“Hey whores!” called a guard as he circled our cell doors to deliver mail. “Letters from y’all’s sugar daddies!”
I began to understand why prostitutes settle into a lower caste in prison.
November and December usually witness an uptick in the number of in-comers for prostitution here at York Correctional Institution, with a growing number of inmates in “overflow housing” – the overpopulation outlet on the gym’s floor.
Even among society’s leftovers, stratification appears. Many inmates look down on women charged with solicitation; most prefer that the state convict them of a depraved violent act than to admit that they “trick” or “sell their asses.” Even in a prison, a closed collection of bad girls, we relegate prostitutes to society’s sidelines.
The guards, through how they speak to us, never let certain inmates forget their mistakes. Of all the insults the correction officers lob at us, “whore” and “crackhead” tie for most-used. Degradation about prostitution drips off some guards’ lips.
But as they humiliate us, details leak out.
They know that JoJo tricks at the Frog Bridge, Keesha on Dixwell Avenue. Several women “work the stroll” on Albany Avenue in Hartford.
I had never heard of these places. How did the guards know about them?
The answer to that question was simple: continued patronage. The worst affronters among the guards are the prostitutes’ best customers. The extra oppression felt by prostitutes in prison comes from the fact that their clients hold the keys to their freedom.
One inmate was less than demure about an allegedly lucrative liaison she had with one guard who happened to be assigned to a post in our housing unit.
“I tricked with this motherfucker. He drove all the way to Danbury,” she told me and a few others as she peered down from the glass wall of our tier.
“Yeah. He gets high,” she continued.
Per usual, one of the inmates who heard this confession became the bearer of inmate intelligence and told the guard what had been reported about him. Instead of doing what the Department of Correction trained him to do – ignore her – he grew panicky, visibly hypervigilant.
Sex. This guard’s behavior told us he had paid for it.
He bounded the stairs up to our tier and announced he was conducting an investigation. No lieutenant lurked behind him — a sign that this “investigation” would progress without a captain’s or deputy warden’s endorsement.
The guard ordered us to stand outside our cell doors. THat is unheard of in prison; safety and security start with everyone inside their cells.
He asked each one of us what rumors had been circulated about him or his partner. That is twice as unheard of because investigators always interview inmates alone to prevent reprisal by eavesdroppers.
The guard was doing damage control now that he knew that his harlot spilled his story. His questions would put a perimeter around any perception of him as a buyer of bawdiness and stop the story right there. In the inmates’ minds, we knew that his excessive reaction would guarantee transmission of this gossip.
Law enforcement/security types seem to migrate to streetwalkers; it’s not just correction officers. Anecdotally, I learned from the prostitutes here in prison that many cops who should bust hookers prefer just to take a free sample and crumple up the police report. The Secret Service took heat earlier this year when agents “tricked” with Colombian call girls while they guarded President Obama. “There’s something about a man in uniform,” women coo. Yeah, there is something; he likes hookers.
With all the trouble that the offense causes, people suggest that we decriminalize prostitution to allow the government to regulate it for public health and safety interests like monitoring women for STDs and preventing physical abuse. I am sure that the Founding Fathers would have loved the notion of Uncle Sam as a big ol’ pimp.
Hanging around women with prostitution charges/convictions will teach anyone about the reality of criminalization or lack thereof. Decriminalization will never work for prostitution; it especially will not work for prostitution because any new, legal system will, more than the criminal code does, impose rules and restrictions on its participants. And wherever restriction resides, circumvention moves in next door.
Decriminalizing prostitution might clean the flesh trade a little bit. But a black market will bottom out of the legitimate businesses, a market where pimps named “Dollars” will undercut any administrative heroics by offering women quicker cash, choicer drugs or thinner red-tape. If women who engage in prostitution could meld themselves to rules and regulations, they would not become any type of offender in the first place.
The guard who conducted his own one-man investigation into prostitution rumors ended up reordering all inmates out of their cells while he went in and upended our belongings. He was not searching; he was trashing. When I reentered my cell, the tracks of my running shoes marked my calendar with shoe prints made from the baby powder he emptied onto the floor. A bottle of dandruff shampoo dripped long tears of robin’s egg blue syrup off the edge of the counter.
His sex. We all paid for it.
Chandra Bozelko is an inmate at York Correctional Institution in Niantic. Readers can write to her at:
Chandra Bozelko
York Correctional Institution
201 West Main Street
Niantic, CT 06357
Previous prison diary entries:
• RIP: A Guard Who Knew The (Golden) Rules
• Behind Bars, 2 Reasons For Thanksgiving
• In Prison, Sandy Packed A Different Punch
• A Favor Turns Into An Investigation
• Behind Bars, Colors Complicate Halloween
• Earthworm vs. Inmate Evolution
• The Power Of The Pen
• The Sandusky-Komisarjevsky Connection: Today’s Victim Is Tomorrow’s Killer
• Inmate’s Court Journey: Dump-Dumped & Probed
• Love As Contraband
• Why I Faked A Suicide Note
• This Seat’s Not Taken