Taking a walk back down the trail of my life. Last year at this same time I was working in the kitchen at Wakulla Correctional Institute.
My shift started at 3 a.m. I had been working for nearly four and a half hours behind a dishwasher in a steam-room. I turned around to a officer who directed me to place my wrists into her cuffs. As I did so she told me I was going to jail. I didn't figure she had anything kinky in mind, but I'm glad she cleared that up for me.
She walked me to confinement as I squished my way along in a pair of knee-high rubber boots. Pretty bad when even a trip to confinement looks better than your job. I was informed along the way that it was this very blog, The Judicious Jailbird, that I was being arrested for. In fact, I was being placed under investigation while they had a look-see over the blog and Facebook.
I still remember my thoughts as they led me away. Only days prior a trailer had backed up to the prison and unloaded hundreds of vine-ripe watermelons. Every day I came into work we saw those watermelons. They were for lunch on the 4th of July. I hijacked one of those melons with a couple of my compadres. We cut it and ate it behind the dishwasher before any guards could become the wiser. It was then that I tasted the melons and knew I would enjoy their ripeness on the Fourth.
Those were my thoughts as I was cuffed and led to confinement. Not at all about how miserable confinement is......No, I was wondering if they serve watermelon in the box and thinking probably not.
Last year I missed watermelon and also barbequed chicken because I was locked up....all because of this blog. That's the closest I ever came to hating this blog.
The investigation was completed a couple weeks later. They let me go since there were no rules being broken. My loved ones run Jailbird, not me. I just go to the box and sit in solitary over the thing.
Well, I'm free this year so perhaps I'll get to have that slice of goodness this time. This prison already locked me up and did their investigation. I guess I can look forward to that each time I transfer. I don't think there's any problem with it now. Although.....an officer did pass me the other day and called me the "dumb ass with a webpage." This made me smile. Clearly he has given me a nickname. He also raised the stats on this very blog since he became a statistic as well.
I shall stop now so I'm not locked up again and miss my watermelon. That would be a shame. Where are the Ghost Busters when you need them!
Dad always said fireworks were a waste of money. I still bought theme each year up til prison. And I'll drive a state away to buy the good ones. If dad only knew. Not only did I spend hundreds on the fireworks themselves.....but I drove all the way to Georgia to buy them!
Then an hour into lighting them off, my house is surrounded by the swat team. I have all the lights shut off and have ran inside and hid behind a couch. You can't buy memories like these. You can't plan them out. They just happen.
Dad has trophy deer heads on a wall to remind him of the hunt. I have road trips to Georgia, a trunk filled with T.N.T. and the house surrounded by Orlando S.W.A.T. You tell me what sounds like a wild time. Hope you had a Happy 4th of July!
Showing posts with label Confinement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Confinement. Show all posts
Friday, July 5, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Clowns & Bones
Here is the second piece of art that J.J. did in solitary confinement. Put an artist in a small box, give him a piece of paper and a BIC pen, and Voila....
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Some Bad News. Some Good News. Some Bad-Ass News.
The bad news? The Judicious Jailbird is sadly in confinement. There is no information why (for those that may inquire).
The good news? Confinement provides air conditioning and J.J. has a break from his food service job....hosing down 1,200 - 1,500 trays with steaming hot water, during the steaming heat of summer during the not-so glorious hours of 2a to 11a.
The good news? Confinement provides air conditioning and J.J. has a break from his food service job....hosing down 1,200 - 1,500 trays with steaming hot water, during the steaming heat of summer during the not-so glorious hours of 2a to 11a.
The bad-ass news? J.J. is also known as the Tattoo'd Hooligan (this is his artist name). We invite you to like the Tattoo'd Hooligan on Facebook! There will be Tattoo'd Hooligan merchandise for sale at www.tattoodhooligan.com featuring his art one day. One day when the Tatoo'd Hooligan is a free man. Yep, some bad-ass news friends.
