The underground economy of solitary confinement
I did three stints in solitary. First for writing to my wife and explaining how I traded coffee for stamped envelopes, which got me an extortion charge. On the last day of my &quot;sentence&quot; in solitary I had my trial and was found &quot;not guilty&quot; of the charge. Of course, it was like Alice in Wonderland, I did my time then got my trial.<p>(during this time in solitary though they went through all my property and figured out I&#x27;d hacked the commissary system to send emails through the jail and were mad about that)<p>Second time I was framed by a guard. It was an internal thing called &quot;Operation Cleansweep&quot;. The idea was to frame all the jailhouse lawyers on false charges and send them to solitary and then get access to all the legal work in their cells to go through. They came and threw contraband in my cell in front of everyone, then cuffed me up and off to solitary again. [I found out about the operation because I fought for the details through FOIA and got all the &quot;Intelligence Unit&quot; reports. Idiots wrote this shit down. Usually the government isn&#x27;t that dumb. For instance, this is a response I got to a request for documents concerning a big investigation in the prosecutor&#x27;s office here in Chicago recently: &quot;After speaking with SAO personnel most knowledgeable about your request including those active in the internal investigation, there is no written or electronic report of the internal investigation into the Adam Toledo bond proffer incident.&quot; LOL]<p>Third time in solitary was because I took two seconds too long trading some rice for a chicken nugget at lunch. Disobeying the guard who told me to &quot;hurry up&quot;. Another stint in solitary!<p>You start with ZERO in solitary in most jails, and work your way up. I sued to get the rules changed, because on the first day you also spent it naked. They would strip search you on arrival and then leave you until you could persuade a guard the next day to get you clothes. [they remotely popped my cell on my first day once for a visit, so I ran out, sans clothing, all the way to the visit until the guards freaked out and were forced to get me clothes]<p>As the article says, even toilet paper can be a bitch to get. My first time I didn&#x27;t know anything. My second time through I managed to snatch a book up off a table as I was being dragged to my cell, so I had something to read. Then I learned to &quot;finesse&quot; the guards into getting me things: toilet paper, soap, pencil.<p>You&#x27;re not allowed commissary in most solitary. The first time I was in I requested my bin of legal work, which they have to provide. But dum-dums gave me my commissary bin instead. So I spent three days eating the whole lot before they realized their mistake and ran in and took my (now empty) bin and swapped it out.<p>You get lots of reading done in solitary. I read 800 books in jail.<p>AMA