WEBVTT
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M h.
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A wall Street line, shackle change, Oh do someome gird
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it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's
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been a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Wrangle three.
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Come in by me to die inside these walls, inside
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the wild.
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Hadn't went no girl as I'm hey everyone, and welcome
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back to Bloody and Gola, a podcast one hundred and
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forty two years in the making, the complete story of
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America's bloodiest present. I'm Jim Chapman, and we have a
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little surprise for you today. Look and Gola. One of
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the most intriguing things about Louisiana State Ben and Gentry
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are the people that have worked there or have worked
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there in the past. I have a guest with me today.
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You're very familiar with her. She's done multiple episodes of
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Bloody and Gola in the past. She also has her
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own podcast, Unspeakable, a true crime podcast by Kelly Jennings.
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And today I'm going to go over a little bit
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with her of her experience getting introduced in Gola, working
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in Gola, the things she did there. It's gonna be
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a really interesting podcast. But first of all, welcome to
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Bloody and Gola.
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Kelly, thank you. I'm happy to be here.
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It's weird calling you Kelly. I usually call you kJ yeah,
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which I invented, and it's incidentally.
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Someone called me kJ a few weeks ago.
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We were somewhere and I just kept looking because I
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didn't hear it, because keep you know, in real life,
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you don't call me kJ.
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Some some people do. Now some people do. But my
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daughter tapped me on the shoulder and she's like, Mom,
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you're being rude. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.
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Well, welcome back to the show.
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I know you.
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I know you've done this show several times in the past,
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and I want to talk about today your personal experience
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with Louisiana State Penitentiary. And I guess we'll start off
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with how the interest got in your brain. Now, for
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those of you lestening that maybe have not met Kelly,
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it's hard for people to wrap their brain around anyone
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saying I want to go work at the largest prison
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in the United States of America, one of the most historic,
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but also a reputation for a lot of danger. There's
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primarily lifers at Louisiana State Bendentiary. You don't get locked
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up there for running red lights. And so you were
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a young female when you started correct.
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Yeah, I think I was twenty No, yeah, I was
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in my early twenties, early very early twenties, twenties.
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And at some point you made a decision and you said,
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I think I want to go work in prison.
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I did, okay, and I'm so excited.
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How does this happen?
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Okay, So I'll let me back up real quick.
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So I went to college at LSU, and I did
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not know what I wanted to do. I had resigned
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myself that I was gonna have to be a kindergarten teacher,
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because that my logic then was, hey, you know, more
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than a kindergartener, you probably could teach him.
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I'm serious. That's give you that maybe I could do that. Well.
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I took a my very first criminal justice class, criminology
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class with a professor named Yoshinori Como.
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And I was enamored.
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I did not know that that was such a class.
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Every word he said, I hung on. I literally read
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the textbook, which makes me a total nerve. But anyone's
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gone to college knows you're not going to sit down
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and actually read the textbook. You're real like hit some
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highlight moments. If you'ven buy the book. Yeah this, Mama.
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I sat down and I ate it up.
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Was it was it the teaching style of that. It was.
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It was his teaching style along with just the content.
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I was very very he knew what he was talking about.
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As matter of fact, he this kind of off topic. But
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he told me he was he was from Korea. I
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think if I had that wrong, don't don't come at me.
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But he said, y'all, y'all need to get your minds right.
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And you had this accent, you know, and he said,
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because y'all talk on the phone. Soon the years are
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coming this text text text, You'll only be texting people
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you don't know in America yet, you will only be texting.
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And I laughed at him. I'm like, I'm not texting.
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Look at us now. The man was cool. Ast crap.
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But anyway, shout out to him if he's still a professor.
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But he Once I took that class, that was it.
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It was on. All I did was watch forensic files
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and court TV.
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So my mom one day told me, she said, why
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are you in school taking all these education classes when
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all you do is love crime? I said, well, what
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am I gonna do, mamma, get a degree in crime?
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And she said, yes, it's stupid, and I was like, oh,
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my bad, mama. So she really got me into these,
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you know, into the mix of criminal justice. My senior year,
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I was sitting in a juvenile justice class and a
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warden came in from Angola. Her name is Kathy Fontnau
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and she is tiny but mighty, and she just started
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talking and I was fixated. I looked around the classroom too,
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I'll never forget this, and the other students, some of
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them were kind of like just looking down, looking at
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their phone, whatever, and I'm like hanging on.
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Every word that she said.
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So I started asking her questions about the rodeo because
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I had been to it and I wanted to know
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things about it. She looked at me, she said, what's
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your name? I said Kelly. She said I want to
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talk to you after class. I said okay, and I
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kind of took that as like be quiet, so I
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was like, all, dang, you know, well after class, sure enough,
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she said, you're really interested, aren't you. I said, Oh,
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I'm like, I'm like sickly interested. I've always loved prison
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and crime and all that she said, how about you
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come out to Angola and I will give you a
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personal tour. And I thought I had just been invited
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to the White House. I just you know, this is
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the greatest thing. And she made good on her word
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a few days late, because I graduated just a few
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weeks like two weeks later, three weeks later, and she
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took me up on it, and I showed up. She
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got me in her car, took me on a personal
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tour the facility for someone. She brought me in the
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dorms and she told me, she said, if you want
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a job, you've got one. Really yeah, And I said,
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I'll be here tomorrow or whenever you want me to
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be here.
