The Truth About Working in Arizona Prisons | Steven Tedaldi
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If you have, let's just say, two white guys, me and you are both in there, we're both inmates, and we're under the politics of the whites, there's going to be repercussions for our actions. So if we just kind of do things on our own, try to make money on our own, we'll get, what, DP'd. So usually DP'd is if you do something wrong, your race has to deal with it. So you got DP'd, you got disciplined.

Stephen Tadaldi left New York to become a correctional officer in Arizona, where the real lessons began after training ended. In this episode, he breaks down prison politics, how he earned respect on the job, and what working inside Arizona's correctional system is really like.

Steven, welcome to Locked In, man. Thanks for coming all the way from the West Coast and thanks for being a fan of the show. Hey, man. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. And, you know, everyone loves the prison guard stories, the correctional officer stories, and you certainly look the part too. You remind me of a lot of COs in prison. Yeah. I never in my life wanted to be working in the prison system. I don't have any law enforcement family members. I don't have...

Like cousins or anything. Like nobody was a cop. Nobody was in the military. Nothing. I kind of grew an attraction for it when I graduated college in 2012. But I guess there's a lot of things to get to before we get to that. But, yeah, man, where do we start? Like from the beginning? Yeah, yeah, of course. Where did you grow up? So born and raised in Long Island. Divorced home. So mom lived in Central Islip in Suffolk County. I don't know how familiar you are. But basically the middle of Long Island. Yeah.

And then my dad eventually settled. He got remarried in 2000. So he settled in a town that's very upscale, very different from where I grew up. So I had completely different friend groups, completely different environments that I was kind of splitting time in. It worked, though. It was cool. Like, you know, I stayed with my mom during the week, and then I was with my dad on the weekends and everything.

you know, if these friends were doing something I didn't want to do, I would hang out with these friends and, um, they never blended together cause they're very different groups. But, um,

Yeah, so yeah, Long Island my whole life. And then when I was 30, I moved to Arizona. Yeah, I did a little three-month stint in Massapequa when I was working for Whole Foods. That's where I'm going after this, actually. That's my old boss, my old job. Yeah, and then I lived in North Valley Stream for a little bit. And then I go to— That's funny. That's where my grandma lived. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's where my mom was from. She grew up there and then went to Rochester. Okay.

That's way up there. Yeah, that's where they relocated. And then I go to Long Island every couple weeks to see my cousins and aunt and uncle are out in, what's the nicer area? Maspico's pretty nice. It starts with a B, I think. Belmore? No, it's another one. Because that's where my dad eventually, that's where him and his wife lived. And Belmore's a nice town. It's definitely not Brentwood.

Brent Woods next to where I grew up. I forgot the name of it, but yeah, I go to Long Island pretty often, so I'm becoming more familiar with it. Yeah, Massapego, there's a restaurant called Calda. Everybody's familiar with the hamburger spot, All American. So you have All American, which has been there for 100 years. Then you got Merrick Road, and then right across the street is a restaurant called Calda. That opened in like... The original one opened in like, I think the 70s from the original owner. So that's the third location, but...

I used to live with the owner and then I worked for them for a long time. And, um,

Like I said, that's where I'm going after this because in Arizona, you do not have pizza and pasta like you do out here. So that's why I said I'm saving myself. I'm saving my appetite so I can go down there and throw down. You know what? I love shrimpies. Have you ever had that? No. Shrimpies burritos. A shrimp burrito, yeah, I could deal with, but I've never even heard of it. The place is called Shrimpies. I guess it's pretty famous in Long Island. It's like a Chipotle, but it's fish. I've been out for six years now, so if it's a new thing, I've kind of—

lost touch with things. Well, get a shrimpies burrito for the plate. Like I said, anytime I go to the East Coast, all I think about is eating. Yeah. Did you have siblings? Yeah, I got two older sisters. My sister Alexandra is a teacher. She's two years older than me. And my other sister, she's 13 years older than me. But she's a stay-at-home mom. You know, she has two daughters. We were very different.

Like if you put us in a room, we don't look alike at all. I'm the only one that's tall. They're both short and completely different personalities. Like I said, my sister's a teacher and I work in a prison. Our senses of humor are a little different. Our beliefs and things are a little different. But growing up, we had a lot of – I don't want to say tension but –

We're just so close in age and we're just typical. It was typical kid shit. We didn't always see eye to eye on things, but we're a lot closer now that we're all adults and have our own families and everything. Did you play sports in high school? Yeah, baseball, football. I was never the best at anything, but I always stayed active. Typical stuff, like play basketball in the summers and everything.

But yeah, I was never like, yeah, I got a full ride for this or I went to college for that. It was nothing ever like that. Were you the popular kid or kind of a loner? No, I definitely wasn't a loner. I was the funny guy. I went to a very diverse high school. Anybody know Central Islip? It's very diverse. So I was popular. I wasn't the coolest kid. I definitely wasn't a dork and I've always been easy to talk to.

And I talk a lot of shit and crack a lot of jokes. And as you know, like being able to talk shit in prison gets you a lot of places because that's how we all communicate in prison. Yeah, especially with the inmates. Like the inmates love the ones that aren't just all serious, that they know how to banter back and forth. Yeah. And there's a lot that will build up to get to that. But yeah, so 2007, I graduate. I go to school because I really thought I wanted to be a physical therapist because I kept tearing up my ACL. Yeah.

I was 18, 19, and I think 21, I had ACL surgeries. So I'm thinking in my head, like, oh, I could do this. I can go to school to be a physical therapist. This is interesting to me. Like, I work out, I'm active, and this is obviously a legitimate career thing, blah, blah, blah. So I go to Cortland. You know where that is, right? So I go to Cortland. I major in kinesiology, which if you do not use it to get yourself into grad school, it is worth nothing. So, Jesus, excuse me. Yeah.

Yeah, so I do that and then never, ever even thought about physical therapy after that ever again. And I also realized halfway through that I was like, I'm not going to like this as a career path. I was just talking about this with my wife the other day. Like the classes that were discussion-based, didn't matter what the topic was. I excelled in. I don't have a problem talking about anything, voicing my opinions, even if I'm blatantly wrong or even if I need to be educated on the topic. I'm okay with that. But it's like I don't care about organic chemistry. Yeah.

I don't care about statistics. I don't care about any of that stuff. But, you know, when you graduate high school in 2007, that was kind of also that time where you either go to school or you go to the military. That wasn't like entrepreneurship or podcasting or taking a year off to figure it out. It was kind of just one or the other. And all my friends that were in the town that my dad lived in, you know, they all had these what seemed to be

linear trajectories to success. And I want it to be like that. Like, I don't want to like fall behind, but you know, everybody knew like, yeah, I want to major in business. I want to major in finance. I want to major in whatever it is. And then everybody started doing their own thing. And something that I did realize though, from a young age, because I went to, I had basically two different homes and two completely different neighborhoods were not all equal. Right. So the town that I went to school in was a lot depressed, depressed,

you know, economically. It was, for lack of a better word, it was the hood. My mom bought a house in a nice part of a crappy town. And I think, I mean, I could be making this up. I think she thought that it was the town, the village where she bought her house. I think she thought that that was a different school district. So if we would have went to Hop Hog School District, it would have been different than going to Central Islip. So then we went to Central Islip and it was just like a different, it was a different environment.

It wasn't too bad. It wasn't anything horrible, but like there's a couple kids that got shot and killed when I was in high school or like gangs were prevalent, you know, that whole thing. Now this is also like the high school version of stuff. This isn't like crack in the 80s in Brooklyn. Like it wasn't like that bad. But, you know, I'll go to my dad's house on the weekends and see all my friends' families and it's like, you know, mom stayed home. She was a stay-at-home mom and dad did something in Manhattan. Like everybody did God knows what in Manhattan, but they were all really successful.

So I just, I witnessed how different things were and how easy it is to fall to the wayside and how much effort, more effort it takes to kind of, you know, get to get yourself to a better place. But I'm glad that I grew up like that. I'm glad that I grew up seeing both ends of the spectrum and like my whole adult life, like work wise. And I know what we'll obviously we'll talk about it. Um,

I saw both sides of the spectrum of things. Like there was a point where I was working at a methadone clinic, right? So you're working at a methadone clinic, you're dealing with heroin users, junkies, you know, whatever you want to call them. But then at night I was working at a, in the nightlife industry and everybody there was a drug dealer. So you see completely different sides. Like where, where are all these people that need all these drugs? And you see them during the day. And then when you see people at night, it's like, how many drug dealers does the New York city area really need? And it's like, look at all these guys.

They got all this money thrown around. So I was just was like exposed to just like the extreme ends of things. But yeah, I mean, I'll back up a little bit. So when my dad remarried, right? Because I think this takes effect into why I made the decision I did later on in life when I moved to Arizona. So my dad gets remarried in 2000. The woman that he remarried had, or she still does, she has a lot of like mental health issues. But when you're...

what, 12, 11, 12 years old, you don't really realize it. You just think that that's just how this person is. That's her norm. But as I got older, I started to realize like the routine of things, everything was centered around how my stepmom felt. Everything was centered around how her mood was or environmental things that were affecting her, like seasonal depression and stuff like that. But as I got older, I kind of gauged an interest in it. Like I used to think about like

Okay, you know it's been two months and Roseanne hasn't had an episode like something's coming like it has to come It's like what's gonna set her off or what are the things that calms her down or what are the things that? That I'm doing that don't even realize that makes her Kind of go off the deep end a little bit and it got worse and worse and worse as I got older so between Her issues and then like my dad's issues, which wasn't really his issues weren't really that major and

Their relationship seemed like more of a codependency. It didn't seem like a real relationship. And I could predict what was going to happen. I could be like, all right, my dad's going to go out drinking because he's mad about this. My stepmom's going to get upset. It's going to lead to an argument. The cops are going to come. And it was like clockwork, dude. Every time the cops would show up to my house, my stepmom wants my dad out, my dad drunk, blah, blah, blah. It was never physical. It was never violent or anything. But-

The cops only do so much. It's like, look, you two are legally married. There's no violence. You know, maybe he can go sleep it off in that room and you can go calm down in that room. But at the end, she would always tell the cops like, you know, I want to die. I'm going to kill myself. It's like, you know, like if you say that, if you're in the prison system, you know, you're going to go on watch. You're going to go. There's something that has to be done because you can't just say things like that. I think there aren't going to be repercussions to your actions. So I would start to see this stuff. I would start to see that.

If she wouldn't get the attention that she would want, she would say these things. And then I started realizing when they would kind of go on little breaks. Let's say we would stay at my grandma's house for a couple weeks to let things cool down. I would come back and it's like, wow, Roseanne's lost a lot of weight. Or she would burn herself with cigarettes and then pick at her arms. It's like that's not normal. It's not normal behavior. And with the losing weight thing, it's like I don't think she really even knew to feed herself properly.

