despite the differences in both age and race, cell mates scott parker and alvin mchellon have come to think of each other more as family than friends. for the past few months, they have shared a small cell in the close management or confinement unit at the santa rosa correctional institution. but mchellon may soon be leaving for the general population compound. the prison s internal classification team has recommended the transfer. but it must still be approved by a state classification officer. today is supposed to be the day ms. beasley comes through, let us know if we re going to the compound or not. it can go either way. i know i did everything i m supposed to do. you know i ain t been in no trouble, keeping a clean record, keeping self occupied whatnot. i m looking for it to go favorably but if not i got to be ready for it. how do you feel about that? a little anxious, you know. but more or less like i prayed about it so i m feeling pretty good about it.
about investing. investment. i started doing things like that and i don t think i never would have did that if i wasn t in a cell by myself and didn t have no distractions around me. while young hopes to improve his finances, alvin mchellon and scott hope their time in confinement will improve their vocabularies. coagulate. i don t even know what that means. he loves doing puzzles. we work on those together. they say two brains are better than one. so when both of us do the puzzle, we smash it. we do it real quick. 66. blank that gun. what would you say? sawed off shotgun. while mchellon and parker have developed a father and son type relationship, it may soon be coming to an end. mchellon expects that any day now he will be released from confinement and transferred to a general population unit. open population is, you got a
the island that i m from usually the girls, age 5 or 6, they start learning how to cook rice. so my sister, i told all my sisters, i got them beat. y all cooking like maybe ten cups at a time. i do 150 pounds. five-star meal right here. we might have cleaned this corn. same corn we cleaned. corn we picked. shucked, bagged. loaded up. good thing we did a good job on it. mm-hmm. despite the differences in both age and race, cellmates scott parker and alvin mchellon have come to think of each other more as family than friends. for the past few months, they have shared a small cell in the close management or confinement unit at the santa rosa correctional institution. but mchellon may soon be leaving for the general population compound. the prison s internal classification team has recommended the transfer.
occasion to other inmates. he doesn t want to be bullied around. you know. being a little bit smaller guy he s trying to establish where he is, i guess, in the group. you don t expect to come to prison and not get tried. people are going to try you, they re going to test you. if you let them get away with it, i m saying once, they feel they can always do it. you know. people do die. people do get stabbed. people do get raped. you got to carry yourself a certain way to get respect. parker s desire for respect is what landed him in confinement. he and three others brutally attacked another inmate. he lost a lot of blood so that s why they had to airlift him out. he never did nothing to me, at all. i had nothing against him. i had no right to do what i did. mchellon has dedicated himself to teaching parker a better way to do time. he s more or less like a son figure to me. but at the same time i know i m not, he has his own mother, he
get your bags two at a time starting up front. at age 50, mchellon is one of the oldest inmates to work in the fields. his 20-year-old cell mate scott parker is one of the youngest. he s serving five years for armed robbery, burglary, and drug possession. i been in that cell for 14 months, you know what i m saying? now 18 months. i get tired of being in that cell all the time. it was nice to come out. it s got its ups and downs. i was nervous coming to prison. first time, 19 years old. it s scary, but i was nervous. didn t know what to do, how to act. he s a young inmate, and it seems like he s still trying to find his way. he does act out a little bit on