ShaveBoy

After that fatal car crash, causing several fatal 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 nice black and white striped jumpsuit, is already waiting for you, 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....

You soon will learn to wear your prison stripes always and everywhere. And you soon will learn that you have to dress yourself properly once you're out of your bed , so to button up your jumpsuit always and everywhere, all six snaps up to the last one just under your chin. If not, the police officers will learn you to do so. You 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 you will never need cash in the future again, this is sufficient for a pair of glasses, or a handkerchief. After all, the fewer pockets in your jumpsuit, 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 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 a with firm grip as a 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 spend 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 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. This time even a black box is added to your handcuffs, fixing them in an immovable way to your belly-chain.

It's a long drive of many hours from the small jail in the town to the huge isolated prison complex in the middle of nowhere. Then suddenly your new home comes into sight. And when 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 is waiting for you!

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 the 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 neighbour already winking you? Will it be No.,2, 4, 5, 6? They are all identical - in prison all inmates are treated equal, as they are all dressed the same.