like children for years or decades acts like... yeah, you get it.

I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve been locked down for things I couldn’t have even known about, let alone influenced. Hell, more often than not I don’t even know what happened till after we come off lockdown and even then... well, inmates are people despite what the staff would have you believe and people are known to exaggerate. Imagine the ‘telephone’ game spread over hundreds of people and days of enforced silence. Leaves us wondering things like, "They couldn’t flush the skull? What about the femurs?!" or "why didn’t he just run from the 6 foot badger?" I’ll probably never know if that lockdown back in 2016 was really because the guard who was patting down the convict tugged on his peepee or why the convict stopped him or... so many questions.

Maybe I’m the fool for trying to borrow some answers here, ascribing asinine beliefs to the obvious sociopaths whose actions are really easily explained. They know there is no daily convening of the inmate congress to hash out the minutiae of actions both petty and grand or how they can be applied to greatest effect. They are looking for reasons to lock people in cages. Sadists taking advantage of their position to torment and us and society has granted them this power and free reign to exercise it over thousands who have no choice but to listen to the laughter as they starve us and hurt us in any legal (and otherwise) way they can.

Not for nothing did Paul Harvey say, " “If you want to see the absolute scum of the earth go to any prison in the US during shift change.”