Inside the Los Angeles County Jail

I am writing an autobiography on myl ife as a drug addict and the subsequent spiritual awakening. There are some excerpts on this site from it. (see blog entitled “Hate: the root of addiction”). I was working on the autobiography today and thought I might post some excerpts from it which you may find interesting.

Many people have never been in jail and there only experience of it is from television. Here is an excerpt which shows “a slice of life” inside the Los Angeles County Jail. If you are in law enforcement don’t bother contacting me about this. These events transpired approx. 33 years ago and the statute of limitations on any crimes has long since passed. And besides I couldn’t give you any names anyway. As far as conditions in the Los Angeles County Jail I suspect they haven’t changed much but I will leave that for others with more recent experience to comment on.
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They took my drugs away at booking and I was fingerprinted and processed and sent off to the Los Angeles County Jail the next day. The county jail was an experience. Although I had been in jail for 43 days the first time, this was the first time I stayed for an extended period. The 6 man cells often held 10 people with 4 people sleeping on the concrete floor. If the cell doors were not opened then you spent the entire day locked up except for chow time which was the high point of the day. Inside the cell we played cards, talked. or read a book from the jail library. Somedays we were lucky and would get an officer who would play music over the intercom system.. Sometimes the cell gates would be opened and we would be given “freeway time” which is just walking up and down the cell block. Very rarely we were put into the dayroom, a large room where we could play cards. Unsentenced prisoners of all varieties, felonies and misdemeanors, are mixed together. As a result hardened criminals and first time offenders can end up sharing the same cell.
One day I heard a commotion in the cell next to me. I didn’t know what it was but something was going on. I heard some voices saying “tie him up real good” but I still didn’t know what it was. When the gates rolled back for freeway time, I left my cell.In the cell next door was a black inmate sitting on the toilet with an erection being masturbated by a young white boy with a embarrassed sheepish grin on his face. Inmates walked down the freeway laughing, grinning and joking about the whole matter. What had happened is that a young white marijuana smoker on his first offense had been thrown into a cell with some hardened black psychopathic criminals. They tied him up and threw him under the bunk, and then perpetrated various forms of homosexual rape on him. Eventually, one of the other white inmates the cell refused to go back inside. He was taken off to Siberia and put
in isolation. When that happened the black inmates untied the white inmate and threatened him with death if he said anything. He didn’t. Truthfully, most of the deputies did not much care what went on in the cell blocks. It probably wasn’t all that uncommon of an occurrence.