Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - What Federal Prison Is Really Like (Honest Prison Advice)

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

What Federal Prison Is Really Like (Honest Prison Advice)

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I like chess. Tons of it. guys, listen, they play chess in prison. You've never played just like this. Like the, you know, you know, chess to me is a game of kings. It's a sophisticated game. It's a game of, you know, rules and, you know, it's a game played by the upper echelon of society.

That's not how it's played in prison. In prison, these dudes, they move the, you know, boom, oh, yeah. I got your bitch, bro. I got your bitch. And then, oh, oh, oh, yeah, what you're going to do now? I'm in your house. I'm in your house. What you're going to do?

You ain't going to do shit. That's right. Oh, I mean, you're like, like, it's, it's, I mean, I don't know how you take that game and make it aggressive. But everything is, I assume, aggressive in jail, though, everything. It's not to be. Listen, you'll get a group of guys. Like, you know what it's like? Like, it's like being a non-enemy combat.

right like like you know in a war zone so you're you're just like a guy that lives in this town where these guys are shooting each other you just I live in Ukraine yeah I live in Ukraine I live in Ukraine exactly and you're just trying to go to your job and make bread I'm just trying to go to my to the bakery and make some bread today these guys are shooting I had to stand over here while they shot and oh they blew that up I got to go home I can't make it there today I'll make it I'll go tomorrow and then you go tomorrow and you go tomorrow and you're going to be have a good day. You go, you work three days in a row and you're good. And then one day you're walking home from work and two guys are shooting each other, only in prison. They're just

stabbing each other or getting into a fight and you walk by and you go. And you'll, you will become kind of desensitized. I remember one time I was, I was, I was the medium and I had just gotten the low. Maybe I'd been there two, three weeks. This guy name, this guy's name is Kiki. You're going to mean about 50 got me well you're you got 10 years you got you'll take did you take are you taking the drug program yeah I qualify for our death because of cocaine use right so uh you'll get the if the drug hopefully you know get the judge to recommend it you'll get a year off for that you'll get good time did they ever give you halfway house or they is that just bullshit no you'll get halfway house you'll probably get six months to a year halfway house you know you're literally you're whittling like

you'll end up doing whatever six years so so let's say you do the six years um you're going to in that time period you're going to meet about about 50 60 guys named kiki so uh you're going to meet some pookies um but anyway what happened one time i was i had just walked in my cell and this guy this big black guy named kiki was kind of walking down the hallway right and walked right in front of my cell and and dropped dead of a heart attack boom my god and i'm he was young he was like 30 something was he'd been to medical he'd been to medical several times of the last few days complaining about chest pains and they kept saying come Monday come Monday got to come back Monday so he died uh like Saturday I think it was like Friday or Saturday

so you know it was just inconvenient for them to look at him because of the chest pain you know it's the weekend so Kiki died um and hit the ground boom died and slid about a foot and i remember looking down and thinking like he was right in front of myself i thought fuck they're going to lock this whole place down and i'm going to be stuck in my cell for the next all night i better go get some coffee so i stepped over kiki's body walked down the hallway went and heated up some water in the microwave and stood there by that point they called medical and they'd come running up they got there pretty quick but kiki was definitely dead when he hit the ground so they put him on a stretcher kiki was a big guy so it took

like four of them to pick them up and bring them down as soon as they got them out there they locked down and so i walked in my room and drank my coffee and then i kind of was sitting there drinking my coffee and i was thinking did i just step over a guy's dead body to go and get some coffee they're a cold motherfucker i was like you're a cold motherfucker i was like And that's nothing. Like nobody shed it a tear for Kiki. There were guys that were walking around like, damn, Kiki dead, man. I've known him 10 years.

