Prisoners begin their “tour of duty” through the prison-intake process. After the mandatory strip search, (the naked and afraid phase), and the equally invasive “lice” checkpoint, prisoners receive their state-issue, or what we affectionately term as “the made-in-Bangladesh makeover”. You enter the property department in cuffs or chains until you are dressed out. Two poker-faced property officers drumming their fingers on the tip of their 30-point rated cayenne pepper spray nozzle and dispenser, secured at their waist, assess each prisoner. The less noxious cannister of pepper spray, rated 5-points is attached to their upper thigh, and less used as I observed a tag, still intact dangling from the sprayer. I see stacks of rough duck-cloth uniforms that all prisoners wear piled on the crumbly front counter. The junior officer (no bars or stripes) tosses, and I drop, the three sets of folded red uniforms.
Promised by the prison hand-out sheet that I would receive “three clean, fitted, uniforms”. I picked up each set of uniform and inspected them. I received one well-worn uniform with a torn pocket and ragged hems on the trousers, (I sneered); I also received a “Jackson Pollock” design of every imaginable color splotched, splattered, and splashed across the torso of the shirt and dribbled down the trousers, (at least they matched); the final set, however, was perfect and new. My scowl disappeared. But not for long as I lifted the shirt up to admire it, I saw that it was too large. With the cop’s finger on the trigger, I hesitated to complain about the motley assortment of clothing. Prisons issue uniforms in a range of colors such as cherry red, drop-dead red, Kool-Aid orange, cyanide brown, neon green, egg yolk yellow, titanium white, sawed-off shotgun silver, and gun metal gray. Bright colors and the reds will bleed out for years, all over your white undergarments turning your panties, bras, boxers, white socks and sneakers into various tints of pink and coral.
Some detention facilities, however, still employ the traditional, but elegant, two-piece ensemble in white with bold, black stripes running across your torso and trousers called the “zebra suit”, adorned with a simple pocket. Peeking out of the pocket should be a pano, or handkerchief that your bestie drew in heavy-smeared black ink or marker featuring the trendiest icons – the felonious clowns – one laughing, the other crying. While stylish and fashionable for female felons, most inmates will just iron a pleat down the center of each trouser leg.
The property officer with the twisted smile gives you three pairs of panties made in “Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, or India”. Invariably they will be of the lowest quality available with at least one leg hole either too small or too large. (But don’t be alarmed if you lived in a Texas prison, you’d only receive bleached, used panties). These undergarments, imported from the other side of the world, will be made by child laborers, who must forego an education to work full-time to help feed their hungry siblings. Remember the child, or seamstress, sewing your garments also works for slave wages, just as you will, if you’re lucky. (Red states are doing away with state pay). This is not ethical labor, but a corrupt system of utilizing different tiers of the poorest laborers to serve the needs of the slaves of the wealthiest county in the world. It constitutes a modern-day caste system. Think of how many slaves service the basic needs of two and a half million American slaves (see U.S.C.A. XIII).
The “Bob Barker Corporation” is one of the largest prison profiteers in the world (not to be confused with the deceased entertainer). This company services most of the prisons, jails, and detention facilities in the U.S.A. Yeah, they also may be servicing the unconstitutional “Alligator Alcatraz” sites cropping up in red states. They are a reliable and dependable vendor with very comfortable medical mattresses, and the mid-range mattresses for inmates and other institutionalized individuals, such as children. They are predictable, in that, their cheap bras are made in Bangladesh. The Barker Company employs Asian women as their “fit models” for the bras and panties. American women are not built like Asian women. We tend to be more “tubular” or “pear-shaped” with larger breasts. Not only are the bras ill-fitting, but the flimsy white cotton (65%), with polyester (30%), and spandex (5%), roll-up over your breasts every time the correctional officer directs you to “raise your arms, spread your legs” to prepare for a sexual assault and battery (this happened in the summer of 2011 to myself and five other women*).
*This incident was well documented, although the D.O.C. attempted to cover it up for 10 years. A major was forced to retire because they found for the inmates (12-15 witnesses).