And if you just saw her walking down the street, you know, she's a perfectly normal looking person. It's just, I used to always think like, I think everybody's had this thought where it's like, if I could be in this person's head for, if I could be in one person's head for a day, who would it be? Just like see how they think or what their thought process is. And it always used to be her because we could be looking at this room right here and these curtains are clearly black. She would say they're pink, but she would have to be right. But it's like, they're clearly black. But all that stuff started really interesting me.

It's not like I ever thought about going to school to be a therapist or psychologist. Like, it was never that. But it was definitely something that caught my attention. And, like, even now, like I said, like, when I started in the prison system, I started at, like, an SMI yard. So you know what that means, right? No. It stands for seriously mentally ill, which is a label. That's really all it is. It could be somebody that has a little bit of issues or, like, a lot of issues. I know a term out here is EDP, emotionally disturbed person. I've heard of that. It's the same thing. Yeah. But, yeah.

Yeah, like I didn't realize that all the childhood, seeing all that stuff, how much it was going to affect me almost in a good way as I got into adulthood. But yeah, I mean like I had a good childhood. Like I'm not going to complain about anything. Like I just had extremes. I just had like this neighborhood, you know, like a lot of single parent households and a lot of like –

It was just different. And then you go to this extreme and it's like, yeah, you know, there's two brand new cars in the driveway and everybody's going on vacation in the summer. And, you know, it just seemed like everybody had such a – they had like this path of success that they were all like set in stone for already. Did seeing those two different environments make you more empathetic to, say, an inmate later on in life? Yeah. Yeah, it definitely – that's a –

It definitely made me more empathetic and it made me – like even now, dude, everything that I come in contact with, I think about the big picture of things. So if I see an inmate, somebody that looks just like me, it could be you for example, right? I don't know anything about your childhood. I don't know anything about your upbringing. But the overwhelming majority of people that are in prison come from uneducated households, poor households, one parent or if they do have two parents, one of them is –

You know, mom's strung out somewhere or she's doing what she has to do to get by or dad's living the street life. So you can't expect people to have such a level of success when their starting point is that they're, they're fucked from the, from the beginning. And especially with mental health issues, a lot of people, the first time they ever get help for their mental health issues is when they're in prison. And it's like, if that's the first time you're ever getting treatment, like you're, you're screwed, you know? And it's just like, when did psychiatric hospitals start closing down?

We all have heard these things, right? The only time people get mental health issues is when they go to prison because there's no funding for state hospitals. There's no funding for this. There's no funding for that. All that money has to get reallocated somewhere else. But I can look at a person and they just look like a regular Joe Schmo, regular man or woman, but you don't know what's going on in their head. You don't know what bothers them. You don't know what are their trigger points, things that will freak them out but not freak you out.

Um, so that definitely, when I started in the prison system, that definitely made me think of, um, yes, this person is inmate such and such, but what's the, what's the story behind it? What all I'm seeing is the end result of an accumulation of mistakes that this person's made. First of all, I don't even know if he's he or she is guilty, but what caused this person to get here?

Yeah.

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There's no right or wrong way to do this job. Well, actually, let me take that back and scratch that one. But I can't tell somebody else how to think about what we're dealing with, right? The way I think about things when it comes to the prison system is based off what I've been exposed to and things I've seen in life and the things I've been taught by my parents, right? So my parents – my mom was very strict on us, mostly me just because –

You know, you got to worry about boys more than you have to worry about girls kind of thing. But if I'm working with somebody, I don't know what their lifestyle is like. I don't know what their beliefs are. I don't know what their thought process is. I don't know what interests them. I don't know what, excuse me, upsets them. So I'll see officers that will just look at an inmate and it's like, okay, my only communication with you is going to be

When I have to communicate with you during count, knocking on the cell. Okay. Are you alive? Move around. Cool. Keep it going. I don't care about anything you have to ask about. That's not my style at all. So yeah, I think there's a lot of officers that kind of completely overlook that. I don't agree with it, but I've been doing this, what, for six years? It's not really a long time. But if you're working with somebody that's been doing this for 30 years, obviously that person has a lot more experience than you.

And has been through a lot more things than you have. And also prison 30 years ago is a lot different than it is now. It doesn't matter if it's state level, federal, whatever it is. It's always going to be different. Everything's always evolving. I will say this though. And this is kind of odd to say. In an environment like in a prison system, right? You would think there's such a obvious answer to this question. If I'm a CO, who's the enemy? You would think it would be inmates, right?

But from my experience, the hardest thing about working in a prison system is admin all the way admin and then the people you work with and then inmates. And when people you work with, it's just because, you know, you put people in the same uniform. You give us the same objective, same common goal. You know, we have to get this done. We have to get rec done, showers, chow, mail, whatever it is. We're not all going to get along. We're not the same people. You know, so just because we're wearing this uniform doesn't mean we're some unified force.

So that is one of the struggles I've had personally, and I can admit it. And that also doesn't mean that I'm a perfect person to work with either because the things that I do, I'll joke around with inmates all day long. And I guess we kind of have to back up to like when I was working in the nightlife industry. But you're going to see these guys all day long, every day for years, right? And now you know this. You expect consistency, right? So if you're down – and I know you – like your story, you moved around a lot in all these transports and –

you know, being in all these different units. But if you're in prison, your punishment is this, right? My punishment for what I did is being in this system. I'm not supposed to get repunished by some officer who's having a bad day. You know what I'm saying? It's like you expect certain things from us. We expect certain things from you. But I don't know where I was going with that.

I kind of lost my train of thought. Do you think that the correctional system trains you to look at their childhood and their family or just to look at them as inmates? Dude, my academy was seven weeks. The only thing that I'm going to say that I think gave me like a step up is when I worked in the nightlife industry because of the type of clubs that I was working in. Should we get into that or like what do you want to do? Tell me about what I just asked you about the – No. Yeah. If you work –

In any prison system, I think they are just trying to get people in and get people out because they know the turnover rate is so high. Like I said, my academy was seven weeks. So you could take somebody off the street that's been working at AutoZone and then you're going to put them through seven weeks and think that they're going to be able to function around inmates who have been doing this, they're career criminals or guys that are, you know, it's their first time in prison. They don't know how to act to the politics. They don't know how to act to the environment. So no, definitely not. When did you actually make the decision to join Corrections?

The idea popped into my mind in 2014. I graduated college in 2012, right? So gave myself a little grace period. I was working, doing stuff, not to say experimenting, but I was trying to figure out what the next move was. So when I was working at the club that I worked at, a lot of the guys that worked there worked at Rikers Island. Rikers Island geographically is only like two miles away from where I was working. And a lot of them would say like, look, these dudes are all –

A lot of them used to go to the club with their Rikers Island ID. A lot of them, it's right there. They would get released. They get their ID and it's like, dude, this expired like six months ago. You haven't gotten an idea. Like you're still using your jail ID to get into a club. But I guess they noticed like, hey, like you're pretty decent at this, dude. Like why don't you just try to go work at Rikers? You know, you do 20 years, get a pension. You'll have job security. So that was in 2014 when I initially thought about like I could do this.

Because like I said, when I thought about doing physical therapy, I knew I would hate it. And when I got out of school, it's like I didn't have the time, definitely didn't have the money. So it's like that dream kind of drifted away real quick. But the Rikers Island thing seemed real legitimate. So I took the test. And then in 2015, they called me and I started going through the hiring process. What screwed me was my license had gotten revoked. I used to take the Belt Park way to work.

going to a different club that I used to work at. And on the way home every night, man, you're leaving at 435 in the morning. You're flying. So I got pulled over a bunch of times, and I got – I played guilty to three speeding tickets in two years. So that got my license revoked. So when I went through the hiring process at Rikers, I went through the whole thing, the physical, all that stuff, blah, blah, blah. The paperwork was like that thick. It took forever. But when I met with the psychologist towards the end –

I'm thinking that's like the last step. So I remember I waited like two and a half, three hours to see her because she was busy. She had other people to deal with. She must have asked me two questions and then she was out and I was like, damn, I'm dead in the water. Like I know I'm dead. And I got the letter a couple weeks later saying I was disqualified and one of the guys that I worked with at the club that I was at, he knew somebody in investigations and he's like, yeah, you don't have a driver's license. And as you know, like inmates have to go to the hospital, they have to go to court. So yeah,

You've got to have a license to be able to drive people around. So that disqualified me. You would have thought they could have just told you that really early on in the application when you submitted your ID. You know, and it took them a while to get me that letter too because I kept thinking, I'm like, all right, in 2015 I was, what, 25, 26? So I'm like, all right, I could do 20 years.

you know, have a pension. I could be hanging out. I could be, I could, I could have that part set, you know, like I don't want to be working jobs forever. I need something where I could sustain a family off of something that I can build off of, you know, have good pay, like the whole, the whole spiel. Like it's definitely not a glamorous job, but it's stable, man. It's a good gig. Actually. I've interviewed a lot of Rikers and a DOC in New York and, uh, you know, between the pension and, uh, everything. And it's just the, uh,

And like I said, when I started in Arizona, that was right before COVID hit. So I started in 2019. And then once COVID hits, everybody's losing their job. The only thing that happened to me is we all got a raise. You know, like you can't work remotely and be a CEO. You can't be a remote CEO.

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But it doesn't work like that.

So did you put the corrections job on hold for a few years? No. So, well, I guess, yeah. So I got disqualified and they were like, you can apply again. I just had to wait for all the bullshit to come off my driving record. So I got my license reinstated and then I just had to wait for the tickets to fall off, which wasn't a big deal. It's just, it's just time. So I just kept working in the nightlife industry doing that.

And that interests me too because they kind of go hand in hand because like I said, the overwhelming majority of the people that were in that, that used to go to that club were street dudes, guys that have been in prison, guys that still have prison attitudes, a lot of that. So I had a good thing going. Like it wasn't far from my house. During the day, I was working at a restaurant. So it was like cool. I had like food. I had – and then I was only working from like 11 o'clock until 4 in the morning. It's not like I'm –

I have to set an alarm and wake up early to go to work. And it was definitely financially in my favor because, as you know, working in the nightlife industry, there's a lot of money going around. Did you know what a prison attitude was back then before you even got into corrections? Only because of the club that I worked at. But like I said, before that, growing up, prison never came up ever in a conversation ever in my life. Did you watch shows at all? Yeah, but it was nothing like it was for entertainment. It wasn't for interest kind of thing.

you know my mom is a nurse right but she had three kids to support you know pretty much on her own so she was always doing overtime always doing what she had to do for us and like we had a good life like we always had um we had everything we needed we didn't have a lot of excess but we had everything we needed but it wasn't like hey son you're you're almost gonna you're gonna be 18 too what do you think you would want to do as a career path it was never like i wasn't taught

You know, if you major in this in college, you can segue into this. Or if you get this license, you can do this. I never was taught any of that type of stuff. So the first thing that ever sparked my interest on what I could do as a career was either become a cop or a CO. So I took the civil service exams pretty much back to back. Rikers was the first one that called me. And for whatever reason, I think I'm more drawn to the prison system than I am being a cop.