**Please remember that J.J. spends his time writing posts and drawing art in efforts to do his time in a productive way. J.J. is not able to benefit from these sales. BUT, it DOES bring him a ton of happiness to know that people enjoy his art. Additionally, it DOES bring him a ton of happiness to think that his art is all around.**
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
A Trip To The Box
A reader recently asked me to elaborate on life in the box. Well, that's our term for solitary confinement.
Prison in itself is designed to punish you. Take away all the extracurricular activities you experience in the free world. Give you the bare necessities to survive. Such as a cot, a tooth brush, a bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper. You are allowed to go to reck-yard to exercise. They feed you three meals a day. If you have family that will play, you can call them collect on a pay phone (15 minute calls). There are windows so you can look outside. All you will see is concrete sidewalks, brick buildings and razor-wire. None-the-less, you can see out that window. Fresh air blows in that window. Sunlight shines in that window.
Solitary confinement takes all this away. You will be placed in a cell about six feet wide and ten feet deep. There is a stainless steel toilet with a sink attached. The only light you get is a fluorescent in the ceiling which is controlled by the guard station. The door in and out is solid steel. There is a small door inside the steel door called a bean flap. It's the size of a cafeteria tray so they can do just that....they unlock that flap, open that door and shove your tray inside to you.
If you need something...more toilet paper, a bar of soap, a spoon for your tray....you can summon a guard. Some guys yell out the door to the guard. That won't get you shit. Some dudes knock on the door. That won't get you shit. Personally, I wait until I hear one walk by, then address them politely and ask for some help. They usually tell you, "sure, no problem." But they never come back. Instead they avoid coming back by again. In Shawshank Redemption, the box is dark and a hole.
Most boxes these days have huge, high-powered fluorescent lights. About the time your exhausted body falls asleep, that light is turned up on bright and burns a hole through your skull. The walls are all bright white and it's like looking into car headlights. Very hard to sleep. And...if you wrap your head to block it out? They tell you to take it off.
Confinement is to break you down.
You eat whatever they give you. The alternative is to go hungry. It's a long time in between meals. Even if you don't like it....you EAT IT!
Monday, Wednesday and Friday are shower days. You strip down to your boxers, then stick your wrists through the bean flap. The officer places hand-cuffs on your wrists. Once again, you are in restraints. The officer yells, "Roll the door!" Your cell door is then opened and you are escorted to a small shower cell. Once inside that cell, you once again stick your wrists through a small flap and they remove your restraints. You are then able to enjoy a 2-minute shower before the guard is then rushing you to get out. The process is then repeated once again and finally you're back at your cell. The experience is quite an adventure.
This is when you have a chance to see the other guys in lock up. You will see guys you know from the compound. They will tell you the latest news. Things you missed since you were taken out of population. Sports scores, who did what, so-on and so-forth. The guards do not like this. They tell you to not chat among each other. So you learn sign language. You talk among each other with hand signals. I learned to sign my first trip to the box. There are other ways to communicate. There are heater vents that go through the walls. So...if I know the guy three cells down and that cell number is 113, I can yell into my cell's vent, "Yo! 113, you there?" And he will reply back. You can carry on a quick conversation until the guards come and shut if down. There is another way to do this as well. Dip all the water out of the toilet bowl. (Yep, you read that right.) If you do this, and another cell does the same, your voices will echo through the stainless steel. Then you are sitting beside the toilet, talking down the hole. If a guard sees this, they are going to call the psych doc....thinking you have gone insane.
Sometimes you run out of paper or envelopes. You can fish for them. There is a 2-inch slit under your steel door. If you rip a small strip off the whole perimeter of your sheet it makes a small rope. You can "cast" it like a fly rod and retrieve items from a cell next to yours. You would throw it down to the next cell door. That guy ties what you need onto the string and you pull it back to your cell. Just figuring this shit out takes hours. Throwing the string over and over until the other guy can reach it. Silly stuff like this is what you do to not loose your mind.
