it again, i don t know how a person without faith does time. see, i hate could come in this cell. i mean, i despise this cell and any other cell and i have a lot of problems with the officers because i don t lock that door. i let them lock it. it s the worst part about doing time when you know you can t leave. rodney has been in prison for 16 years. when he was 18 he shot and killed a man while robbing a restaurant. rodney was sentenced to life for murder. he occupies his time with the prison job he s allowed to have in unit six. my job, i come here on death row. i feel trapped already. you see it s getting dark coming up in here. no way out. just one way in. when i go from unit six to death row, i m always, like humbled. i know that that could have been me. because they threaten me with the death penalty. another advantage to living in minimum security is
society in midtown memphis. ziggy had grown accustomed to life in river bend s minimum security unit. he has what he calls a cushy prison job, editing the inmate newspaper. my punishment is not going to begin until i walk out those front gates, because this is a world i ve gotten used to since age 12. but when i get out there, it s an entirely different world. and it s a changed world. and to be honest with you, i m very, very scared. during our shoot ziggy was facing a disciplinary board hearing for altering his urine test. let me see the text of the write-up here. in his hour of need, ziggy turned to an unlikely ally, fellow inmate and convicted serial rapist mark higgins. higgins prison job is as an inmate adviser, a sort of layman defense lawyer.
therefore, inmate hall has been charged with dsa, drug screen alter. i did this for a reason. it was because i m coming up for parole here in less than three months. and i guess i needed a way to delay that. to delay getting out. i m not ready to get out. lieutenant vance, the d-board chairman has a tendency to have an attitude of don t know, don t care when it comes to your personal problems. all he wants to address is what s in the write-up. ziggy faces several potential penalties for attempting to alter his drug screen, including time in the hole. a loss of his prison job and even a judgment that can make his whole plan backfire, a transfer to another prison. that s one punishment i really don t look forward to, being transferred somewhere else. ziggy s reluctance to leave prison became all the more
guys in the cage give me a cut-off mop stick. this guy was trying to stab me, and i broke that stick over his head and got the knife from him, but all i can say is he probably was lucky that the stick broke. personally i try to treat the offenders the way they treat me. they treat me all right, don t give me a problem, then i m not going to give them a problem. but i ll tell you what, if they cross me, i can be their worst enemy. james stone is one of the offenders that used to test cabanaw s mettle. my first eight years here was very violent. that s what i did for a hustle. guys that were having problems that were owed money and couldn t get it, they d come to me and say, will you collect this for us? i d say, yeah, but i get half. i d go up there and split their wig and say, you got a week to get the money, or the next time i m not going to be nice. over the years, stone has grown less violent and more committed to his prison job, which today will take him to the
a lot of people here have affiliation with gangs. they ask me who i run with? i run with teachers and librarians usually. when i find them, i will run with them. i haven t found too many of them yet. parro must also deal with racial politics in his prison job as a housing clerk. i got a message you called over here. usually i come in in the morning, see who paroled, if there have been any roll-ups in the last 24 hours and beds open. i got 109 up, 242 up. those are open since yesterday. i kind of look at those and see who we have waiting and place them. it is a bit of a puzzle because we have to house according to their ethnicity, gang affiliation and medical needs. stefan had a job that afforded him a certain amount of information about the various inmates on the yard, so he really had to walk a tightrope