Hard Time: A Look At The Law Inside The Walls

The Union and State legislators are calling on Massachusetts DOC to start taking action about a new synthetic cannabinoid that is being smuggled into prisons-- and putting officers in the hospital. DOC's response is "well we all have these challenges"-- how much longer can they ignore the problem? Why does it take a major incident-- an officer's death for anyone to care? Policy m...

In Pierce County Washington, three people were held at gunpoint after three others in ballistic vests came to their house claiming they had a warrant to serve and were there from the Department of Corrections. This, all a temporary cover for an armed robbery. Guess how long they stayed in jail in Washington? Not long-- the crime wave continued. Luke, a former CO, tries his hand at podcasting and J...

Nothing lasts forever. Jon's not going anywhere (yet) but the torch has to go to the next generation at some point. He's busier than a boiled owl. The busiest year of his life just plum got away from him, and he's got to get back to livin' at some point. Get busy living, or get busy dying as they say. Carli's a case manager and former dispatcher, and a girl, so she's got ev...

In this episode Jon and Jake take time to tell brief stories of our best officers-- men and women who faced the most dangerous situations and acted effectively to preserve life and enforce the law at great risk to themselves. In California, a CO finds a building full of people under attack; in Delaware officers depend on each other to survive an ambush on a housing unit; around he country officers...

In this episode, Jake is doing his best to be a father. Family comes first. Before podcasting, before work. He has his feet in two worlds of overwhelming worry and responsibility. Being a father of three, and being a sergeant in a community jail. As a professional he faces unchecked violence, false accusations which carry their own anxieties and baseless blemishes to his reputation. He faces the d...

On Friday, the boys decided to react to portrayals of corrections in media-- television especially. In this experimental episode, Jon and Jake watch Sons of Anarchy, season 5 episode 3 "Laying Pipe." This acclaimed episode from 2012 features several of your favorite Sons going to jail for the shenanigans of past episodes while striking various deals for protection and power. Of course, e...

On the screen, solitary confinement is hard time. Locked in a dark cell or thrown in a pit, the inmate spends almost 24 hours a day alone, cut off from all human contact. That has not been a reality in prisons in this country for ages. Even so, lawyers and policy makers are hellbent on eliminating the practice. Jake and Jon talk about the reality and practicality of modern so-called "solitary...

A judge said on the record that it's a fuckin' hell hole. The US Marshall said it was a clusterfuck. Officers says its a shitstorm. Attorneys allege in a federally-filed affidavit, "holy shit." Inmates say that it's worse than Transformer Age of Extinction, and they don't even get to go to the movies. As the Executive Branch gets ready to pull funding From The Sunflower S...

𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘖𝘶𝘵 is the true story of Harry Camisa, who spent 50 years inside New Jersey's maximum-security Trenton State Prison, first as an officer and then as a teacher. Harry Camisa witnessed 13 electrocutions, was taken hostage twice, stopped the escape of five violent felons and knew all of New Jersey's notorious criminals from 1950 through 2002, prohibition-era gangsters the modern age (i...

In a follow-up from episode 32, rookie correctional officer Reagan returns to the podcast to talk about life inside the walls. She discusses how inmates have tested her limits, tried to gain her confidence and compromise her, and her once falling under the eyes of a supervisor's suspicion. How being an officer She talks about attending an elite 12-week academy, the challenges and rewards and w...

Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel are 'presumed dead,' but their bodies haven't been found. The retired American couple were aboard their dockside yacht in Grenada after three prison escapees from a Caribbean island when the vessel was seized in a getaway attempt. It was later found abandoned with no one aboard 70 miles off the coast of St. Vincent. The three men responsible have been app...

Randall Hepp, the warden of a Waupun, a maximum-security Wisconsin prison, and staffers were charged following investigations into the ⁠deaths of four inmates over the past year⁠, including one that wasn't discovered until at least 12 hours after the inmate died. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt led the investigation into the death and took made a press conference to the media in which grand-...