I wouldn't want to be a cop. Not anymore. But it just fit because, like I said, I'm working with guys that work at Rikers Island. I'm like, this dude's 46 years old and he's retired already. That's great, man. That's what anybody would want in life. And, like, yeah, he's still working. He's still doing other things. But he has benefits for him and his spouse and his children until they turn a certain age. And guaranteed, like, you know, that pension's hitting. Like, that's the thing people want in life. How did you end up in Arizona during that time period? Yeah.

So a friend of mine used to DJ at the club that we worked at. I guess he kind of got tired of it and he ends up moving to Arizona. But him and I are real close and we're real similar in everything in a lot of ways. So he was already out there. He took a job doing something, whatever he does. And he's like, why don't you just come out here and take the CO exam out here? Because at that time, like I said, I was just waiting for all of my

my driving issues to kind of follow my record to apply at records again, because I records Island is going anywhere. So I went out to Arizona, I did the CEO exam out there and then they called me first. Like they called me like almost immediately, like three weeks later because that department's pretty short staffed. So I go through the hiring process there and you know, I used to hear, I always used to hear people saying things like, you know, when, when my kids graduate college or when my pension kicks in, like I'm leaving New York or I'm, I'm,

moving out of New York. Like I'm going to Florida, I'm going to Virginia, whatever it is. So I didn't have kids or anything. I wasn't married at the time. So it's like, what do I have to lose? If I don't like Arizona, I'll try Arizona. If I don't like it, I'll come back. Um, I left my living arrangements like cordially. So it was understood with my, my friend Rego that I was, that I was living with. Um, like, yeah, I'm gonna go try this. If it doesn't work out, I'm going to come back. It wasn't like I'd have to start all over, like get a different apartment and get a different job and all that stuff. So 2019 is when I moved to Arizona. I took, um,

In like January, I took the test out there. Like I flew out there, took the test of the physical, and then I started the academy in like March. Very spontaneous. Yeah, you know, I'm not one of those people. I don't have like my roots like cemented in one fixed location. I just don't. Like my hometown doesn't owe me anything, nor do I owe my hometown anything. So the world is bigger than Long Island. The world is bigger than Manhattan. So I was like, oh, I want to go see something else. And like my sister, she lived in China for a couple years,

My other sister, she spread out. She was doing her own thing for a couple years. So like, I don't know, it was kind of like it was my turn to go do something too. How did your family react when you said you were applying to be an officer? They didn't care. They didn't care. My mom's not one of those people that she's going to let you make your mistakes on your own, but she's going to let you do your own thing and be your own person. And she can't influence me on what to do. She was just like, I think she knew that maybe I would be good at it because I could never sit behind a desk. I just can't do it.

It doesn't like there's, there's no job that I'm going to do sitting behind a desk. It's going to interest me enough where I'm going to want to do this every day. So she was very supportive about it. She wasn't happy. Like her only son is moving across the country because both my sisters are married with kids at the time I wasn't, but she supported me. She flew out there for the academy graduation and you know, she knew she's like, look, I'm 20, I'm 30 years old. I was about to be 30 years old. And she's like, this is what you have to do.

Once you started the academy, were there any thoughts about saying like, oh, maybe this isn't what I wanted or this isn't what I expected? Well, it definitely wasn't what I expected. So when I took the exam, they let you pick which location you would want to go to. So in Arizona, there's Winslow, which is in the middle of nowhere. There's Safford, Yuma. You know, Yuma's right there on the border. There was a prison in Phoenix called

Like right in the downtown area. That's the one that I started at. And the only reason why I chose that one is because I've heard of Phoenix. You know, if you're coming from New York, you're coming from the biggest city on the planet or not the biggest, but you know what I mean? Everybody, the whole world's heard of Manhattan. I can't just go to some dilapidated place and live in the middle of nowhere and just have such a complete culture shock where the only thing that I have going on is just working. I didn't want to do that. I can't, um, you know, I couldn't do it. So I was like, okay, Phoenix would work.

So I didn't know anything about what that unit was like. I didn't know that it was a reception yard. There's Lewis Complex, which is on the west side, which is like an hour and 20 minutes away on the west side. Then on the east side, there's Florence, and then there was Iman Complex. So in the town of Florence, you have the Florence Prison, and then right behind it down the street is the Iman Prison. But there's also like Pinal County Jail. There's a CCA prison, which is –

federal, private, federal, there's an immigration detention center. So basically the whole town exists because it's a prison town. So I chose to work in Phoenix, like I said, just because I've heard of Phoenix. But when I moved out there, like I just packed everything I could in my truck and just drove out there. Like I didn't, I didn't have a place to stay. I didn't know anybody besides my one friend, but his kids were little. But I said, look, I'm moving here for this reason. So I'm going to make the best of it, obviously.

Do you think that they make the training easy because they're so short-staffed or was it challenging? Thinking back now, now that I have some time under my belt, the things that they train you on really doesn't matter. And I know that's such a horrible thing to say. There are certain things like, yeah, how to use handcuffs properly and how to use a firearm. Obviously, those are big things. But the hardest part about working in a prison and dealing with inmates is how you deal with inmates. And I don't take myself too seriously. I don't –

You know, I'm not one of those per policy guys. I don't know anything about policy. You know who knows policy in prison? Who knows policy the best in prison? The inmates. The inmates. Like I would ask – I remember one time I was working and somebody had some – said something to me over the radio, some 10 code that I didn't know. And I looked at the inmate like, what the hell is a 1015? And the inmate's like, oh, it's this. I'm like, I didn't know that. He knows it. He could have been bullshitting me. But it's just all about like relationships and how you deal with people. So the academy doesn't teach you. They'll teach you like, yeah, like –

Towards the holidays is when you see a lot of suicides because people aren't with their families for Thanksgiving or maybe their mom just passed away and now this is their first Christmas without her or they're at a different unit that's far away from where they live so they don't have visits. You got to think about the things that could be affecting somebody because I do my walk every half hour and I just see all these guys just doing the same exact thing behind their cell walls but behind the bars but I don't actually know what's going on in their head.

Like you can kind of predict things, but I don't actually really know. Like I said, I only know these guys as the culmination of everything they've done wrong in their life to get to where they're at. So when you're in the academy, we had to do sit-ups and all that stuff. Like I've never seen anybody do a sit-up in prison. That works there. So like what do we have to do this for? I understand the physical fitness part of it, but they don't teach you enough about like how to like actually deal with an inmate. And a lot of guys, in my opinion –

They want to punch first to ask questions later. That's not my approach to things. I'm not a hug a thug. Yeah, you know that term. I don't consider myself a hug a thug at all, but I don't want to go to work every day and just be getting into fights with people. Let me back up a little bit. When I worked at the club that I worked at, right, everybody there lived that street life, that criminal life. Like I said, guys would come up with their prison IDs. All the people that I was the closest with, the people that I had the most respect with and the best rapport with were people that I had problems with at one point.

And this doesn't mean we're fighting each other. It would just be a disagreement over something that they did versus what they're supposed to. It's just like little disagreements. But after you talk to someone, you develop a rapport with them. It's like, okay, it's pretty easy to come to a common ground on things. So if it's you and your friends, you and six of your friends, right? And me and you just don't get along. And eventually we have some type of altercation which leads to some type of conversation because A, I work here. I'm here every night.

You come here all the time because you want to. So we're going to cross paths. We're going to see each other again. So let's just figure out what the problem is and deal with it. And then moving forward, we're going to have a lot more respect for one another. And prison was prison is the same way. You know, if I see some guy that's acting up, acting a fool, acting, acting like an asshole, is that him directing his disdain for me specifically? Or is he mad at the system as a whole?

Or is he part of the politics and he has to do this because somebody that, you know, is in charge is telling him to. So the academy should have taught you all about relationship building. They do teach you good things like different custody levels. Like, you know, this guy is like an enhanced housing unit or they'll show videos of like, you know, inmate such and such as here on death row because he killed an officer back in the 80s. So like be alert, be attentive. They do teach you things about manipulation.

which most people don't realize are getting manipulated, but that they should talk about a lot more. I think the physical part of prison should be the least important thing. Yeah, from what I've seen talking to former officers is that there's so much emphasis on the physical aspect of the training when really the majority is mental. I mean, all the officers I've seen that are very good at their jobs were out of shape, but...

but had great mental conversations. You didn't see them getting into fights or getting attacked. I guess you need to be physical to help another officer that wasn't properly trained when the button gets hit and they got all run to save them. But the ones that were out of shape but kind and caring and actually made an effort did so much better than the other ones. Yeah. How do I say this?

If I'm going to sign up to be a cop, right, or to work in a prison or to be in the military, I already know ahead of time what I'm getting myself into, right? So if you're going to go work in the prison system, you know what the consequences could be if things go wrong. So it's on you to stay in shape. It's on you to be able to figure out, look, I'm not good at dealing with these inmates. Let me figure out what I'm doing wrong so that – excuse me –

Let me work on what I'm doing wrong so that I can be more successful in this field. Right? Don't complain about things that happen when you sign up to be here. That's like my biggest pet peeve, right? You'll hear people complain like this, this guy threw feces on me or he threw urine on me or, you know, I just got assaulted and you're the one that signed up to be here. You signed up to work in prison. These are the things that happen. So don't complain about it. I'm not saying it should happen, but yeah, that's, that's the type of stuff that goes on. And yeah,

You kind of learn from other people. Like I said, there's officers I work with that are great at what they do, but they do things totally different than I do. But overall, like the consistency of how you work and the consistency of how you treat people, whether you treat them good or bad, if you're consistently like strict about things, an inmate's going to understand like, all right, you know, that shit doesn't fly with him, but it flies with this guy. Like you got to –

be able to point out your strengths and weaknesses and be able to work on your weaknesses. Tell us about your first day on the job. Okay. So like I said, the Phoenix yard is an intake yard. I did not know that when I went there, when I signed up to work there, I, like I said, I picked it because it's in Phoenix. So it's a very small prison. Like it's just a big rectangle. So, um, there's inmate. Like if you walk in the main entrance, um,

Inmate workers live on the right. Those are your like laundry guys and your kitchen and they do all the yard stuff electrical all that stuff They're all there for like nonviolent crimes Drugs and bullshit and then the back half is a just reception it's just housing for guys that got sentenced in jail and Then they're there then they're waiting to get classified and they get shipped out to their regular yard. The other half of it was mental health

And when I chose to work there, the mental health definitely was of interest to me because of all the mental health stuff that my stepmom subjected me to. Like seeing the way that she would behave and the way that she would deal with things and seeing the things that would set her off. Like I said, it's like one of those things that will forever be of interest to me.

