WELCOME IN MY PRISON - THE ONLY ONE THAT OFFERS ALL PLEASURES OF ALL AMERICAN PENITENTIARIES TOGETHER
After that fatal car crash, causing serious traffic victims, it always starts with arrest and being handcuffed at your back. Then you're driven to the police station. There follows the intake, the body search, the mugshot, the inevitable alcohol test and finally the finger prints.
As the test is positive your brandnew prison uniform, a simple nice black and white striped jumpsuit, to be closed with just six shiny snap buttons at the front, is already waiting for you, one of the kind you will have to wear from now on for many years to come - as is the barred bare cell with just a bed of cold steel, a stool made of the same stuff and a toilet, to spend your first night locked up and think all over....
Your beautiful new villain suit will only be taken off from now on when you have to shower, together with other prisoners. You better prepare yourself for that too: in prison we don't do privacy. The first time you will hesitate to undress in the presence of others just as much as that shy new inmate on the right, but that will soon be over, i promise you.
You soon will learn to wear your striking prison stripes always and everywhere. No separate trousers and shirt for you anymore, just a jumpsuit. And you soon will learn that you have to dress yourself properly once you're out of your bed , so to button up that jumpsuit always and everywhere completely, all six snaps up to the last one just under your chin. If not, the police officers will learn you to do so.
You also soon will get used to the fact that this is just how you will look henceforth, that your visiting family will see you dressed like this. No, there will not be any exceptions to that rule in the future. You soon will discover that your prison uniform has only one small pocket, on your left chest, and none further down as your pants once had. As you will never need cash money in the future again, this is sufficient for a pair of glasses, or perhaps a handkerchief. After all, the fewer pockets your jumpsuit possesses, the smaller the risk of any contraband.
Yes, from this moment on wearing solid steel handcuffs will become nearly inevitable as soon as you are somewhere outside your own cell. Safety comes first - at the police station they have their experience with new prisoners who suddenly go crazy and thus become violent.
A few days later you're already on your way to court for trial, in your new prison stripes clearly contrasting to the accompanying officers in their grey uniforms. Of course you're already since you left your cell in full restraints, shuffling along with difficulty in your uneasy leg irons, while your wrists in handcuffs are fixed to the frontal D-ring of a thick leather belt around your waist, with which the jailers lead you with firm a grip like some wild dog on the leash to the dock to get sentenced....
After your perp-walk in front of the eager local press and the curious public you enter the courtroom, where your lawyer pleads in vain for a conditional sentence on the grounds of mitigating circumstances. But the facts are clear and the sentence of the judge therefore is too.
You will have to spend many years in prison - which one, you don't hear yet. The next days, or perhaps weeks, you will stay in your cell at the local jail again. When you move back from the courtroom to the exit of the court-house, the sound of the rattling of your leg-irons, each time when the connecting chain hits the stone floor tiles of the corridor, sounds more ominous than ever. You will get used to them...
And now, first back to the county jail. Now you've been sentenced, you're aware that you indeed will have to wear this black and white striped prison jumpsuit the next years. And yes, because of that, on your way out of the courthouse those damned handcuffs also stay on.
Outside the prison van is already waiting for you. No, there is no chance to escape your fate. Too much police officers around, apart from your shackles - and your prison stripes, that will betray you. There is only one choice for you: to obey to the law and step inside.
And yes, this time, on your way back, you're not the only one in the prison van. As small as it is, there is space enough for two - or more...
Back in your cell at the county jail you've just to wait, till on some very early morning in the next days or weeks you're suddenly awakened and taken out for transport. The handcuffs and leg-irons you have to wear during the next hours already are waiting outside your cell. This time even a black box is added to your handcuffs, fixing them in an immovable way to the belly-chain padlocked at your back.
Outside, the special prison bus is already waiting for you. Inside that van, behind the driver's cabin, there is a lockable compartment for you and your fellow inmates, with bars on the windows. For the rest there are only very basic chairs on a steel floor. Now, you have a very long ride ahead of you, during which you will stay fully restrained the entire time. At no point will your shackles come off, that's strictly forbidden, not even allowed when you are given food and drink on the way, or have to piss, or when a short stop is made to pick up a couple of recently convicted inmates, already shackled, at the next county jail.
If you are unlucky, if you are considered a flight risk, you will not only have to wear the hand and foot cuffs that have already been put on you in advance, but you might also be chained to your place for the entire ride, presumably with your legs to a ring in the floor. As you can see, the necessary extra cuffing-equipment for this is already present in the bus in enough amounts to do so just behind the driver's seat.
It's a long drive of many hours from the small jail in your own county town to the huge isolated prison complex in the middle of nowhere. Then suddenly your new home for the next years comes into sight. The wires, the walls, the watch towers, al those frightening forbidding structures you can watch now for a couple of minutes through the windows of the prison van from the outside before it enters, make you immediately realize: once inside, there will be no way out.
And when the prison gate opens and the van finally drives into the court yard, you already catch a glimpse of the other inhabitants, all wearing exactly the same black and white striped prison uniform as you. You're not the only one here, that's for sure.... A new, harsh, unknown life with a lot of strict rules now lays ahead!
And when you are taken to your cell block for the first time, and you encounter a whole column of fellow prisoners while crossing the courtyard in your full restraints, you realize something else: outside of that cell block, your hands and feet will always be shackled for safety's sake, that fucking tight leather belt around your waist with those bloody handcuffs attached to it, will from now on become your standard equipment as soon as you leave it, heavy leg-irons included.
EXPERIENCE THE UNIQUE AMERICAN WAY OF PRISON LIFE!
I have started this new blog about one of my greatest phantasies: to experience a real American prison from the inside. After being transported to a huge state penitentiary of the maximum security category, surrounded by barbed wire, walls and moats, and the obligatory humiliating stripsearch immediately at arrival, a hidden severe world is welcoming all new inmates for many years to come, offering a lot of rest, partly to be spend in solitary confinement:
Barred cells, serious shackles, rattling chains, prison stripes and finally the famous chain gang - always secured in full restraints: that's the way i like it!
Well, and there is your cell, completely for your own, your home for the next years. Which one will be yours? Is your new neighbor already winking you? Will it be No.2, 4, 5, 6? They are all identical - in a good prison all inmates are treated equal, as they are all dressed the same, their individuality reduced to their identification number stamped on their plastic wristband and maybe printed on their new uniform too.
And then one of those cell-doors is opened for you, and you have to go inside. After your handcuffs and leg-irons are taken off, the guards leave your cell, the barred door is banged shut and you're left alone.
You're locked up now, and the only part of your captive body that you can now move past those damned iron bars of your cell by yourself are your hands. The rest remains inside and has to wait till the door will be unlocked again - next morning or next week or next month, or whenever, that's no longer up to you...
