Category: jail

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People Who Spent Time in Prison Talk About the Worst Things They Saw Behind Bars

We’ve all seen so many movies and TV shows about prison that we think we have a little bit of an idea about what it might be like…

But I think that unless you’ve actually been behind bars, none of really have a clue.

Well, it’s time to find out what goes on inside those walls, because AskReddit users that have done time all talked about the worst thing they witnessed while they did time.

Let’s take a look at what they had to say.

1. Yikes.

“Saw someone break a small branch off a tree in the yard, dry it out in the sun, sharpen it down to a point on the concrete and then stab a guy in the back with it 4 times, he had to be airlifted to hospital because it punctured his lung.”

2. Fighting cousins.

“I saw a guy get in a fight with his cousin over a 50 cent bowl… this escalated more and more until they starting fighting.

We all kinda watched out the corner of our eyes bc it was in the cell while the doors were open. Well the guy that was p*ssed about the bowl grabbed the dude by the hair and bite a huge hunk of his cousin’s eyebrow off… like about half of it.

If that wasn’t bad enough me and my cell mate moved into the cell bc it was further away from the TV. So we are cleaning up the cell and my cell mate goes ” holy f*ck look at this!” he lifts up what I thought was a dead hairy bug… nope, furry *ss eyebrow and skin.

Doesn’t haunt me, just crazy to think a guy lost half an eyebrow over a f*cking 50 cent bowl”

3. OH MY GOD.

“We had an offender with a colostomy bag.

Every time he would shower, the most terrible smell would fill the unit. We asked him multiple times to not burp his colostomy bag in the shower but he swore he wasn’t.

Eventually, after developing an infection, his doctor found out he was charging other inmates to have s*x with his colostomy hole.”

4. Terrible.

“The term “getting the sh*t beat out of you” is real. You get beat so fast and hard the adrenaline kicks in and you sh*t yourself.

It’s like some primal defense mechanism. Saw many guys crawl away because if they walked away all the sh*t would dirty the pod which would make everyone more angry.”

5. Turning on each other.

“I remember people kinda turned on each other out of boredom.

I mean, you made friends and all, but you had it hanging over you that you were a bad guy, and some people took to being *ssholes and provoked others seemingly out of boredom.

It was an unpleasant situation to be on the other side, because you wanted to stay out of trouble too, but at the same time had to stand up for yourself. Maybe not the absolute worst I saw, but something I remember.”

6. Kettle-ing.

“Kettle-ing was horrible and i saw it at least 10 times. People would lose an argument, fight or just get embarrassed by someone and go back to their cell, fill a kettle up with water mixed with sugar, boil it and then throw it in the perpetrator’s face.

The sugar made the water like napalm and it would stick to them. I saw 4 people hang themselves, one person slit his wrists and fall through the cell door when it opened in a massive pool of blood. Many, many people cut themselves with razors as a way to get things they want. And one person in the segregation block, smear sh*t all over his cell then cut himself all over and smear the sh*t into his cuts. Also people throwing buckets full of p*ss and sh*t over others.

I saw a pool ball thrown at a guys face and break his nose and jaw. I was a prison “buddy” which is a information giver/counsellor. This was all in 3 years and im grateful everyday i wake up that I’m not still in there”

7. Wow…

“Saw a dude get his face turned to hamburger over a card game. Dude lost so he sucker punches the guy scross from him a minute later, gets in top of him, and probably get about 10 hits in by the time the CO broke it up.

Blood everywhere I was like holy f*ck….it was like my first month there and it made me kinda not wana leave the cell.

My bunkie was a blood and jacked he’s like dude nobody will f*ck with you I’m like ok I hope not…I’m pretty sure he smashed his eye socket in.”

8. For traffic tickets…

“Not prison, but county jail.

I was doing 90 days and a woman who was very pregnant went into labor. They refused to take her to the hospital until her contractions were 2 mins apart. When they finally did, they shackled her to the bed.

They refused to unlock the shackles even when the baby was in danger. She lost the baby and almost bled out. She was in jail for traffic tickets…”

9. Random violence.

“I was in a prison that was split. One side was a level 4 facility (just under max) and the other was for mentally ill inmates.

One day they decided to move some of their more stable mentally ill patients to our side, the level 4 side. There was this really huge dude who, as soon as he got to our prison, just started screaming that he wanted to go back.

He turned and found the person closest to him (I was down the hallway from him) and he proceeds to beat the hell out of this random dude. Dude went into a coma and died two days later. It was horrifying to watch this blatant display of random violence that ended with someone dead. I won’t ever forget it.”

10. Gotta watch your step.

“A guy get his face beat in by a dude with a cast on his arm because guy took dude’s ketchup pack off his plate on hot dog day.”

11. The guards.

“Saw a lot of bad things, like the usual fights, couple people dying and such.

One of the most f*cked up things I saw was what the guards did to this one inmate. I was in maximum security, and then there is a supermax segment of that which is all tiny single cells to hold the murderers, high profile cases, and complete nut jobs that are too dangerous for general population.

So I was a trustee doing my rounds handing out lunch to the single cells. This one guy demands an extra sandwich from me…I tell him it’s not happening bc I don’t have extra, and he starts throwing stuff including who knows what liquid on me. Well the guard sees this, and I was cool with them bc I never acted up or anything.

Then he gets on his radio, and calls for their “special response team”. Maybe 1-2 minutes max, 12 dudes in full riot gear coming walked down the hall marching and banging their clubs on their shields like something out of a movie. They let me stand there for some reason, all 12 of them somehow fit into the 6×10 cell, and just beat the living sh*t out of this guy. The guard tells me he will handle the rest of handing out lunch.

I get back to my cell near the indoor guard office, and about 5 minutes later they bring this battered dude down. They have what’s called a restraining chair, which straps your ankles, legs, waist, wrists, head and neck all down.

The guy gets promptly put into it, and then rolled outside to the yard about 50 feet away. Promptly gets maced. It was 36 degrees that night, but they apparently have a rule that they can keep you out there as long as it doesn’t hit freezing. They left this guy out there for a solid 12 hours with no food/water and barely any clothes.

I saw him again 4-5 days later after he got out of the hospital/medical, one eye swollen shut, the other barely opened, and beaten beyond recognition. He called me over to his cell and apologized. Appreciate the guards looking out for me, but I felt a bit bad for what they did to him.”

12. Over a fruit cup…

“I watched a woman stab another woman in the neck with a plastic spork, over a d*mn fruit cup.”

13. Orange County.

“When I was in Orange County Jail (CA) I saw a whole bunch of wild sh*t.

So when people “roll” into a cell or a dorm (cell = 8 man or less, dorm is 128 men in one open room divided into two inaccessible floors, so 64 on top and 64 on bottom) they usually roll in super late at night, like around midnight cuz i guess it has something to do with funding.

