Saturday, August 02, 2008

The one where my prison is on MSNBC

They were at CSP-Corcoran for what seemed like months, but I guess they were only there for about five weeks. My personal opinion was that they had story lines in place and just needed to find inmates that fit, to make good television.

This first installment of a six part series is called Corcoran: Extended Stay: Love and Hate

Yep. It is violent, just like it shows. We search all the time. Inmates sometimes don't identify assailants because they don't KNOW the assailant. Of course, prison politics being what they are, if they do know the attacker, they aren't going to rat him out. However, watching the way the races interact is exactly what we do...even in the classroom. We watch for body language and we watch for individual "tells". I like to think I can spot a liar because I can see the flash of a tell, no matter how good they are, mainly because most inmates underestimate me.

SNY is commonly called the Sensitive Needs Yard, but it is a Security Needs Yard. The inmates assigned to this yard are gay, convicted of skin crimes or jumped out of a gang. Oddly, EVERY SINGLE ONE of them will say that they are gang drop outs. Baloney. (And I've never heard a gang called a "car". Ever.)

THE HOLE. We call the SHU and AdSeg the hole. both of them are 23/7 lockdown. AdSeg is a little less severe with less time--sort of a time out while we sort things out. The SHU...well you get a SHU term. Freddie Wanted Dead or Alive (a former kinder of mine) has done a number of SHU terms. So has Hismael (not his real name). They get sent to the SHU for being bad bad very bad.

IGI...Garcia was my BEST training cop!I worked with him for maybe three straight years. I still can call him and ask him anything. IGI is always busy checking, searching, listening,reading. I can tell you that if ANY inmate says "to tell you the truth" or "honestly" is probably lying.

FYI, I worked on the dayroom floor on a different yard for a year. I really liked it but it was also much more of a security issue. You can see how wide open it is.

1 comment:

Paulie said...

Just a few years ago you were telling us how its a great job -- so far I can see the pay and benefits might be but who wants to work under these circumstances you write about? Not me.