by Larry Lawton
*
Lawton quickly learned about currency in prison. In all the years as a prisoner he never once saw any money. Instead, in prison the main currency was postage stamps.
“An inmate is able to buy postage stamps at the commissary at face value but on the prison yard, the value of a book of twenty stamps was five dollars,” said Lawton. “It cost twenty-five cents for one stamp. Inmates would amass hundreds and even thousands of dollars worth of stamps gambling or dealing drugs.
“If you wanted to buy a grilled cheese sandwich from the kitchen, it would cost you four stamps worth a dollar,” said Lawton. “A hamburger would cost four stamps.
“I watched an inmate get killed for a book of stamps, which he had used to buy drugs. I didn’t know much about him. He was a black guy in his early 30s, kind of muscular. When you owe money, everyone knows it, and they stay away from you. Because the inmates know you’re trying to get money from whoever you can in order to pay off the debt.”
The other currency at Atlanta was drugs.
“In Atlanta, if you went into the hole, you would suitcase some heroin,” said Lawton. “Once you arrived at the hole, you could then trade the heroin to the orderly for things you wanted like a toothbrush, soap, or a radio. If a prisoner owed money to members of his group, that group might send him to the hole with heroin suitcased to make money. He’d then trade the heroin for stamps, and he’d use the stamps to pay off his debt.
“Most of the guys who did this were junkies,” said Lawton. “They were told, ‘If you use the heroin and don’t come back with the stamps, we’re going to kill you.’ Some of them used the heroin anyway and then ran to the captain to keep from getting killed.”
It wasn’t long before Lawton saw that there were more drugs in prison than there were on the street. Quickly he learned which inmates sold what and in what amounts. His friend Reno, a member of the Latin Kings, earned $10,000 a month selling heroin.
“If you’re on the streets and you want to buy heroin, you might have to drive two miles,” said Lawton. “In Atlanta you only had to go five cells down. On the streets you might have one or two heroin dealers in your neighborhood. In Atlanta, we had fifteen dealers. Everything was readily available – heroin, crack, coke, acid, weed, you name it.”
He also discovered how the drugs made their way into the prison.
“There are several ways,” said Lawton. “A girlfriend of an inmate will wrap the heroin in cellophane, put it inside a plastic Kotex, and put it inside her vagina. She’ll come in for a visit, go to the bathroom, take it out, and pass it to the guy. He’ll then suitcase it -- slide it up his rectum.
“Or someone on the outside would take heroin or coke or weed and put it in a condom in little balls. He’d make thirty of those and put them in an M&Ms bag. Then during the visit, he’d go up to the candy vending machine, buy M&Ms, and then switch them. The inmate would sit there eating what the guard thought were M&Ms, but really they were the little balls of heroin, coke or weed, and later he’d shit them out.
“While I was there one inmate was caught with seventy little balls of weed. If the guards think you have something in your system, they will put you in a dry cell. A dry cell is a totally empty cell with no running water. They then wait until you take three shits into a bucket before you can get out. If there’s anything in your system they’ll find it. Someone watches you the whole time.
“I never had to go through this ordeal,” said Lawton. “I wasn’t a drug pusher.”
A third -- and most prevalent method of bringing drugs into the prison -- involved the guards, who brought them in. The drug kingpins in the prison contact their people on the outside, and those people would send the guard money and drugs to a specific PO Box. The guard would then bring the drugs right into the prisoner’s cell. Lawton saw guards bring in a pound of weed at a time. If a pound of weed was worth $1,000 on the streets, it was worth ten times that in prison.
At Atlanta, most of the debts were drug debts. If the debt dragged on too long, you could get killed.
“This guy had borrowed books of stamps, and he used them to buy drugs, and he didn’t pay the guy back, and sure enough, three guys go into his cell and stab him to death,” said Lawton. “Just like that. Everyone knows the identity of the killers, who have life sentences. What did they care?”