So anyways a guy rolls in at the like 12 am, and I am on the top floor of this dorm. Now, when you look out of the dorm main exit there is a few hundred feet of reflective glass with a catwalk behind it. The cops walk back and forth on this catwalk but most inmates use this glass to communicate with the other floor since its basically a giant mirror that spans the whole giant room.

So its late and I watch this guy come in the bottom dorm and immediately start talking sh*t to the white guy leader of the downstairs. Now I only talked to this guy one time to borrow cards but he was a nazi named “Cyclone” that literally nobody f*cked with. So new guy is spouting off at Cyclone about how he will be the new head of the woods (white people), and it just goes back and forth to the point where everyone on both floors are watching.

There are 3 words you DO NOT say to someone in OCJ, even in jest it will get you f*cked up. Calling someone a “punk”, “b*tch” or “lame” are IMMEDIATE fight words and if someone calls you any of those and you dont fight them, well thats how you get picked on. I was told that even if you’re 100% sure you will lose the fight its better to jump and get your *ss beat than be known as someone who doesn’t react.

So new guy called Cyclone one of those 3 names and in like the same breath Cyclone braces his body between two beds like he’s doing dips and lifts himself up and heel kicks the dude straight in the mouth. Well new guy is just lights out. He falls backwards limp and smacks his head on the bars. Cyclone only hit him once, and the guy was done.

One minute later everyone downstairs is screaming about something and it turns out new guy sh*t himself like a LOOOT, and if you know anything about heroin addicts that first week in jail after a bender is typically spent exclusively on the toilet and in the showers because obvious reasons. Everyone’s gagging downstairs to the point where they hit the emergency button and TOLD ON THEMSELVES. Not exactly, nobody said it was Cyclone but someone told the cops “he was mouthing off and then he sh*t himself, we need a mop.”

So cops come with medics, check the dude and stretcher him out and check everyones knuckles through the bars and of course nobody had any knuckle marks. The guy was covered in blood and sh*t and I remember watching all of this from the upstairs reflection saying to myself “holy f*ck” the whole time. I have so many other wild stories from in there this one is just the freshest in my head.”

Okay, now we want to hear from you.

In the comments, tell us about any stories you have from either being arrested or spending any time behind bars.

Thanks in advance!

The post People Who Spent Time in Prison Talk About the Worst Things They Saw Behind Bars appeared first on UberFacts.

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Ex-Prisoners Talk About the Most Evil People They Encountered Behind Bars

I think going to prison would be the most terrifying experience imaginable.

Being locked up with murderers, rapists, and all kinds of other violent offenders has to do so much damage to a person’s psyche. Let’s hope that all of us (or at least most of us) never have to go through that.

AskReddit users shared their stories from when they did time.

1. Can’t forget it.

“The words “I shot that bitch in the stomach and I hope they both die” were used in reference to a 15 year old pregnant girl.

I won’t ever be able to forget that one.”

2. A simple farm boy.

“When I was in the outbox the day before I was released I was hanging out with a bunch of guys just killing time.

One of them was part of a killing gang. They kidnapped and killed a bunch of people for body parts. And cut them off while the people were alive. It was a pretty gruesome case.

Anyways, he was really quiet and rather stupid. Just a simple farm boy type.”

3. Seemed nice enough…

“English guy here, I spent 4 and a half months in prison in 2018. There was a guy who was really nice, seemed like a genuine guy.

That was until I found out her strangled his drunk wife to death and left her there whilst he went to work the next morning.”

4. The Aurora movie theater shooter.

“Before I got my prison sentence in 2013 I was in Arapahoe County jail with James Holmes. Was pretty crazy cuz they’d put the whole facility on lockdown to move him, Even though he was in segregation.”

5. Not an inmate.

“There was a correctional officer at least 6’5 and well built and he would always come in pissed off. So one morning we are waiting in line for breakfast and he thought he heard this older man call him a bitch. He followed the man back to his cell and started teeing off on him.

The man didn’t even try fighting back and when he fell the first time he split his head open on the steel bunk. The inmate was so out of it he started asking were his car keys and wallet went while he was on the ground bleeding. The C.O. hears the man and for some reason turns around and goes back and hits him a few more times and says “who’s the bitch now…”.

I’ll never forget thinking ‘damn this is somebodies father’.”

6. OH MY GOD.

“One of the women on my wing cut up her lover and put his body parts in an empty TV box, then put the box on his mother’s door step.”

7. This is brutal.

“I was in and out juvy from 15-18 till I went to county jail, the worst people I came into contact was a boy 15 who shot his step mother, slit her throat, beat her head in with a blunt object, wrapped her in sheets for the fathers roommate to find her then he shot him. Happened in McMinnville Oregon. Other than that a lot of people raping siblings, and making threats to shoot up the high schools in the area. That’s Yamhill County for you.

8. Women’s prison.

“I was locked up with Jodi Arias, so that was bizarre.

There was also a woman who murdered her baby and kept it in the freezer. We called her Maytag.”

9. No remorse.

“This rich kid stabbed his friend in the chest, killing him, but he was on Xanax and weed at the time and doesn’t remember anything of it other than his friend on the floor dying, the mad thing is this guy (18 years old) actually got off with the murder and found not guilty although was sent down for just under 2 years for possession of a knife. His parents were quite wealthy and it was a big case in the UK. Basically his barristers were the best money could buy and he said that’s how he got off.

He didnt have any remorse for his actions. Which was made to think made him a pretty fucked up person. It’s a funny one though because he actually seemed a nice guy until he would talk about the killing and just didnt care what he had done. Nobody else in the prison had ever killed anyone to my knowledge, as it was a lower cat prison – but he was only their for possession of an knife.”

10. All kinds of psychos.

“I was incarcerated with over 280 people doing life without parole. There were all kinds- Stabbed the neighbor lady 150+ times, shot a bully in the head in the school parking lot, beat a dude with a hammer, etc.

There were two that stuck with me though- one where he looked me right in the eye and told me about shooting a guy with a shotgun to the chest (creeped me the f out), weirdo that kidnapped and killed some girl in his basement was another. John Wayne Gacy actually designed the miniature golf course there.”

11. 99 to life.

“Was in prison for 27 months. Unfortunately, your child rapists and kiddie porn guys were mixed in to gen pop, so you would get all kinds like that everywhere. The worst one I heard of was when I was in military prison. Details are foggy because this was 13 years ago, but I remember there being a guy who got 99 years for murder.

He had killed a guy, then killed the guys wife because she was home and would have been a witness, but not before raping her first. The whole facility got locked down every time they moved this guy, because they didnt even want the other inmates to see what he looked like.

