Bob Walsh
Stockton, CA
Male, 60
I worked for the California state system, starting as a Correctional Officer and retiring as a Lieutenant in 2005. I now write for the PacoVilla blog which is concerned with what could broadly be called The Correctional System.
Very common. When an inmate comes back into the security perimeter they are skin-searched, more formally known as an unclothed both search. For some jobs inmates are stripp-searched when the get off work. When there is a distrubance and we are looking for weapons we will skin-serach everybody in the area.
As far as the cops feel, they know it comes with the territory. You want to talk about gross, you talk about "potty watch." That is waiting for some guy to take a dump so you can search through the feces for contraband, usually drugs.
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Not in California, though it happens unofficially. Feral cats, mice, that sort of thing. There are prisons where inmates do animal care, horses and service dogs, but they are not "pets" per se.
The infamous Birdman of Alcatraz never had any birds at Alcatraz, and lost permission to have the birds at Leavenworth when he was caught with a still to turn the seed into booze. He was also a vicious homosexual pimp who wrote reams of homosexual pornography using prison staff as characters. Also he didn't look anything like Burt Lancaster.
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Don't know about jails. Prisons CAN read inmate mail other than legal mail, but they rarely do. There just isn't the manpower to do it. Where I worked there were six workers who did nothing but open, inspect, sort and deliver inmate mail. If you were to actually have to READ all of it it would require dozens of people. That gets expensive.
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It is hard for me to answer an open ended question like that. About two years back a death row inmate got a heart transplant, cost the state well over $1 million. inmates do not GET TVs, but are allowed to buy them. the electrical drain becomes significant in the older prisoners that were never set up for this purpose. they can also have fans, inmate housing units except hospital units are not air conditioned. My prison, DVI, used to have a pool but that has been shut down and filled in for years. Inmate medical care in California is absolutely top drawer, name-brand pharmaceuticals, usuall see specialists in 2-3 days.
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moderately, yes. there are a couple of large private prison operators that have contracts with many states and the federal government. i believe there are also some local jails that are operated by private operators. many more have outsourced their inmate helath care to private operators.
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it happens, but prison rape is not the every-day occurance hollywood would make it appear to be. i have seen prisoners who are straight on the street and are gay inside, but that is not particularly common either. prisoners are very much like other people and they come in almost infinite variations.
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The facility I worked at was primarily a medium security institution, with a modest (144 bed) high security area and a somewhat larger (250 bed) minimum security area.
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