BEER IN PRISON

The single most frequently asked question in all my e-mails is:  “Do they really serve beer in prison? ”  (The second is: “How the $#%! Did you end up in prison?”)   So once and for all I am here to confront this smoldering beer issue head on and tell you the answer is a resounding:  “Hell Ya….” – Wait a minute, first I have a little explaining to do.

It must be understood that the “they” is not the prison.  You won’t see guards in aprons carrying pitchers.  They don’t sell six packs, cases or kegs on commissary.  And there’s no 16 oz drafts being drawn in the chow hall - not even on March 17^th.   Furthermore, the substance is not called “beer.”  It goes by a variety of different names: Juice, Jump, Raisin, Jack, Buck, Brew, Chalk, Hooch, Pruno and there maybe others, but if you drink this evil shit  - Hell Yes - you will get wasted and the next day you’ll think Samuel Adams came back from the grave and did the antler dance through your intestines before splitting your skull open with a musket, it’s that brutal.

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones once said:     "I’ve never had a problem with drugs, only with the police.”  Personally, I had a problem with both.   Going to prison at forty, as a lawyer and former prosecutor, brought new meaning the term: “Midlife Crisis.”  You’d think I would have needed a drink, but it was making beer in prison that intrigued me.

My first experience in this area was at county jail awaiting federal sentencing.  An inmate came to my cell to bum a scoop of freeze-dried Columbian coffee and while doling it out one granule fell to the floor.  I’d only met this inmate that day but when he bent to pick it up, lost his balance and fell laughing on his ass, I learned something about his character, and prison alcohol consumption: “We jack the hand sanitizer from the officer’s station when the guard goes on rounds.  He keeps it in his bottom draw.  Heating it in the microwave burns off everything but the alcohol.  Mix that with some juice and holy shit you’ll get slammed. You’ve got to try it.”  “No thanks.” Was all I could muster, still shocked he went for the Columbian.  It will never get that bad.  I kept telling myself.  No matter what, don’t ever let it get that bad.  Life, even locked up, didn’t suck enough to pick specks of coffee off the floor or resort to ingesting that poison.  But the fact was many inmates spent a great deal of time and creative energy devising ways to escape reality through alcohol consumption.  I found this fascinating.

Apparently ordinary items used and consumed independently everyday could be combined in synergy to make a potion Satan would be proud of.  Ask 99 prison bootleggers and you’ll get 101 different recipes.  However, those same men will agree on one fact: every ingredient is readily available on the compound.

The details of their combination will vary, but the concept boils down to fermentation.  During fermentation yeast interacts with sugar from the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide (as a by-product).  Co2 is a gas that makes  “burping”  – periodically letting the gas out of the plastic bag you’re using to make the batch – a step that under no circumstances you should forget.  Ever.

My next exposure to institutional intoxication came at Fort Dix.  After a grueling month in the ‘Admission and Orientation’ building I was assigned to the second floor in one of the housing units.  The assignment came on a little white slip of paper delivered by Counselor Hernandez’s orderly, inmate Pollo (The ‘l’s are pronounced like a ‘y’  for all you non-Spanish speakers).  Traipsing around A&O with a white scarf, Pollo was so flamboyantly gay I feared he would burst into flames.  Nevertheless, in his position he could get many otherwise difficult things such as job changes and bed reassignments accomplished.  For this reason everyone tried to stay on his good side. “Good luck Jeemee,” Pollo hushed with a smile when he handed me the tiny paper.  I knew not why, but anyone who’d been at Fort Dix for a while knew I was going from Beverly Hills, straight to Compton.

 It was Christmas week 2008.  There were several inches of snow on the ground, it was brutally cold, and I was starting to believe there were always snowflakes in the New Jersey air in December.  After loading my personal belongings into garbage bags, I coaxed Patty from the AM yard detail to snag me a wheel barrel and off I went across the Compound.  Mind you it is not a straight shot.  Not even close.  The mazes of razor wire fencing that ran in every direction were used to control movement and secure the facility in case of an emergency.  Once you understood the layout, negotiating them provided a little extra exercise.  Until then, they were a kaleidoscope of delirium.

