Oh whoa. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I would have freaked out.

Despite the fact that I chose the jail option, I was freaking out at first. I felt like a huge ****-up. Fortunately, emotions pass. But that's a hard thing to remember.

Hiring a lawyer for a DWI is strange. ... It's almost all rote, to an experienced lawyer. They've seen it all before, know what needs to be done, forms and steps and hearings. Mostly I think they're helping you navigate the process while also advocating for you.

I will say that I hired the best lawyer in the area I could find. I have no idea if it made any difference in my individual case. Maybe the outcome would have been the same, no matter what. But I felt better hiring someone with more experience.

There was a book cart that made the rounds once a week. It had a couple hundred books maybe, from young adult fiction to the Satanic Verses, which I found really challenging.

Seemed like your average library book sale content. A few books you could see people likely had sent to them. Little Altars Everywhere, one reader started making notes in the margins after 2/3 of the book--I assume that's when he finally got a pen.

Jails tend to have very little in terms of prisoner resources, while prisons offer much more. This is what everyone has told me, anyways.

The day I went in, I went online to Amazon and ordered three books on Prime. Packages are allowed in, some items, but they have to come from specific places (not individuals, Prime, maybe WalMart, that kind of thing).

I sent them to my name @ the jail and they were delivered to me on the 26th. Factotum I left with some of the guys. It was ok.

In addition to the phone and TV and commissary kiosk, there is also a Lexis terminal (some kind of law library access) so inmates can access legal information. The second day I was there I heard one inmate get very excited because he thought he'd found a procedure the judge and grand jury had messed up.

Kinda wonder what happened with that. He was talking about how the judge allowed the grant jury to consider some off the record information.

Cliffs on commissary items? Best/Worst/weirdest? Were prices inflated?

Commissary is one of the big ways the inmates amuse themselves. Much gambling is done for cookies and snacks, and then time spend paging through the kiosk to pay those off ... delivery is once a week, and "What time is commissary arriving" is a frequent refrain on that day.

Prices probably aren't crazy inflated, but someone is profiting a few cents in there.

How ****ing evil do you have to be, to serve bland food in order to sell salt and sugar packets?

On arrival you are issued an orange plastic water cup. You can buy a larger cup for about $2. Two kinds of instant coffee, each about $5. Ramen noodles, soft flour tortilla shells, chili mixes, ranch dressing .... "Are we cooking tonight?" ... lots of candy and snacks ...

You are issued one blanket, one sheet, 2 pairs of underwear, a pair of the world's worst flip flops, orange t shirt .... You spend a lot of time cold in jail, and you can buy extra clothing thru the kiosk--boxers, shorts, orange shoes ....

Stamps, envelopes, pen and paper, all pretty much cost what you'd think. The pens are awful, almost like they just give you the ink-filled tube from the inside of a pen. Who can write with these things?

File under: Broken System

John was in jail for a drug charge, something more than possession. He lives in Georgia, where he owns property with his wife. John is not poor but doesn't have a lot.

He was sentenced and let out on parole, how long and when escapes me. And his request to transfer his parole to Georgia was denied. So he's basically stuck in NY while on parole, unless they reverse the decision on transferring it to Georgia.

John has little connection to New York. Upon being released on parole, he began looking for an apartment. Most places wont rent to him, and those that will are ****holes, he says. "I'm not paying $1,600 for a roach infested ****hole."

So he left NY and returned to Georgia, and of course the authorities came to get him. So they drive him back to New York and give him 60 days or so for the violation. That's how I met him. And he said it was just going to happen again and again until his sentence was up. "There's nothing for me here. If they want to spending money to keep driving me back from Georgia, ok."

John seemed like a decent guy. I'm sure that's not the entirety of the story but what he described is one of the difficulties in getting out of jail or prison. No one wants anything to do with you.

Oh, and on commissary: Most of the guys in there for any real length of time were burning through money at the commissary. Like, $400 or $500 a month, especially when they first get there.

