Tea at Four - The rules of dating a prisoner - "how can you be intimate with a partner in jail?"

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Listen to some juicy goss that you might have missed from Katie, whose boyfriend is in prison in the US. In this highlight from the episode, they discuss how Katie and Danny are intimate with each other, how they might send cheeky pics via family members or friends, and why the prison girlfriend community has some tensions. Lauren questions why Katie didn’t write to any female prisoners, how the prison officers screen your pictures and letters, and Katie explains how the smallest things can be seen as threatening. If you have any tea you want to send us, please do at [e-mail]. And please give us a follow on our shiny new Insta page @teaatfourpod x

I maybe have a candid question. Go on. So you've obviously mentioned the first. Have you been able to be intimate? How would you show that with a partner in jail? Yeah, you have your way. Really? Yeah, you do. Yeah, you basically have phone sex. So they've got that conjugal visit. Conjugal. No. Conjugal visit.

You can't like, no, you can't like, be physically intimate with them. Oh, right. You can find your ways of like, making things work for you. Conjugal visits are a thing. I knew it, because I've been watching the movie. What the hell is conjugal verb? Isn't that a verb?

It's like a family visit is what they call it now. But conjugal visit would basically be like, you can go on a visit, you can stay for like the weekend and you can do the do. Do you mean stay where? In a cell or? Well, no, no. I think they've got like a special unit.

Oh, right. That they take you to, yeah. It was like, well, I believe, to be fair, if you search it on TikTok, some girls that go on them in different states, they'll like talk about it and stuff, it's quite interesting. But like, so I've not experienced this because they don't have them in Wisconsin

and you also would have to be married in the States that they do have them. So California, for instance, they have conjugal visits. You would have to be married. It still counts if you got married whilst they're in there. And I think they've got a different little unit and you can literally put in, you can either bring in groceries with you

or you can make an order and they'll pre-order it for you. I'm so happy to pay. And then I think they give them a disposable camera. What's it called? Polaroids. Polaroids. Oh, cute. And they can just, it's basically stay in like a little tiny little apartment

thing for like a weekend, I think. And you can do the deed. You can do the deed, yeah. Do the deed. Yeah, but in his state you can't, no. Okay. So, I mean, what we would do is, I mean, I've seen things and he's seen things.

The big things, yeah. Yeah. Still image or moving image? Both. Wow. Yeah. And are people having to monitor that? Yeah.

How does that work? No, there's ways of getting around things. So for instance, if he had like any old pictures or whatever that he could get someone on, like do you know what I mean? Like someone to send me, like say whoever, like is in charge of his phone or whatever. You could do those sorts of things. Wait, wait, your friend is sending you nudes for you.

No, I'm saying you could do that. Oh, you could do that? No, you could do that. Is it like a normal thing to kind of do that? For guys in there, yeah. So like, yeah. Oh, is it? So like, say if a guy's gone into prison,

like, they can't take their phone with them. Like, their mum might have their phone. Like, they might literally be asking their mum to send their nudes for you. Yeah. It happens. No way. Surely the mum isn't, yes son, give me one minute.

Well maybe not his mum, but yeah. Maybe if he had like a brother. Maybe his brother, yeah. Yeah. That's all right. Yeah, your mum, yeah, it might be a bit weird. Just go into my iPhone, not the photos, the files. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, you could do that. But yeah, other than that though, like strictly following the rules, you can't, no, you can't be intimate. You can send, you can send pictures, like sexy pictures to a certain point. So the rules are like no nipple showing.

No nipple. no nipples, no bits and pieces and no bum cheeks showing. Oh, so what's left? Yeah. And pretty much nothing. So you could, I could for instance send, Here is my shadow. Have fun imagining it.

You can send like a picture in like underwear. from the front, not the back, those get denied. But yeah, picture in underwear you can send as long as it's not showing too much. But then as for the sexting, there's not a prison officer that's having to screen it before it gets sent to him. Yes. Yes, with pictures, yes. Yeah, someone has to sit there and approve or deny those. So you could literally send anything and people do. You could send all of the things that I've said you can't do. Yeah. People have tried. You don't worry that these officers like keep them?

I'm pretty sure they have a catalog with this like a folder that is like. When it used to be physical pictures that you sent in, yeah, a million percent. That's horrible. Where's that picture going? You saying you shredding that picture really? Mm.

Bad bucket. But they're now electronic. So, I mean, yeah, nothing's to stop anyone doing anything. So my advice to anyone would be, don't send anything that you're not comfortable with other people seeing, because they have to, every picture you send has to get approved.

So like if I'm sending him a message, a message would go through like instantly, as long as it's not got any keywords in there that would flag it to go get sent for approval. But by the way, the word phone is a keyword that would get, like the words that is stupid. Yeah, so you could be writing a message and then it'll go pending.

And you'd be thinking, why is it pending? What have I said? I'm literally talking about going and getting my hair cut. Yeah. Cut. I can't say cut. Yeah, and so then you think, fuck so, let me rephrase, write the whole message again. Yeah, so like a bad word, like Willie,

would that be pending? No, you can say Willie, you just can't say phone or cup. Oh, woof. Prison issues. The rationale. Wow, but in your pictures, because you pose in your pictures like gang signs as well. Yeah, I could do that. That's not gang signs, that's peace, babe.

Yeah, but they don't know what they're saying. Oh yeah, that's in the in-person pictures, they're very funny about any hand signs at all. No peace. Like he couldn't, I think on one of our first visits, he tried to do like that above my head and was told no, no hand signs. Oh wow.