So yeah, walking in, you just do your, I was working six to two and it's, it doesn't take long to learn how to work at that, that unit. Because like I said, they get classified. They're either in Delta or they're an echo, right? Echo at the time I think was like GP guys. Delta was like your SO guys and, um, guys whose paperwork wasn't good. So they couldn't just be like a big housing unit, like in a big pod, but it's just, you just, okay, cool. Like Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, wrecking shower days. Um,

you know, let's say it wasn't overwhelming. Like it wasn't like, uh, like you see in movies, like if somebody comes into a prison, everybody's shaking the bars and they're throwing crap, you know, onto the floor and they're like, you know, yelling and screaming, trying to, to get a rise out of the officer because it's not like a permanent housing place. Like, yeah, the workers are there, but those aren't like those guys like at the tail end of their sentence and they're not really like about the prison politics anymore.

Like I said, the other half, though, was like mental health. So that was a little bit different. But nothing about it was overwhelming to me. Nothing about it. And it's not because I'm like super qualified or like I'm hot shit. That's not it at all. It just it was like just like a it's a very simple place to work. So did you wonder why they were so short staffed then? So part of it's the pay. Right. Which is obvious. But a lot of people use it as like a stepping stone to get into different departments, which

I did hear people frequently say that the unit that I started at, the Alhambra Yard, wasn't a yard that people start at. So most guys that were there, they're like, yeah, I did 10 years at Lewis or I did 10 years at Florence or I was at Yuma, whatever it was, and then they transferred there. But I guess the department just was so short-staffed statewide that they said, okay, you can start here now too because I think they just wanted people in the system because you can transfer another yard or promote and go to another yard, which is what I eventually did.

But after like my first two months of it, I was like, you know, I got to see something else. I have to – I need like the full experience of working in prison. Like I need to see it. And I know because like I said, nobody is actually housed there. So there's no store. There's no politics. There's no visits only for the workers and only for the mental health guys. But that's a minority of the population.

So I started branching out and going to, I would go to Florence, I would go to Lewis, I would go to Perryville, the women's prison and kind of like sharpen my tools, I guess you can say, and like really learn about like what it is to do this job and how I'm going to do it. So that was, yeah, that was all like 2019. Now, are the older officers, maybe the ones that are getting ready to retire, are they showing you the wrong way to do things off the gate? Yeah.

No, I wouldn't say that. There was definitely nobody that was like intentionally setting you up for failure. It's just the problem is like we think about how to work in that environment. Policy, policy, policy, policy, right? Policy only works if you have enough staff. So if I'm in Echo and Echo is the max custody guys, right? If I'm running showers, policy would say, okay, you got to cuff them through the trap and belly chains and put leg irons on them just to take them to the shower. Nobody's doing that.

i'll cuff you up and i'll just walk you to the shower but i'm not going to go doing whatever policy says because we don't have enough people working here the phoenix yard wasn't that short when it came to staffing um but a lot of the other prisons were like miserably short so it's just back it goes back to what i said before like we're not all going to get along like if i'm brand new to this right and i see somebody that's been doing this for 30 years the one thing that i really overlooked if i would have started at rikers i'm going to be dealing with people that

are from that area. So the Manhattan Queens, you know, Westchester County, like the same area that I'm from. So same, excuse me, same attitude, same even references. Like they'll, they'll understand the things I'm talking about. But if I go work at the Yuma complex, right.

It's like pretty much all Mexican guys and women that work there that a lot of them live in Mexico So that's a completely different culture that I'm used to being exposed to it's different beliefs It's different thought processes different jokes different sense of humor. So you're just gonna butt heads with a lot of people So if I'm if I'm working with somebody I know him and I just don't get along I'm not really even gonna want to teach him how to do anything It's like I don't anything to do with him, but I I was never exposed to like yeah I'm gonna purposely said this guy out for failure and

It was never that. It was just a lot of different working styles. And there was a lot of gray area just because this sergeant might be all about policy, right? This sergeant says, you know what? Everything got done. There was no issues among staff, no uses of force, no nothing. I'm okay with that. Everything got done. You know, so it's all like the day is dictated based off who's in charge that day. After a couple weeks on the job, could you see yourself doing 30 years of that? I don't want to say that quick in, um,

Because a lot of it was still, like, I haven't really gotten the experience of it yet. I haven't really gotten the whole gist of it. Excuse me. But I also chose to move to Arizona for that. It was kind of like working at the Phoenix Art. It was kind of like, this is it kind of thing. Like, this is prison. You know how you talk about, like, the Wolf of Wall Street camp over here, FCI Danbury? It's like, you walk in there, like, this is a prison? Yeah.

You know, like everything I hear, it's like that place is like the creme de la creme. That's like the Ritz Carlton of federal prisons. Like, yeah, you're still in a prison, but it's like this is it. So after a couple of weeks, it was more of I got to think about what's best for me within this department because there's a lot of people that want to promote and move up as fast as they can. And you would see that a lot. A lot of people were willing to like I have 20 years to promote as much as I can.

And that if you're going to take that route, that means you have to be willing to move a lot. But you're doing it because you want to work your 20 years. You want to retire at a higher pay. So your pension is better. I get it. But there's a lot of people that want to just do the same exact thing every single day for 20 years, 25 years, which is I wouldn't be able to do that. It's just so repetitive. I wouldn't be able to do that. When did it start to get exciting for you? If it did at all? Once I realized that I could spread out and drive around and go do overtime at other units. Yeah.

Because it was kind of like satisfying this, I don't want to say need, but satisfying this desire that I had to see what it was really like. You ever have friends growing up that went to the military and like after talking, you know, you know them like your whole life, whatever it is. And then they kind of say like, like, I want to be in a combat zone. Like, you know what I mean? Like they have to see it. So yeah.

That was actually good. It was, um, because where I lived 10 minutes from where I worked, right. But I would work six to two, go home, shower, eat, you know, do whatever. And then I used to go down to Florence and work four to 10, four to 11. That's the good thing with overtime out there. You can, unless you're doing a hospital run or a transport, you can show up at any unit, any time of day and say, put me to work, which is a luxury, you know, like a couple of years later when I was working at, uh,

The unit was called SMU, Special Management Unit. It's closed now, but I was working 12-hour days, so I had a lot of free time. So I would go to work at night. I hung out with my then-girlfriend, but my now-wife. We would hang out, eat dinner, watch TV, whatever it is. And then when she goes to sleep, I would go to work and just do overtime because you could just show up whenever you want. That's a luxury. So it got real interesting when I started moving around because I would see –

You know, like you're at a five yard, you're at Browning, let's say Browning's like the death row guys and STG guys, the validated gang members and all that stuff. But you see how different, different prisons are. So it was, it was constantly interesting to me. It was, it was always like, I thought that I was doing the right thing by exposing myself to as much as I can so that I can be as successful as possible within this department. Yeah.

Share with us those differences that you noticed. Man, where do I start? Can I back up a little bit? Yeah. So when I worked nightlife, the guy that owned the club that I worked at, he owned two different clubs at one point. So one was in Queens, one was in Brooklyn. When you work with guys that live a street life, right, it's always like Brooklyn's like all the toughest dudes there is, right? Now, if you're from Queens, like Queens ain't shit kind of attitude. So I would see these guys in the club in Queens, they'd be fine.

I see them two days later in Brooklyn. They're acting like savages. So it was kind of like an environment thing. It was like, I know you guys are cool. Like, I see you all the time at the other place. But just because you're in Brooklyn, you have to act tough. You have to act a certain type of way. So with all these different units, because there's a complex out there called Lewis, right? I don't know if it's ever come up in any of your conversations before, but Lewis has a name for itself as being like,

A tough, tough spot. So Lewis is the whole complex. So then there's six units within Lewis. So you have Steiner, which was stick them Steiner, Maury murder, Maury. Then you have Rast, Rast, max, Barchi Bachman, whatever. But those units were all known for being like all the inmates were like heavy hitters. And they really lived that like political lifestyle. Like you stick to your kind, you stick with your own race. You, you, you do all the politics stuff. I could go to Florence, right? Florence is on the East side, right?

And you can go to central unit, right? CB2. That building alone is like 100 years old. But same thing. That's a GP yard. So GP yard has GP politics. But you can go right next door to north unit and that's like laid back. It looked like airport bunkers just the way it was set up. But there wasn't a lot of politics there.

But it was real different how it's like, you know, I wonder these inmates, I wonder, are you guys acting like this just because you're here? Like, oh, if I'm in Maury, I got to act a certain type of way or, oh, I'm at Browning, I have to act a certain type of way. Or, you know, what's the cause that's making you, you know, do your time like this? Oh, go on. No, no, no. What was your take on prison politics? It's pretty stupid. So we all know, like, we all hear like the typical things, right? Like black with black, white with white, Spanish with Spanish, you know,

You know, and all the differences amongst them. You know, you have like your Mexican Mafia, your Serenios, Norteños, whatever it is, right? If you hear about, like if I go on my RDOs and I come back on my weekend and I hear about inmates such and such, or I see him and he's got a black eye and he's all lumped up, most of the time, your own people do that to you. So everybody talks about like you got to stick with your own race and we have each other's backs and we have, you know, this brotherhood amongst us. Nine times out of ten, you're getting disciplined by your own people.

So it's like, what are the politics here? You just got to impress your own people who they can break certain rules, but you can't. And then there's consequences for them, but not for you. So I never understood it, but it's also like I wasn't the one in the cell. I wasn't the one dealing with the consequences of being in prison. Would you try to involve yourself in prison politics situations or would you just let it play out? No. There's things that I could control, things I could intervene in, but –

You kind of have to act a certain type of way based on your environment, because you know that if I don't, then these dudes are going to run down on me and try to ship me off the yard. It's like, do you want to be grouped up with, you have numbers and strength or you want to be a lone wolf doing everything yourself?

I can't think that I'm going to be able to control the politics. That's ridiculous. That's it'll never happen. And you hear a lot about like prison reforms and we need this. And you always hear about inmates getting stabbed and murder and all that stuff. Last time I checked, inmates are the one murdering each other. So you guys are the ones that are choosing to, to go about this lifestyle and live in this environment. And you guys are the ones that are willing to stab somebody over, over $80. Yeah.

You know, like nobody told you to do that. You chose to do that. Like, that's why we always hear in prison, you always hear about guys that are like trying to get in touch with the younger generation of inmates or, or get in touch with youth. These are all guys that have already done 20, 25 years. And they're like, I don't want to do this shit anymore. I don't want to be fighting people because he couldn't pay me back the two honey buns that he owed me. Because if I don't discipline him for what he did wrong to me, now the whole perception of me is I'm soft on this, I'm that.

