6 Things You Learn Listening in on Every Prison Phone Call

Prison: Its looming threat is the sole reason that the Cracked offices limit cocaine and erotic knife fights to Fridays only. But when that fascist, Johnny Law, inevitably checks our browser history and sends us to the big house, at least we'll still be able to call our loved ones and regale them with extravagant lies about running the prison like a marathon. Well, maybe: Prison systems actually have intricate rules about who you're allowed to call, how you call them, and what you talk about. We sat down with a woman who monitors those calls. In the grand tradition of stupidly oversimplifying, we'll call her a phone warden. Here's what we learned:

#6. Prison Phone Calls Are a For-Profit Business

Alex_str/iStock/Getty Images

The gist of my job involved setting prisoners up to make their phone calls with the outside world and then listening in on all the catty prison gossip. The company I worked for changed hands to Verizon Business for about a month during my tenure, then it wound up owned by Global Tel Link, but when I started it was with MCI. The only reason I bring that up is to point out that services like mine aren't run by the government or through the prison system. Big ol' corporations handle the work, and their primary concern is making a profit. Hence, one of my main jobs was making sure nobody dared to try a three-way call. Not because phone shenanigans, including three-way calls, can and have led to actual prison escapes -- but just because it cheated my employers out of like, 20 cents.

Thinkstock Images/Stockbyte/Getty
"Hey, we could buy two hours' prison labor with that money!"

Here are the basic rules for prison calls: When I started in 2006, one of the phones had to be a landline. Each prisoner was allowed 10 people on his call list. And if you wanted to be added to a list, you had to mail the prisoner directly and wait for her to approve you. Also, they pay for the privilege of calling out of prison -- hence why I worked for Verizon.

The job was sold to me as a cushy gig. I was told I wouldn't even go behind the gate or see prisoners. When I toured the facility, it looked sweet: I'd make more money than I'd ever made and I'd even have my own office -- all for eavesdropping with occasional light data entry. Unfortunately, it turned out that everything I'd been told was a class Rumsfeld lie.

Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Up next: weapons. Ass. Discussion.

#5. You Have to Meet the Prisoners You Spy On and Piss Off, Face to Face

Claudia Gabriela Tapuleasa/iStock/Getty Images

Only a few days passed before they asked me, "Would you mind going out to inmate dorms to answer questions about the phone system?" Now I had to go meet dangerous criminals face to face, sometimes after shooting down their requested phone contacts.

byheaven/iStock/Getty Images
And even non-criminal customers want to kill Verizon reps.

"Oh hey, convicted criminal, I listen to everything you say -- some of it possibly meant to be secret. Here's my face, my name, and my place of employment. Oh, and here's my card, too. I've included a list of my deepest fears and allergies on the back, just for funsies."

I had one chick send me eight different numbers (in eight different states) for her husband. I had to deny her because none were a landline. Later that day, I was listening to calls and heard her going on and on about the "phone bitch" -- she kept saying she was going to find me at the prison andmake me add the numbers.

Dale Yudelman/Wiki Commons
"If she doesn't start adding, I'm gonna start subtracting."

Luckily the prison system doesn't take math-based threats lightly: They gave me a Personal Body Alarm, or PBA, to carry with me. It was a black, rectangular box with a belt clip and a single white button. Should anything happen, I'd just press the button and hopefully guards would come to my aid before I caught a sharpened tooth brush to the gall bladder. Thankfully, I never had to use it. To this day, the only person to force me to add anything was Count von Count from Sesame Street.

That monster.

#4. Part of Your Job Is Snitching

Olga Miltsova/iStock/Getty Images

My job wasn't exclusively monitoring for illicit use of call waiting and whatnot. I did have to listen for possible criminal scheming, mostly about drugs. Drugs are a fact of life in every single prison on Earth. Prison guards seized nearly 3,000 grams of weed and 92 grams of cocaine alone between 2008 and 2009 -- and that's just the shit they caught.

Scott Harms/iStock/Getty Images
That's just the shit they caught and then reported.

There are a few ways to pick out a drug call. Mostly it's just in the flow of conversation. Drug calls don't use normal sentences, and the participants talk in really short spurts. I mean, they're not Navajo code talkers or anything. They'll substitute some random word for whatever drug they're talking about. "Cookies" for "weed" was pretty common: "Did you get those cookies I sent in?" or "that last batch of cookies was really dry, and I think it was laced with something" or "if you don't find that missing batch of cookies, your whole family is dead."

John Moore/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Though this was Girl Scout cookie season, so it could have been a legit thin mint-related threat.

Once you walk the halls and realize your prison doesn't smell like the Famous Amos bakery, it's pretty obvious what's really going on: The prisoners have somehow found a way to bake cookies without the smell.

This must be stopped.

CONCRETE BOLOGNA

Sunday, February 22, 2015