Many people, both
free and inside these prison walls ask me how I have did so much time and managed to not become bitter. I am serving a 15 year sentence for white collar offenses, and to date have served 9 years,
5 months, and 10 days, but who is counting?
I have lived on
the streets. I've traveled, and have
visited 37 states. I have also lived in Montreal Canada, and visited my daughter in
Toronto Canada once a month when she resided there for over two years. I am going to go back a little to state prison, to show you
the difference in how convicts serve time. All names and incidents in state prison
are true and verifiable.
Two convicts ran
the prison. Big Dino, and Essie. I was housed at Ohio Reformatory
for Women, also called Marysville, and also the Pre-release
Center.
When I arrived at
Marysville, I was a white-collar offender.
My sentence was 33 months. I begin my
sentence as a minimum security offender, and was placed in a green shirt. The color
of your shirt is how the officers are able to identify where you fit in. Green shirts
were housed in a large dorm called Hale, but should have been spelled Hell, because that is what it was. Too many women, packed together in a large warehouse, with only one large bathroom and long
shower. They had the nerve to give us three minute showers.
Many women wash their hair daily or every other day, so it was torture to them.
They had to alternate which day to wash their hair, and use the other day to wash their butts- brutal. I learned to wash and rinse twice, fast. A male officer, with an inmate assistant would stand at the
end of the shower with a clipboard and yell your name when your time was up. If you did not comply, he would call the guards to take you to the SHU. The SHU is Segregated Housing Unit. We
called it the hole. I
frequented the hole a few times.
In the state,
because convicts possessed the power, there wasn't a lot of resident snitches. Inmates
were employed as aides in all major areas, including the Warden's Office. I was
employed for the Warden, Ms. Dorothy Arn for a short period of time. As the Warden's aide, I had access to pink slips and
investigations on officers. Everything was considered confidential.
"Hey Turpin,
you didn't see my name on anything in the Warden's office did you?"
Many officers would ask.
My answer was
always the same. Nope. I liked my cush job and was not going to blow it by giving
up confidential information to staff that had no loyalty to me.
I eventually lost
that job because I kept going to the hole.
The first time I went to the hole was for fighting. I had a temper, and never learned to
argue. Because I am mild-mannered,
soft-spoken and an introvert, many inmates figured that I was weak. I moved alone,
and always had a book in my hand. I love
to read, and have always loved it.
My roommate, Ms.
Bad, was a bully.
"You are not
allowed to have these cookies in the room." Ms. Bad said.
What she was
referring to was a rule that said no borrowing and lending. I had many associates that knew me from the streets, and knew that
I loved Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies.
I'd received 10 bags on commissary day from associates out of respect. She could
not understand that. The limit to
purchase was one bag a week.
"I am feeling
lucky today, so I am going to let you slide with that comment. Mind your own business. I
got this." I told her.
I stood in front
of the mirror, attempting to comb my hair.
It was 4:00pm count, and both of us were standing, waiting on the officer to
announce count.
"I should
slap that look off your face!" She
said angrily after the officers completed count.
"I am going
to advise you to save yourself, and go sit down somewhere." I told her calmly.
Well, Ms. Bad
bitch slapped me so hard I saw stars. It
took me three seconds to regroup and transform.
Before she knew
what hit her, I gave her an upper cut under the chin, then a sharp right cross in her stomach that bent her over quick, and
kept drilling her with power punches in her face.
She tried to cover her face, and I knee'd her repeatedly, until she fell to the floor.
On the floor, I kicked her to the body.
She kept her face covered, but I'd already did damage there. I attempted to pick her up and slam her down
on the concrete floor, but she scurried and rolled under the
bunk bed in the far corner. We'd been thumping for awhile. I was exhausted and out of breath. I was wailing on her body from full adrenilin. Every time I felt the sting on my face from
her slap, I
saw red, and wanted to punish her.
Eventually the
two officers unlocked the door. The
neighbors on both sides called for them yelling, "They are fighting! Its a fight!" When they unlocked the door, I was on my hands and knees,
trying to pull her from the corner up under the bed.
It was an awkward position, and I was having a hard time gripping her, because she was holding on to the back posts
of the bed.
"She
attached me!" She yelled when she
saw the officers.
I said nothing. I was
still angry about her slapping me like that.
Was she crazy? I had never been bitch slapped in my life! Warden Arn had the
incident report squashed against me.
She never said
it. I never asked. It is just one of the things you know for
sure.
You get arrested inside the prison for fighting. You are slammed inside the cell of the hole. You wait on
your incident report that never comes, and then after seven days you get released with no explanation. The moment I got out of the SHU, Warden Arn called me over
the loud speaker.
I walked into her
office, embarassed and needing a shower.
In the SHU showers
are twice a week, and I was stinky. I washed up in the sink in the cell three
times a day at minimum, but I did not feel clean at all.
"I need you
to report to work immediately."
Warden Arn said, with an evil look on her face. Her
scowl bothered me because she had never been angry with me. "May I go and shower Ms. Arn? I stink, and I need to put my property away,
and put
on clean clothes."
I asked.
"You may, and stay out of trouble Rhonda." Warden Arn scolded.
