Women Who’ve Done Time Are Revealing The Brutal Realities Of Prison Life

6.

“I got locked up in a women’s prison when I was 21. When you first get there, they ask if you’re addicted to anything. If you said benzos or alcohol, they dosed you up with Klonopin. Anyone who’s been there before knows this, so for the first two weeks when I was in the drug treatment area, things were very chill…”

“There were a few verbal fights, but kind of a camaraderie between the women, like, ‘We’re all just addicts trying to get through this together.’ We had groups and AA, it was a daily thing for all (which was most except me), the women with children to break down crying about missing them and how they’d do literally anything for their kids now that they’re sober. You were in a trailer with two floors. There were rooms with four bunks in them and a community bathroom with individual showers. Lots of hooking up in the bathroom stalls and showers. Every few days, they passed out electric shavers; there was one for each bunk, and there would be a line of girls using these old shavers to dry shave their legs and pubes in the bathroom. Some of them would flip them and use the non-cutting side as a vibrator/dildo on others. There was a microwave you could sometimes use and access to hot water to make noodles and coffee. They gave out stamps, paper, and pens to write home if you asked, and gave you pads, one roll of toilet paper, ghetto shampoo/soap, and toothbrush/paste. During rec time, you could walk around the compound, but there were also classes like yoga, AA, Zumba, gym, library, etc.

After 2 weeks, I got moved to the maximum security part. Here you were in a high-tech building with one bunk in each room and locked in for most of the day. Or else you could go to the community room and watch TV for a few hours a day. No more access to hot water. Women who didn’t pay a fine were locked up with baby killers. One baby killer got attacked because she asked for my oatmeal that I wasn’t eating. No more classes of any kind. You had to be there for over five years to be put in the trailers where the drug program was. I saw a girl almost die getting her face smashed into a metal door frame. Lots of fights. It really was awful.”

—u/afakefox