Thankfully, I’ve never been inside of a prison. I don’t plan on getting locked up at any point in my life mostly and I have shows like HBO‘s Oz to thank for that, shows that scared the piss out of me and have left a lifelong lasting impression. The biggest deterrent for me breaking the law are stories like the ones below, stories from current and former prison guards talking about the most disturbing things they’ve ever witnessed…Contrary to the first story, these are not humorous, they’re pretty FUUUUUCKED up, so get ready to be disturbed (via AskReddit):
Xofthecourts:
My dad used to work as a CO and he would never tell me any stories about his time there until one day of constant badgering he told me the tale of the Easter surprise.
Easter morning one of the inmates thought it would be a brilliant idea to get completely naked and shove a toilet scrubber all the way up his ass so the only part visible was his bristled “bunny tail”, he then proceeded to scream that he was the Easter bunny while trying to hop around and avoid the oncoming guards
eavf92:
My dad was installing a ventilation system at a women’s prison. He had a nice chat and a sandwich with an inmate. After they said goodbye to each other, a guard told my dad that the woman was sentenced for life because she killed her husband, and put the body through a meat grinder.
JFeth:
My dad is retired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and started out in the California prison system. There are a lot of stories that us kids didn’t find out until he was retired.
He was attacked with a pipe and almost died. He doesn’t know who attacked him or why.
He was on a kill list from the Mexican mafia and my mom got threatening phone calls from people saying they were watching us kids at the bus stop.
He transported inmates back to Cuba where they were promptly walked around a corner and shot and killed after they were handed over.
I’m pretty sure he shot and killed fleeing inmates but he won’t confirm it.
He has walked in on many suicides and saved a few people trying to commit suicide.
He won’t talk about a lot of things, like riots. He was head of the SORT team, so he has seen some shit.
I’ve tried to get him to write these stories down but he won’t do it because he doesn’t want anyone to get in trouble.
OptimusPitts:
One of my old roommates worked in the county jail. He came one one day with a stone face so I asked him how work was. All he said was “I saw a guy eat his shampoo because he couldn’t shower…then uncontrollably puke and shit himself…that’s how my day went.”
Cleaborg:
Oh boy here we go
– My first fight I responded to was a stabbing. Trying to contain that situation with nothing more than OC spray and Gloves was a pretty grim welcoming to corrections.
– I try not to look at their charges because I find it hard to treat them the same after I find out that they are a violent sex offender. Almost every time an inmate is polite and seems like a decent enough person I end up hearing their case in the news and it is 9/10 sex charges.
– I saw a guy who slipped in the bathroom have his hip come completely out of his socket and his leg came out at a ridiculous angle.
– Trying to have a conversation with someone and deescalate them when you can hardly see them because so much feces has been spread over the window.
– During a strip search an inmate used his hands to make his butt cheeks say “excuse me sir, but do you have a breath mint?”
– But by far the most disturbing thing is the complete lack of accountability. 90% of these guys have convinced themselves that they are the victims and have done no wrong. Never accountable for anything and have a sense of entitlement that is more frustrating than anything to deal with than any other aspect of my job.
EDIT Just adding a couple extra seeing as you guys seem to be enjoying this
– Becoming accustomed to being threatened is a pretty strange phenomenon. I didn’t realize I had become desensitized to it until I was threatened by an inmate telling me “I am going to murder you and rape your wife.” I told my family that it happened a few weeks later just as a “oh by the way” sort of thing and they were mortified. Where as I had almost forgotten it happened.
– An inmate who was infamous for packing drugs in his rectum came in and completed his dry cell stint in segregation. Other inmates didn’t believe him when he told them he didn’t have any drugs on him this time so they decided to check for themselves. They accomplished this with a Dasani water bottle enema.