The Barker corporation has been compared, therefore, to a heat-seeking Patriot missile-homing in on the target of the lowest wage-earners on the planet. Despite the United States controlling just 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. incarcerates 25% of all prisoners in the world. For a country that claims to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, a quick check at statistics discloses that “one out of every four prisoners in the world is either an American or imprisoned in an American detention facility under the U.S. constitution’s Slavery Amendment XIII.” This has created a massive capitalistic coom whose tentacles wrap-around every third world economy (including G-20 countries employing children to produce and manufacture prison products, it also includes resources and materials to support the penal colonies, and allows the U.S. prison profiteers to export technology and strategies to be employed in other third world countries to imprison their populations thus, furthering the expansion of the far-right global take-over (fascism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism).
Countries existing under fascism, such as the starving Burmese in the military junta of the Machine State, (Manichean), may be producing products for the carceral world, then shipping them next-door to the more respectable, Northern Thailand, to add a label a button, or some minor, innocuous widget, to finish the soft or hard goods, in time to ship to the United States prison profiteers. This often happens under the complex trade laws and import, and export, rules and regulations of the U.S. and other countries. We are exporting our political and constitutional rights to further slavery, not abolish the hateful practice. All the while, we call out Russia, China, North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and all the baddies of the world for their human rights abuses. It fools the majority of Americans into believing America is “Spotless” on their record of human rights abuses. And nothing can be further from the truth.
After several months on a cargo-container ship, and another month in line at a clogged U.S. ports, the forty foot containers are off-loaded and the prisons’ necessities of cheap clothing, cheap containers, cheap furniture, cheap radios, cheap surveillance and restraint technology, along with non-lethal weapons such tasers, stun guns, pepper spray, etc. are enroute to either the large, industrial detention facilities, or to the prison profiteers who will mark everything up from 25% to 250% and fulfill the stacks of orders accumulating on their purchase agents’ desks and computers. The two, pleasant property officers will finally receive their orders in cardboard boxes adorned in Chinese, Thai, Hindi, Pakistani, etc. with a black marker in English describing in little detail what’s inside. The officer flops three pairs of white tube socks on the counter in front of you. They look great and feel soft to the touch. “Look” being the operative word, because once you struggle into the “tube sox” you find they are constricting your ankles and preventing adequate blood flow into your thin ankles. If you’ve got “cankles”, you’ve got problems, The “less-than-accommodating” Property Officers tell you, this is all the state issue you will receive this year. (I went this entire year of 2025 with 3 pairs of old panties and bras (3 pairs) because I couldn’t wear 3-5x garments that the prison had inexperienced inmate seamstresses re-sew with a fit model dummy. Nothing fit and I had to toss out the state issue-it was a botched mess). You can purchase the inferior products with the 200% mark-up, though. The Property Officer points me down to another area where I need to pick up two blankets, two sheets and a pillowcase. Since she has the bars on her shoulders, I follow her finger to the next station. The junior officer chucks over two blankets that resemble “two black dishrags.” My eyes must’ve popped right out of my head as she adds “just wash them.” Stunned by disbelief, she trades me “two black dishrags” for two plaid horse blankets, used and recycled.” With some trepidation, I asked, “Recycled with what, ma’am?” Laughing, she retorted, “Recycled with trash, what else!” I exchanged “two black dishrags” that I could dry, plastic “containers. cups, sporks and the counters” for two plaid horse blankets. Now, I would be spending my evenings picking” feathers, Christmas foil and tinsel, along with slivers of magenta, teal, and red mylar” out of the blankets each night ，
Finally, I receive two white crisp sheets and a pillowcase. After ten excursions to the laundry, I notice the sheets have lost their luster and softness. The white dye and the softening agents have run their course. The beige sheets revealed regular red and blue threads, along with dots in black ink randomly scattered among the red and blue threads. Oddly, there was a mixture of stars strewn all over everything. From three feet away, it appeared as a map of Bangkok’s redlight district, marked by a large black X.