Each brick building had three stories.  I climbed the stairs to the second floor.  This would be my home for how long?  A year?  More?   I reached the landing and was instantly struck by the pungent odor of cannabis.  Having attended Saint Michael’s College in the early eighties, partially because of the tremendous skiing, primarily because the drinking age was eighteen and it ranked high in Playboy Magazine's list of party schools, this smell was like homecoming.  Making my way down the hall to room 220 I gave the customary knock and entered to find something you would never… ever find in Winooski: six black guys.

The only bunk open was the one closest to my right, six upper.  Six lower was occupied by the largest and the darkest of the bunch.  He was stretched out reading Sooth Magazine.  The woman on the cover had a bottom large enough to rent as a moonwalk for my kids. “Jimmy,” I said with outstretched fist, and for a sliver of time thought I'd be left hanging.  Then he looked up briefly: “Big,” he replied. And although he looked pained to do it, met my knuckles with his.

“This locker open?” I asked gesturing to the one closest to my side of the bunk.  Big, who’d gone back to his magazine, and clearly had had enough of me, tapped his chin off his chest, which meant moving it less than an inch. Big's feet hung so far off the bed I knew he was well over six feet.  The way the mattress bowed under to the floor, he had to weigh 300 lbs.  When Big opened his mouth gold caps shown in contrast to his onyx skin.
I dragged my bags closer, tossed them up top, and began unpacking.  There was an empty, desperate feeling in my stomach.  My heart was fast and my hands unsteady.  The others went on playing cards, reading and listening to their Walkmans.  I was sick.

When everything was put away.  I climbed up top.  It was already 3:30 PM; too late to do anything before count, so I might as well lay down.  As cold as it was outside, and in most parts of the buildings for that matter, I was thrilled to have the lone heating duct in the room running up the wall behind me and directly overhead.

“Count!” “Count time!”  “Four o’clock standing count!”  Someone shook the bed frame rousing me from those first stages of REM.  On instinct I swung my legs left to get down as I’d done in the A&O building.  There, however,  A-G was my Bunkie and he kept his chair on the right.   Here, Big was partial to sitting on the left, and was enjoying spaghetti with red sauce when I landed in his gigantic bowl.  “What the fuck – Yo!”  He shouted, while I slid out and hit the floor.  Big jumped up with such force his chair hit the locker behind him and would never be he same.  The rest of the room was dead silent while Big hovered over me looking like the victim of a drive by shooting.  I was reasonably certain his next move was pulling the pick he kept in the side of his fro, driving it through my heart, and taking me to the other side of midnight.  “Hey I’m sorry – so sorry.”  I offered while scrambling to my feet.  “I’ll clean this up, and – and I owe you a new tee shirt…”  Big didn’t speak.  The guards entering the room for count interrupted the tension.  After that no one spoke, not at all.   Eventually we were released from the building for chow but by then the emptiness had mushroomed into complete despair blocking any desire for food.

Deciding to walk, I made my way towards the A&O building.  With close to 2500 inmates mulling around I needed to stay with some familiar faces.  Everything was segregated by race.  No ship without an armada had a hope to survive.  By necessity I hung with the Italians. The only other thing I might’ve passed for was a Jew.  They were many more in number, but their kosher food trays were a bitch.  

The Italians were fewer in size than most groups but thanks to a mystique created by Hollywood and the literary world they were high on the respect ladder.  Everybody loves a mob story and having worked their way down with good behavior from federal penitentiaries, to mediums, now to the low, we had the real thing: true goodfellas.  Bosses, guys that had been straightened out decades ago, and soldiers who’d gotten pinched trying to earn their button.

Through an unusual chain of events I’d fallen into the good graces of one of the latter.  I watched his back in a situation my first week in A&O and we’d become friendly.  I was happy to spot him in front of 5811 and we walked the compound this night killing only boredom.  I didn’t know much about him, but it quickly became clear something was different.  In the course of our walk no less than fifty inmates said hello.  Every person we passed; Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Asian, knew him.   “Nino, what’s up;” “Hey N, how’s it going?” “Ni-no!”  He just shrugged it off, hardly speaking in return, seeming aggravated by the fact we kept getting interrupted.

When we reached the corner near the softball field I heard a voice call down from the unit.  The person yelled his name, but this time it was not as a greeting but to get his attention:  “ Yo - Nino! Do you know that dude?”  When I realized the voice belonged to Big my heart tripped into reverse.  There was an uncomfortable moment, then Nino put one arm over my shoulder and shouted back: “This is Jimmy, my boy from Boston, look out for him - you hear!”