The other fucked up one was at the same facility. So in the army there’s a thing called turtlefucking, where you hit someone’s kevlar helmet with your kevlar helmet. It makes a loud THONK sound, but doesnt really hurt. People didnt hit super hard, just hard enough to make the noise happen. This guy turtlefucked a girl when she wasnt wearing a kevlar helmet. She ended up dying while the guy was still awaiting his trial, and he went full on cuckoo bananas.”

12. KKK member.

“I had a cellie in prison who was a KKK “white boy.” He was a mad man. He was always pissed off and would say the craziest stuff like “Did you hear that? The “white” rhino is going extinct. Fucking jews.”

I was watching the movie about black pilots in WWII and he sat down indignant and rolled his eyes and guffawed… “Black Pilots!?! C’mon.” I said “You really think there are no black pilots?” He said “Hell no, have you ever seen a black pilot?” It was like this every day until my move finally got approved.”

13. From an officer’s perspective.

“I wasn’t an inmate, I was an officer so my opinion might be disqualified. But at a facility I worked at we were a level 5 which is maximum security. Lots of people who had life without parole and just a bunch of different things happened. One guy was on a documentary because he traveled across several states and killed around 5 people total. He was pissed cause the documentary blamed him but he always tried to say his father hitting him as a child made him kill these people.

Then there’s the old guy who raped his young grandchildren and was furious that he was sent to prison cause they were HIS grandkids so he could do whatever he wanted. He had also raped his children when they were growing up.

Lots of sick things in a max security prison and those would be nothing when compared to a federal supermax.”

14. Sounds like a nightmare.

“Ahh.. theres different degrees to evil.. one of the smallest black guys in there was SO loud and would not stop talking. He eventually freaked out and cut his body up with a razor blade to get medical attention for a different scene.. another guy was young, got beat by a 70 yr. Old in dominoes. The young guy just straight punched the old man in the forehead, I was reading Marley and me, and it just sounded like someone hit a watermelon super hard. I looked up, old man was knocked out on the floor, when he came to, these other 18 yr old kids were cracking up laughing and the old man was sooo confused and kept asking why are you laughing?

A white guy who was small and young was the jack russell terrier of the pod, and he was the worst. He would just constantly steal and for some reason nobody did anything about it. Guy named nick looked just like mike Tyson and would fight white ppl who would work out bc they were doing it wrong..he would also stare at you while you were taking a shit.

There was one corrections officer who assaulted me in a bathroom during work duty bc I didnt know if a roll of toilet paper should be changed out.. there was like a 1/3 left. It was my first day, he thought I was fucking with him. After he hit me and was done, I said Sooooo, does it need to be changed i still dont know. He figured out I was serious and apologized. One CO always snuck me coffee and let me watch football on tv bc I was nice and worked hard.”

15. In the Bronx.

“Was in Spofford Juvenile detention center when I was 13 (not a good age to be there at 4’9 100 lbs) and I was one of two Caucasian’s in the entire place so I mostly kept to myself. I did befriend a kid named Chris Whitehead who showed up with a freshly healed scar about 15-20 inches long in the shape of a C on the side of his head. He didn’t talk much but he ended up telling me how it happened when I finally got the nerve to ask him.

Told me his older brother jumped him into the Crips and since he cried during he took a hot knife and burned it into his head for the disrespect. Then he had his little brother, the same age as me by the way, shoot the first person to cross the street in their neighborhood, who ended up being a young pregnant girl. How he only ended up at Spofford is beyond me but it was disgusting to see such a nice kid end up there because of his older piece of shit brother.

I remember when he went to court he was sure he’d be transferred so he pissed all over his jump suit and stuffed it in the radiator causing all of us in the semi violent block to be moved upstairs with the actual violent criminals (I think the kid I’m referring to was only on mine because of his age). The staff members there gave everyone there permission to beat the living shit out of him when he came back but he never did because he got transferred thankfully because his brother ended up there too and was fully on board with the beat down his brother was going to receive.

Really glad they shut down that place because they were running drugs and a prostitution ring on the female side and the treatment of the kids there was disgusting to say the least.”

Yikes. Prison is no place for this guy, I can tell you that much.

Have you ever spent any time behind bars or maybe a friend or family member did some time?

If so, tell us what it was like in the comments. We’d love to hear about your experiences!

The post Ex-Prisoners Talk About the Most Evil People They Encountered Behind Bars appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Ex-Prisoners Talk About the Most Evil People They Encountered Behind Bars

I think going to prison would be the most terrifying experience imaginable.

Being locked up with murderers, rapists, and all kinds of other violent offenders has to do so much damage to a person’s psyche. Let’s hope that all of us (or at least most of us) never have to go through that.

AskReddit users shared their stories from when they did time.

1. Can’t forget it.

“The words “I shot that bitch in the stomach and I hope they both die” were used in reference to a 15 year old pregnant girl.

I won’t ever be able to forget that one.”

2. A simple farm boy.

“When I was in the outbox the day before I was released I was hanging out with a bunch of guys just killing time.

One of them was part of a killing gang. They kidnapped and killed a bunch of people for body parts. And cut them off while the people were alive. It was a pretty gruesome case.

Anyways, he was really quiet and rather stupid. Just a simple farm boy type.”

3. Seemed nice enough…

“English guy here, I spent 4 and a half months in prison in 2018. There was a guy who was really nice, seemed like a genuine guy.

That was until I found out her strangled his drunk wife to death and left her there whilst he went to work the next morning.”

4. The Aurora movie theater shooter.

“Before I got my prison sentence in 2013 I was in Arapahoe County jail with James Holmes. Was pretty crazy cuz they’d put the whole facility on lockdown to move him, Even though he was in segregation.”

5. Not an inmate.

“There was a correctional officer at least 6’5 and well built and he would always come in pissed off. So one morning we are waiting in line for breakfast and he thought he heard this older man call him a bitch. He followed the man back to his cell and started teeing off on him.

The man didn’t even try fighting back and when he fell the first time he split his head open on the steel bunk. The inmate was so out of it he started asking were his car keys and wallet went while he was on the ground bleeding. The C.O. hears the man and for some reason turns around and goes back and hits him a few more times and says “who’s the bitch now…”.

I’ll never forget thinking ‘damn this is somebodies father’.”

6. OH MY GOD.

“One of the women on my wing cut up her lover and put his body parts in an empty TV box, then put the box on his mother’s door step.”

7. This is brutal.

“I was in and out juvy from 15-18 till I went to county jail, the worst people I came into contact was a boy 15 who shot his step mother, slit her throat, beat her head in with a blunt object, wrapped her in sheets for the fathers roommate to find her then he shot him. Happened in McMinnville Oregon. Other than that a lot of people raping siblings, and making threats to shoot up the high schools in the area. That’s Yamhill County for you.

