“Many of the guards are a stone’s throw away from being, or should already be, inmates themselves.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

NOTE: This post contains descriptions of violence, murder, and drugs.

"What was supposed to be an eight-year sentence became a life sentence. RIP Gerry.

I know it was too late to save him, but they could have moved him to hospice months earlier and spared him some pain. Altogether, from the beginning of his symptoms, he lasted about six months.

Gerry was in a bar fight that got out of hand when the other guy pulled a knife on him. Gerry admitted that he took it too far, and that's why he accepted an involuntary manslaughter charge instead of crying self-defense. If I remember correctly, the victim's family was okay with the deal he got (which you rarely see in terms of plea bargains).

He was a good guy who'd had a rough life and was trying to better himself. He was good to me and showed me the ropes when I first got down. I know he had a daughter he was in contact with, but he was old and didn't have any sort of social media, so I wouldn't know how to track her down. I hope she's doing okay."

"He was arrested for possession of crack, pawning stolen nail guns, kidnapping (picked up my brother from school and didn't have custody), various petty crimes, and his sentence doubled from 15 to 30. He 'deserved to go to prison,' but not for 30 years. Also, taxpayers pay for their stay. He has a job and gets paid 25 cents an hour. They take out pay for 'room and board.' But taxpayers already pay for that, plus the massive salaries and pensions of top dawgs. Don't support your government officials who vote yes on private prisons. They are scamming you for monetary gain and profiting off straight slavery. (Unless you consider 25 cents an hour not slavery.) Prisoners are people too, and half of them are incarcerated for drugs. Prisons are the ultimate money bank. Florida State Prison hires scum and is run by scum."

"I asked what happened, and he said he couldn't even think straight; it hurt so bad. He said it was injured during his arrest. I unwrapped it, and it was absolutely necrotic, black, and bone exposed. I was surprised it didn't smell worse. He had lost all feeling to the tip and mid of his finger, but the base and right above the knuckle were excruciatingly painful and discolored. I can't even imagine how he was getting by this way.

I assessed it and reported it to my charge nurse and the on-call physician, and he was sent to the ER. I saw him again a couple of months later, and he had his finger amputated. He thanked me and told me he felt so much better. I just cried hearing that having his ring finger cut off was something he was thanking me for.

I also had a patient with an STI in his ileostomy stoma. He wasn't even being seen for the stoma. I just noticed it while changing his ostomy bag. ☹️ I mentioned how it looked to an experienced nurse. I just thought it was skin breakdown; it looked infected. 

We had to swab it just like you would any other body part, and it was an STI. Really sad. The patient didn't seem to care. We gave him IV antibiotics and sent him back with oral meds on discharge."

"I don't know how to describe it, but there were a lot of people who would talk as if there was another person in them. One minute, they were fine, and the next minute, they were trying to hurt themselves and others.

There was one gentleman who was there for murdering a mother and a young child. He would sit in his room and scream at night, claiming the child was in his room staring at him. He begged us not to turn off his light because he had a fear that the child would murder him in his sleep.

I also remember stories from this one guy who said he could see into the future. A lot of what he has told me has come true, including the number of kids I have. He also knew what happened in my past without knowing me, including my ex-wife's miscarriage."

"Is there no way of stopping that kind of coordination of gang attacks?"

"Too many guards smuggling in phones to stop."

"Bingo. There are a lot of phones inside, and a lot of cash. The escorts assigned to us are usually retired and working part-time. They've literally told us to keep our eyes and mouths shut if we think we spot any type of contraband. It's not worth the retaliation or the trouble that comes with getting involved with telling on people over cell phones or weed or 'shanks'. Prison employees aren't the main source of imported goods these days; it's drone drops. Big, expensive, carbon fiber drones will drop weed, meth, even guns inside the fences."

"Lice and scabies, man, you get outbreaks, and it's this colossal expectation (and a hard and fast prison rule) to clean up after yourself, take regular showers, and maintain a clean cell. If you don't do all of those, get ready to be checked off the unit."