I personally sing out lout. Just to hear another voice. I will laugh out loud. Just to hear laughter. I will burp, then laugh about that. When I'm bored, I wash my socks and boxers, then hang them on the bunk rail to dry. Hand washing them in the small sink. You can only lay on your bunk for so long before you realize you could go crazy. Your mind begins to mess with you. You start to question yourself. I wonder if my woman may leave me. Will my mother be alive and healthy when I'm finally released? How many more of my friends and family will die before I'm released? Will I be able to conduct myself in a good manner? Will I loose my cool when someone treats me badly? Things that you don't usually get hung up on, bother you in solitary.
Your skills to rationalize a situation get rusty. You begin to question yourself. You dig deep into past experiences and relive them. At times it's positive things. Places I have been and times with my family. Other times it's the dark places I've been. Face down in a crack house. Staring down the barrel of a gun. Feeling my mother's pain that her oldest son is gone.
This is confinement. This is the box.
It is not fun. What it will do is make you appreciate that little window that carries in a breeze, the sunshine and a view of my surrounding walls. When they let you out of confinement and you first step back onto the compound....you feel free.
Gives me a small taste of what it will feel like that day I am truly free!
Prison in itself is designed to punish you. Take away all the extracurricular activities you experience in the free world. Give you the bare necessities to survive. Such as a cot, a tooth brush, a bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper. You are allowed to go to reck-yard to exercise. They feed you three meals a day. If you have family that will play, you can call them collect on a pay phone (15 minute calls). There are windows so you can look outside. All you will see is concrete sidewalks, brick buildings and razor-wire. None-the-less, you can see out that window. Fresh air blows in that window. Sunlight shines in that window.
Solitary confinement takes all this away. You will be placed in a cell about six feet wide and ten feet deep. There is a stainless steel toilet with a sink attached. The only light you get is a fluorescent in the ceiling which is controlled by the guard station. The door in and out is solid steel. There is a small door inside the steel door called a bean flap. It's the size of a cafeteria tray so they can do just that....they unlock that flap, open that door and shove your tray inside to you.
If you need something...more toilet paper, a bar of soap, a spoon for your tray....you can summon a guard. Some guys yell out the door to the guard. That won't get you shit. Some dudes knock on the door. That won't get you shit. Personally, I wait until I hear one walk by, then address them politely and ask for some help. They usually tell you, "sure, no problem." But they never come back. Instead they avoid coming back by again. In Shawshank Redemption, the box is dark and a hole.
Most boxes these days have huge, high-powered fluorescent lights. About the time your exhausted body falls asleep, that light is turned up on bright and burns a hole through your skull. The walls are all bright white and it's like looking into car headlights. Very hard to sleep. And...if you wrap your head to block it out? They tell you to take it off.
Confinement is to break you down.
You eat whatever they give you. The alternative is to go hungry. It's a long time in between meals. Even if you don't like it....you EAT IT!
Monday, Wednesday and Friday are shower days. You strip down to your boxers, then stick your wrists through the bean flap. The officer places hand-cuffs on your wrists. Once again, you are in restraints. The officer yells, "Roll the door!" Your cell door is then opened and you are escorted to a small shower cell. Once inside that cell, you once again stick your wrists through a small flap and they remove your restraints. You are then able to enjoy a 2-minute shower before the guard is then rushing you to get out. The process is then repeated once again and finally you're back at your cell. The experience is quite an adventure.
This is when you have a chance to see the other guys in lock up. You will see guys you know from the compound. They will tell you the latest news. Things you missed since you were taken out of population. Sports scores, who did what, so-on and so-forth. The guards do not like this. They tell you to not chat among each other. So you learn sign language. You talk among each other with hand signals. I learned to sign my first trip to the box. There are other ways to communicate. There are heater vents that go through the walls. So...if I know the guy three cells down and that cell number is 113, I can yell into my cell's vent, "Yo! 113, you there?" And he will reply back. You can carry on a quick conversation until the guards come and shut if down. There is another way to do this as well. Dip all the water out of the toilet bowl. (Yep, you read that right.) If you do this, and another cell does the same, your voices will echo through the stainless steel. Then you are sitting beside the toilet, talking down the hole. If a guard sees this, they are going to call the psych doc....thinking you have gone insane.