8. Women’s prison.

“I was locked up with Jodi Arias, so that was bizarre.

There was also a woman who murdered her baby and kept it in the freezer. We called her Maytag.”

9. No remorse.

“This rich kid stabbed his friend in the chest, killing him, but he was on Xanax and weed at the time and doesn’t remember anything of it other than his friend on the floor dying, the mad thing is this guy (18 years old) actually got off with the murder and found not guilty although was sent down for just under 2 years for possession of a knife. His parents were quite wealthy and it was a big case in the UK. Basically his barristers were the best money could buy and he said that’s how he got off.

He didnt have any remorse for his actions. Which was made to think made him a pretty fucked up person. It’s a funny one though because he actually seemed a nice guy until he would talk about the killing and just didnt care what he had done. Nobody else in the prison had ever killed anyone to my knowledge, as it was a lower cat prison – but he was only their for possession of an knife.”

10. All kinds of psychos.

“I was incarcerated with over 280 people doing life without parole. There were all kinds- Stabbed the neighbor lady 150+ times, shot a bully in the head in the school parking lot, beat a dude with a hammer, etc.

There were two that stuck with me though- one where he looked me right in the eye and told me about shooting a guy with a shotgun to the chest (creeped me the f out), weirdo that kidnapped and killed some girl in his basement was another. John Wayne Gacy actually designed the miniature golf course there.”

11. 99 to life.

“Was in prison for 27 months. Unfortunately, your child rapists and kiddie porn guys were mixed in to gen pop, so you would get all kinds like that everywhere. The worst one I heard of was when I was in military prison. Details are foggy because this was 13 years ago, but I remember there being a guy who got 99 years for murder.

He had killed a guy, then killed the guys wife because she was home and would have been a witness, but not before raping her first. The whole facility got locked down every time they moved this guy, because they didnt even want the other inmates to see what he looked like.

The other fucked up one was at the same facility. So in the army there’s a thing called turtlefucking, where you hit someone’s kevlar helmet with your kevlar helmet. It makes a loud THONK sound, but doesnt really hurt. People didnt hit super hard, just hard enough to make the noise happen. This guy turtlefucked a girl when she wasnt wearing a kevlar helmet. She ended up dying while the guy was still awaiting his trial, and he went full on cuckoo bananas.”

12. KKK member.

“I had a cellie in prison who was a KKK “white boy.” He was a mad man. He was always pissed off and would say the craziest stuff like “Did you hear that? The “white” rhino is going extinct. Fucking jews.”

I was watching the movie about black pilots in WWII and he sat down indignant and rolled his eyes and guffawed… “Black Pilots!?! C’mon.” I said “You really think there are no black pilots?” He said “Hell no, have you ever seen a black pilot?” It was like this every day until my move finally got approved.”

13. From an officer’s perspective.

“I wasn’t an inmate, I was an officer so my opinion might be disqualified. But at a facility I worked at we were a level 5 which is maximum security. Lots of people who had life without parole and just a bunch of different things happened. One guy was on a documentary because he traveled across several states and killed around 5 people total. He was pissed cause the documentary blamed him but he always tried to say his father hitting him as a child made him kill these people.

Then there’s the old guy who raped his young grandchildren and was furious that he was sent to prison cause they were HIS grandkids so he could do whatever he wanted. He had also raped his children when they were growing up.

Lots of sick things in a max security prison and those would be nothing when compared to a federal supermax.”

14. Sounds like a nightmare.

“Ahh.. theres different degrees to evil.. one of the smallest black guys in there was SO loud and would not stop talking. He eventually freaked out and cut his body up with a razor blade to get medical attention for a different scene.. another guy was young, got beat by a 70 yr. Old in dominoes. The young guy just straight punched the old man in the forehead, I was reading Marley and me, and it just sounded like someone hit a watermelon super hard. I looked up, old man was knocked out on the floor, when he came to, these other 18 yr old kids were cracking up laughing and the old man was sooo confused and kept asking why are you laughing?

A white guy who was small and young was the jack russell terrier of the pod, and he was the worst. He would just constantly steal and for some reason nobody did anything about it. Guy named nick looked just like mike Tyson and would fight white ppl who would work out bc they were doing it wrong..he would also stare at you while you were taking a shit.

There was one corrections officer who assaulted me in a bathroom during work duty bc I didnt know if a roll of toilet paper should be changed out.. there was like a 1/3 left. It was my first day, he thought I was fucking with him. After he hit me and was done, I said Sooooo, does it need to be changed i still dont know. He figured out I was serious and apologized. One CO always snuck me coffee and let me watch football on tv bc I was nice and worked hard.”

15. In the Bronx.

“Was in Spofford Juvenile detention center when I was 13 (not a good age to be there at 4’9 100 lbs) and I was one of two Caucasian’s in the entire place so I mostly kept to myself. I did befriend a kid named Chris Whitehead who showed up with a freshly healed scar about 15-20 inches long in the shape of a C on the side of his head. He didn’t talk much but he ended up telling me how it happened when I finally got the nerve to ask him.

Told me his older brother jumped him into the Crips and since he cried during he took a hot knife and burned it into his head for the disrespect. Then he had his little brother, the same age as me by the way, shoot the first person to cross the street in their neighborhood, who ended up being a young pregnant girl. How he only ended up at Spofford is beyond me but it was disgusting to see such a nice kid end up there because of his older piece of shit brother.

I remember when he went to court he was sure he’d be transferred so he pissed all over his jump suit and stuffed it in the radiator causing all of us in the semi violent block to be moved upstairs with the actual violent criminals (I think the kid I’m referring to was only on mine because of his age). The staff members there gave everyone there permission to beat the living shit out of him when he came back but he never did because he got transferred thankfully because his brother ended up there too and was fully on board with the beat down his brother was going to receive.

Really glad they shut down that place because they were running drugs and a prostitution ring on the female side and the treatment of the kids there was disgusting to say the least.”

Yikes. Prison is no place for this guy, I can tell you that much.

Have you ever spent any time behind bars or maybe a friend or family member did some time?

If so, tell us what it was like in the comments. We’d love to hear about your experiences!

The post Ex-Prisoners Talk About the Most Evil People They Encountered Behind Bars appeared first on UberFacts.

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This Man Studied Photography in Prison. He’s out Now and His Work Is Quite Impressive.

Every single person deserves a second chance in life, and Donato Di Camillo is definitely making the most of his opportunity.

