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US Prison Experience

This will become a new site about one of my greatest phantasies: to experience a real American prison from the inside. After being transported to a huge state penitentiary, surrounded by barbed wire, walls and moats, and the obligatory stripsearch at arrival, barred cells, serious shackles, rattling chains and prison stripes are waiting - allways secured in full restraints: that's the way i like it!

#American Prison #prisonexperience #prison #prison cell #jail #prisoner #locked up #prison uniform #shackles #chains #handcuffs #restrained #leg-irons #prison stripes #behind bars #chain gang #full restraints

bullringmen

US Prison Experience

This will become a new site about one of my greatest phantasies: to experience a real American from the inside. After being transported to a huge state penitentiary, surrounded by barbed wire, walls and moats, and the obligatory stripsearch at arrival, barred cells, serious shackles, rattling chains and prison stripes are waiting - allways secured in full restraints: that's the way i like it!

bullringmen

FOUR BROTHERS ARRIVING AT THE COURT-HOUSE FOR TRIAL IN GREEN-WHITE STRIPED JUMPSUIT AND MATCHING SHACKLES

Let's start with a very inspiring and, if I may say so, enviable picture. It perfectly illustrates the basic principle of a serious prison: all prisoners are to be dressed and shackled completely equally. I hope you will enjoy my long comment. These are four brothers who have to go to prison together, I wished I was one of them! All in their twenties, here they are just getting out of the van that took them to the courthouse, the first guy for a while pausing for a short interview with some local tv-station, now that all six of them are faced with the prospect of spending many years behind bars. As a quartet, their clothing reminds them of the Dalton Brothers from the well-known comic strip Lucky Luke, only the ball and chain are still missing.

Because of course all four brothers are already dressed in the same standard prison uniform in use overhere, which they will also have to wear in the future, degrading them to the deindividualized inmates they have become. In their case it’s not the usual two-piece, consisting of shirt and pants, in solid colors, but a much more exposing, eye-catching jumpsuit of green-white prison stripes, to be closed with a row of six silver-colored press studs at the front, combined with an identical white shirt with long sleeves underneath. They have also had to exchange their own shoes for the usual special sandals.

That prison jumpsuit makes each of them much more like an inmate than a two-piece would, and immediately recognizable as such, because no one else wears a jumpsuit like that, trousers and shirt merged into one continuous whole, without belt and fly, but only with that unmanly row of simple snaps from bottom to top in plain sight. And indeed in all four cases the jumpsuits are as very expressly prescribed in the prison regulations - and the autorities usually keep a close eye on this - neatly buttoned up to the top press stud. They are, in a sense, forced to lock up themselves safely and carefully in their outstanding prison garb.

A two-piece, especially in plain orange or yellow or blue, on the other hand looks more like the work clothing of road workers. This kind of jumpsuit thus stands out from each other kind of outfit. There is something extra humiliating about having to wear it. Once dressed in it, you are really exposed as a bad guy. Even more in the striped version, in which these four brothers are clad.

Only the sizes of their prison-clothes differ, because the brothers are of different length, and this has in their case clearly been taken into account when delivering them their uniform. So they are not much too big, as one regularly encounters, and fit each brother indeed perfectly. It's not a sight you encounter every day, but their striped jumpsuit suits them damn well, also this special specimen in green and white - a color combination that doesn't come around very often. But I like it very much. Hopefully the judge waiting for them inside the courthouse will give them the opportunity to wear their nice new daily outfit for many years to come.

The front three brothers behave as if they now take it for granted to wear such a prison uniform, the third even exudes a certain self-confidence by walking straight upright. All three guys already wear their striped thug-suit in such a natural way as if they have been wearing it just for half of their life, and therefore are completely used to it. Well, in any case, they will have to get used to wearing nothing else for a very long time from now on.

Only the last guy, the youngest of all, makes a different impression. He is clearly still overwhelmed by what had happened to him, and thus is significantly less comfortable in his own skin and suit. His uniform is a little crumpled, and while the other three stare ahead rather unperturbed, he looks around him timorously. He clearly shows signs of discomfort and uncertainty about his new outfit, which now so rudely confronts him with his inescapable future behind bars.

For this very young lad, only in his early twenties, the complete change in circumstances he finds himself in must have been a shock. While the others have a rather calm appearance, he is scared and timid in the view of the unrelenting TV camera waiting also for him. He is clearly intimidated by all the circumstances, by his sudden arrest a couple of days ago, his subsequent irrevocable incarceration in a bare cell of the county jail, and his public exposure as a captured criminal now, recognizable as such by everyone from afar due to his new prisoners outfit, as it not only consists of his humiliating prison stripes, but also of all the inevitable attendant shackles.

Because, just as naturally, all four brothers already are put in the matching full restraints. All again of course exactly of the same kind. They wear the same handcuffs, tightly secured with a belly-chain around their waists, while their ankles are locked in steel too, the short connecting chain of those leg-irons forcing them to take only small steps, to prevent any stumbling.

Their hands are shackled in such a way that they are forced to keep them helplessly low in front of their belly all the time, without the possibility of moving them in front of their faces to avoid the curious looks of the gathered bystanders. In this way, in those stigmatizing striped thug-suits, they are also defenselessly at the mercy of the eager cameras of the press, which can thus make them identifiable to the outside world for many years to come as the avoidable criminals that they are.

Only on the back two guys the leg cuffs are visible in the pic, out of focus but unmistakable; the crumpled ends of the otherwise virtually wrinkle-free trouser legs, around which the tight-fitting foot-cuff is closed, also betrays this. However, because all four are otherwise fitted out completely identically, there is no doubt that the front two are also forced to wear exactly the same leg irons. There is no room for personal preferences of individual prisoners in this respect.

The boy at the far back, who has just stepped down the steps from the bus, has the connecting chain during his descent hanging down between the cuffs in a slight arc. In the case of his brother immediately in front of him it is already stretched as tight as possible; with a slightly larger step the guy threatens to trip over his bonds. For sure, there is no running away. Or a chance of jumping in your jumpsuit.

It will probably take some getting used to for all four of them to have to walk around like this, but it will undoubtedly take the most for the youngest brother. Certainly, I would be as nervous as he was if other people saw me for the first time in my striped prison jumpsuit this way, heavily shackled as a high-risk criminal, both hands and feet. But at the same time: how I would have liked to have taken his place at this humiliating moment of his first presentation to the public and the press! I would have found that very exciting! Ever since I found this photo of four guys going to jail for committing the same crime, I have regularly given free rein to my imagination.