One time an inmate acquaintance of Lawton’s borrowed money from a loan shark, who made the loan because Lawton had vouched for him.
“I gave my word that he was good for it,” said Lawton.
Several months went by, and when the inmate by the name of Streeter didn’t pay back the debt, Lawton knew if he didn’t do something to urge Streeter to pay the money back, he would be the target of the guys who had lent him the money. Lawton decided that the impetus Streeter needed would come at the business end of a shank.
“You can make a steel shank out of anything,” said Lawton. “You can make it in a machine shop. You can make a shank from the edge of a foot locker or from bed springs. Shanks go for big money in the joint.”
Lawton, like most inmates, had numerous shanks planted all around the prison. He had one shank outside his cell on a pipe above his door. He had another shank inside a coffee creamer can inside his locker. He had another one hidden on the yard. The guards often found the ones on the yard, so Lawton was never sure it was there.
“Why did I need a shank? For self-protection,” Lawton said. “Death was a common occurrence. There were more murders and overdoses in the Atlanta prison than anywhere in the system. You never wanted to be caught with your dick in your hand. Your dick isn’t hard enough. It better be steel.”
Lawton took a shank and went looking for Streeter. He found him, and when Streeter saw Lawton, he must have realized that Lawton was after him, because he began running through the unit up the stairs to the second level where he lived to get away from him.
“I’m chasing him, and he’s running through people, and I take two stabs at him with my shank, and I get him on the side,” said Lawton. “He made it to the second level, where I wasn’t allowed to go.”
Lawton ran back to his cell, ditched the shank, and was all hyped up waiting to see what would happen. During count time, Streeter walked past Lawton’s cell in handcuffs. He had blood on his shirt from where I got him. He looked right into the window where Lawton was standing and never said a word.
“I give him that,” said Lawton.
Another time Lawton was certain that another inmate – Lawton never knew his name -- was out to kill him. When Lawton went out on the yard, he made sure he carried his knife with him.
“I knew he was going to have a knife, and I had to protect myself,” said Lawton. “If I pull out my knife, he’s going to stop for a second, and that’ll give me enough time for the guards to shoot down on the yard. It might save my life. In prison you do what you have to.”
The problem Lawton had was that he had to get through three sets of metal detectors to reach the yard with his knife. Lawton knew exactly what to do.
“I put the shank in one half of a plastic toothbrush holder, taped the open end, and put it up my ass. I made sure to put it way up. Did you know you have seven extra inches in your ass to hide something? You do. I knew one guy who put six quarter-rolls of weed up his ass.
“To get to the yard you have to pass through three metal detectors. When the detectors go off, the guards pull you out of the line, and they strip search you. You have to lift your nuts, turn around, spread your ass, but the knife is past your sphincter. They can’t see it, and they won’t find it. They don’t know if you have a metal knee or a bullet still in you. After you get through that third metal detector, only then do you take the shiv out of your ass, put it in a wooden handle hidden on the yard, and you have your shank. Wooden handles don’t get found as much because the guards run the metal detectors everywhere an
d wood isn’t detectable.
“We confronted each other. The guy pulled a knife, and I pulled mine. The guards came out of the tower and leveled their rifles screaming over a bullhorn for everyone to get down. The situation was diffused. The shank up my ass saved my life.”
Off to the hole both went.
In another incident Lawton and a buddy stealthily followed an inmate he had a beef with into the gym, a space so dangerous that the guards rarely would enter. There were two handball courts and a regulation basketball court and bleachers on either side of the court. Inside the gym was a bathroom, located behind the wall, and Lawton watched the inmate go inside.
Lawton noticed that one of the orderlies had left a mop bucket and wringer near a supply closet, and Lawton told his friend, “Watch the door.” He picked up the mop wringer and held it by his side as he stood by the outside entrance to the bathroom. Lawton heard the toilet flush, and when he saw the shadow of the inmate as he was walking out, he swung the mop wringer like it was a baseball bat, and he smashed the guy in the face. The guy dropped like a stone. Lawton dropped the mop wringer, left the gym, and blended into the crowd as he headed back to his unit.