After that, I
felt that I was untouchable. Officers
let me do whatever I pleased
because I was Mrs. Arn's aide, and they wanted to stay on my
good side.
Many inmates did
not like me because I had the juice, and most of them steered clear of me. That was
fine with me. The second time I went to the SHU was for fighting another
roommate who was trying to control me. She
screamed assault because I did damage to her face. After being found guilty and sitting in the SHU 30 days, I lost my job,
but always had an open door policy with Mrs. Arn, and would often go in the side
door which was also an enclosed porch of her office and chat it up with her about
her family life and the small city of Marysville where she lived. I had no interest in what was going on in the
prison. I was facinated by the 4 ft. 11" icon, and all the
details of her outside life. The Arn complex was
named after when she retired.
I went into state
prison as a Lady Boss. Women knew me
from the streets because although my conviction was white collar, I'd also sold
drugs. Many women were serving short sentences as a result of their drug addiction.
I begin as a
minimum inmate, living in Hale, but once I studied the landscape of the
prison, I immediately begin to make moves. Because inmates ran the prison it was easy
to have my way. The
first thing I did was paid the Count Office inmate that made all the
moves daily. I needed
a bottom bunk, and was not assigned to one.
She moved me the
next business day when she made her daily moves. She really did not like me but she
respected me, because my reputation preceded me. She was a lifer, sentenced out of
Cleveland, and I knew that she did not have outside
help. Everyone could use some
dough, right? Right.
After I checked
out what unit I wanted to live in, I went back to the Count Office
Clerk, put some more qwop on her books, and had her move me
to the honor unit, which
was single rooms.
There was one problem with this.
There was a
seasoned staff member that saw through me.
Her name was Mrs. Turley.
She was a black primadonna that was known for wearing
Turbans on her head that matched
her suits, and very high heels. As duty officer, she did a walk-through, and
saw me perched
up in my single room, sitting at the desk writing a
letter.
"Turpin! What are you doing
in this unit!" She yelled loudly.
"Um..." I stuttered.
"I was
wondering how you got a state sentence, sentenced in federal court. How did
you do that?" She quizzed.
Before I could
answer, she answered.
"The feds is
trying to be slick, and so are you. You
are not supposed to be in this honor
unit! You just got
here! I am going to check this
out!" She said.
She hesitated long
enough to write down my room number.
When I heard her high heels
clicking on the floor toward the door, I began to pack my
stuff. I knew it was time to visit
the hole.
Mrs. Turley did
not talk to any inmates. She did her own
investigation, staying at the
prison until 10:00pm that night. She traced my moves from the time I came in
the door, and
say how I had moved.
The Count Office inmate was immediately fired without explanation
the next morning, and the guards came and escorted me by
each of my arms to the hole.
General population was standing around gawking.
"What in the
world did that nice lady do?" They
said out loud.
I looked like a
school teacher, but was Bella Boss for real.
Lucky for me, most inmates
and a lot of the staff were clueless, and couldn't see
me.
I did fifteen
days in the hole. The day of my release,
I heard Mrs. Turley's heels and smelled
her perfume before she reached my cell.
"I got
something for your smart butt. I am
sending you to Arn-2, the max unit. We
are
going to break your butt down- you are just doing too
much." She said with a smirk.
"Ms. Turley,
how are you going to skip me from a minimum to a maximum security inmate?
Even with this shot, that only takes my points up to a
medium!! I said.
No one skipped
security levels. That was the equivalent
of a person in grade school
skipping high school.
It was unheard of.
"You are
going to learn today! You are going to
max. Guard, her bed assignment is room
11, in Arn 2, you understand?" Mrs. Turley ordered.
"Yes Ma'am.
" The kiss-ass guard said.
The guards were
scared of her too, and she talked to people crazy. She was extremely
powerful, and the Warden allowed her to run the
institution. She was equivalent to the
Assistant Warden, and one of the oldest employees at the
prison.
I was a repeat
offender. She knew me. I had been there a few years prior for Receiving
Stolen Property where I did 111 days, and then after that
for a parole violation, where I
served four months.
Mrs. Turley could not stand repeat offenders, or inmates that were
educated, and I was both.
The next thing I
knew, I was living in Arn 2, and wearing an orange shirt. Arn 2 was
maximum security. The
2-level unit held 110 women. It looked
like the jail units they show
on TV with two floors of 2-women rooms, a recreation room on the first floor with the tables and
stools bolted to the floor, and the oval officer's station
raised on a podium so that they were
looking down on you each time you had to go to them to ask
them anything.
In the unit with
me was the black serial killer, Debra Brown, several serial murders, and
women that were violent, A few had been diagnosed criminally
insane.
The entire unit was labeled incorrigible. A few of the women were lifers and had no
problem
fighting police officers.
When they moved me
to Arn-2, my first instinct was fear. I
asked myself, "HOW THE HELL
AM I GOING TO DO THIS?"
As I walked to my
cell with my belongings, I could not show any fear.
"Here. Let me help you." The notorious Essie said.
There was no saying
no to her. Did she think I was about to
be her bitch? I had a lot
of property that included my own TV, and lots of commissary
that everybody was scoping out.
Many were predators, and they were watching me like I was
succulent fresh meat. It was not
good......