Sometimes you run out of paper or envelopes. You can fish for them. There is a 2-inch slit under your steel door. If you rip a small strip off the whole perimeter of your sheet it makes a small rope. You can "cast" it like a fly rod and retrieve items from a cell next to yours. You would throw it down to the next cell door. That guy ties what you need onto the string and you pull it back to your cell. Just figuring this shit out takes hours. Throwing the string over and over until the other guy can reach it. Silly stuff like this is what you do to not loose your mind.
I personally sing out lout. Just to hear another voice. I will laugh out loud. Just to hear laughter. I will burp, then laugh about that. When I'm bored, I wash my socks and boxers, then hang them on the bunk rail to dry. Hand washing them in the small sink. You can only lay on your bunk for so long before you realize you could go crazy. Your mind begins to mess with you. You start to question yourself. I wonder if my woman may leave me. Will my mother be alive and healthy when I'm finally released? How many more of my friends and family will die before I'm released? Will I be able to conduct myself in a good manner? Will I loose my cool when someone treats me badly? Things that you don't usually get hung up on, bother you in solitary.
Your skills to rationalize a situation get rusty. You begin to question yourself. You dig deep into past experiences and relive them. At times it's positive things. Places I have been and times with my family. Other times it's the dark places I've been. Face down in a crack house. Staring down the barrel of a gun. Feeling my mother's pain that her oldest son is gone.
This is confinement. This is the box.
It is not fun. What it will do is make you appreciate that little window that carries in a breeze, the sunshine and a view of my surrounding walls. When they let you out of confinement and you first step back onto the compound....you feel free.
Gives me a small taste of what it will feel like that day I am truly free!
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Hello Food Service!
My first week on the job and they have yet to fire. All this time in prison and my jobs have all been super easy. I have a real job now. Even though my hands are dish-pan hands and very soft, I'm busting my ass.
I am working for the food service. They placed me on the A.M. shift. I wake up at 2 a.m. and head to work. I finish around 10:45 a.m. I'm not adjusted to this new schedule yet. I'm still falling asleep at 11 p.m. then waking up three hours later to go to work. I'm exhausted. During my four years in D.O.C. I have never worked this hard. All the other jobs are a joke compared to food service. They work your ass. Decide not to work, then you are getting locked up for refusal to work (that's confinement time). The only perk is you can eat. And eat is what I do.
Food service has it's own dorm. Two sides: one is for the A.M. shift, the other is for the P.M. shift. So far it seems to be the most disrespected dorm on the compound. You would think since we feed everyone this wouldn't be the case.
When I first came to prison an old-timer showed me the ropes. He said, "Always take care of the men who wash your clothes and the ones who feed you." Makes sense to me. The laundry man sews, patches, and replaces your clothes. Likewise, the kitchen feeds you. Yet the guys who work food service are basically shitted on. This has caused me to resort back to yet another rule of the chain-gang...look out for yourself.
You come to prison by yourself. You will leave prison by yourself. Don't worry about what the other guy does...worry about yourself.
Along the way you will meet some good guys. Those are the ones you look out for. The ones who will look out for you. They are few and far between. None-the-less....they are here. My first week in this new job, and I have already found some. I have a new bunkie, a new work out crew, and a new laundry man. My life behind bars just hist restart in some weird way. My first week in this new job has literally flown by. That's a good thing.
