A sad day in Otisville today. A fellow inmate, Gabbai Shayni, who grew up in New Haven on Goffe Street, a fellow mortgage fraud attorney, was sent to the SHU (aka “the hole”). An MP3 player was found in his locker.
There is nothing wrong with having an MP3 player, except you have to purchase the MP3 from the prison, and you have to download songs through the prison system. It costs one to two dollars a song.
There is a huge markup on the price of everything in prison. You get charged about five dollars an hour to use the email system.
So Gabbai Shayni had this MP3 player smuggled in already loaded with tunes. It was the same type of MP3 that the prison issues.
Guys think that another inmate ratted him out. This other inmate has been sitting in the SHU for about a week already. SHU stands for “Special Housing Unit.” Naming the SHU the “special housing unit” is a sick joke. Nothing special about the SHU or “the hole,” as some call it. It is solitary confinement in a small cell 23 hours a day which contains nothing but a steel bed and a toilet. Human rights groups have condemned the use of the SHU as psychological torture. With the new prison reform bills kicking around there has been some talk about stopping the overuse of the SHU and limiting it to the most violent offenders.
In Gabbai Shayni’s case, the suspected rat’s name is “Orkie,” short for “Mork from Ork.” He is a chiropractor from Stamford. He was caught with pain meds in his locker. He also hid some pain meds in his bunkie’s belongings. When the Blue Boyz found the pain meds they drug tested both bunkies and Orkie tested positive. So now, it is believed, Orkie is in the SHU ratting out inmates so that the Blue Boyz will go easy on him with his drug violation.
Orkie is sitting in the SHU with a drug dealer named Kareem, who was sent to the SHU about a month ago because he was caught having conjugal visits with his girlfriend in the woods located next to the visitors parking lot. The SHU is getting crowded.
If Orkie ever comes back to the camp he will be treated like a pariah. He tried to blame his bunkie, the Mayor, for the drugs, and his bunkie is one of the nicest guys in the camp.
Gabbai Shayni was well respected in the camp. He spends a lot of time working on his case trying to get his jury verdict overturned. Hopefully he will come back here and not get shipped out to a low-security prison.
Cell phones, electronics and drugs are taken very seriously in the camp. Because of the lax security guys think they can get away with stuff, but when they get caught the Blue Boyz come down hard.
I can see the temptation of smuggling in a cell phone, although nobody here has ever been caught with one, as long as I have been here. You are limited to 300 minutes a month on the pay phones, which is only ten minutes a day. And each call can only last up to 15 minutes until you get cut off. Plus you are getting charged 20 cents per minute.
In other news, my co-defendant, a mortgage broker from Waterbury, is scheduled to turn himself in tomorrow. It’s called “self surrender.” He will probably be sent to live in the dorm with 15 other guys, including myself. So tomorrow there will be three guys in here from my case, two mortgage brokers and myself.
Most of the other mortgage fraud attorneys from the tri-state region have cleared out of here, in order to make room for the 100 or so older doctors that the Blue Boyz are herding into the camp. The doctors were busted for sub leasing office space to medical labs at above market rates. I cannot understand the rationale for locking up so many doctors when there is a doctor shortage in this country.
It must be part of the Obama plan.
Previous installments:
• Larry Noodles & The Tossed Banana
• A Peanut-Butter View Of A “Real Prison”
• Arrival
• Tempers Flare Over … What?
• Blinded By The Light
• The Russians Take Control
• Welcome To The Hole
• Slider Takes On The Roman Empire
• Waiting For Johnny
• Limping Toward Passover
• Drama in the Warehouse
• This Too Shall Pass