While you're in

After the door slams behind you

The previous guide covers everything you do before the door. This one covers what happens after it. It is not a task list. It is what it's like to be a number and a nickname somebody else picked for you (I was "Lil J" or "gay-not-gay Josh," depending on who was talking).

Read it before you go. You will not be able to look anything up once you are inside.

Start with part 1: The role See all 9 parts

Nine parts, written to be read in order. The rest of this page is the front matter: what the guide covers, and one thing you need to know before part one.

For someone inside

Copy the whole guide for TRULINCS

A link is useless to someone inside. This turns every part of the guide into plain text you can paste into a message.

Copy the whole guide

Every part as plain text, no links, cut into messages CorrLinks will take.

The frame

What this tries to cover

This covers most cases, not all of them. What's here holds across the federal system wherever you land. The differences are mostly between security levels, and sometimes between joints, though those are subtler. If you are headed to a low, the low security guide covers what changes there, and per-institution details are in the facility guide. Where something forks, it is marked.

I did my time at a men's low. Everything here comes from that or from documented policy. For other levels, all I have is what people told me, and I say so when that's what I'm working from.

I have nothing useful to say about women's facilities. They differ enough in social structure that anything I wrote would be a guess. I am not qualified and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Look elsewhere for that, and be skeptical of anyone who claims to cover both without having done both.

Read this first

Exhibit A

A note before the part that sounds bad

Inmates in federal prison sort into groups (called cars), and those groups are organized largely along racial lines, then by region or home state. This is not a fringe dynamic or an artifact of one bad facility. It is the basic organizing structure of the population, and it will apply to you on your first day whether or not you want anything to do with it.

I am describing a structure. I did not build it, I do not defend it, and nothing here should be read as endorsement.

It is in this guide for one reason. A person who walks in without knowing this arrives unprepared for the first conversation they have, misreads what is being asked of them, and makes avoidable mistakes in their first week that follow them for the rest of their sentence. Preventing that is the entire purpose of this document. Leaving it out to make the guide more comfortable to read would make it useless.

Start here

Exhibit B

The golden rules of surviving

If you read nothing else:

The guide

Exhibit C

Read it in order

1. The role

You stop being an individual who makes decisions and become the occupant of a position. The adjustment, intake, the paperwork conversation, and your first days.

2. Cars

The group you are aligned with from day one. What it gives you, what it expects back, who the driver is, and why the whole structure holds.

3. The unwritten rules

Property, space, the television, the phone, the shower. What never gets asked and what never gets volunteered. None of it is posted. All of it is enforced.

4. Debt

There is no cash, so everything is credit, and a small unpaid debt escalates far out of proportion to its size. The rule, and how new arrivals get caught.

5. Information and trust

The telephone game, played constantly and badly. What never gets discussed, why your locker is not private, and the value of repeating nothing.

6. Working with staff

Correctional officers, the unit team, and your case manager. Who does what, how to ask, and who is watching you do it.

7. What conflict costs

A twenty-second fight can cost months, and the price is set by policy. The sanctions, the arithmetic, and how to step back without looking weak.

8. The economy

Stamps, stores, and services. What things cost, why they cost that, and what happens when the episodic enforcement finally arrives.

9. Your time

Boredom, routine, the visit cycle, and watching for the drop. What a year of not deciding anything does to you, and what helps.

The short forms

Exhibit D

If you do not have time for nine parts

The checklist

The ten things that matter most inside, ranked by what getting them wrong costs you. Everything above, compressed into one page.

The FAQ

Just about anything you could ask, answered: hygiene, cellies, money, cooking, yard economics, broken bones.

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

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.

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If this helped, it will help someone else too.