"I was a corrections officer for a decade, and we are our own worst enemies. Inmates were not the demographic I thought I'd be serving and protecting, but I took a great amount of pride in doing a good job. Unfortunately, corrections seemed to get the people that even the most redneck, keystone cops departments wouldn't hire. In a decade of working for a federal prison, the only fights I almost got in were with other officers. I worked in a jail on the West Coast, and it was great because it paid well and they could pick good people. In places that don't pay really well, it can suck big time."

"Partner goes back to the truck to get a backboard (this was a long time ago) while I stayed with the patient. One of the rocket scientist guards yelled at all the other prisoners who were locked in their cells for what would have been TV time, announcing that no one could leave until EMS was done. I've never been yelled at by that many people at once before.

The guy in the cell directly next to us was just screaming 'HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY' at me for like twenty minutes straight.

As we are getting ready to leave, I peered into his cell and asked, 'Yes?'

He responded with the yell, 'MY MOTHER HAS DIABETES. YOU WERE VERY NICE TO HER.'

Extremely surreal. Hopefully, our patient got a big payout."

"Our corrections facility does that all the time to us/them. They clear out the cells, put them in the big room/gym together, and then tell them, 'Nobody gets out until EMS leaves.'

The 30-40 of them go fucking apeshit and freak out like you just trapped a bunch of zoo animals together. I always feel so bad for the patient that has to get treated, then wheeled past all of them on the way out. Just constant death threats. I just know they get the shit kicked out of them when they return."

"After the incident ended, a handful of inmates initiated the grievance process, which was the first step to build up to a lawsuit. Those inmates were individually brought before the head administrative white shirt and told in no uncertain terms that if they proceeded with the legal process, they would be beaten to death, and the paperwork would reflect that they had died while attempting to kill a correctional officer."

"If you think you could handle a squirrel cage, I promise you that you can't unless you're small as fuck. My cousin was crying, telling me about it; nothing else in prison shook him that badly and made him feel that dehumanized."

"Afterward, a sergeant came in and told everyone that they would not be turning off the phones, as that's illegal, and asked everyone to just go about business as usual.

The image of that guy destroying the officer has never left the edges of my brain. I've seen a lot of things in life, but that...that one really stuck with me."

"My first time in at 18, we were all on permanent lockdown. The corner bottom cell had caution tape all around it, and the news crew even showed up. The guy in there was waiting for transport to prison. He apparently strangled his wife and four kids to death; one of the kids was only nine months old. Pretty horrifying. The other cells would scream horrible things and bang their doors all night to keep him from sleeping. The guy was truly a monster. I hope he's dead."

"After the correctional officers determined he was not, in fact, faking, he had to go get 12 stitches on his eyebrow, and was very close to heat stroke. The man was 42 and was a gang member for the Aryan Brotherhood."

"So my dad turned toward a wall, readied himself, blocked his head, and took a beating from five inmates. His girlfriend at the time visited him after the fact and said he was in rough shape. He couldn't open his eyes, his cheekbones were swollen to high heaven, his lips were busted, etc. He mentioned to me how his ribs still hurt years after that beating.

After the beating, a guard waited til the Northerners left him alone, moved my pops to medical, then sent him back to the Southern block. My dad always spoke of the Northern leader with great respect, though, despite the beating. My brain can't wrap around that...imagining my father (a big and rough man) being beaten to a pulp is a very brutal image for me."

"I'm not following. The guy wouldn't shower, so his fellow inmates decided to force him to sit by the door and shit his pants, etc., until what? The guards stepped in and moved him to a new cell?"

"They make you stand by the cell door until the guards take the hint and move you somewhere else. Prison guards are exactly the type of people you'd expect to want that job, so sometimes it takes days."

"The really creepy thing in mine was the predator lady. She was a lifer. No one actually messed with her because it seemed like the guards were on her side, for reasons we suspected. She was also really friendly to new inmates. Particularly, younger-looking, petite inmates. For reasons you can imagine. They were owned by her if they let her. Like a small gang in jail. They all had the same prison tattoo. Which I didn’t realize till I was in the shower with a couple of them."

"He said the wasted potential was just heartbreaking."

Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.