– The host of medical conditions you see during strip searches is alarming at first. The list contains testicles the size of mango’s, genital warts larger that their penis, AID lesions (always make me gag), and of course penis amputations always catch you off guard.
vman4402:
Former prison guard. I had to escort a new prisoner to medical. I had no idea why until we got to medical. He had bandages all over both legs and he walked stiff-legged (couldn’t bend his legs). When he sat down, the nurse started removing bandages to expose rotted, abscessed flesh. He was a heroin addict and was injecting in his legs. His legs were so swollen and gangrenous that the smell almost put me down. When he tried to bend his right leg, the skin split and infection oozed all over the floor. The doctor looked at me and immediately called for another guard to come to the room. I asked what was wrong and she said, “You’re going into shock, I need you to leave before you pass out”. Surprised at what she said, I protested, but she demanded that I leave. On my way out, I started to feel light-headed. I looked in a mirror and noticed that I was sheet-white (normally a brown guy). I’ve seen people hanging. I’ve seen people stabbed and shot. I saw a guy blow his head off with a shotgun. When I was in the Corps, I’ve pulled burned bodies out of a crashed CH-53E. This, by far, was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
RoosterShield:
I had a neighbor who was a CO at a juvenile prison in my city. There was a new kid at the prison one day, he was apparently very shy and very quiet. He had the misfortune of sharing a cell with one of the more violent inmates. His second night there, his cellmate unscrewed a screw from a bench, and sat on his bed in the middle of the night. When he woke up, he said “I’mma make you a pirate,” and shoved the screw into the new kid’s eye. My neighbor was the first CO to respond to the kids’ calls for help. When asked why he shoved a screw in the new kid’s eye, he claimed that he looked at him the wrong way. That’s a pretty fucked up situation if you ask me, and not one I’d like to deal with under any circumstances.
eaterofdog:
From when my dad was a guard: Two prisoners trying to kill a third prisoner. The shank broke, so the put a pen in his ear and stomped on it. It came out his mouth and he lived.
SqueezeTheShamansTit 4723 points 20 hours ago*
At my jail, we had a non violent criminal in lockdown with a violent one. Bad dude killed the other guy with a colored pencil through the eyeball. Being a woman, I was working female facility so only heard all the chatter over the radio. Speaking of eyeballs, also had a guy pull one of his out. Also didn’t see that one.
Worst I dealt with were just the stories when I would talk to my girls. So many crying sessions as they discussed their childhood. One that stands out the most: had this girl none of the COs could stand. She was constantly in trouble and getting put in lockdown. I had a very good rapport with her though. Came in one day and she was in a cell doing typical “acting out” She had calmed down but was getting riled up again. I went to see her since she always behaved with me. Turns out her aunt who was also in the facility had just been sentenced to death. This woman, Margaret Allen if anyone’s interested in looking it up, had killed a woman by cutting her throat and pouring bleach in it and her mouth, then buried her still alive.
Anyway the young girl was upset over this and even I was like, look, that fucking bitch deserves death, you need to behave and don’t get in more trouble or lose sleep over this. So she proceeded to tell me why she loved her so much. As a kid, around 6, she was in an apt with a few other little cousins, when some guys broke in to kill the parents. They were cooking crack at the time. So the 10 year old shoos all the kids into a closet and tells them to be quiet. This girls best friend, same age, hears screaming and runs out and is also shot dead. The oldest kid wasn’t able to stop her. Long story short, this aunt who was just sentenced to death took her and the other kids in and kind of raised them off and on and always made sure they were taken care of. All lived in the same apt complex.
macdavisishere:
Not be but my cousin, one day she found a guy cutting his dick open and sticking tiny plastic balls inside the wounds and the inmate wanted it to heal like that so when he gets out it would pleasure the ladies.
Gnes990:
Not really disturbing in a traditional sense, but still made me uncomfortable. I’m a CO at the Denver complex for the department of corrections. Seeing James Holmes, the Aurora Theater shooter, come through our processing after getting sentenced. I’d seen this man’s face and heard the stories for two years on TV. But seeing him person just slapped me in the face with a weird sense of reality. I don’t really know what I expected, but it was pretty disturbing to me personally.
b1g3ar5:
Not a prison officer but my dad spent 26 years working as one in the UK. Brixton then Belmarsh.