Kiki made the best pizza. It was like, he's just upset because his pizza partner is gone. There'll be another Kiki. So there's like, there's going to be another Kiki. Yeah, it's, you're going to get desensitized. I remember one time this guy, there was commotion. People are screaming and hollering and running around. You could tell when something happened because people are trying to heat up

coffee and borrow stuff from other cells because you know you're going to get locked down like something happened in the rec yard and they were screaming lockdown and this guy comes running over and he goes cox cox and i go yeah what's up and he said yo he said um my celly just got stabbed in the rec yard and i said are you telling me that there's a two-man room available because it means that he's at sad they're going to move him he's going to shoe at least so and I now know there's a two-man cell that has one bunk available. And he goes, yeah, bro. And he hands me a cop out and says, fill it out right now.

Stick it under the counselor's door before we get locked down. So I filled it out, stuck it under the counselor's door, ran back to my cell. And by the time we got out like the next day, I had a new cell. Were you in a cell alone, but prior to that? No, I was in a three-man cell at that time. Oh, God. I was going from a three-man cell to a two-man cell. there's no one man's health yeah yeah you're you you're gonna be like this is like you hear that

and you're like that's horrible but i mean that's just it's a survivor mentality but you know once you get into you'll get a little job you'll get a bunch of buddies that you hang out with when you get there do not tell them oh i'm here for a computer crime no no they're gonna think i'm a chomo yeah white you're a soft white guy yeah bad idea um It's going to go bad. And even what's so funny about that is I've known guys that have done that or not told people what they're there for. Like they'll say, they'll go, oh, my lawyer said not to talk about my crime. And guys immediately.

You guys not have your jackets in federal? No. No, you're going to get there with your thing. Well, you can mail off for your pre-sentence report. You can try and have it mailed in. but a lot of times they won't mail it in it like they'll catch it now listen i've had mine mailed in twice it got in both times but sometimes they'll catch it and they'll say hey you can't have this we're mailing it we're throwing it away so they'll tell you can't have people like join gangs and

everything then if there's no like the like the verification process i mean you figure out a way to get it in like you have somebody shuffle up the papers or mail in a couple pages here two days later they mail in three or four like you know what i'm saying you can get it in but just mail it in like just in an envelope that says PSR on it. That's never going to happen. That's probably going to happen. So, I mean, that's going to be my application for the Aryan Brotherhood. So, I mean, I need to get it in something.

When you say gang, I was thinking, there's not going to be any gangs. Like, you're going to a low. There may be gangs, but you're certainly not going to have to be a part of a gang. Like, hey, you ready? You want to join the woods? Yeah, I'm good, bro. Who's going to protect? you come on man stop how segregated is it in federal prison like can you was like i mean it if it was a

pin or something it would be but even then they'll mix a little bit you know they'll talk they'll this or that but they don't really want to share things it's not like it's not like you're going to a pin in california no it's state you're going to a federal probably going to a federal low and that low is going to be it's going to be soft there are going to be some guys that are walking around acting like it's a tough place but everybody kind of thinks they're a joke like like all right yeah i get it i get it it's yeah we you know everybody's a stand-up guy but you know really you have to kind of know like look if there's i used to say this all the time at the at the low i you know guys would be talking about oh that guy over there bro he he he he uh i heard he snitched on this guy

heard he snitched on that guy and they'd be looking at i'd look over at the guy and i'm like that guy over there oh yeah oh okay and i'd tell you say, well, hey, I have a question for you. You guys good at math? And they'd be like, well, I'm all right. Why? I go, well, 90, let's assume that 90% of every, of people cooperate and gets It's even more than that.

I know it's higher than that. And they'd be like, all right. And I'd say, so if 90% do cooperate, I said, so let's go ahead. I said, and there's 160 guys in this unit. that means that, you know, and I said that means that you've got out of this unit, out of 150, 160 guys, you've essentially got, I think it ends up being, whatever, it's like 106 guys. I'm like, so there's 100 and, I'm sorry, sorry, there's 16 guys in this unit, sorry, 16 guys

in this unit that didn't cooperate. And they're all like, so there are five guys standing around me. And they're like, right, right? I'm like, we can exclude some of those guys immediately because some of the, because some of those guys went to trial so they didn't have an option to cooperate because they went to trial. So we know who they are. And I could just name them, right?