Di Camillo found himself in and out of jail when he was younger, and he became very interested in photography when he was serving a sentence in a federal prison in Virginia. Di Camillo says, “I was always interested in magazines like National Geographic and LIFE. When I was a child I used to dream about being on adventures, exploring, always fascinated about other cultures in different parts of the world.”

He also said about his upbringing, “I was always interested. I was exposed to art early on. My uncle Dominic, he was an art director for many years before the computers took over. He was also a painter. He still is. He’s more like a Renaissance painter. We grew up in a four-tenement home, you know, so it was a close-knit family.”

Di Camillo was released from prison in 2012, and since then he’s dedicated himself to learning how to use a camera and to improving his art each and every day.

He takes a lot of wonderful photos of street scenes around New York, capturing a side of life that most people either ignore or tend to shy away from. He often focuses on people who are homeless and mentally ill.

Di Camillo says, “These people walk around, and they’re faceless. I feel that everybody deserves a face. I think we all relate to each other in one way or another, whether someone’s laying in the street or running a Fortune 500 company.”

Look for Di Camillo’s first book in 2020 and check out more of  his work on his Instagram page and his website.

Fantastic work.

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Andreas Mihavecz is an Austrian…

Andreas Mihavecz is an Austrian who was taken into custody and forgotten in his cell for 18 days by policemen. He lost 24 kg (53 pounds) and holds the record of surviving the longest without any food or liquids.

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Only one man survived the 1902 Mount…

Only one man survived the 1902 Mount Pelee eruption, which killed 30,000 people, because he’d been thrown in jail the day before and his cell was partially underground. It had thick stone walls, a bomb-proof magazine, and a small slit for breathing with no other windows.

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Ex-Convicts Share the 15 Most F***ed Up Aspects of Prison Life

Prison is hell, and we should all be incredibly thankful that most of us will likely never experience it.

Thank heavens for that, because this AskReddit thread had ex-cons shed some light on the most f*cked up things about prison that the general public doesn’t know about, and it’s messed up.

1. Smokes

“A cigarette in prison consists of the following:

Take a regular cigarette out of the pack

Cut the tobacco portion of that cigarette into 4 equal parts

Remove the tobacco from each of those separated portions and reroll it using Bible pages into 4 mini-cigarettes called a “clip”

Sell each clip for $2-$4

A cigarette out of that pack can be sold whole for between $10-$20 each.

Edit: Here is the currency conversion for the prison where I was incarcerated:

1 ramen noodle soup = $1

1 mackerel fish pouch = $1.50

bag of coffee = $8

new bar of Ivory soap = $2

1 pack of duplex cookies = $2

bed made = $1

laundered t shirt = $1

tattoo = $20 – $50 (depends on how many hours spent)

fellatio in far stall = $5

All part of the cigarette/clips/tobacco trade

It was very common for someone to walk around the yard picking up fully Smoked Cigarettes to shake out the last few crumbs of tobacco for rolling into a clip.

Most people were fine just buying a clip or two that would last them for the entire evening. If someone saw you smoking a Cadillac you are either going to have to share that Cadillac or fight. (Again a Cadillac is a full Factory rolled standard cigarette.)”

2. NOISE

“With the acoustics of concrete, steel and glass, its not only not quiet noises all the time… it’s LOUD noises all the time. Barely can think in some cell blocks.”

3. GOT is everywhere

“On a slightly lighter side, a sort of family friend recently got out of prison after ~18 years for holding up a gas station for drug money.

My uncle was his friend and when the guy got out my uncle said “Man, there’s this show you’re gonna love called Game of Thrones.”. The guy laughed and said he was current on it. The in-prison black market was his source for a tiny ~2 inch battery powered screen and microSD cards with the episodes on it.

Every now and then it would be confiscated as contraband and he’d have to save up for a month to buy another.

He also had a prison-cat that knew to leave his cell before morning activities and to come back after lights out, he’d feed it little chunks of meat he smuggled out of the mess hall. One big thing for him was making sure to train the cat who to go to next because there’s definitely some people that would have killed it just for the unique experience.”

4. Sounds terrible

“You never wake up feeling safe, ever. There is so much hanging over your head that you may not be in control of that the stress level is through the roof.”

5. Lifers

“The lifers are usually the nicest people you will meet while you are there. This is their home, this is their whole world. Most of them try to make it as pleasant for themselves as possible.”

6. A business

“The fact that literally every single aspect of the infrastructure is setup to be for-profit, to exploit your family. From arrest quotas, to plea deal quotas, to the corporate run phone system, the prison labor gimmick slave labor used to make PRODUCTS FOR COMPANY PROFIT, not to better the community or help society.

Prison is a business, a corrupt, criminal, awful business run by politicians and special interests that are more evil than the inmates.”

7. Interesting…

“The most unlikely people are chess masters.”

8. The simplicity

“When you get out you miss the simplicity of choices.

When you are in all you think about is getting out and what you will do when that happens. Everything focuses around this.

When you are out, at first, the input is enormous and a small part of you miss the simplicity. 🙂 “

9. The rules

“Former prison librarian here.

Dental care – Dentists won’t fill your teeth, they will just pull them. No caps, no implants.

Race – Prisons are still self-segregating in a lot of ways. When I worked in a prison in WV, one dorm had a black TV (controlled only by black inmates) and a white tv (controlled by only white inmates).

Honor culture – If you call someone a name or steal from them, the other person must retaliate to save honor. As a result, you will see a lot of black eyes in prison.

Postage stamps are a form of currency.

Many prisons censor what books come into the institution. At one prison I worked in, The Art of War by Sun Tzu was banned simply because of the title. I assure you that no one in admin had ever read the book.”

10. Guilt

“My dad was in prison, in his situation, and in many others, you feel immense guilt after getting to know your fellow inmates. Because you’re gonna get out, and they’re not, ever.”

11. Broken spirit

“A neighbor of mine was locked up for murder and released some time before I was born. It’s one of those things where everyone knew about it but no one talked about it.

I remember him telling me the story of why he was in there and what it was like (very rarely did), and the most surprising thing in his experience was that the smaller/quieter/weaker/more vulnerable in general were typically left alone. It’s only if you acted like a big shot did people want to fight you.

Also, picking fights with said smaller/quieter/weaker/more vulnerable ones will instantly get you a nonstop flogging by other inmates until your spirit broke.”

12. Ugh

“Shit-bombing.

I had a friend go to prison for a drug related crime. He had his own cell and stuck to himself for the most part. Another inmate shit into a water bottle and filled it to the brim with water and mixed it up into a slush.

Said inmate then took the water bottle to the my friends cell, placed at the slit at the bottom of his cell door, and fucking stomped on it! Shit water sprayed absolutely everywhere… while my friend was in the cell too.”

13. Barefoot

“When you get out, the feeling of soft carpet on your bare feet is borderline orgasmic and you’ll never take it for granted again.”