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My mama cried, oh my god.
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Wow. Interesting.
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She said, you're good to my mom.
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You're gonna die, I said, Mama, I mean everyone can't
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die every day.
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Well, but look and looking back now, you're a parent.
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I'm a parent. I get that. I get it. I
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would be freaking the f out if my kid was like, yeah,
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I want to go working and go I mean, I
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think it'd be cool, and I would accept it, obviously,
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I was. I first thought was they'll kill you.
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That's what I want.
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Free.
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You think you are some kind of a badass.
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When I was, uh, you know, I'm twenty.
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I was five foot four, maybe one hundred and ten pounds,
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but a ball of dynamite, you know, rolled up in there,
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and I'm.
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Glad it did. I loved it.
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So that first day, let's talk about that. So you
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get hired eventually, and you get hired for what.
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So my job was what's called an ARDC specialist one.
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So you have to have a degree to I guess
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qualify classification.
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That's what the job was that I got. So classification
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is going to be.
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Someone that has a little bit more education than the
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average SAT.
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Bit you have to have a college degree.
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Yeah too, And so you know it's a little bit.
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I have a higher pay grade. I'm not acting like
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it's a warden or anything, obviously, it's it's it's still
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I would consider it entry level, but a little bit
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higher than that. And so my job was that when
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inmates would come in, I had to determine housing custody.
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And quarters of the inmates do that.
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So I was young, A lot of it was watching
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other people and trying to figure out what the hell
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they were doing. But this would be so you would
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have to look at what's called their jacket. Their jacket
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is their file. Basically you flip it open.
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They do.
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It's called aun and then you're looking and you're trying
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to determine what type of crime do they have, where
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are they from, how old are they?
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You know, everything is taken.
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Totality of circumstances taken in Now, obviously, if you're a
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death row inmate, you're.
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Going to death row su Hell, yeah, that's easy.
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But if you were really young, if you were under
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five foot seven and you're white, and you're a non
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violent offender, maybe you're three times in, you're out three
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strikes and you're out type thing or drug dealing or
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something like that, you're gonna be in a bind behind
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prism walls because you are going to be a target
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for sexual aggression and so things like that. You would
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look at them and say, all right, Padna, I'm gonna
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put you. So you have options. You We have dorms
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that are open. We have I say we I'm in
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no way affiliated with Angola, just to be fair, but anymore,
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we have working cell blocks wcb's how it would be written,
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working cell blocks. We have cell blocks there's lockdown, there's
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admin seg, there's all these different options. Majority of your inmates,
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if they're not really young, if they weren't seventeen something
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like eighteen, they're gonna go to a working cell block scenario.
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And so what that is is where you're in a
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cell block to sleep, to eat your lunch. But other
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than that, they wake you up at the buck crack
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of dawn. Get on your clothes. You're gonna walk out.
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They're gonna do count, which is taking attendance. They're gonna
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make you do what it's called dousen it up, which
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means you get into two lines that are right next
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to each other. You're gonna walk out the gate. There's
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going to be officers on horseback and they're going to
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escort you to the field. It's a working cell block,
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and so you're going to walk out with your tool
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whatever it's a hoe or whatever it is that you
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might need, swing blade or whatever. They walk you out
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to the field. You're going to pick your crops, work
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the fields. They'll march you back and you go into
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your cell to eat your lunch, and then they march
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you back out. Yeah, do your more work. The rest
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of your work and then they march you back in.
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Interesting, and so you basically classified these individuals and it
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was in an effort to maybe keep them safe as
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well to an extent. I mean, you know you don't
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want to put let me give you an example. If
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you're a if you're a guy, you got a goala,
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you're fifty five years old to get you don't necessarily
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look like a threw, right, although anybody in there, yeah right,
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it looks to some Yeah, to some extent, But do
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you take aging the consideration.
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Yeah, and you would also take okay, maybe not on paper,
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so I know there's someone who's gonna jump on my
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throomly no out of it. But if I'm looking at
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you and let's say, let's say you murdered somebody, Okay,
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anybody's capable of anything on any day. We have people
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that are in wheelchairs, that are very sickly that can
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still pull a trigger and kill somebody. However, the constitution
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still provides that I need to Once you're in our custody,
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we still have an obligation to protect you from obvious.
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Concerns.
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And so maybe you come in and you're elderly and
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you're frail, and you're in a wheelchair. Well, I'm not
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going to be inclined to put you with some young
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buck who's going to be able to manipulate, harass, and
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hurt you for obvious reasons because you can't defend yourself.
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Now you know, that's worst case type scenario I'm talking.
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I mean, most people are going to just have to
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bucket out.
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I mean, you're in prison.
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You're in prison. You better learn to But I can
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tell you too.
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And again, things have changed a lot since I've been there,
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and so like camp see I believe is now like