But on the pictures that you send to them, yeah, you can. But if it was like, if it was a literal gang sign, no, you couldn't. But yeah, I could do a peace sign. I think, I think. Interesting. I'm thinking, now it was a literal gang sign, no, you couldn't. But yeah, I could do a peace sign, I think. I think, now I think, have I said it? Maybe I have to try and see if they're funny about the peace sign, maybe.

I have to ask, so we're obviously doing our research with your account and Prison Girlfriends as a whole on TikTok. I guess it was a kind of area of niche tea that there's a bit of beef between prison girlfriends or maybe like, do you find yourself being attacked for like promoting the lifestyle online? Cause some people have an issue with like,

I don't know, romanticizing, glamorizing. Yeah, do you know what someone actually commented the other day on something of mine and said like, why are you glamorizing it? And I thought that was the funniest shit ever because I'm like I've literally been crying on here for the last year saying that he's on lockdown and that I've not been able to see him I was like glamorous like I don't know how you've got glamorous from that But like sometimes I will like post his friends or whatever because if they're like

I don't know and speak to you We see like if someone would speak to me, people are like, you shouldn't be promoting this. It might, I kind of don't feel like I'm not saying, hey guys, this is a really good life choice and you should also make this life choice. Like it's just sharing. I'd like to think that most people on TikTok

are of an adult age, hopefully, or can make decisions for themselves. But yeah, there's so much drama within the community as a whole. There's drama between different people in the community. There's drama with everything and everyone. Like it really, like prison TikTok is like, and specifically like prison wife TikTok is like it's whole,

it's like a whole community, it is a whole niche. Obviously. We need a TV show. But yeah, definitely do you get people saying like, you're glamorizing it or whatever. I think, I understand where they're coming from in the like, you know, someone might see that and think,

oh, that's worked out really well for them. I'm gonna do that. But I would personally like to think that I show the highs as well as the lows, but at the same time, if someone's just come across my page today, they might not scroll back to see me boil my eyes out about something

that happened a few months ago. Or, you know, earlier this year, we went through a breakup for a bit. And that was caused largely because of the lockdown and all of the stuff that had gone on there. And like I said, we butted heads around him wanting to share more things on there that I thought was a really bad idea.

And it really kind of pushed everything over the edge. So those sorts of things like I'm I feel like I'm quite open with most things that I go through. Yeah. So I would like to think that it's not perceived as glamorous but yeah I guess it can be. I don't know. I think from a personal point of view and seeing seeing this growing community of prison wives, prison girlfriends, there's also at the same time a massive, I don't know, uptake in true crime depictions of these horrific criminals. And it's like you've got Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy,

you've got Evan Peters playing Jeffrey Dahmer, you've got Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy, you've got Evan Peters playing um Jeffrey Dahmer, you've got the Menendez brothers in this latest Monsters thing and I guess they depict these horrific killers in such beautiful, glamorous, lovely, wood ways. Like do you think some people fall into this lifestyle thinking it's going to be like that? Yeah I also think that people it's gonna be like that. Yeah, I also think that people view a picture of someone and because they're attractive, think that, oh, that's fine then. I think it's almost like a weird,

pretty privileged thing, isn't it? Yeah. But like, for instance, if you think about what was the hot inmate, Jeffrey Meeks. I remember that. I was thinking with this. Like, no one could tell you what he was in there for, like, or how long he was in there for.

He was just the hot inmate, right? Yeah. Like no one could tell you what he was in there for, like or how long he was in there for. He was just the hot inmate, right? Yeah. And no one cared. No one gave a damn about what he was in there for. Cause they were like, he's now a model. Yeah. You shut your mouth. And so I think it's true.

Like it does happen. And I think that unfortunately there are a lot of guys that take advantage of that situation as well. So yes, absolutely. So those guys, you know, as much as I think the general consensus, when you first go online and talk about any sort of prison relationship, your comments will be full of it's jail talk,

it's jail talk, it's jail talk. And there is a percentage of that is absolutely true. And there's people I've seen myself before and I've thought, shit, I think he's using her. Like, but again, it's not for you to, what do you know? But it could be. And I've seen all of these relationships work out so many different ways.

Some have worked out, some have literally gone on to get married and have kids and been great. Some have got out and done the absolute maddest shit and you've ever seen in your life. Some have like just ghosted, disappeared, like they never existed and they clearly were using them. And there'll be guys that will be sat in prison, whack their picture and buy whatever up on a pen pal site

and they could have 20, 30, however many girls messaging them, especially if they're attractive. And they could feasibly as well be getting money from all of those girls. And guys, it happens to them too. The other way around, women inmates do it. There's male inmates that will also do it to other men. There was a guy, I can't even remember his name,

Wade Wilson. I don't know if you've seen any of the Wade Wilson videos. Have you? I have heard that name, yeah. It's like a white guy, he was like heavily tattooed all over his face. Not my cup of tea personally, but from what I understand from the internet, they quite think he's attractive.

I don't really get it, but he like, then on TikTok, there is loads and loads of videos, like of people that he's been, he's what someone that has taken that and run with it to try and speak to as many people as possible and get what they can. I get what you can out of them. Yeah, and he would be tricking men and women,

this guy who'd like be proposing to a guy on the phone then the next minute onto, and it's people like that that I think that's why people generalise and think, oh yeah, like he's in prison, he's just using you. And realistically, any of them could. Yeah. But I guess if you weren't necessarily looking

for something romantically, why didn't you write to women prisoners? I've thought this myself, you know, afterwards, I probably should have done. I don't know why I didn't.