14. Sickness

“Don’t get sick! You’ll probably die a horrible death.”

15. Withholding

“Guards can and will withhold medical treatment. When I was in county jail, there was an older woman, vomiting profusely. She couldn’t keep water down, her skin was tenting and she was hallucinating.

I explained all this to the guards and that she needed medical treatment immediately. For two days she was like that until I transferred out. I have no idea what happened to that woman and I still think about her. This was in Georgia, USA.”

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15 Travelers Reveal What Happened When They Got in Trouble in a Foreign Country

I’ve never, knock on wood, been in trouble in a foreign country. I did have a friend who got arrested in Mexico and told me it was pretty sketchy.

Let’s all live vicariously through these AskReddit users who talked about their experiences getting in trouble while abroad.

1. Holiday in Cambodia

“Rented a scooter in Cambodia, got pulled for having the headlight on before 6pm. I got taken in to a room and was told why I was there, they then asked for my international driving license (which you don’t catually need for a scooter) I lied and told him I lost it in Australia.

He started shaking his head and telling me this wasn’t good…first the headlight issue and now no license…

This is when he asked if I wanted to do things the easy way or hard way, i said easy and he gave me a little speech about lights in Cambodia and then proceeded to ask me how much I thought the info about light in Cambodia was worth.

I paid him 10 bucks and went on my way.”

2. Murder plot

“When I landed in Nepal this German guy accused me of plotting to kill him while on the airplane. I was sitting a few rows behind him reading from a tablet. He told the police I had a laser pointer and insisted I was an assassin. He was hysterical. I was scared in this new country and was put in a room while the police searched my bags for a laser pointer. I had none. The guy turned out to be very mentally unstable and was sent away.

The airport police chief gave me his own phone number and told me to call him if I needed tourist recommendations.”

3. Tanzania

“Imagine being a forienger in Tanzania in the dark kneeling in the dirt in a circle of armed police officers.

I was in Tanzania doing research on the Maasai language. I was working in the city of Arusha, and my first trip I didn’t have time to do anything fun like go out to any parks to see wildlife. I was alone, so I’d just talk to everyone. One night, I was coming back from the bar that had reliable internet, when a young man struck up a conversation with me. We were walking down the road talking, when I saw a hedgehog run across the road. I ran after it to get a picture–the only wildlife I’d seen (except a monkey from the train) was a hedgehog in a ditch. It was the one time I’d forgotten my camera, and I was determined to get a picture of one before leaving. Confused, the young man caught up with me standing disappointed by a black plastic bag that had blown across the street. I told him that I just wanted to get a picture of a hedgehog. He told me to meet him the next night (they’re nocturnal)–he’d find out where they are commonly seen.

I assumed he didn’t mean it (though in Tanazania if someone says they’ll call you, they call. If they say you should come meet my family sometime, you go meet their family (even if you were strangers before you sat down at the same coffee stall). The next night I was returning from the bar, and my new friend was waiting.

He took me a bit south of the city to an abandoned or rundown school. We squeezed through the gate, but then a dog chased us out. Did we give up? No. He led me down a dusty street. We peered through dusty grass in the light of my dim phone flashlight.

Suddenly we were illuminated in the blinding light of seven or eight armed police officers with powerful flashlights. In the dark I hadn’t realized we were trespassing in people’s yards. Wide-eyed I explained in my best Swahili that I was just trying to take a picture of a hedgehog. One guy with an intimidating rifle screamed at me. It took me a second to translate, “I just saw one!” as he ran down the road and dove under a car. He shook his head–it was gone. The police talked briefly too quickly for me to understand and then they were all fanning out with their flashlights. Some crawled on their hands and knees through the bushes and shrubs.

And damn if they didn’t find one. Picture me on my knees in the dark in the dust surrounded by a semicircle of armed police officers. They used their feet to herd the hedgehog toward me so I could snap a picture. They realized their lights were scaring it, so they turned them off. My flash kept scaring it, so I never did get a good picture.”

4. Road trip!

“In the 1980s, my father and 2 of his friends decided they’d go on a road trip through some US states. This was the first time my father had gone on holiday to another country, so he was pretty excited. One night, they stop at a bar near the Utah/Nevada border, and get talking to this guy, as one does. The guy (an older gentleman who my father later assumed had served in Vietnam) invited my Dad and his friends to his house for moonshine. The trio took him up on the offer. My Dad and one of his friend’s (who we’ll call John) get in their car, while the other friend (Harry) got in the car with the guy, the pretense being they’d follow them to his house.

So, as they are following this dude, he crashes his car into the side of a bridge. My Dad said had the guy missed it the car, and Harry, would be at the bottom of a canyon, and probably dead. So, Harry leaps out, jumps in the other car and they speed of into the night, because they’d be stuffed if the police saw how drunk they all were.

They camped in the desert that night, and in the morning, while my father was eating his second hard-boiled egg (something that, due to this incident, my father still has trouble eating), a lot of police cars pull up, and place them all under arrest. So they all get shoved into a police car and taken to the local police station. They are then told that “a guy is coming down from Salt Lake City to interview you guys.”

The ‘guy’ turns out to be FBI Special Agent Joseph ‘Joe’ Cwik (that was apparently his real name, my father still has his business card, which he recently found and showed me). Imagine what you think a FBI special agent looks like. My Dad said he looked exactly like you imagine a FBI man to look like, with the sunglasses and everything (I imagine him looking like Hudson from CoD: Black Ops). So naturally, my father and his friend’s were pretty scared that an FBI special agent was going to be interviewing them separately.

Joe Cwik asked the standard questions, who are you, what are you doing here, where are you going, etc. He then left the room, and came back holding a pillowcase with something inside it. He showed the thing to me father.

That thing, my dad later realised, was a machine gun.

Joe asked my dad if he knew what this was. My dad said no, and agent Cwik explained that the person they had had drinks with the night before was known to have a lot of guns in his possession. And, as it turned out, was a bit unstable.

My dad suddenly realised, Oh my God, this dude was taking me and my friends to his house to kill us, and no one would know, and thought that he was being interviewed as an eyewitness or something.

No, he was being interviewed as a suspect. For, you see, this person also sold guns, and apparently had been under surveillance by the FBI. And my dad and his friends were heading west, towards California. Know what was happening in Los Angeles at the time?

The 1984 Summer Olympics.

The FBI saw these three, 20-something, fit, Northern Irish men talking to a man known to sell guns while heading towards LA, and assumed they were a Paramilitary hit squad, going to attack the LA Olympics.

My father and his friends, of course, denied everything. They had never been affiliated with any paramilitary organisation, especially ones that would have the need or resources to hit the Olympics. Afterwards, as they were all waiting outside the station, Joe Cwik came up to them, lit a cigarette, and pointed it to them individually.

