Glenn Langohr: The Path Into Solitary Confinement in Prison is Wide and the Path Out is Narrow

Glenn Langohr: The Path Into Solitary Confinement in Prison is Wide and the Path Out is Narrow. Glenn Langohr spent over 10 years in some of California's worst prisons on drug charges, with 4 years in solitary before turning it into research as a writer and expert on prison culture. For a complete list of his drug war and prison thrillers in audio go here- http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=glenn+langohr%27s+audio+books You can also download the books to your phone, tablet or computer in minutes for free and buy them in print as well here- http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00571NY5A

"The path into solitary confinement is wide for this reason. We have to many laws and send to many people to prison these days. It used to be, in the 1980's, that you only went to prison for murder, rape and robbery for the most part. Tough on crime political platforms and the drug war took over and now we are paying the price with a prison population that is exploding at the seams.

To expand further, now that we send people to prison for poverty crimes like stealing to survive "Petty theft", and not being able to pay for probationary costs, and for being addicted to drugs, we have an overburdened prison system that frankly, has a lot of mental issues. Imagine being in prison as a drug addict or an orphan of poverty, on a packed prison yard, where the inmates are comprised of every race, color and creed. Now mix in hundreds of different street gangs and some predators. But please don't forget to add in a percentage of outright mental cases. Add all of that up and you have a recipe for violence, the slippery slope into solitary. This is where you have to look deeper. As an inmate trying to fit in, and avoid that violence in a predatory environment, one of the easiest masks to put on is in the form of tattoos. Human beings often enter the prison system as innocent, young drug addicts, and out of fear, try to fit in by blasting their bodies with ink to look formidable. This is the main reason that the path out of solitary is narrow. Since the path into solitary confinement and the path out aren't regulated by a court of law, dubious evidence is used that has to do with certain tattoos meaning certain things. Other dubious evidence is second hand information from other prisoners, and the one that hurts my heart the most, self admission.

What most people don't understand is that as a new arrival to a prison, the prison administration has to run a check to clear the inmate for mainline population on the "Big Yard". During this process the inmate is under the microscope like an insect under a magnifying glass. He or she is asked questions like, 'What gang do you run with? What do they call you? Do you have any enemies?' These questions make a new inmate feel like joining a gang is the answer! A great percentage of lost misfits pass the tipping point and claim something. In my case being a White inmate they asked, 'Are you a peckerwood or skin head?' I saw the verbal bait on a hook and responded, can't I just be a White man without any affiliation? For those who take the bait and claim where they're from in the form of initials to their county like S.J.C, for San Juan Capistrano, just gave someone's pen the power to keep them self in solitary forever.