So it's a big charade. How do you think the prison system fixes that? You can't. You can't. Inmates created that. Inmates created the politics. So you can move people around. That's a problem that they're having right now. There's this unit called Reining, right? It's at the Iman Complex. Reining was, when I was there, an IHP yard. So that's integrated housing. So you'll have like a black transgender dude with a –

skinhead white guy on a GPR. They would never house together, but they both come to the agreement. Okay. We're not going to sign PC paperwork, but we're going to set aside all the politics just so that we could all do our time and, you know, just go about our days. Like you don't have to just be my enemy because we don't look alike. But what that is now causing is IHP yards are kind of becoming like a new GP yard.

So there's just this new development of politics that are coming about. Now, this is just stuff that I hear because I'm not with this department anymore. But when guys are subjected to chronic boredom, they're going to try to find things to do to be creative. They're going to try to find things to do to break up their day. So that's all on the inmates. Yeah. No, I'm just saying like you can't expect that it's going to change. It would have to change from the top. It would have to – you would need to like –

reset everybody's like remember men in black where he flashes the thing and then you forget everything that would have to be done to every inmate just so that everybody can start from scratch and we could kind of set these politics aside but it's nothing I can do about that do you think the prison system creates too many rules no I don't think it's too many rules it's just I never gave people a hard time like okay perfect example of like different CEOs that are different attitudes that officers will have and

When I was working at SMU, right, I was working six to six. So if I knew that my sergeant, my lieutenant was going to come do a post inspection later on, I would just tell the inmates like, hey, lieutenant, whomever is going to come by later, take down your laundry line, take the cover off your light. And then once he comes in and checks, put it back up. But then there's other officers that'll –

Like you can go ahead and write tickets to every inmate you see that's doing something wrong. But A, we don't have enough time to do that because we have so much shit to do. And B, do you really want to do that all day? It doesn't get them. It doesn't get you anywhere because all you had to do is just speak to this inmate correctly. And nine times out of 10, he'll listen. And if you have to flex your authority, do it. But when it comes to rules, no, I don't think that there's too many rules. A lot of people that are in prison never had anybody disciplining them when they were growing up. And that's why they're in this environment.

You can't expect a kid to be born and mom is strung out on drugs. Dad's in prison. So it's just a community of people that just pitched in to kind of raise this child and think that this person is going to be set up for success. That's not how the world works. And then you end up in prison and now what? That was the saddest thing actually. That was at Phoenix. Like I said, it was intake yards. You see people come in and out, right? So you would see guys come in.

And I would hear stories like, oh, yeah, you know, that kid's 20 years old. He's on his second bid. And maybe he got a couple tattoos, right? Because you'll see guys get all blasted in prison, right?

And it's like, yeah, this is fun and games. You're talking about it now. Like you're laughing about it. Like, yeah, I got, I got three years. Like, that's not a big deal, but dude, that's your second strike. And now Arizona doesn't have three strikes like in Cali. But if you're a repeat offender, you keep catching these, these charges. Yeah. That three years when you get out next time, it's going to be 10 years. Like that's a long time and it's time. You're never going to get back. Some of the stories about my prison experience, the ones that stick with me the most have nothing to do with violence.

Right. Like I'm sure there's things about your time when you were down that you'll always remember, whether it's just something disgusting that you've seen or something that an inmate or a CO said to you that just really stuck with you. A lot of times when we would go to work at, um, if you work at like a, like a Lewis, right? Like you can be your, your assigned housing unit could be Bachman, right?

But when you go through ingress, they could say, hey, you have to go to RAS just because it had call-outs. So you would just move around within the department or within the unit a lot. So at Iman, you'll have – there's five units? Yeah. There's a couple of different units, but two of them are SO units, right? So when you walk into the unit, it's just kind of a set of houses in a big circle. And the rec yard is in the middle. And then there's a big fence in the middle that separates the two sides.

So two days in a row, I got sent to one of the SO yards. So I don't know any of these guys. I work at a completely different unit. So I go in, do my job, get set up, do whatever I have to do. And I remember the first time walking in and I hear this guy on the phone. And when you walk into the building, there's like a big common area. There's like a CO3 office right there. CO3 is like –

Say you want to move units or get somebody added to your email list. They're kind of like the guidance counselors or something. I don't know. So you have the big common area. You have the CO3 office. You have the barber. Maybe you have a TV over there or an Xbox, like a music room. But I remember the first time I ever walked in, I heard this inmate on the phone talking to what sounded like his kids or his baby mama, whoever it was. And I just hear this dude just...

barking on his kids. Like I told you, you're not allowed to do this before you finish your homework. And I told you that after your homework, you help your mom with this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, the guy comes off as a strict parent. Okay. Not my business. I would never say anything.

Next day, I get cross-leveled again. Go back to the unit. It's the same time of day. At 6 o'clock, there's nothing going on. So inmates are allowed – like counts at 4 and 8 o'clock. So 6 o'clock is kind of just dead time. Same thing, man. Inmate's on the phone and he's barking on his kids and he's like – if you don't get an A, not an A-, if you don't get an A, you're not going to basketball camp, like all these different things. It made me think of like my childhood to a certain extent because my mom was real strict about

And I didn't realize until later on in life, she was strict because she didn't want me to become a degenerate. I get it. And I don't fault her for it at all. And she was a lot more lenient on my sister, but my sister wasn't doing anything wrong. You know, you're worried about boys breaking shit and getting into fights and doing all that stuff. But yeah, so this image, he's just barking on his kids. Okay, cool, whatever. In my head, I'm thinking...

Okay, this guy did something, whatever he's here for. I never used to look up inmates. I never used to like look up what their crime was or how much time they have. But the guy wound up telling me, he's like, yeah, you know, I'm a real strict parent. And, uh, you know, my kids are already having college scouts looking at them for this or for that. I'm like, all right, you know, whatever, dude. Like, I don't even know this dude. Something about it just made me want to look him up because his number, he had, I remember he had like a three, three, three, two numbers. So,

Let's say you're the first inmate to ever go to prison in the state of Arizona. You're inmate number one and the numbers are ascending. So one, two, three, you know, so on and so forth. And your number never changes. So you could have like a really old number and have been in prison the entire time or you can be in and out. So this guy had a relatively new number. So it was probably only like seven, eight years old. So I'm thinking like, all right, you know, maybe he is a good parent, you know, and he's just trying to be strict on his kids and trying to be a dad now that he's away. Yeah.

For whatever reason, I looked them up. And I'm like, this guy doesn't get out for 70 years. 70 years. I'm like, what's your plan, dude? You're going to bark on the phone to your kids for 70 years? Were you this type of dad when you were out on the street? Were you this much of a parent when you were on the street? Or now because you can't be a parent, now do you want to be a parent even more? And he was in there for like pimping and pandering and shit that I don't agree with at all. And I'm just like, man, what type of person were you on the street? Because you're like, guys that are in there for that, in my opinion, they're like the biggest manipulators.

About just like how long until your kids realize, like, I don't have to listen to you. I'm never going to see you again.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Again, or if I do, it's going to take 20, 30 years to get you out. Do you feel like inmates could successfully parent from prison? No. No. I mean, a lot of that is contingent on how much time you have to do and what your sentence was like beforehand. But if you're like a marginalized person, that's tough, man. It's really tough to think that a kid's not going to want to just stray away because you

Maybe you are a really good dad. Maybe you were a really good dad, right? But now you're down for seven, eight years. Your kid's going to go through that rebellious phase of, I wish my dad was here. Why isn't my dad here? Did he abandon me? Whatever it is. Now you start acting up. And a lot of parenting is not just what you say. It's just being present. You know, like I told you outside, like my wife and I were expecting our first child in end of October. And we talk about it. It's like,

You know, I want to go to like every dance recital and every ballet performance she has, like all her school activities, just being there, you know? And so it's like, yeah, you can, you can, my dad is real strict on this. You can know his, his rules and regulations, but you're going to think about it a lot more if he's physically there, you're going to think, I don't want to go do something stupid because I'm going to have to go home and my dad's going to be there. So I don't really think you can.

I think you're just putting yourself at such a disadvantage where it's just a ticking time bomb where it's eventually going to blow up in your face somehow, some way. What are some other stories that impacted you deeply? Yeah, same thing. Like this has nothing to do with violence. So at the Phoenix yard, like I said, I think it was Echo. Echo was –

the higher custody guys. So I remember I heard on the radio, like, Hey, can somebody 45 processing for a move? I wasn't doing anything. I was like, all right, cool. Let me go get this guy and just put them, you know, in his housing unit in echo. And I go there and, um, guys just cuffed up ready to go. So I take them out. And when you walk into the building there, it's too big else, right? So Delta is the same. It's an L this way echoes and L this way. But when you're going down the hallway, it's just cells on both sides with the plexiglass. So, um,

All the inmates know that when those doors open, somebody's coming in. So everybody goes to the class or banging on the glass. Like, yo, bro, like I remember you from such and such. Like, you're just like, I don't want to say catcalling, but everybody's looking to see if they know you or if you know them, you know, you're clicking up with your own people or trying to see like this dude's enemy, whatever it is.

So I'm escorting the guy and I remember thinking, cause he's, he's a lot shorter than me. And he had a shaved head that his tattoos were actually pretty good for being, you know, prison tattoos. He had like a whole helmet, like his whole head was blasted. And, um, everybody's barking at this dude. He's not saying a single word. He's just this short little Mexican dude, you know, five, six, five, seven. Somebody says something to him that actually got his attention. Somebody called him like a name or something. I guess something that

Only like a real friend would know to call me by so he looks and he kind of like stops moving and I didn't really give him a hard time about it's not a big deal like talk your little two sentences and the guys bang on the glass like yo like how much time you got like what are you in here for that or I guess I hadn't seen each other in a while and the guy's like I'll never forget this. He's like he's like man. They gave me 15 flat I'm like it's a lot of time a lot of time, but you know what the guy said he's like I'm not worried about it I got nine months back time in County and

You know exactly what I'm thinking, like how dumb that sounds. Like, dude, you have nine months back time in county. You still have, what, 14 years and three months to do? And what I found out after, he didn't come from jail. He was already in the Lewis prison, caught another charge doing something, went back, and then got resentenced. So his initial charge could have only been for like four or five years, but

But now you got all this extra time because you had to do some prison stuff. But it's just like, I couldn't imagine ever thinking that 15 years is not a long time. And it just shows you like people really could become institutionalized real quick. A lot of people can get to that point where they're, they're more comfortable being in prison than they are being out. Cause you have different things to worry about. You know, in prison, there's only so many things like no one's going to drown to death in a swimming pool in prison. You know, it's just not going to happen.