I have heard dozens of stories about food service. The cook sweating over your food. Meals prepared and prepped by bare, unwashed hands. Guys forced to work even when they are sick. The list goes on. Truth is...it's hard NOT to sweat when you are in full uniform in a 100+ degree kitchen. Then you stand over a boiling kettle or a steaming dishwasher. I'm in a dish room. I load cafeteria trays onto racks that are then ran through a commercial dishwasher with boiling water to sterilize them. The trays are then removed and stacked on drying racks. Remember this is not a mom and pop diner. This is 1,100 to 1,200 inmates being fed in a 2-hour rush. This isn't fine dining.
So yeah....
Now I'm the guy standing in a kitchen sweating my ass off. For what it's worth, we eat the food we make. This is prison, not five star dining. When I can, I'm going back for seconds. Right now, I'm about to enjoy two full days off. On the street I used to say I lived for Friday. My Friday is now on Sunday. My plan is to sleep. While you chase the American Dream....I chase my release date.
Check out who else does the dishes in D.O.C.......
I am working for the food service. They placed me on the A.M. shift. I wake up at 2 a.m. and head to work. I finish around 10:45 a.m. I'm not adjusted to this new schedule yet. I'm still falling asleep at 11 p.m. then waking up three hours later to go to work. I'm exhausted. During my four years in D.O.C. I have never worked this hard. All the other jobs are a joke compared to food service. They work your ass. Decide not to work, then you are getting locked up for refusal to work (that's confinement time). The only perk is you can eat. And eat is what I do.
Food service has it's own dorm. Two sides: one is for the A.M. shift, the other is for the P.M. shift. So far it seems to be the most disrespected dorm on the compound. You would think since we feed everyone this wouldn't be the case.
When I first came to prison an old-timer showed me the ropes. He said, "Always take care of the men who wash your clothes and the ones who feed you." Makes sense to me. The laundry man sews, patches, and replaces your clothes. Likewise, the kitchen feeds you. Yet the guys who work food service are basically shitted on. This has caused me to resort back to yet another rule of the chain-gang...look out for yourself.
You come to prison by yourself. You will leave prison by yourself. Don't worry about what the other guy does...worry about yourself.
Along the way you will meet some good guys. Those are the ones you look out for. The ones who will look out for you. They are few and far between. None-the-less....they are here. My first week in this new job, and I have already found some. I have a new bunkie, a new work out crew, and a new laundry man. My life behind bars just hist restart in some weird way. My first week in this new job has literally flown by. That's a good thing.
I have heard dozens of stories about food service. The cook sweating over your food. Meals prepared and prepped by bare, unwashed hands. Guys forced to work even when they are sick. The list goes on. Truth is...it's hard NOT to sweat when you are in full uniform in a 100+ degree kitchen. Then you stand over a boiling kettle or a steaming dishwasher. I'm in a dish room. I load cafeteria trays onto racks that are then ran through a commercial dishwasher with boiling water to sterilize them. The trays are then removed and stacked on drying racks. Remember this is not a mom and pop diner. This is 1,100 to 1,200 inmates being fed in a 2-hour rush. This isn't fine dining.
So yeah....
Now I'm the guy standing in a kitchen sweating my ass off. For what it's worth, we eat the food we make. This is prison, not five star dining. When I can, I'm going back for seconds. Right now, I'm about to enjoy two full days off. On the street I used to say I lived for Friday. My Friday is now on Sunday. My plan is to sleep. While you chase the American Dream....I chase my release date.
Check out who else does the dishes in D.O.C.......
 | |||||
| Former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/blagojevich-prison-washes-dishes_n_1447437.html |
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Confinement : J Dorm
Art from the box......
This was drawn on the back of a cover letter to a legal paperwork (thus the yellowish background). There are several things jammed in this piece that is significant to doing time.....prison bars, bricks, hour glass, spider web, and stitches. This helped J.J. kill several hours while sitting in confinement not too long ago.
This was drawn on the back of a cover letter to a legal paperwork (thus the yellowish background). There are several things jammed in this piece that is significant to doing time.....prison bars, bricks, hour glass, spider web, and stitches. This helped J.J. kill several hours while sitting in confinement not too long ago.
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