“I hit the guy at three thirty in the afternoon,” said Lawton. “That was the time they had recall, which was when you had to go back to your cell. Every day in federal prison they have what they call four ’clock standup count, when every single inmate has to be on his feet locked in his cell. They do that because for three days they had counted an inmate who had died on his bunk.
“So every day at four o’clock they count, and if everyone is counted, they open the doors about four-thirty, and then they allow the units to eat. Sure enough, four-thirty came, and they didn’t open the doors. At five, they still didn’t open the doors. Holy shit! I was sure it was because the guy I smashed wasn’t accounted for.
“I wondered whether I had killed him, but when someone in prison dies, the word gets out fast, and no one had said anything. Someone found him, all fucked up. At about five fifteen they opened the doors. I never heard about it again, and I never saw the guy again.”
*
After several months of incarceration at Atlanta Lawton was learning how to become a convict. There are two types of men living in Atlanta. There are the inmates, who follow the rules and do everything they’re supposed to do. They aren’t trusted. And there are the convicts, those who question authority, stand-up guys, who understand how to do prison time. Usually old timers.
Lawton was a convict, and one of the illicit enterprises he became involved in was the making of wine and alcohol. Stealing from the kitchen was a part of the prison culture, and Lawton, who worked in the kitchen, became very good at it.
“Every week we would make thirty gallons of wine,” said Lawton. “We’d take fifteen gallons and break it up into sixty quarts, and we’d sell each quart for five dollars. That’s one book of stamps. That’s $300 a week or 60 books of stamps.
“Making wine involved stealing fruit and sugar from the mess hall. Stealing sugar was an art. You can’t just walk around prison like you own the place. You have to hide things, because the guards are constantly patting you down. One of my co-conspirators had a size 10 foot but he stole size 13 shoes from the laundry. He looked like Bozo the Clown with his big feet, and he would stuff sugar packets and Ziploc bags full of sugar into the space in front of his toes in the shoes, and he’d bring it back to our unit.
“We mixed the fruit we stole, and the sugar, and we’d put a little yeast in there and let it ferment, and viola, it became wine – wine that could make you drunk as a skunk.
“To make the wine, we had put the wine in a bag, hide the bag behind the cell wall, and let it ferment. To make the hiding place in the wall four or five of us used nail clippers to chisel a foot-round hole behind the shower in our cell. We’d put a large bag in the hole and pour the wine into the bag. Getting the wine out of the wall required us to steal a hose from a clothes washer or dryer. We’d suck on the hose and siphon the wine back into a bucket. As soon as the wine was ready, we’d sell it, and within an hour everyone was roaring drunk.
“One time we didn’t give the wine enough air to breath, and it started to cook, and it exploded, making a big hole in the bag. You could smell the alcohol throughout the whole cell block. The guards looked for the wine everywhere.
“The other fifteen gallons we’d cook off and make into white lightning, pure grain alcohol. To do that you have to boil it, and we did that by taking a piece of electrical cord from a typewriter or from the light in the counselor’s office, we’d then take the device that boils the water – we called it a stinger -- two small metal drain covers or any two pieces of thin metal, take a little piece of rubber or wood, something not conductive, and face the two pieces right next to each other without allowing them to touch, maybe a quarter or half inch apart, then put one wire to one, the other to the other, and you boil water or any liquid real fast. The key is to make sure the metal doesn’t touch, and you plug the electrical cord in when the device is in the liquor -- or you’ll blow the fuses in the area of the prison you are in.”