But I remember thinking like, this dude's like 25 years old. It's over already for him. You know, he had a sentence school. Now he has to do this. It's like, bro, by the time you finish that, you're not even going to want to get out. And then if you can get out, what's the world going to be like for you? My wife is from, uh, she's from San Francisco, right? So we met when she was in Arizona for, um, she was going to hang out with her girlfriend for her birthday cause she went to ASU. So we had, after we met, we started talking, uh,

We planned for her to come back out so we could spend some time together. And at that point, she was already thinking about moving to Arizona. So it kind of worked out. It wasn't like I was like desperate to see her, you know, so it worked out. She had a reason to come out there other than just me. So I remember the two weeks beforehand, I was maxing out my overtime every week just because like, all right, let me have all this extra money so that I can take off when she's here and we can go out and have fun. So yeah.

It used to be 24 hours of overtime was the most you can do in a week, in one week. Then they upped it to 32 hours. You know how many people work their 40 hours every week and then they do 32 hours of overtime on top? How many? A lot. You're never home. And if you're working eight, you're basically working four 16-hour days, an eight-hour day, and then you have two days off. That's your whole life.

But I remember when, before she came out, I was doing all the overtime. And then when she was there, I remember I said to her, I said, Hey, hey, Raquel, you want to go get some chow real quick? And I was like, damn, man, like I just use a prison term in the real world. And it's like, it's true, man. Like I can only imagine if you're in there 24 hours a day, seven days a week for years on end, like that institutionalization thing is a real thing. And for everybody, it hits differently.

But I thought about that with that guy. The one that was moving around was talking about the 15 years. He's like, nah, I got nine months back time, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, this dude's destined. Like, this is it. This is his whole life. It's going to be his whole life. And it's a shame. It is because, like I said, growing up in such different – not different environments, but having two completely different households in different towns, you see different things. Like I said, we're not all equals, man. We don't all –

We could all have the same starting point, you know, me and you could have the same birthday, same year and everything. But if, if you grow up with both your parents in your house and I don't, you're already at such an advantage. And it's a shame. It's like how many people are just in prison because they're poor, you know, or they don't, they don't know any better. They're uneducated. Or I could, I could fight it. Like I'm a hundred percent innocent. I could fight it. If I blow trial, I'm getting 30 years or it can cop out to five years. Like these are the type of things that people have to think of. That's why I said I'm very big picture about things. Yeah.

Does working as an officer make you look at time differently? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, when you see somebody every day for years, you don't really think about, like, I've known this person for seven years because I see him every day. You don't think about how many different things have changed in his life because nothing has changed. But you think about what's changed in my life. You know, there's people that are never going to see their parents again. There's people that are never going to see it. There's people that never held an iPhone, you know.

But it's, I guess how you do your time is what makes it easier or harder for you. But I wish people didn't realize how finite time was until it's already too late because you always hear the same story. Like, like these dudes are all young and they're wilding out and they were reckless. They were shooting whoever Robin, whoever they didn't care because they were young. When you're 20 years old, you don't think about being 80 years old. When I graduated college in 2012, I didn't ever think that I was going to be 36 years old.

Not that I thought that I was going to like die or anything. I just didn't think that like, that's so far away. Like, I don't have to worry about that. You know, but I'm closer to being 50 than I am to being 20. You know? So it's like, man, you got to think about all this time and you got to think about when you're living this lifestyle, doing what you, what you think you have to do. People don't commit crime thinking they're going to get caught. You know, people, they do what they do out of necessity, stupidity, or they're trying to impress the wrong people.

But once you get jammed up and everything, you realize like this is it, man. Like I'm going to be 42 years old when I get out of here. You know, like that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes. What are some weird habits you would see inmates do from the perspective of someone that, you know, hasn't been to prison before but has worked as an officer? The sitting down to pee one was –

I mean, it wasn't like weird to see, but I mean, obviously, you know, white guys do that. I never thought about that ever. I never in my life thought about like sitting down to pee because of the particles coming up and like you're stuck in this little house, you know, the showering with sandals on. Like people only do that stuff at the beach. It just depends. Like I spent a lot of my time in like lockdown yard. So there wasn't as much unless they're at record or in their pod time, they weren't like moving around as much. But, you know, people realize like,

People realize when they go into prison, it's like, I actually am very artistic. You know, you'll see guys like with the origami or they're carving up little soap into statues to sell them or whatever. But when it comes to habits, like, you know, people realize like, you know, I only have to eat one time a day. Like just certain like little things, but I guess it's all dictated by your environment though. What was the most creative thing you saw an inmate do? Oh man, creative? I don't even know. I can't think of anything that's like that extravagant, but I remember there was one inmate who used to like, he would...

They're not dream catchers. He would take toilet paper and make rope out of it, which is pretty common. It's just like if you're making your fishing line with the drawstring from your boxers. But he would make rope out of it and then make braids. And then he would kind of braid things together to make artwork. That's pretty creative. I would never in my life think about doing that. I would never ever think about... Maybe I do have artistic abilities. I just don't know because I'm in the free world. I can do whatever I want. But State Prison Arizona, man, they kind of need to get it together because...

I would always hear things about guys that have been in federal prison. They would always say like, yeah, I'd rather do five years in the feds and three years in state because, you know, like the library, like there's just, or there's all these different programs. There's all these, these things for you to do. Just sticking somebody in a cell for years on end. Like that's not going to cut it. You said you spent most of your time in the lockdown unit. What was like a typical day like for that? Um, so, uh,

Every officer kind of has their own ways about them, their own rules, their own demeanor about them. So you know, right? If you're in a housing unit, you know it's shift change. You know if it's that officer's first walk of the day, you want to see who's coming around because maybe you have a rapport with this officer. Maybe you don't. Maybe whatever it is. Maybe your cellie likes them or whatever. But you get there at 6 o'clock, right? So at SMU, you do your initial walk, and then the next count is at 830. So I still had a couple walks in between there.

I had this rule, right? I didn't mind passing stuff around to people if you're in your pod. So the way SMU was, it was a big rectangle and then there's four hallways. And in each hallway, there's four clusters, two in the back, two in the front. Each cluster is six pods. So kind of like a big circle is one of those units where you walk in and then it's row of cells, row of cells. You're just looking at a concrete wall. I know it's kind of hard to visualize, but, um, so let's say, um,

You know, one of your people has just moved in upstairs somewhere and you want to give them a bottle of shampoo because if you move from a different unit, you're not going to have all your property for like maybe a week, maybe two weeks because it gets inventoried when it gets shipped out and then it has to get re-inventory when you get there. But there's only so many people that do that job. So if you're moving to a different prison, you don't have any of your stuff. You got to think about things in the big picture, right?

Me just taking a bottle of shampoo from you and giving it to the dude upstairs because you can't fish a bottle of shampoo. They can fish tablets. They can fish all types of shit, but you can't do that because you can't get it out of the cell. There's guys that I work with that would never do something like that. And like, yeah, you do that. And then next week they're asking you to bring in an ounce of heroin. I'm like, that's a little bit of a stretch. There's a lot of things that could happen in between that. But if I just do something so simple where, A, I treat somebody like a human,

Because this guy just wants to shower. He's not asking for anything ridiculous. Let me just give this bottle of shampoo upstairs. We could birdbath in it. You know how much easier that's going to make my day just from that simple gesture of humanity and civility. That's going to make my day a lot easier. Right. But I had rules. I said, look, I'll pass something within the pod. I'm not passing anything to different pods. That's crazy. That, that takes too much time and effort.

But there's a contingency. I'm only going to do it until 830 count. So don't ask me to pass something around at two in the morning. It's not going to happen. And if one person in this pod is an asshole, everybody's burnt because you guys expect something from us. I expect stuff from you. So police your own people. I shouldn't have to tell you how to speak to me. Like I'm very big on please and thank you. We can talk shit in between please and thank you, but start and end it the same way. But I'd also know that that's just like my rule. Like other people don't care about that.

But, um, you know, I'll pass things around. Cool. But once somebody does something and they, and you're going to screw it up for everybody. Like this is like a good statement of prison, right? If I'm having a problem with some guy and then all these inmates know how I do things and I'm cool about things and I don't take it too seriously, but you know, we, we have a good working relationship. If this guy over here is being a complete asshole to me, I'm not even gonna waste my breath talking to you.

If you're a Mexican dude or whatever, I'm just going to talk to whoever's in charge of the Mexicans. If you're a black dude, white dude, I'm just going to whoever's going to talk. I'm going to talk to whoever's in charge. And I'm going to be like, you know what? Your boy down there in, uh, you know, one Baker 27. I don't know what he's trying to do, but it's pissing me off. So deal with your people. Nine times out of 10, you come back the next week or next time you see him, no issues. Like that's a representation of prison. Like that's how you have to have relationships with people to go along and get along kind of thing.

Like I said, if you're doing shit egregious or if you're like assaultive on staff or you're gunning at the nurses and all that stuff, I'm not even going to talk. I'm not going to waste my breath. But that's just how you do things. But yeah.

Depending on the unit you work in, right? If you're working in a lockdown unit, these inmates need you for everything. So I have to bring mail to your cell. I have to bring your store. You know, Wednesday was store day. So every time you walk around on Wednesday, yo, what's up with store? What's up with store? Because you know how that goes. That's people's lifeline right there. And you would see during football season, like I would go up top to give somebody their story. Like, hey, can you bring the entire bag downstairs to Morales, whoever it is? Because, you know, he owed up his debt.

But when you work at a high custody yard and you have so many inmates dealing, you're so under, you're so short staff. It's like no, no day ever felt the same. Like it just never like, yes, it is the same, but it never felt the same. That's the one thing I liked about that department was being cross level and everything. Like you experienced like different housing units, different inmates. And it's like I said, it goes back to your, your kind of like, um, sharpening your tools for your trade. And then, um, when you deal with like the SMI guys, that's a totally different ball game. But, um,

I liked it. You know, I did. I left that department just because of, you know, financial reasons. Like it just doesn't pay enough. It's not worth it. But I liked working there. Tell us about fishing. I feel like every single person is fascinated with fishing. Yeah. I mean, a lot of times. So at SMU, a lot of times if we didn't have two control officers, we would kind of just override the doors to the pod. So the cell door would be shut, but the pod doors would be open because otherwise we have to wait for somebody to walk all the way around upstairs and open them.

So guys would fish things, right? So you take your, you take the string from your inside of your boxers and you usually tie it around, um, a piece of paper that you fold up. Like one of those little triangles that you used to flick in high school to play football with. And then you got to have another one at the end of it. So one is to catch it. And one is just a weight kind of thing, but you'll see guys like they'll, they'll, they'll put something in a bag, like an old tortilla bag or whatever it is. And,

You know, I want to put a bag of rice, send it upstairs or, or guy who would fish tablets, dude, guys will have the balls to fish their tablets from the top tier to the bottom. And you just see sliding out the door. And if you're in the control room, the control room at SMU is above everything. So you can see into every pod. So you can see what everybody's doing all day long. People are just fishing stuff, doing this, doing that.

