Depending upon where you are sent, the rules and culture of each and every prison are a little different. Just as if you are travelling to another country, every prison has their own language and slang terms.
How you act depends on the culture of the prison.
The one thing that really stood out to me was the segregation and the division of races. Blacks , Latinos, Whites and "Others" all stayed together and for the most part did not intermingle at all.
Within these racial groups were further divisions of gangs. For instance the Bloods and Crips were always at odds with each other however when the fought against the Latinos or whites they banded together.
For clarification "Others" included Asians, any sort of Native Indians, Pacific Islanders, Gypsies and even Homosexuals. If you didn't clearly define as a specific major race you were an other.
So thats just a small tidbit on how people banded together. There was one universal thing that included everyone and that was farting.
There's etiquette for everything including farting. Being in such close quarters with so many "animals" the place stunk. Now, if you were the type of person that did not shower and smelled rancid you would be beat. Natural body odor is quite prevalent , but when you smell dead you're asking for trouble. It's viewed as an odoriferous assault and is dealt with swiftly.
When you have a cellmate you coordinate to shit when your "celly" is out on the yard or working etc. If it's during lockdown you let them know you're gonna shit and usually put a sheet up. Prior to dropping dueces you are flushing the toilet to minimize the smell. Naturally you're gonna fart too, but thats acceptable during the crapping process. Whats not acceptable is farting in the cell while you're just lounging around, that will get you beat up.
If you need to fart you usually place your ass against the bars and can have your cellmate swing a pillow or anything that will push the gas out of the cell. You need to stay there and not immediately walk back to your bunk bed otherwise you will cropdust and bring the fart back into the cell.
I have no idea why anyone would want to be a Prison Guard regardless of pay or benefits. They endure daily abuse including having to smell prisoners. A term called getting "Gassed" is not what you think. It's actually when an inmate poops and pees into a container and lets it ferment for weeks at a time. Finally when the concoction is ripe it's thrown preferably into the face of the prison guard. It's a way of deterring Prison Guards from being too much of a ballbuster especially during shakedowns or if they get someone thrown into the "hole" or the "shu" aka Solitary confinement.
During cell shakedowns we all always tried to fart in our cells in order to make it as unpleasant as possible for the guards to be in the cell and encourage them to not spend too much time in the cell looking for contraband.
So, thats it for now. Stay tuned for some extremely humorous prison fart stories as well as a few dangerous stories where farting led to some serious ramifications.
As always, keep eating a high fiber diet and always be ready to Crop Dust !
Image from Google,this is not a photo of my girlfriend (yet)
