Prison Camp: Daily Life
A Forum for Stories of Incarceration, Justice, and Redemption
In a continuation from last week’s theme about daily Prison life, the following is a description of the spaces we lived in—the narrow bunks, crowded bathrooms, and the long dark corridors that framed every movement.
PRISON CAMP
The camp was a low-lying industrial building that resembled a giant storage shed or a military barracks. Under one long metal roof, it was a maze of long dark corridors where our entire lives played out.
The dorm was an open landscape of sixty-four separate cubicles or pods called bunks. From a bird’s eye view, it resembled an experiment for mice. The pods were six feet high, with an area about eight by seven, and had no privacy. Each cubicle housed two inmates with a bunk bed, two low-lying lockers, two plastic chairs, and a narrow drawer that fit under the bunks. Every surface was hard: cinder block walls, plastic chairs, steel beds, and concrete floors. There was only one thermostat in the entire space. For ten months a year, the dorm was meat locker cold, and in the summer, there was no air conditioning, the bunks stifling and oppressive. Decay was pervasive there. Mold in the showers, broken urinals and sinks, frayed sheets, stained blankets, dented lockers, a foul smell in the bathrooms, and a mossy film everywhere. Fluorescent lights hung from exposed steel beams and iron pipes, and some bulbs were always missing or flashing.
Corridors as Neighborhoods
Inmates passed through the corridors in streams. In the winter mornings, the darkest season, we stumbled through them shivering and in silence. And one hundred plus inmates jostling for space. More than any other time, the long days loomed. The corridors looped around the bunks to form a kind of neighborhood as inmates bunked with their chosen tribes. It’s inevitable, I guess. I named them based on my New York roots:
International Boulevard, the widest corridor, with windows along its length, passed through “the Middle East” (two bunks of Muslims), “Israel” (a Jewish bunk), and “Spanish Harlem” (Puerto Rican drug dealers). Across from the dog pound—where inmate dog trainers bunked with their dogs—lived veteran Black inmates, including Coop, who ran the prison store. Coop looked like Mr. T, only kinder. He greeted me my first day with: “What you do to get eighty-five months? Kill somebody?” followed by a grin and a fist bump. A businessman at heart, Coop stocked everything from M&Ms to deodorant, but no contraband.
A right turn off International led to Northern Boulevard (Queens), a noisy, mixed-tribe stretch where nights were rarely quiet.
From the center, two corridors led to the bathrooms: Park Avenue, where the white-collar guys bunked, and No Man’s Land, the entry point for new arrivals. Between them ran 42nd Street, a shortcut to the computer room and showers.
Encounters and Protocols
Passing each other so often bred an awkward protocol. Some stared straight ahead. Others tossed out a generic “What’s up” without looking. Ralph the Boss—self-proclaimed leader, a Don Rickles lookalike minus the humor—always ended conversations with “Go fuck yourself.” Some Black and Spanish inmates wore a permanent scowl that might or might not have been meant for you. A few nodded down, some nodded ahead, some nodded at you. Eventually, I settled on nodding to friends by name—“Hi Bill,” “Hi Steve”—and looking straight ahead with everyone else. I never felt like I got it right.
With the staff, it was easier: they never looked at you. Their job seemed to be to stare straight ahead, daring you to meet their eyes. The camp counselor, Mr. Larkin—a forty-something with a huge gut and a Cheshire-cat grin—embodied that indifference, smiling at nothing in particular.
Other Corridors
Two narrow corridors led out toward the laundry, technically out of bounds, but I’d sneak through on cold mornings just to feel the steamy air, a brief relief.
Another short corridor led to the telephones—old black receivers bolted to a wall of broken sheetrock, like relics from another era. No calls in, only monitored calls out, each requiring codes for invisible recorders. Four cracked plastic chairs lined up in front, almost always occupied, with no chance for privacy.
Beyond the phones, the longest corridor stretched to the mess hall. Three times a day we lined up there—short at breakfast, long at lunch and dinner, especially Thursdays for baked chicken. Greg the Walker, a waifish man in his sixties with rosary beads, paced that corridor endlessly, muttering riddles. Some said he was a decorated Vietnam vet; others, a serial grifter. What was true was that he stole food constantly. Still, he always waved to me, and I waved back. Everyone needs a friend in prison.
The Whole Life Under One Roof
Beyond the dorms and bathrooms were the small kitchen with its microwaves, the game room where Black inmates played cards, the converted “library” with drugstore novels, the computer room for monitored emails, the education room with evening documentaries, the staff offices, the medical unit, and finally, the visiting room—also the TV room—with a door leading to picnic tables outside.
All of it—our eating, sleeping, walking, waiting, scheming, surviving—happened under that single roof. Corridors linking and looping, carrying more than a hundred men through the same paths, day after day, until one left and another arrived. Probably a hundred or more inmates passed through during my time there. Every day, someone left and someone arrived. I learned to hate them both.
If this story resonates with you, or if you’ve wrestled with your own origin myths, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform Efforts
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More stories from prison