Heard a lot of crazy stories including how the IRA prisoners used to be. “Mess” strikes used to happen frequently. They used to cover themselves in their own feaces, wait for the guards to go into the cell and attack them. They then just started hosing them down through the service flap.
He also told me swallowing razor blades was fairly common amongst prisoners. Although one time this guy didn’t think that would be enough – so he slotted a bunch of razor blades amongst the bristles of a toilet brush and then rammed the whole thing down his throat up to the handle.
He lived.
Pyro9966:
Honey buns are routinely spent on sex as a currency.
Also the amount of Ramen Noodles a normal college student eats in a week would make you rich as fuck on the block.
Bomeler:
Last year I was on jury duty.
Dude was serving a month in county jail for a DUI.
Jail is overcrowded and packs 7 guys into a 4 man cell. 3 of them are violent offenders. The one on trial violently raped a 15 year old girl.
Over the course of 2 weeks, 3 of the guys in the cell makes the other 4 guys fight each other in a sort of “fight club”. And if they didn’t fight, they’d beat the shit out of them.
Finally, one day they get bored, and decided to just stomp the shit out of the guy in for the DUI charge. Just didn’t like they way he looked at them or something. It was all on video. I watched the video of this guy getting his head repeatedly bounced off the cinder block wall.
The guy who was on trial waited until after DUI guy was unconscience, then ran over and beat on him more. His lawyers tried to claim it was just assault and not aggravated assault because “he didn’t beat him unconscience, he just hit him AFTER he was unconscience”
After this, the 3 violent guys made him clean up his blood, then stay in his bunk and hide any time guards came around. For 3 days.
Guy on trial ended up getting the
midgeet:
My friends mom was a prison guard when i was younger. We went there our whole class, and she told us about how inmates would break down mentally. One story i remember her telling multiple times: She was on night shift, and was suddenly alerted by screams of help, the screams came from a cell, and her being careful she looked inside the door window. There, in the farthest corner, an inmate was on a chair, screaming, pleading for help, and trying to avoid something on the ground
Mom: “What’s wrong inmate?”
Inmate: “It’s the CHICKENS! Please get them out!”, while still standing on the chair, jumping and crying.
Mom: “what chickens? where are they?”
Inmate: “EVERYWHERE!! Please get them out!”
so friends mom opened the cell door and guided the invisible chickens out. The inmate calmed down, but as friends mom closed the cell door, he screamed: “YOU FORGOT ONE!!!!”
So she went back in and got the remaining chicken.
Note, the inmate in this story was a big ass biker dude, he was probably on drugs, but i think it’s a fun story.
heyyouwtf:
I was a co at a max unit for several years. I’ll just make a list. I had a guy slice his own neck in front of me.
Had a guy hang himself on a night we were very short. I had to stand there and wait several minutes for another person before entering the cell. We were able to save him.
Had a guy hang himself and succeed.
Had a guy collapse in front of me and die. He had a brain aneurysm.
Had a guy try to connect his tattoo gun to the light. He electrocuted himself. He died.
I’ve caught people having sex twice. Once was willingly and the other was for protection.
I’ve been on the 3rd row and the power went out. It was pitch black for about 20 seconds. Power loss was always the scariest thing to me.
Had a guy who had come in with a relatively minor sentence. Now serving over 100 years consecutively due to crimes he committed while incarcerated. He would attack any co he had a chance to. He was notorious for popping his door open and attacking cos.
Had different guys try to attack the nurses on a few occasions. If you ever go to prison don’t so this. They’re the ones who decide if you need to go to a hospital or go back to your cell and drink water.
Had to fight a psych patient in the back of an ambulance on a transport.
Had to sit through multiple surgeries because someone has to have eyes on the inmate at all times.
Once I had to wrestle with an inmate when he was coming out of his anaesthesia. He was out of it and freaked out.
Alright, bros, that wraps up coverage from one of the most disturbing AskReddit threads I’ve ever read through. If you want to keep on reading stories like the ones above you can CLICK HERE to head over and see that thread in full! If by chance, you’re a prison guard and want to share your story you can just drop me a line in the comments below!