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......
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