Summary Of Life In Prison By Reilly Santos

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Life In Prison by Reilly was an exceptional read and the information was fairly recent while the last year he was a correctional officer in 2007. Reilly has been a correctional officer for a little over 6 years and while in those six years he has worked at two different prisons; a prison in Pennsylvania and Maine State Prison. Since these were both high security prisons, these offenders ranged from 20-65 years old, some older than that, race varied but predominantly black, both of these prisons had well over 900 inmates that includes around 800 males and over 100 females. These crimes that inmates committed were all felonies, with ranging from drug distribution to murderers. The next book is Inside: Life Behind Bars In America by Santos. Santos …show more content…

Santos talked about a race war and a riot that occurred one day and I related to the videos that we watched on the riots in prison. Seeing the videos in class and then reading as he described what happened really connects the class and the book well. I understand more on why riots occur and there are countless of reasons and I think race does play a huge role in that aspect. Being locked up everyday and being ordered around by guards is not something the inmates like and to see a rival gang in prison everyday, it can get tense. Also, talking about the inmate code we can really see how if you don’t follow it there will be punishment. Santos discusses being to friendly with a guard will get you beat up or if you try to start running the prison on your first day, will also get beat up. I can see why if you never been to prison before and don’t know about the inmate code it can be a culture shock when an inmate is in the prison. Even knowing about the prison guard code that the guards follow should never be disrespected. Reilly, however broke one of the guard codes by disrespecting an officer in front of an inmate. This shouldn’t happen because the inmate will lose respect they have towards the guard and that is never a good thing. Reilly thought the guard was handling a situation poorly so he stepped in and instead of working with the prison guard he took over the situation himself. In both books it gives you a sense of prison guards and inmates have to follow certain codes if they want to survive in a prison or penitentiary and should be aware before they walk