Doing time at a low

# How conflict actually happens

Serious violence at a low is rare. Fights are not. Here is the honest version, because the short version leaves you unprepared.

The honest version

## Rare, and not zero

Here is the honest version, because I have given people the short version before and the short version is not quite right.

Serious violence at a low is rare. It is not a place where men are shaken down for their commissary or where new arrivals are tested. The system is heavily self-policing: a lot of people on that compound have arrangements worth real money, everyone's release date is the thing they care about most, and nobody wants an incident that brings a shakedown or a lockdown (everyone confined, movement stopped) onto the whole unit.

But fights do happen, and telling you they do not would leave you unprepared for the one time it matters.

Causes

## What actually starts them

Almost never anything dramatic. In descending order of frequency:

- Debt — unpaid, disputed, or renegotiated without agreement;
- property — something touched, moved, borrowed, or missing;
- the phone — time, turns, hovering, and what someone overheard;
- the television — genuinely, and particularly during football season;
- disrespect in front of other people, which is the category all the others convert into;
- and something said about somebody that traveled and came back distorted.

Notice that four of the six are avoidable by following [the unwritten rules](/going-in/while-youre-in/the-unwritten-rules), and the fifth is avoidable by not repeating things.

The pattern

## How it escalates

There is a pattern, and it is slower than you would think. Something happens. It gets mentioned. It gets mentioned to the wrong person. The two cars involved talk. Usually it resolves there — the driver on one side tells their own person to pay, apologize, or drop it, and it ends.

Fights happen when that process fails or gets skipped. Almost always, someone handled something themselves that should have gone through their car.

The fear

## Weapons

They exist. They are uncommon at a low and their use is rarer still. The overwhelming majority of physical conflict at a low is a short fistfight in a blind spot, arranged so that it is not seen, ended quickly, and not reported by either party.

The procedure

## What to do

Leave the area and tell someone from your car. That is the entire answer.

The fear people have is that this marks them as weak. It does not, provided you use the correct channel. Going to your car is the expected procedure and it is how the great majority of disputes end. Handling something yourself when it should have gone through the car is what causes problems, not the reverse.

What you never do, under any circumstances, is involve staff in a dispute with another inmate.

The arithmetic

## What a fight costs

A twenty-second fight produces a shot (a disciplinary write-up) for both parties, regardless of who started it. Self-defense is a mitigating argument at a disciplinary hearing and often not even that.

The sanctions are covered in [the companion guide](/going-in/while-youre-in/what-conflict-costs), but the one people forget is the halfway house (the halfway house before release) recommendation. A shot in your file is a reason to cut your pre-release placement, and that is frequently the most expensive part — more expensive than the lost good conduct time (days off for staying out of trouble) and considerably more expensive than whatever you were arguing about.

Keep reading — part 9 of 13

### [Shakedowns, the hole, and lockdowns](/going-in/security-levels/at-a-low/shakedowns-the-hole-and-lockdowns)

The three ways the institution reaches into your day without notice, and what each one costs you.

For your people

## Hand the rest of this site to your family

You will not be able to look things up once you're inside. They can, and this is where: [everything written for the one waiting](/for-families) — a twelve-part guide to mail, visiting, money, and your release date, plus their own FAQ and checklist. Alongside it, a [guide to every facility](/resources/facilities) with [email alerts when visiting stops](/lockdown-alerts/subscribe), the [support group directory](/resources/support-groups), calculators for your release math, and [free answers](/contact) when they have questions.

Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you.

**Need help with this? Just ask.**

These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. **Answers are free** , and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer.

[josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Low%20security%20question)

I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.