“Harry, you can go. John, you can go. Andy (my father)… you need to stay.”

My dad said he made a noise he could only describe as like a parrot being hit by a car.

“Just kidding,” said FBI special agent Joe Cwik. And with that, they were free to go. They drove all the way to Las Vegas in utter silence. One of the worst days of his life.

To this day, my father is still anxious when going to the United States, as it probably says under his name, “Investigated by the FBI for links to terrorism.”

I like to think he and his friends were the most talked about people in the Western intelligence community that day, as Joe Cwik probably called his HQ in Salt Lake City to see if they knew any of the names, who then asked the CIA, who then asked MI5/MI6, before coming back with, “We don’t have these names on any of our files.” “

5. Drinkin’ in Germany

“On our school trip to Germany, our teacher made us sign letters saying we wouldn’t drink as we were all below 21 but above Germany’s legal drinking age of 16. So of course, immediately when we got there my friends and I started sneaking off to bars after we were done sightseeing. We started off small: like one beer each at a bar very far from our hotel. We probably would’ve been fine if we stopped there, but we kept upping the ante. Eventually we ended up with bottles of absinthe and Jägermeister in our hotel, along with a bunch of kids we met from Texas who were even crazier than we were. Naturally we got caught and had to make the very awkward “Hey, I’m a terrible son” calls to our parents.

Looking back though it’s a hard thing to regret.”

6. Kazakhstan

“I was travelling across Kazakhstan for work. One thing I failed to notice on my visa / landing card was that after x number of days in-country, I had to go check in with immigration. Whoops.

So when I went to leave the country, the passport control official noted that there was no appropriate stamp, pointed this out to me, and eyeballed me like his life depended on it. While I was being coldly stared at, I was shitting bricks, and I thought “oh, I’m going to spend a few nights in the cells before being fined and deported”.

THANKFULLY he said “In future, when you visit our country, you must comply with the law” and let me go. I apologised profusely and got on my flight out.

I haven’t been back, but certainly wouldn’t rule it out. Just don’t go during winter – Kazakhstan is pretty damned cold in November.”

7. Grateful

“I was visiting Montenegro a few years ago with my girlfriend (at the time) and another couple. We stayed in this awesome villa in the mountains, our own private pool/garden and not another soul for miles. It was bliss, and we had the best vacation I had ever had.

We were flying home from Dubrovnik in Croatia, however the journey was only a short taxi ride from Montenegro over the border. Our taxi driver wasn’t an “official” licensed cab, but the brother in law of the guy we rented the villa from. It was slightly dodgy, but he offered to do the trip for about 50 Euros less than the other cab company so we agreed. We had met him a couple of times during our holiday and whilst he spoke virtually no English, he seemed fine.

The other couple were flying home from another airport, so it was just me and my girlfriend in his cab. It’s about a 45 minute journey, basically in silence just looking at the breathtaking scenery out of the window. When he gets in the airport and we’re taking our luggage out of the trunk, he indicates to me (in very broken English) that his wallet is missing. I was sat in the front seat next to him, so he obviously thought I had taken it from the dashboard or something. I explain to him that I hadn’t stolen his wallet, had actually just paid him 20 Euros more than he asked for as a tip, and even helped him search his car for his wallet for a good 10 minutes.

Eventually I got tired and said “look, sorry you lost your wallet but we have a flight to catch. Good luck.” As we walked off, he started getting angrier and angrier, and actually followed us into the airport terminal. He grabbed a Croatian police officer who was just standing around, and started talking to him in their local dialect, so we had no idea what they were saying.

The police officer pulls me into a room with my luggage and asks me to open my case. I do as he says, he takes a VERY quick peek and says “okay, you’re free to go.” I was like “Umm…there’s about four other compartments you haven’t looked in. I can unzip them if you want to look properly?” He just smiled and said “no, I know you’re not a thief. That guy is an idiot, don’t worry. Have a safe flight.”

We thought that was the end of the matter, so we check in and we’re waiting in the departure gate. The same police officer comes over to us and says “Sorry, I wanted to let you go…but the guy has made an official complaint so I need to bring you in. Sorry, it’s gone above my head now.”

Now, I’m slightly panicking because I don’t know if this is some sort of scam and we’re going to be asked for some ludicrous amount of money to make this problem “go away”. After what felt like an eternity (probably about an hour, in real time), he brings me and my girlfriend in to see his boss.

My preconceptions about being scammed were totally unfounded. They couldn’t have been nicer. They spoke good English and handled the whole thing very professionally. They did a more thorough search of our bags, cracked a couple of jokes and then escorted us to our flight home which we made with about 4 minutes to spare.

With the ordeal finally over, just as we were stepping onto the plane, the original police officer called my name with a serious sounding tone. I turned around thinking “Christ, what now???” and he just looked at me and said: “You have Facebook?”

He never added me as a friend, sadly, but I’ll forever be grateful that we didn’t get thrown into a Croatian prison for no reason at all.”

8. Spring break!

“Back in 2010, when I was 18, me and 4 of my friends went on our first all-inclusive vacation to Cancun.

We stayed at Oasis Cancun, which at the time was one of the known spring break/party hotels.

We met a local dude who we befriended hooked up an ounce of pot for a ridiculously good price.

After about 30 minutes, there’s a knock on the door. We open it and 3 of the hotel’s security guards barge in. The first thing they see is all of that pot sitting on the table in plain sight.

I was nearly s****ing my pants. One of my friends told them we got it from a taxi driver and he said it was legal in Mexico – quick thinking.

The security guards took half the weed and left. That was the end of it.

We’re honestly extremely lucky. They didn’t extort us (besides taking like 40$ worth of pot), or call the cops.

Some other friends who were there at the same time also got caught smoking pot in their room and each had to give the security guard 200$ for him to let them off, so we are very very lucky.”

9. Replica pistol

“Not me but someone we were travelling with. Our school based in Australia had a high school trip across Europe as part of a history/art tour. The jock of the group bought his father some unique gifts, one of which included a replica flintlock pistol. We all told him that this idea was completely and utterly stupid, but gosh damn he wanted it and buying it for his fathers birthday was his perfect excuse.

He seemed to get away with it through the airport and eventually we boarded our plane back to Australia (departing from Rome) Eventually we are waiting for an extended period of time after some announcements I didn’t pay attention to, and I look out the window as I see a few members of the police, a customs representative, a baggage handler and the guy from our group. They literally unpacked his bag on the apron just because of his stupid cemented pistol. To this day I don’t know how it came to be confiscated at the last possible second, but I’ll never forget him standing there looking like an idiot in front of a whole 747 of delayed passengers.”

