Member-only story
No Jews Allowed
Just like at the country club
Getting introduced to a new environment — be it an office, neighborhood, bar, or even a prison — takes some getting used to. Figuring out the lay of the land takes a minute. And so it was at MCC federal prison when I arrived.
At the time, MCC housed about 775 inmates, all but 30 of whom were male. Of the 745 men, only 80 or 90 were sentenced prisoners. The rest was what were called pretrial inmates. They either couldn’t make bail or had been remanded.
The theory was that sentenced inmates were less unruly than pretrial guys by virtue of the fact that they knew their out date and didn’t want to fuck up and lengthen their stay. Pretrial guys were desperate and more prone to violence. Taking all this into consideration, the prison officials opted to house the sentenced guys in their own unit (called “cadre”). And as a sentenced inmate, that’s where I was placed.
Five South (the cadre unit) contained 48 two-man cells. But at any given time, we didn’t have 96 inmates. The number fluctuated between 80 and 90 during my year at the prison. And that meant that several prisoners had a cell to themselves. After a while — and considering I was working two prison jobs — I thought I rated my own cell. I’d come to realize that certain inmates had “singles” and were keeping them. That was no accident. I…