But if the doors to the pods were open, you couldn't really hear us coming. So, you know, if I turn my radio down and I hold my keys so they're not jiggling, I would just stand next to a cell and I would see like, all right, this dude's trying to get his tuna upstairs, whatever it is. And I would, if you got caught, I would just take it and put it on top of your cell, the trap on your cell because you can't get to it. I was like, I'll make you wait a little bit and come back and get it. But it's a genius system. You know, if it wasn't for fishing, inmates would be

A lot more isolated because you could have one book even if it's thin enough to get under the door and the whole tier can read it. You just got to fish around, but it's an art form. Did they give you a nickname in there? Yes, but it's only something that stuck with a certain half of the unit I was at. So my last name is Tadaldi, which doesn't really like roll off the tongue that easily.

There was this Mexican inmate that time, a lot of the Spanish guys, and I give them respect for this, they were like trying to fight their case and they're like, look, I don't even speak English. How am I going to fight my case? I have to at least learn to speak English, right? Or guys just wanted to learn English. They're like, look, I got nothing but time. I might as well do it. And there was this inmate who would always try to read my name off my shirt, you know, because you know how it goes. Everybody's name is on their shirt.

And, um, it's not like such a common name. So he would just sound it out. Ted doll, Ted doll, D Ted doll D right. Next walk. I come around, he reads it to dolly. All right, cool. Guy's getting it. So I walk around the next time and I hear the guy say to him, he's like, uh, he said it in Spanish to his boys. He basically said, he was like, Hey, what's that cop's name? That tall guy. And the guy's like, uh,

I don't know, tamale? Something like tamale? And it's funny because we wore brown pants and beige shirts, which is like kind of the colors of tamales, like the beigeness. So for that, yeah, it was tamale, which I was cool with. It wasn't derogatory. It was funny the way it came out. But I never had like a –

I never had like any other nickname than that. Because they were short-staffed, did the inmates get neglected at all? Oh, yeah. Yeah, and that's a big problem too because if you're in there doing what you're supposed to do, right? Look, I don't want to sit in a cell in Arizona in the summer.

It's just pouring sweat. You're just pouring sweat all day long. Right? Guys just want to shower and feel clean about themselves. I get it. I also understand you're the one that decided to do the crime. Don't cry about it in prison, but I don't think people go to prison thinking that they're going to be deprived of things that they're entitled to. Like, you know, that term, give them what they got coming. That's a very common thing in prison. Right? Um,

If we don't have enough staff, we can't get anything done. So if we don't have enough staff for rec, can't do rec. If we don't have enough staff to take you guys to the resource room, then it's not going to get done. And that's what causes people to act up. And most of the time it was just showers because not everybody wants to birdbath all day long, especially having a celly. But we got to do the best of what we can. And that's like my thing with policy. I'm not somebody that ever thinks that I'm better than policy, but policy only makes sense if we have enough people that actually work here.

you know it's like i said i just can't get things done you know you're either going to complain that i didn't get all my stuff done but i didn't get all my stuff done because i'm doing things per policy i don't you know it doesn't really work like that and you'll have some you'll have sergeants sometimes that are just such sticklers about things so it's like you could be working one day and get written up by a sergeant for this but the next day you don't because it's just a different sergeant working there you know i remember one time so when i was at the phoenix yard right so i worked at phoenix for a while and i eventually transferred down to florence

But when I was at Phoenix, I used to go just drive down there and do overtime a lot. So I remember I went to a unit, just showed up there. They put me to work. And the sergeant comes around and do her post check. Now, mind you, I had already worked six to two at my unit. And Arizona is nothing but sand. You're in the desert everywhere you go. And the sergeant came in and she did her post check. And she made a comment about my boots not being shined. And I remember thinking, I'm like, now one person that works under you likes you.

There's no way anybody likes the way you do things here. I said, I'm here doing overtime, not because I'm so worried about helping the department. I'm doing it for my own financial interests. That's obvious. But you're worried about my boots not being shined. Like that's what you're worried about. Or when I first started, we weren't allowed to have facial hair. And I've, since I can grow a beard, I've never not had a beard. So being in an environment where now I have to shave every day, like I'm not doing that. Not out of laziness. I just didn't like my appearance. And I remember thinking,

Like are we selling life insurance here? Are we doing like presentations here in front of politicians? Like why can't I have facial hair? Like that doesn't make any sense. I used to get in trouble for that a lot too. But certain sergeants let it go. Other sergeants don't. But when it comes to rules, it's like not all rules are going to work in every prison. It's just based on – it's based on like the way the inmates behave. It's based on the structure of the prison itself. It's based off staffing unit. It's also based off like if your staff wants to do what they have to do because it's real easy to say –

Fuck them. It can wait. I've done it. It's real easy to say that or it's real easy to like forget something that you promised an inmate to because you know that you're like an hour away from your the start of your weekend. Yeah, I would remember that all the time, especially in solitary where like you asked, say, a guard for a razor and it's four o'clock on a.

or 3:30 on a Friday and he's getting ready to go. And that makes a big difference for that inmate getting the razor. But for the guard, it's something that's-- - Easily forgettable. - Easily forgettable. And that can affect the whole dynamic between that guard and that inmate. - And that's why I say, that's why I said before, I didn't mind passing,

You know, little things like, yeah, I'll give a guy a thing of peanut butter upstairs or I'll give him like the boiled eggs from your tray that you don't want because that little gesture of showing somebody that, yes, you're an inmate. You did what the fuck you did. But you're still a person and I'm willing to treat you like one and not a caged animal all the time makes your days a lot easier.

No, I would see inmate. I mean, I would see officers that would get bitter about inmates, say, getting a special holiday meal or, you know, all these special items on commissary. What was that limit for you where you're like they shouldn't even be getting this because they committed a crime or they're a human? And let me you know, it doesn't matter. I don't care about that. I would say a lot of it was more with guys behavior. So if you're working like in an SMI unit, right, seriously, mentally ill, that whole stigma thing.

It's blatantly obvious that a lot of guys in there have serious, serious mental health problems, right? Like this is something that was not a reality check, but it was eye-opening, right? On this side of the country, nobody's smoking meth. You know what I'm saying? I never in my life heard of somebody that ever smoked meth in New York. Crack, maybe, but that was like in the 80s. But I would hear this...

Same story over and over again, right? I would hear guys say like yeah, you know in the early 2000s like I had my own Construction business or like I was just making a lot of money doing this doing that whatever it was. I was real successful All of a sudden meth hit the scene. I started, you know partying I started smoking meth and then all of a sudden my party favor became a habit and then my habit became a necessity and then it got to the point where I was smoking so much and I was Excuse me. I was up for nine days straight and

And then I got paranoid and then I started hearing voices in my head because I was so paranoid and tweaked out because of all the meth I was smoking. And then I beat somebody to death with a brick. And now I'm in prison for 15 years, 20 years. Like you hear that story a lot, a lot. So those type of guys that just had this psychotic break. Now you're at an SMI yard, let's say. So,

A lot of the guys in there would just work the system because they didn't want to be on the main line because they didn't pay their debt or they didn't want to play with the politics, but they also didn't want to PC up. So a lot of guys know how to work the system. But when it came to like these guys and their behavior, you would see a lot of, um, a lot of guys would specifically just wait till like a specific, uh, psychologist was there because they know that that psychologist is going to give them what they want if they say certain things. And then when they get what they want, um,

I would feel some type of way about it because I know specifically that you're just getting over on this. You're getting over on everybody right now. However, I never had a problem with talking back to rank about things that they approved. Right. So if, if my sergeant wants to give an inmate this bottle of water for whatever the reason is, if it's for the greater good of the entire unit, I'm okay with it. Cause at the end of the day, it's just a fucking bottle of water.

But a lot of people said, oh, this inmate's getting over on you. He's doing this. He's working you. So they feel some type of way, but I didn't really care that much. And I'm not going to go, okay, if this sergeant gave you this, I'm not going to go when he's not around taking it back from you because it's just going to cause problems for myself. I don't want to go to work every day and have problems. And like I said earlier, admin is looking to jam you up. They are not your friends. Staff, people you work with and maybe sergeants and lieutenants that are above you, we're just such different people that we butt heads a lot.

And people that I get along with might not get along with somebody else. People that I don't like, you know, other people may think they're the coolest person in the world. Like I don't have a problem walking right past people if I don't like you. If I don't like you and you work there, I'll work with you. We'll go on a transport. We can do what we have to do. I don't have a problem with that at all. But other than that, like I'm never going to ask how your day is off or I'm never going to ask about anything that has to do with your personal life. And that causes tension, but –

Like I said, that would be a lot of the problem sometimes. If this officer thinks that this guy doesn't deserve it, well, this officer, what? You're Captain fucking America here? You're no different than anybody else. But I don't know, man. I didn't make a big stink over little things. Like if this guy's going to get to shower on an off day, if my Sergeant LT says let him shower just so that he doesn't like have to have a use of force on him, I'm okay with that.

Can you break down some of the lingo you've been using throughout this conversation, like PC, anything like that for the audience? I know they always ask about it. Yeah. So certain things just become routine, like the lingo that we all use, even with our family or our friends, right? So in prison, you'll have things like PC, protective custody. From my experience, and I think a lot of people will understand this, there's this misconception that if you go to a PC yard, you're safe. And that's

Very inaccurate my opinion PC yards are more dangerous than GP yards am I and from from what I've seen because if you're on the mainline Right, if you're in a GP yard, there's a structure there. I can't just go and

And do what I want to do and be a vigilante because I'm going to have to report to people that are the same race as me. Right. And I'm sure it was the same thing as the feds. So if you have, let's just say two white guys, it mean you were both in there, both inmates and we're under the politics of the whites, you know, the woods, whatever they are, depending on where you're at, there's going to be repercussions for our actions. So if we just kind of do things on our own, try to make money on our own,

you know, we'll get what DP'd and DP'd. I'm not going to say what the one is that people probably think, but the other one is disciplined. So usually DP'd is if you do something wrong, your race has to deal with it. So you got DP'd, you got disciplined, but going back to the PC thing, protective custody. If me, like I said, if you and I are both, you know, we're under, we're, we roll with the white boys, right? But we go to a PC yard. Now you go to a PC yard and it's open season. There's nobody in charge. So if,

There's no structure at all. It's every man for himself in there. So this notion like, yeah, you're in protective custody. Maybe if you're in like a SHU, segregated housing unit, you know, SHU, the whole, those are the same thing, right? You know, there's terms like

You could have one unit, but within each unit, like let's just say SMU, Special Management Unit, right? Wing 1 was, let's say, workers. Wing 2 was SOs. So everybody knows what SO means. Everybody knows what CHOMO means. And an SO is a sex offender. Yeah, I don't know if I was supposed to say that or not. But you can go down. Wing 3 is BDU, right? What the hell does BDU stand for? Behavioral Detention Unit. So you're already in prison. You act up. Now you're sitting in jail within prison.