10. Left bag

“Visiting Heidelberg Germany taking the bus into town after getting off the plane with a few friends. Inside was my passport, laptop, charger, wallet and several other valuables which I so conveniently and dull headed of me decided to take off my back as it was sore. I lay it infront of my seat on a small platform, and when the time came for me to get off, yes, I hopped right off with my bag still on that bus. It must have been an hour after I arrived at our hotel and unpacked when I realized shit. I don’t have my bag with me.

Lucky for me my friends relatives live in Heidelberg and managed to call up the public transport company in hopes of getting my valuables back. At this point I was wondering how I was to possibly find a Korean embassy to make a new passport let alone replacing the rest of the things I had lost. But around 2 hours later the driver let me know the bag was there and that he would drop it off to be collected if I waited by the same stop, which is how I managed to get everything back. How lucky I was that someone didn’t happen to just take it, or perhaps it speaks of how nice people there are.”

11. Ear infection

“Two weeks into a seven month backpacking trip around South America, my girlfriend got a severe ear infection when we were in Puerto Madryn in Argentina. The pain was so bad she could barely stand and said it felt like her head was about to explode.

Obviously I knew I needed to get a doctor involved ASAP in case her eardrum ruptured, but I’d only been learning Spanish for two weeks at this point. I could about handle formal greetings, but hadn’t yet covered medical emergencies.

I sprinted from clinic to clinic, and using the Google Translate app eventually was able to find one that would take her in. After basically carrying here there, the doctor and I basically communicated using Google Translate, passing my phone back and forward as he asked questions and I answered them. It was weird at first but it worked well, the doctor was pretty cool about it (especially considering he was about to leave for the day when we rocked up).

He gave her a STRONG painkiller and a prescription for antibiotics and sent us on our way. My girlfriend was high as a kite and went straight to sleep. I went into the kitchen and drank a bottle of wine.”

12. You need a passport, dude

“I was a research assistant in an ecology lab when I was 20. My lab group was flying from Seattle to our research site in the remote Canadian arctic, with a stop in Edmonton to change planes. I’d driven across the Canadian border multiple times and just used my drivers license as id. It never incurred to me that I’d need a passport when flying in. The immigration agent gave me this incredulous look and I could feel the shame rising to smother me. He just stared me down for several seconds, then hands my drivers license back and says “You do realize Canada is an independent country, right?” and let me continue. He seemed so defeated by my thoughtless American arrogance.

On the way home,a grad student volunteered at American customs inspection that she’d collected samples of an arctic poppy species that wasn’t on her import permit. Like they would ever have known otherwise. She had to leave her samples behind.

The 90s were a more innocent time.”

13. Spain

“I was 18 visiting Spain from the US. I was with my Spanish friend who was only 17. I wanted to drink alcohol because it was legal for me but not for my friend. I bought us some bottles of beer and we started drinking them out on the street when suddenly the police showed up. They got in our faces but i couldn’t really understand what was going on so my friend had to translate.

They said something to the extent that i could be arrested or deported but instead of translating directly, my friend was telling me what was actually going to happen which was that they were going to make us pour them out and maybe write me a ticket that I’d never have to pay. So I’m just nodding dismissing everything and the police started yelling at him. So he turns to me and said, “they want me to make sure you know this is really serious and you can go to jail”

I still wasn’t getting it so my friend then adds, “so look scared.” I then made this face like i was afraid I’d get in trouble and started acting really apologetic. The police got this satisfied look and kinda stared me down as i poured out our beers. They then finally left us alone.

Side note: my Spanish friend first said to them in English, “I’m American” and for whatever reason tried to do it with a pitiful sounding southern accent (hilarious to me). And it actually might have worked since he had a US drivers license, but when the cops searched his wallet they found his actual Spanish ID card so the jig was up. They said they were sending him a citation in the mail. I guess that was the most stressful part since his parents would have been pretty pissed. Luckily the cops apparently never followed through with it!”

14. High tension

“I went once to Russia from Nice(France) by train with my then girlfriend. Obviously, there were frontier controls at Belarus, so we showed our passports with our transit visas (funny enough, we didn’t need visas for Russia, but we did need them for Belarus). As none of the guards spoke any language other than Russian, they just gestured that everything was ok, and that was that.

We spent 2 weeks and a half in Moscow and St. Petersburg, using AirBnB. It was pretty good and I genuinely enjoyed the trip.

Then, when we were going back to France (by train again), we stopped again at Belarus for exit control, and it was like 2am. We were in a 4 people cabin, and with us was a russian lady and her daughter, she was very kind and we sorta chatted a bit (and then we realized that she had an awful experience with our country, won’t give many details here). The thing is, when the guards saw our passports, asked for something in russian again. The lady translated our “check-in documents” or something like that. It turns out that, when you’re a foreigner in Russia, you have this sheet of paper that you should give to your hotel to be filled and then hand it back when exiting the country. Nobody told us that, and we were puzzled. The guard say “We’re going to take your passports. I am going to talk with my superior”.

Then, we spent a tense hour. The lady called her husband, who, as it turned out, worked with some russian ministry and had something to do with migrations. She then grimly explained that the guards could detain us and send us back to Moscow in the middle of the night for not having the required documents. In that moment, we were livid, we had a flight to catch in France in 4 days or so (and the trip by train takes 2 days), we didn’t have much money for a last minute flight and the prospect of being detained in Belarus wasn’t a pretty one (later I discovered that Belarus is called “the last european dictatorship”, so, there’s that). I was already worried, my ex was very chill until I kinda explained the situation for her, and then she started to worry as well.

The guard came finally and handled our passports back. The lady asked “What happened? Is everything ok?” and the guy said “Well, my supervisor and I had a great day today, we’re in a cheerful mood, so, we won’t bother you. You’re free to exit the country, have a nice night”. We were relieved…

Months later, I found a colleague from Belarus who explained to me “well, next time you slip a 20 Euros note in your passports, and problem solved”. The more you know.”

15. Russia

“I was in Russia, in one of their two main cities, doing my studies. I was a college age male, and American. One day, I’m walking around without my documents, but its like, late September and the police like to hang around the subway stations stopping young adult males and making sure they’re not avoiding conscription. So I get stopped, and I speak a bit of Russian because I had been studying it for almost two years at that point, but that was my second mistake of the day!

Despite my heavy american accent, the lack of passport plus my penis, age, and fact I knew Russian got me a trip downtown to the local military recruiter’s office. I assume I’m about to be conscripted into the military in mere moments, so I pay the guy a bribe and make a phone call to my flatmate and beg him to bring my passport down to the station. He shows up, they see my visa, I get released. That was fun…”

h/t: Reddit

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