Next, comes the awkward “hygiene hand-out.” (You’ll only need one hand for this phase). The property officer hands me one small, thin Motel 6 sized bar of soap. She tells me, “Sorry,” due to the pandemic supply chain snafu, the weather, and the Democrats, this is all we could get. Just enough to wash your face and hands, but certainly not the “in-between” pink parts. As the officer places a child-sized toothbrush into the palm of my grubby adult hand, I wonder how I’ll be able to brush the back of my teeth. Like Oliver Twist, in a Dicken’s novel begging for more gruel, I found myself muttering in Cockney, “Just two inches more toothbrush, suh.” The three-inch state-issued toothbrush, with missing bristles, wrapped in plastic, will only brush your front and middle teeth. If you’ve been smoking crack or methamphetamines for years, you probably are missing a lot of teeth, anyway. To prevent inmates from turning long-handled toothbrushes into shanks or weapons, prisons will cut off the two inches of the long toothbrushes, (A side note to new fish: always keep your toothbrush in a cup of water with a dissolved denture tab to kill the bacteria as female offenders, in a fit of rage will often dip your toothbrush in the toilet or smear feces across the bristles). Next item dropped into your paw will be a clear plastic deodorant stick, called “Lockdown Level 6” to lock-down the most recalcitrant odors and funk, but don’t drop the plastic stick of deodorant made in India by “New World Products” (clever name) because it cracks. It will render the push-up plastic stick “difficult to manage” just like, a lock-down in Level Six in Segregation, you’ll also receive a six-ounce tube of “Maximum security” shampoo, with a light, fragrant scent of cayenne pepper, (2.5 rated points). A tube of “Maximum security” body wash is tossed to me as well. A tube of “Dental Security” is passed to me with the usual chuckles, “Like the smell?” I was asked. It had a “molar locked behind bars” emblazoned across the familiar-sized toothpaste tube. I sniffed. It smelled like old glue. I would later discover the “old glue” functioned as calking to plug up holes or leaks in the residential units’ walls and showers, (maybe it would work on my teeth to caulk the cavities the dentist won’t fill).
If I can get an escort, I can get to my newly assigned housing unit.
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Later that day, after sitting in an ice-cold cell with a bag of recycled clean trash (my blankets and linens), my two escorts arrived. A word of advice as to what you can expect: “Smile wide to the old timers gawking at you from their cell windows. Expect the residential whores, banging on the cell door, hollering for chocolate candy in exchange for sexual favors, to ignore you after introductions and expect the boy-girls to ‘whistle and catcall’ after you. After introductions, they’ll be begging for ‘coffee, creamer, sugar, hard candy, ramen soups, and clean boxers’.”
Nissin ramen soup, chili packs, boiling in microwaves permeates the air like an exploded brick of C-4 plastic explosives. Mixed with pungent unwashed bodies and religious oils, like “Madagascar musk and Shamali Rose” it was difficult to breathe. I choked and gagged, (It was like breathing in the exhaust fumes from bumper-to-bumper traffic on L.A.s 405 freeway). Let the housing unit think that nothing rankles your serenity as you are being escorted down the shiny, waxed-cement corridor by two ginormous uniformed officers in “spittle-shined, traditional black bolo boots! Sandwiched on either side of you, they drag you by the elbows to your new home. All that’s touching the cement floors are your toes. Your hopes and dreams, like your toes are now trailing behind you. Sweat is trickling down the cops’ faces. They’re dressed in double Kevlar shielding jackets; in case a little turd tries to shank them. Beads of sweat flings back at you. You can’t wipe the moist stink from your face as your hands are cuffed. Wiggle too much and the robust cops will scold you and snap your cuffs. Ouch…
Since you missed lunch due to the “hazing process” (in-take), one cop pitches your sack lunch on top of your bunk. Fearlessly reaching unto the sack, you touch something wet and gummy, some kitchen worker high on meth, forgot to tie-up the baggie of grape jelly to accompany your one-ounce squeeze packet of peanut butter and two slices of “It’s a Wonder… bread?” The silver-foiled, no brand chip bag is flattened. The cop kept your lunch bag in his back-pocket and, tired of waiting for you to blunder through the “de-sensitizing” in-take process, he sits down on the cement bench. Crunch… crunch. In the baggie you find two black and white cookies, oozing creamy fillings, now squashed, broken into a mosaic design.
You have metamorphosized into an inmate after “The Bangladesh make-over,” and despite the smashed lunch, the cop turns to you, smiles and gently throws a luscious red apple to you, “Have a good day,” and he slams your cell door. Not everything was so bad. “Welcome to prison.”
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