TONIGHT'S TOP STORY: Human beings confined in uncomfortable spaces may break rules and employ creativity to make their situation slightly more bearable.

It's only bizarre if you're operating under the premise that the media exists to be sensible, objective, and non-evil. Mainstream American media is propaganda; it exists to sell whatever narratives benefit the current power elite. "The takeaway is that these prisoners should all be suffering" is exactly correct! That is precisely why this news report exists, to make audiences think prisoners should be suffering - or, at the very least, to shift public dialogue in such a way that "wanting prisoners to suffer" will be seen as a valid position to take.

They don't even try to disguise the propagandistic nature of this segment, either. If you notice, the female newscaster leads into this story with the following thesis statement: "What you're about to see may -change- your -perception- about what's happening behind bars." (emphasis hers)

It's all about triggering fear and changing your perception.

Exactly right.

That's what kills me about those who call themselves "anti-media," "independent minded" or use "sheeple" as a pejorative. More often than not they're the ones who will eat this tabloid horseshit up by the barrelful and forward it to their Facebook friends.

HOW DARE THEY WALK AROUND ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY WITH CELLPHONES LODGED IN THEIR RECTUMS ALL DAY

outrage is the product they are selling

1:08 GETTING TATTOOS


yeah, because that never happens in prison.


Holy shit white ppl

There's also the fast clip of the "pizza" at 1:26 which actually appears to be a sort of prison recipe made from mashed up ramen noodles and flaming hot cheetos. I've seen a few recipes and human interest stories that call it chi chi, though I doubt that name is common all over.
Maybe we can get some good out of this video and start a prison cooking week.

out here in the west we call it "spread", make burritos and all kinds of shit. birthday cakes made out of honey buns, everything.

I've made that shit in Dele Valley in Austin it's sad how excited they get in commissary day but anything beats the long term effects of county grub. Eating dry ramen chunks covered in flavor sodium is still preferable than a couple weeks of that shit on your gut. I done stints in looney bins and jail alike and each time you come out about 25 percent weaker for the food

'cause there's only black people in prison. Duh!

I live Ruth

Plus I'd imagine it's pretty hard to file down an iPhone into a shankable weapon, so why not let them make calls and do the facebooks? COs have more to worry about with lunch trays than iPhones really..

Isn't banning unfettered communication with the outside world usually justified for more practical reasons? I'm sure allowing it isn't quite as positive for morale as you'd think, and allowing personal devices like iPhones out in the wild seems like it would make it really hard to restrict or track any specific inmates' activity. I'm sure it's occurred to more than one guy how much shit you could stir up online with nothing but time.

sure but realize that until recently inmate phone calls were unregulated and could cost up to per minute: http://tinyurl.com/ovm3bth

Yeah the days of using your phone to call your friend to take out the guy that ratted you out are over, if they ever really existed in the first place outside of movies, unless some people are really really stupid and do that, which is their prerogative, but then it's easily traceable so I doubt if it happens that much if at all, because you don't want to be in prison with someone who did you a favor. But Napoleon does make a good point: you can't use your cellphones at school so the same rules should be at least enforced in prison. But prisons have always had some sort of penpal program, so being able to connect to facebook doesn't seem to be a big deal, since it's just encouraging the incarcerated to be corrected.

I dunno, there's still plenty of rules. An old co-worker of mine, who was incarcerated for weed was telling me how the bus there took 2 days (maybe it did, it was Wisconsin to Georgia) and everybody on the bus had to shit or piss, and the driver just laughed as the soon-to-be-incarcerated soiled themselves in agony, only to get off the bus and be met with another CO who made fun of them for shitting and pissing themselves.. not really a good start if you ask me. I don't think that prison should be some fun summercamp for adults or anything, but there's plenty of changes that ought to be made in North America.