'The convicts sleep tonight'

Our friend is working in a medium/maximum security prison and offered to take me on a private tour before we left for home. So late Monday night after the convicts had been counted, tucked in to bed, and locked up for the night, we drove up to the prison and walked through the main entrance and into the heart of 'The Big House'. He gave me an in-depth tour of practically the entire prison, and I must say, I had no clue what to expect before going in, and tried to keep an open mind, as I did not want to assume it would be like prisons are generally portrayed in Hollywood.

We started the tour by looking at how they keep count of the inmates every day, and he also showed me the prison armoury. That gave me the first notion of just how dangerous some of the inmates really are! These guys were prepared for the worst with rifles, guns, bullet proof vests, and pepper spray cans the size of fire extinguishers!

We moved on and walked through long green and white concrete corridors with lots of barriers, video cameras and slamming steel doors, as one would hope and expect.

"It is when I don't hear a door slam behind me I start getting worried."

As we moved deeper and deeper into the prison, I got to visit the cell blocks and the segregation unit where some of the worst baddies are housed alongside the ones that are unlikely to survive in the general population. We also had a look in a suicide observation cell with eerie writings on the walls, we checked out the visiting rooms (which in some ways were surprisingly warm and family oriented), we checked out the exercise yards, kitchen, and even took a drive around the prison walls.

All through the tour he was telling me horror stories about prisoners attacking other prisoners, riots, contraband, gangs, and more. Very very interesting!

This was definitely an eye opening tour, verging to the extreme, that I don't think too many people get to experience. I was saying to our friend as we walked through the prison that it should be mandatory for every single school kid to visit a prison, because hopefully after seeing that, they'd stay out of trouble!

I walked out of there with great admiration and respect for the work our friend and his colleagues are doing every day.