the brushy mountain correctional complex is one of the oldest prisons in tennessee. its roots in this rural section of the state run deep. brushy mountain is in my blood. i ve been around it my whole life. my father used to bring me up here at 4 or 5 years old to get a haircut back when it was a full max institution. my grandfather, father and uncle and my husband have all worked here. i mean, you ve got just family members and cousins and dads and brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. it s a part of our everyday life. the roots run equally as deep for some of the inmates. everybody in my family has been through this place. brothers, cousins, uncles, grandfathers, fathers. they have all been through here. this is charles dikes fourth time in prison. he s facing five years for auto theft. i just finished a 12 year sentence in the northeast. i wasn t out a month and caught
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but at the time davis was on an eight-day high from methamphetamine and didn t realize the intruders were actually his friends. once you re up that long on a drug you actually hallucinate. when they came in, i have friends running in and out of this house all the time. it was a bachelor house. you know what i m saying? basically i thought they came to rob me. i done run them off once that day. when they came back, i thought they was trying to get me. that s the kind of person i was on the street. if i thought you was trying to get me, i was going to get you first. i ve known him for over a year. that s my buddy right there. i haven t had any problems. we always get along. i had him moved down here. he wanted to move in. it has been four days since jason rogers arrived at brushy mountain. despite his initial anxieties he s adjusting to life behind bars. actually, you caught me on another good day. i got out of a smaller cell and got put in a bigger one. i had a cellmate up the
helps prevent the urge to smoke all day. i want this time to be my last time. that s why i choose nicoderm cq. while brushy mountain s most dangerous and violent inmates are segregated from the rest of the population in one-person cells, the majority of inmates spend close to 23 hours a day in two-person cells. they have got two beds, a little stool for you to sit at. they got a sink, toilet facilities, and a shelf to put some books. it s very close. two inmates in there really doesn t have a lot of room to move around. living in such small quarters, it is essential that inmates learn how to get along. a lot of people don t do it like that. a lot of people, what s theirs is theirs. they don t want other people to touch it. we don t do things like that.
face the camera. i never thought i d end up in any penitentiary, much less brushy mountain. that s not the type of person i am. you know. i might get thrown in jail for drinking or something, maybe a barroom fight or something like that, but not penitentiary stuff. once the offenders are identified and fingerprinted, they undergo an in-depth psychological exam. i just need to ask you a few routine questions. want to get a little history. jason, how did you get yourself into something like that? could you just briefly tell me what happened? well, basically, it was a drug deal that went bad. okay. jason, have you ever used much in the way of drugs? yeah, i ve used drugs. 80% of the men i interview on intake will have either been under the influence or seeking money to be under the influence when they offend. these guys will say no, i m not an addict, no, i m not an alcoholic. i can handle my liquor. i can handle my pot.