But these terms just become so common knowledge. Like they just become so, you know, store, right? Store is commissary. Store is commissary, yeah. Or canteen, right? Canteen, I never heard. I never heard that in state prison. But you'll have like H&R, right? Health and, I don't know. I actually don't know what it stands for. But it's just like, oh, if you have a medical issue, you want to write the medical staff about it.

But yeah, like that's how we, that's how we communicate in prison. Like, that's what I said, like with 10 codes and all that stuff. Like I know the main ones, like 1019 is I'm in route to where you are. 10-4, I'm okay. 10-13 is a staff assault, whatever it is. But inmates know all that stuff. I don't really think about policy, but you know. Yeah, I used to out of boredom, I would read like the handbook.

uh, the prison handbook that they give you that no one reads when you actually get there. But if you're in the shoe or something and you need something to do and there's a copy of it, you end up reading the whole thing. Yeah. Or, or even like, um, you know, like a lot of people that are interested obviously in this podcast, they're going to listen to other ones. So you'll hear about like the Cali stuff, like SNY, sensitive needs yards. That's her, I would think probably just PC. It's probably the same thing out here, like an Arizona, like IHP integrated housing program. But, um, it's a lot of acronyms. It's a lot of, um,

It's a lot of bigwigs that are trying to do what's right, but they don't actually know what goes on on the floor. That's, I think, the problem right now. Like the old director in Arizona, his name was – what was that jerk-off's name? I forget his name. Not Shin. Shin was the guy he came after. But the old director, when I started, was known for being like – he would steal money from the department and he was very anti-staff and all that stuff. He winds up either getting fired or retired or whatever it was.

And then you hear on the news, like, ex-DOC director has standoff with the cops. And he's, like, shooting at the cops from his garage in Tempe, Arizona. You know, and it's just people get trapped into that, man. Like, people really get trapped into that life. And, like, this is all they know. Like, this is who they are. This is their identity. You know, you want to hear another story about why I always try to treat inmates the right way. And, like I said, I'm not a hug-a-thug dude. I will...

Do what I have to do if I have to do it, but I'm not some tough guy, hot shit. I'm not trying to make it harder on myself. I catch this in my tattooing one day, right? Now the dude that was doing the tattoo never spoke to me. Native guy. Um, his name was Tashoni. Never gave me a hard time about anything. I didn't really know anything about him. All right, cool, dude. Like there's inmates that I'll talk to every walk. There's other inmates that never say a word to me. I'm okay with that.

So I catch the guy tattooing and I talked to him. I said, cause tattoos in prison is not a big deal. I never wrote a ticket in state prison. I didn't care about your fishing line. I didn't care about your, your light cover because I know that a, you got a lot of time to do B you and I have a good rapport and having a rapport is more of an asset to me than it is me. What flexing my ego. Okay. Yeah. You lost phone privileges for a week because you had a ticket for something stupid.

Um, but going back to that inmate, I was speaking to him and I said, Hey bro, like, what do you, what do you, what are you in here for? So basic shit, like aggravated assault, fell into possession of a firearm. Like how much time you guys like I got, um, nine years, but I'm about to hit my seven year mark. So I'm up for parole soon. So I said, so what you're saying is if I write you a ticket for having this tattoo gun, it could fuck up your parole. And he was like, you know, kind of like that. Like, yeah. So I said, okay. Hey, I don't even know how to write a ticket.

All I did was take the motor out of the gun and I took the guitar string. I was like, you guys figure it out. Like don't start fighting in here, but if you already paid for it, you guys work it out amongst yourselves. You're adults. About three months later, right? I worked my six to two. I go home. I used to go. So on my Friday, a lot of times on my Friday, I would work my six to two and then I would go do a six to six hospital run because you're just sitting in the hospital. You're not doing anything. So I didn't care if I was tired or exhausted. You're just sitting in a chair just like this.

So I walk out and I had my pants on, but I didn't have my work shirt on. And I hear somebody say like, what's up to Dolly? And like, I'm used to hearing that because that's my name, but I'm only used to hearing that in prison. Nobody goes like by their last name on the street. Definitely not with my last name. And I look over and it was the inmate that I caught tattooing. He caught parole and he moved in two doors down from me. So that just goes to show you, it's like, yeah, a lot of these guys have these long ass bids are never getting out of here, but it's,

if I would have treated this guy differently, if I would have treated him like a piece of shit, that interaction might have gone a lot different for him and I. And all he did, he was, I remember he was, he was drinking a beer, smoking, you know, whatever. And he's just like, we're good, man. Don't worry about anything. Not granted. He only lived there for like a couple of weeks and then I never see him again. But, um, like when I, when I see people that I work with that are just going in there and they're just barking at inmates about shit that nobody cares about, I'm like,

Do you have problems like in your personal life that you're trying to deal with? Like, do you like having this authority over people? And I'm just not like that. I'm just not, I'm not going to go and make it a big stink over something. Like I said, my job is not to re-discipline you. You're already being disciplined because you're here because of what you did. But also, I don't really know if you did what you did. But I'm sorry, I'm like veering off topics away from the initial question. But yeah, dude, prison's like never going to, if you work for a big department, like you're never going to be bored. Yeah.

And if you really don't like it, like if you know that you don't have a good skill set of dealing with people, then you probably shouldn't work in this environment. You know, like I said, working in the nightlife industry prepared me for it because I was dealing with criminals. And I don't even mean that as like a negative label to them, but they live that street life. Like I know guys that are where you were at at Fort Dix, you know, not guys that I'm friends with, but I just – I see them on Instagram. Where did you get that phone? How much did that cost? You know, but –

these guys really lived that lifestyle and they have like that, that like when they would come by themselves, they're cool. When they're with their honoraries, they have to flex and act tough. So it really set me up for when I went into the prison system. Um, now I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, what's next? Because like I said, I'm married, I got my baby on the way. So, um, you know, there's something else out there. I haven't seen it yet, but, um, overall, man, prison is not a bad place to work. I think it, it, it really teaches you compassion and humility and,

Because if you're looking at somebody that's been in the system for 30 years and they're just in and out and it's the same routine over and over, right? You get your psych meds. Okay, cool. You'll be taking your meds for three years. You get your morning meds, your noon meds, your evening meds, your PM meds brought to your cell four times a day if you need them four times a day. Then when you get out, you're given a 30-day supply of all your medication, but you don't know how to divvy them up.

You don't know when you're supposed to take them. You're just used to them showing up at your door. And if you've been in prison and you have mental health issues and you're not even dealing with the underlying causes of your mental health issues and you have drug issues, all you're going to do is take your medication, either abuse them or try to flip them for something that you can abuse on the street, and then you're going to be right back in prison. So when you see that, it kind of gets discouraging. It's like, you know, my tax dollars is what's paying for this. Your tax dollars is what's paying for this. It gives you that, like...

frustration of like we know what needs to be done to change this but you know it's just the wheels of the government just turned slow man and it's um like so you know it'd be such a simple thing that would help so many people when you get out you should be able to get all your tattoos removed for free because like i knew a guy who got released and i only knew him on the tail end of a sentence he never bothered me nothing that's no no problems and

fully blasted. I mean, he got from, he left his face, but he got underneath his jaw, complete, like everything. So when you see somebody like that, you would think like, you probably have a lot of time to do. I'm like, you got an entire body suit when you had a seven year sentence and that's seven years. What start to finish, you can catch parole earlier, but it's like, how are you going to get out and go back into the real world?

And think you're going to get anywhere in life with all these tattoos. Because tattoos is one thing. Prison tattoos are another. Anybody with decent vision can spot the difference between the two. I know there are some programs that are doing like the charity work where they'll – if you were in a gang or anything and you want gang tattoos removed. Or their hate speech tattoos. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they'll remove those for free, which is good. Sorry. I don't remember what you said about the water. You know, it's just – I don't think people realize how easy it is to potentially fall in the trap of – not even trap, but potentially –

Becoming an inmate, you know if I'm out with my wife right now, right and we're out doing something whatever it is We'd be a target doesn't matter if if I walk away for a second and I come back and I see that somebody just grabbed her arm I don't know what I would do to protect her But if I take it too far in the eyes of the law now what all for what doing I'm supposed to do is my wife I'm supposed to protect her or if I'm with my nieces or if I want my mom or whatever it is, so

It's real easy to fall into this where it's like even if you just get like a six-month sentence, whatever it is, like it's not that hard to become an inmate, man. It's not. And there's just like this thought process like, all right, if you've been in prison, you're a piece of shit. The overwhelming majority of people that I met in prison are pieces of shit and that deserve to be there. But like I said, I can't look at a guy that's my age who's all tatted up.

And I can't think of him as a piece of shit because he got involved in the gangs and he got caught selling drugs and he robbed another gang member. I said, maybe if this dude just had a dad reading him a book at night saying, I love you. Maybe if you had a mom that fed him a bottle and gave him attention and nurtured him, maybe he wouldn't be in this situation.

But when you force a kid to grow up on his own or his uncles have to raise him and they're all in the street life, can we really be mad at this person because he fell into this? And then by that point, it's too late. That's why people always want to say, like, I'm trying to get into the youth's head. Like, this is not – this doesn't end well. You either end up dead or in jail for the rest of your life. Are you happy with your decision to become a correctional officer? Yeah. I don't – like I said, I don't mind the job at all. There's obviously things I don't like about it. There's things I would change. But –

I'm not obligated to go there any day. I could punch out one day and never come back. I don't have to be there. But I don't think it's like one of those things like I'm serving my community and all that. I think about what it offers my family. I think about I have a recession-proof job. I have guaranteed benefits. And as you get older, you have to think about that type of stuff. And if I would have never moved to Arizona, then I don't meet my wife Raquel.

So I don't care if I get fired tomorrow. Like this decision is still going to be like worth it to have gone out there. It all happened for a reason. And if I could say this, like if I would have gone to Rikers, knowing what I know now about how the hardest thing in my opinion about working in prison is just dealing with staff and the people above you, I would be dealing with a lot more difficult attitudes, a lot of city attitudes. So it's like that probably would have been a bigger problem or a harder problem to navigate because –

New York City people are a lot more aggressive overall than people from Winslow, Arizona.

Definitely. Well, Steven, thanks so much for coming on the show today, man. It was an incredible conversation. It was good to hear your perspective of it. And I appreciate you coming out here. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. And you got this set up and I'm always going to be a fan of you, man. Yeah, definitely. That's the coolest part about this, that we can have fans of the show on the show to come and sit here and tell their stories. Right on, man. Safe travels back and congrats on the kid. Oh, yeah, man. Thank you.