feel. you become somebody you would never expect to be. cheryl megarry is serving up to five years for forging a credit card application, a crime she perpetrated in order to buy drugs. this unit s very good because the women all support each other. it s like a sisterhood. in the community they have mentors, they have support for each other. positive nine plus negative six. exactly. we have set it up so that everybody gets positive reinforcements all the time. we realize the consequences what we ve done, because of the wrong choices we have made and how we ve harmed our loved ones. we can t change the past but we can change the future. i m just a totally different person. you wouldn t have liked me seven years ago. cindy johnson has been clean for some time. a graduate of the excel program, cindy discovered her drug problem only after it was too late. i am here on a first degree
to learn how to be a human being and put your hate behind you. so there s always this kind of uneasy truce. but for the most part, if they have respect for each other and each other s space, then there s usually not a problem. while segregated from the rest of the general population, within this unit the inmates are integrated. meaning a member of a latin gang could be housed with a white supremacist. we try to create a balance throughout the building, you know? so they kind of have to live around each other, but there s not a big congregation of one gang versus another. they ll hang with their certain group. they re in such confined space they re still basically forced to interact. they ll do calisthenics. they ll lift water bags, play hand ball, play cards. it just brings more tension. because they re trying for us to get along but not everybody thinks that way. there s other gangs that just don t just don t want to get along. felix solis is a member of occ, ogden s crazi
this is the consequences for being if you look up, the fourth deck s pretty high, you know? people take an elevator ride. problem is, there ain t no elevator. the fall doesn t hurt them. it s the sudden stop at the end. the inmates have created their own hierarchy in this unit based on their own form of respect. the old-timers live on the top tier. a lot of them respect me. not because they re scared of me but because i ve been a lot of time in here. tony duran is one of the influential inmates on a-east. he s been in and out of prison for 20 years for robbery and burglary. murderers, robbers, they re up here. child molesters, rapos, they re down here. it s a food chain, you know? everything is about respect in this place. how you carry yourself determines how you live. this joint here ain t like the rest of them. see, when i first got here in 84, convicts used to run this joint.
you can go insane over here. and you see a lot of people like that. after they ve been over here a long time, they just withdraw into themselves and they start hating everybody. separated from the rest of general population is usp s uinta-1 facility. our uinta-1 is a super maximum security. basically, this is a jail inside the prison. lieutenant jeff myers has served at usp for over 25 years, including six in uinta-1. we have inmates that have shown very negative behavior in other housing units. they have assaulted their roommate, they have assaulted staff. they have tried to escape. so this is it. this is end of the road. in this unit, inmates are single celled to reduce chance of assaults. there are also units called
i have a good relationship. even though it s over the phone, just because i m sober. like cindy, many of usp s female inmates struggle with cycles of abuse that stem from destructive relationships with men. due to overcrowding issues, usp is forced to house men in the timpanogos star-1 unit, side by side with women s housing. it would definitely make it easier if there wasn t men. it would help the women focus more on what they need to focus on. the prison goes to great lengths to reduce contact between the men and women, ensuring that they are never in any adjacent yard areas at the same time. and covering windows to prevent them from seeing into each other s housing units. nevertheless, the two genders have devised other ways of keeping in touch. what i was just doing was signing. that s how we communicate with the men. monica waterfall is serving up to 15 years for possession, and has become fluent in