When a firearm goes inside the walls, someone's getting taken hostage or murdered. What's a true phenomenon is that an inmate in possession of a firearm would kill a staff member before turning it on himself, with a suicide note left behind. All the power of a gun and the inmate only chose to settle the beef he had with his bae and with himself. But how did the gun get inside the now infam...

Some wanted asshole tried to get into a secure area at the airport. Arrested, he goes to jail. He cannot post bond because he has a warrant from Fulton County on a probation violation. Held for extradition, he fails to disclose his own health and mental health problems to the jail's nurse upon admission. After less than a day, he tries to fling himself off a tier. First to respond are his fell...

What do inmates eat? Well recently, it was an Fulton County Detention Officers' ear. Pretty horrible. This is in the same place where an inmate was eaten by bed bugs. They have got to change the menu in Fulton County. Some inmate went straight Mike Tyson on an officer recently, but she's doing okay. Down in Phoenix, an ex-con decided in 2020 the innovate and bring prison "cuisine&quot...

Jake forces Jon to read a 100-page article that is almost 30% in the French language. So yeah, he's gonna mispronounce things. Things he shouldn't. But this is the pressure of performance, and normally Jon has no problem performing. But France is one country too far. Also, Algiers. He knows what a Renault is, even if doesn't show. This is the story of Rédoine Faïd, debonair gentleman c...

Jake became a CO because he saw the job posted on Indeed, the website designed to broker meetings between employeers and prospects. But what did he see? In this episode Jake and Jon break down "The Pros and Cons of Being a Correctional Officer" as Indeed describes it. Did they get it right or were they way off? A perfect segue is made into talking the case in Oklahoma where the warden&#3...

Two Correctional Officers transported an inmate to the hospital. While there, he decided to make a break for it. He overpowered one officer, dousing him in his own oleoresin capsicum. The other officer, seeing that the game was afoot and that the safety and security of the community was on the line for this soon to flee felon, drew her pistol and plugged him. Now he's sentenced to the prison o...

Jon discusses how scammers go after big retailers, recalling how he used to put his life on the line to protect the local Target store; as it turns out those same scammers are movers and shakers in the gangster disciples Alabama branch. Jon also responds to the two correctional officers lost in Charlotte, along with a police officer and a US Marshall. Somebody has to call correctional officers law...

A Surprisingly Serious Sixty-Ninth Episode. The world takes its insane beliefs so seriously that there is no humor or irony in the New York Post's article: "the lawsuit is demanding... Department of Corrections... award compensatory damages to the inmate that removed 𝘩𝘦𝘳 [own] testicles." Jon wakes up ready to mock the world, but today's just not the day. In this episode you are...

Back to Slow Implosion State Penitentiary (see Ep.40) for a new dust-up, this time the state figured that giving inmates tablets and the internet was not worth all the money they were making. These tech companies are cleaning up-- but are they hosing inmates and families? Who should bear the costs, and what should that be? At 52:45, Jake and Jon make reference to the harassed hick sheriff JW Peppe...

Jake admits to heinous and appalling crimes; Jon's computer takes a dump halfway through. An inmate in Auburn New York intentionally spits blood into officers' mouths and nose, and vile more acts of biomayhem. An inmate in Stockton fought officers in the hospital, stabbing and slashing them. DOC spokespeople, who work at desks and golf right at 5, say officers are fine and in good conditio...

Subscribe to get this episode of HARD TIME. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hardtime/subscribe Mecklenburg Correctional Center was a maximum security prison operated by the Virginia DOC-- in 1984, six murderers broke out of the block in cool Ocean's Eleven fashion and The Fugitive: End Game scenario took place all without Tommy Lee Jones. Hear how prisons evolved since then to the supe...

Commonplace, if somewhat grim, unsocial event known as a necktie party. The guest of dishonor a gang member named Michael Dewayne Smith, just a moment away from the needle, a lying only a short distance from the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Michael Smith, who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow men, must have been out for a blunt and missed out. Mr. Mic...

In Missouri, a man who committed the most heinous crimes you can think of has spent the last 17 years charming officers into thinking he's a swell guy-- now the officers want the Governor to pardon him. Click this link to subscribe and hear Jon's spicy content: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hardtime/subscribe