Red Bull, so-and-so, W. And we'd name them off. You'd name off like 10 guys, 11 guys. And I go, so that means that there's five guys in this unit. five that didn't cooperate and didn't go to trial and have the most time out of everybody. Right. Well, and I would look and I'd look at the guys around me and I'd say, I'll bet it's, I'll bet it's you guys, isn't it? I'll bet it's you guys. What are the chances that all five of those guys are standing right here?

What does Shakespeare say? Thou doth protest too much? Exactly. Listen. And that's what is it. That's what. it is. So, you know, like, even getting in that conversation is just, it's just so, so much still, like, I, I didn't, I didn't partake in the, you know, the, the, the, the politics of who did what or this guy or, you know, it's, to me, it's like, look, I'm getting a routine down. I'm going to find something to do that I enjoy doing every day. I'm going to get a group of guys that I like talking to. I'm going to get a routine. I'm just going to go through the motions and whittle this time away. And I, and I, And I didn't. It was, listen, it was. And honestly, this is going to sound horrible, but for what it is, taking into consideration, it was prison. But for what it was, it was a good experience. It was the best experience that you could have had. So for me, I had the best experience given the situation for what I could have had. And in a lot of ways, I look back on it. And I think it was, it was a good part of my life. Like I wouldn't want to redo it. But for what it was, it wasn't. horrible so okay i i it's yeah i see where you're coming from i see where you're coming from yeah how many people tried hitting you tried what try it like like because like i could tell you you're very witty so there would be a giant brutish dude who's saying something stupid and then you're like oh that happens that happened that happened several times yeah i i got i got nutted up a few times

like literally i realized going in it was like I can I can either make smart ass cracks and get slapped every once in a while or I can just keep my mouth shut for the next 20 something years and I went yeah I'm not going to do that like I'd rather just take an ass beating every once in a while so ever so I was probably really there was only one time a guy actually physically like like I want to say he punched me he he bitch slapped me from behind because you know what I'm saying he walked up behind me and went bam and just hit me because i mouthed off to him and i had another guy one time that poked me in the eye but he was mentally off like he couldn't be in the regular unit they kept him in the

shoe and i was in the shoe with him i didn't realize he's crazy so um other than that i didn't you know i really didn't have any any any issues okay luckily i'm a much i'm a bigger guy so i don't think people are even just come screw with me right well and the other thing is honestly like I don't know if you've ever watched any of my stuff, but, but literally if you get stabbed in federal prison, you pretty much had it coming. Like, you did something. You did something. Like people think someone randomly ran up and did something.

No. No. You, you ran up a debt or you gambled and ran up a debt, didn't pay. You, you know, you can run up store debts. Like, guys will have stores. They'll sell stuff out of their locker. Like, they'll keep extra commissary in their locker. So you're free calendar.

Oh, sorry. What are they called? They're called the shop men, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you can do that, you know, and you run up, people will run up a debt and not pay. And then they'll be like, yeah, what are you going to do? You know, what are you going to do?

And it may be some old man who's not, you're not scared of. He'll have somebody just come beat your ass. Like, you know, so or you talk shit about people. You start mouthing off about people or spreading rumors. That'll catch up with you. Like, there's lots of things that will catch up with you. So, you know, you don't talk about people. You don't run up debts.

Be polite to everybody. You'll be fine. You're being a low. You're a big guy. You know, you're going to be, it's going to be, you're to meet a bunch of people that you're like, I can't believe I'm talking to this guy right now. I cannot believe. Like you're going to want to say, almost stop the guy and go, bro, I can't believe I'm talking to you right now. You're insane.

But don't you. I've already been there in the holding cell. That dude was talking about. like they're going to turn me into the next jfk i'm like what are you talking about i don't know what that means i'm scared his charge was too what he tried burning his school to the ground they caught him trying to burn a high school to the ground and he got a federal arson charge what an idiot um yeah yeah it's going to be all right it's going to be all right