If These Things Don’t Come Naturally, You’ll Learn Quick
- Respect
- Humility
- Minding Your Own Business
If you can live every day with those three things in mind, you can make it through a federal prison sentence without any scrapes and scratches.
It doesn’t matter what security level we’re talking about, or whether it’s state or federal prison – those are three universals everywhere.
Respect is arguably the most important. When you arrive in prison, you’ll be surrounded by people who had big and important positions in the free world – be it criminal in nature or not.
If this applies to you, you have to be humble enough to realize you’re just another inmate. This can be especially difficult for white collar offenders who tend to have a chip on their shoulder about sharing tables and spaces with drug dealers.
The bottom line is that you committed a federal crime – and got caught – so you’re in it together with your fellow inmates, no matter what your net worth is outside prison grounds.
Finally, you need to quickly learn how to mind your own business when you’re on prison grounds.
If you see something, don’t say anything.
When you’re walking through the unit, you look straight ahead. Don’t walk with your head on a swivel checking out what’s going on in everyone else’s cube. On top of the fact that privacy is a luxury inmates can only create with rules like these, no one trusts a nosy inmate.
Further, give your fellow inmates space when they’re on the phone or on the TRULINCS computer.
These things may sound like common sense, but you will see people finding themselves getting in harm’s way on a regular basis by not following these rules.