ARTICLES BY SETH FERRANTI
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 I'M BUSTED
Breakfast in the Feds is served from 6 AM to 7 AM and ranges from coffee cake to pancakes to bear claws to egg-and-cheese bagels to cinnamon rolls to waffles. The morning meals are pretty light, served continental-style with a piece of fruit, coffee, and milk. Nothing fancy or extravagant. The fruit is what they let hogs eat on the farm. Only the prepackaged waffles, cinnamon rolls, and bear claws are half decent....
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  I'M BUSTED
On August 28, 1999, the Bureau of Prisons adopted the Ensign Amendment, putting in place statutory restrictions requiring return of commercially published information or material that is sexually explicit or features nudity. That meant no more Hustler, Playboy, Club, or Swank. Now convicts are figuring out new visual aids to j/o to on compounds across the nation. Say hello to doll porn....
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Tidbits Issue SpecialIn prison there are serious restrictions on prisoners' personal property. In the world, people tend to accumulate things as they get older, but in prison convicts are expected to live decades of their lives and not accumulate any belongings. Not that there's that much to accumulate. Most necessities...
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Here's what basically every single day in here is like for me.
5:30 AM, doors crack: The cellblock comes to life as the CO cracks the door. I wake up, brush my teeth, wash my face, and throw on my khaki prison uniform in anticipation of chow call...
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People in the real world imagine a lot of horror stories coming out of prison. And in a sense they're right-a lot of foul shit goes down. All you free people have seen Oz, right? But living in the belly of the beast, prisoners learn that horror stories are only at the extreme end of the spectrum. Ye...
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"I worked for Citicorp's institutional currency-trading department," says Mark the baby-boomer con. He's 46 and from Kansas. "My title was associate Vice President of Arbitage for Currency. From 1988 to 1990 I did a two-year internship with Citicorp in New York and received a Series 7 license to tra...
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At FCI Gilmer, in the hills of West Virginia, a flock of wild geese lands in the yard every morning to eat bugs in the grass. They leave goose shit all over the yard. There's also a dude who prisoners call the Birdman at Gilmer. Unlike his namesake, the Birdman of Alcatraz, he doesn't keep birds as ...
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In the pen there ain't a whole hell of a lot to do. Prisoners develop hobbies to keep their minds occupied, because like my man Sport says, "Idle minds court chaos." Courting chaos in prison can quickly lead to death. If you mess with the wrong joker at the wrong time you might end up with a dull me...
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In the netherworld of corruption and violence, convicts live for drama. Dudes in prison are constantly scheming, trying to find a way to come up or a way to tune out and escape the brutal reality of their incarceration. Drugs are usually a means to an end. In federal prison, where more than 50 perce...
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 FREE MUSIC
Jamming Out in JailHere in the belly of the beast, life is either totally chaotic or so monotonous that you can feel each second slip by. To find some peace and pass the time, some guys get into arts and crafts, others play basketball or lift weights and still others spend their time in the prison law library, trying ...
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