Pick a Team and Stay on the Bench

Prison is a game. A stressful survival game with rules that muse be followed. First rule is, pick a team, usually sorted by skin tone or ethnicity. Team choice is important. Some people try not choosing a team and go it alone. Loners are weak in numbers (one) and stand out. You never want to stand out. Pick a team and stay on the bench. Eat with your team, work out, walk, fraternize, barter and trade only with teammates.  If you want to have a stress-less prison stay, don’t buck the system. People who follow the rules but stay on their bunk are left alone.  
A Latino man was beat up yesterday by four guys and sent out by life flight. He wouldn’t pick a team, chose to play-poker, everybody knew they could take advantage of him because he had no backup. Now he has two battles, the need for heath care in prison and his own race against him.
Prison yards are volatile. Prison staff know it and try to keep the team “race” numbers as equal as possible. If you portray yourself as weak or sick you are looked at as a person using up space that a stronger team player could be in. Everything you say and do is being watched and judged. Almost every day someone leaves this yard either voluntarily “checking in” or forcefully. Despite your personal beliefs, self preservation requires that you follow the rules every second. This is a stress you live every second of your time here.

Comment Responses

The author sent some responses to comments on this blog.

Comment by Anonymous on post, "Make Up":
Q: What percent of your block do you think is HIV+?"
A: Each state has prisons scattered throughout. State prisons have contracts with one or more major hospitals to house inmates for hospital stays. Inmates with chronic medical needs will be housed only in the prisons closest to contract hospitals. Usually its the prisons closest to big cities. Inmates know they are on a highly medical yard because the med and pill call lines are ten times longer. There are a lot of people with canes, limited duty waivers and special medical diets. If you do nat have a visible impairment and are not an insulin diabetic, questions may be asked. Nobody can say who has HIV or how many have AIDS as there are a lot of people here who are not sick. Some are removed from other yards and placed here for "Protective Custody" reasons. I am friends with the medical porter and he estimates from what he sees and overhears that 25% of the 1100 on this block have HIV or Hepatitis C. That obviously doesn't count those who haven't tested. There in no mandatory testing, nor is there a push for voluntary testing.

Comment by Ashley Anderson on post, "Comments and Questions Welcome":
Q. What are the comparisons between the health care he [the author] was receiving prior to incarceration?
A. If you google "prison health care" you'll quickly see the lack of it nationwide. Incarceration is a business. Employers resist paying half your health insurance coverage on the outside, so prisons dont want to pay all medical expenses. Prisons resist, avoid and procrastinate diagnosing anything. If the diagnose it they have to make an effort to treat it. They do have the bare minimum to avoid lawsuits. On the streets I had a PCP plus dermatologist for skin cancer, neurologist for neuropathy, urologist, etc. Here in prison, there's nurses who answer "health needs requests" and after enough requests and complaining, you finally get to get to an all purpose doctor who finds a way to shoot down all requests. HIV care is all about preventing opportunistic infections and secondary illnesses on the outside. In prison its bedrest, warehousing and "drink lots of water." Pain medications are not allowed and if you dont come to prison with a current drug regimin, you will be prescribed an older, less expensive onc. I am the only person here on Issentress. Doctor has never heard of it. Its all about the dollar, especially now.