That have "indigent packs." Commissary stuff you can get if you have less than $1 in your account for 10 days.

This thread so makes me think of one russian proverb, roughly translated:
don't count out a prison cell, a begging bowl may come as well.

I mean you did nothing really wrong and you still ended in jail and it was best possible outcome. You really never know in life, where the way is going. You have just zero guarantees for nothing.

This is not correct. I know you come from a culture where having vodka with your morning toast is normal, but he was drinking and driving.

I don't necessarily agree with this. Not everyone in jail is convicted. Some are on trial.

But he stopped. Basically he got in jail because he did a sensible thing: stopping driving while drunk.

I'm not trying to dunk on Sapo about this, since he admitted that he screwed up.

But being passed out in the driver's seat with the motor running is not the same thing as being parked.

So as long as you stop doing something, all is good?

Couple of things wrong here. For one, prison is profitable. There is something wrong with that. People are financially incentivized to put others in jail. Second, not everyone in jail is guilty. Third, when the US (a "free" society) has more people in prison than China, there is something wrong.

I mean Jeff Sessions wants people that smoke pot to be thrown into prison.

So yea, call me cray cray, but there's something wrong with prison and we should look at how to fix the problem.

Stopping doing dumb stuff does not make all good. But stopping doing dumb stuff>>>>>>>>>>> continuing doing dumb stuff. And he got basically punished for stopping drunk driving. The whole procedure does not encourage to stop if you noticed that you are actually not fit for driving. It encourages to try to push through and continue to drive unfit.

I did my fair share of dumb stuff in life. If I would get caught and punished after I actually stopped misbehaving...... I would feel sooooooooo resentful and so motivated next time not to stop.

Freedom gives the people who are natural ****ups more opportunity to **** up.

So in one way it's no surprise we have more incarcerated than China does.

Jail and prison are too often viewed as revenue generators though. Financial incentive to incarcerate citizens is unacceptable.

The prison telephone racket alone is a big moneymaker.

A friend of mine in college was a Prison Telephone Kingpin. An insane amount of money. Would charge a ridiculous amount and kickback a portion to the prison. I think it was like $1 to $2 a minute for something that cost a fraction of penny. Would make the Warden a consultant of the company.

Prisoners have no choice. What is their next best option? A carrier-pigeon.

perhaps you should be motivated not to even start then.

Cmon man, this is some real BS here and you know it. I wonder how resentful the person feels whom kid you just killed while driving drunk even though you were REALLY planning on taking a nap behind the steering wheel just minutes later. Pretending like Sapo got punished for stopping his drunk driving is some seriously delusional stuff.

I didn't express clear enough my thought. I don't defend drunk driving.

He didn't get punished for stopping the drunk drive, but he did get punished because of it. I mean someone reported him only because someone saw him sleeping in a car.

And the question is which reaction encourages which behavior. We have three sets: don't drive drunk, drive drunk realize it and stop, drive drunk to the bitter end. For me such kind of punishment would sooooooooo encourage me next time to continue to drive drunk and try to avoid being seen sleeping in my car. (For the record I neither drink no drive.)

And about this idea, that it should motivate me next time to not start the misbehavior. It doesn't work this way. Punishment/negative consequences basically never motivate change in the long term behavior. They always trigger a pretty short term mechanism to try to avoid them at any cost.

How do you pay for the stuff? Can you bring in a credit card?

Who can stab someone to death with those things? That's the question that's important.

It is mightier than the sword you know

If you have cash with you when you come in, they put that in your "account." Speaking of, I think they owe me money.

Once that runs out, people on the outside can deposit money into your account in a couple of ways but I don't think the one on the inside can do anything to fund it.

This is the company that supplied a ton of the jail's stuff, from jumpsuits and t shirts to underwear and the toothbrush.

https://www.bobbarker.com/

I can't believe those jumpsuits cost anywhere close to $15. Jail is a racket.

6.5 cents per toothbrush though ...