Which Larry did. “If there’s no power or lights, the administration and guards freak. Using that little device, I was able to make the liquor. We took the wine we made, and we put it in a mop bucket. We put the mop bucket in a big trash bag, and we stuck the stinger inside the wine. The bag expands as the heat from stinger cooks the alcohol. The alcohol rises and ends up on the sides of the bag where it drips down to the bottom of the bag. The pure grain alcohol is at the bottom of the bag. For every gallon of wine, we made one pint of hard liquor, and that stuff was the real deal. It could really fuck you up. In prison that pint sold for forty dollars.
“Guess what happens when you have a lot of drunk inmates in prison? Fights, stabbings and total mayhem. I was told that one time in Florence, Colorado, three guys were put in a cell because of overcrowding, two had life sentences and the other a 10 year sentence and was due to be released soon. They all got drunk and the two with life sentences used a razor they stole previously and cut out the liver and intestines of the other guy. They hung the intestines around the window in the cell door. Did they hate the third guy? Who knows? They had totally lost it.”
About four months after being incarcerated in Atlanta Lawton was caught with a shank by the guards. He had it for his own protection, but getting caught with a shank was an offense punishable by a stint in the hole.
Soon after going to the hole, Lieutenant Catret, who was in charge, wanted to know where Lawton got the shank. Lawton, who wasn’t a rat, refused to tell him. Catret, like the prosecutor, made him pay for his silence.
“Catret, the head of the SHU, was an Italian asshole guy from New York City who had a team of goons with him,” said Lawton. “Catret was pretty big, but he didn’t do his own dirty work. He was the motherfucker who used to beat everybody’s ass. The goon squad would go into a cell, and you would hear inmates begging for their lives. You could hear them screaming on the end of the tier. And you knew it wouldn’t be long before they were coming for you.”
Catret was heartless. Because Lawton wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know, Catret sent his goons in to exact punishment.
“When you hear them open the door at the end of the tier, you know they’re coming to get you, and that’s the most fear you have in prison. You really believe you’re going to die. It’s not the beating itself. The door opens, and your juices are flowing, and your adrenaline is up, and then you work yourself up, get mean, fuck you, and get ready to fight.
You get ready to fight, but the outcome is always the same: a severe beating.
“Four guards the size of gorillas came in and no words are said, they just start beating on me, and you can’t fight that many guys. No way. All that movie stuff is bullshit. As I was trying to cover up, all I can hear the guards saying is, ‘You’re
a smart ass, huh?’”
They knocked Lawton to the floor, kicked him, and pounded on him over and over again with their fists until they figured he had enough. Other than screaming in pain, Lawton took his beating in silence.
“There’s no telling on them,” said Lawton. “Who are you going to tell? Nobody cares about you. I’m a pretty tough guy, but there were times when I wondered whether I was going to survive to the next day.”
While in the hole Lawton made various objects, to make what little life he had more bearable. Like having a straight-edged razor blade from a disposable razor to sharpen a pencil or cut a piece of bed sheet. The trick, of course, was stealing the blade without the guard finding out.
“An inmate is given a razor to shave once a week,” said Lawton. “An hour later the guard comes and retrieves it and makes sure the blade is still in the razor. I learned how to fool the guards by taking a silver-colored advertisement from a magazine, cutting it into the exact shape of the razor, and putting the silver-colored paper in the razor in place of the actual blade. The guard would check, see what he thought was the blade, and throw it in the trash. I then kept the actual blade in my cell, a blade which I used for various reasons. “
One of the other items Lawton learned how to make at Atlanta was a rope, which only had two uses: either it was a means of communication in the hole or a way to commit suicide.
Each cell in the hole had a solid door, but there was a one-inch gap underneath it. The inmates figured out an ingenious delivery system to pass messages – known as kites -- through that gap under the door.
“They give you a sheet, and you cut it lengthwise into strips,” said Lawton. “Then you tie them together to make a long rope. You attach a message to the end of the rope along with a weight – usually a flat, empty toothpaste tube to give it enough weight to travel far enough to go down the tier and get under another inmate’s cell door.