As usual they called “Recall” at 9:30 PM to give us time to get to our rooms before ten o’clock count.  I hadn’t been back since the spaghetti incident and regardless of Nino’s recommendation, I wasn’t looking forward to it.  No sooner had I crossed the threshold Big took me by the wrist, pulling me in the rest of the way. “ Yo, you didn’t tell me you were with Nino, I spent eight years with him up at Shcuylkill .  Yo, fellas – fellas , this here’s Jimmy, he’s with Nino and the Italians.” 

That’s how I first got in.  We went around the room with introductions and intricate hand shakes.  I told them I was from Boston and they assumed I knew Nino from the street.  Seeing he’d been away almost fifteen years, and most of these guys were still in there twenties, there was plenty of grey area.

“Nino’s got a mad body count, Yo - Are you in the Mafioso books too?” Asked Baby.   Before I could respond Big stiff-armed him in the chest: “Yo, real gangstas don't talk about their shit! What the fucks-a-matta with you B?”

Taking Big's lead I kept quiet about myself.  The less I said the more their imaginations galloped. They wanted me to be something… “their something…” “their pet Italian.”   My roomies would brag to their homeboyz about my exploits.  When they walked with friends from other units they'd point, then make me the protagonist in a story they heard at another institution.  Knowing me made their britches bigger.  Knowing Nino  did away with a formal initiation or period of suspicion any other new man to the room would have underwent.  From the first night I was accepted. I was trusted. I got lucky.

With twelve we had a full house.  Moments after the 10:00 count was cleared out came eight cell phones, and he party erupted.  A card game was set up at the center table,  four of the phones were streaming porn while the others connected to baby mommas back home eager to provide a wide variety of live erotic entertainment.   On the street I had to make an effort to procure drugs.  Here a quarter gram of good coke or heroin could be delivered for three books of stamps in the time it took to signal Bonez from across the room.  We kept our door open for the steady stream of traffic.  Rap music blared.   Dudes stood up and down the hall sipping from plastic cups.  The smoke in the bathroom was so thick I had trouble locating a urinal.  If you added women it would have looked like a college dorm or fraternity party and no one would have wanted to go home. 

There was one guard assigned to a building of 300 inmates and tonight’s was known to never leave is his office.  These freedoms are why violence is kept to a minimum in the low.  If blood were to be shed it would have to be for good reason like an insult or dispute over the TV.  Without an incident report everyone here was going home in at least the next ten years.  Nobody wanted to go back to a penitentiary.   

After a while I noticed the beverage was being kept in large plastic jugs.  There seemed to be an endless supply.  It frothed, when poured, like death in a cup.  There was no hiding the agony it took to choke down, but once south, the boys were twisted like gyroscopes.  Someone poured a glass for me.  It smelt like ammonia.  Touching it to my lips burnt off a layer of skin.  That was as far as I got.  We continued playing cards and they were so messed up no one realized I dumped it when I went to the bathroom.

 Around the table were guys from Philly, Baltimore, DC, and NYC.   While we played they wanted to hear about Whitey Bugler and the Winter Hill Gang, armored car robbers from Charles Town, wire taps in the North End, and the aftermath of Raymond Senior’s rule.  These were things unrelated to me that I knew and could discuss competently.  Carrying myself like a thug was a relief compared to hobnobbing with lawyers and judges who’s heads were so far up their asses they could check for strep throat.   Had I told my new friends I was speaking from courtroom experience and not the street; they would have never believed me anyway.

Walk through bed counts were at 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM.  Everyone scrambled to their bunks just in time and the second it was clear went right back at it.  After 3:00 AM I decided to stay put.   I felt exhausted from the move… and the stress, but relieved it was over and for now I was safe.  It may have been from the exhaustion or the relief but in either case I let my guard down and broke out the earplugs and eye shades.  I’d started using them in the county when the unit was wilding-out half the night.  There you were locked in a two-man cell making security less of a factor.   Here you could get your throat slit or head bashed in by a lock in a sock and never know what or who hit you.  I think I was asleep before I finished adjusting the shades.

I’ve had several nightmares in my life where I felt like I was falling, and several more where I was drowning, but being water boarded was a new twist; one that surprised me because in a state of wakefulness I’d never given this torture much thought.  I didn’t realize the water was  poured all over your body?  Why was everyone screaming?  Who was holding me down?  And why did the water sting my eyes and throat – what the?  Fighting an arm free and ripping off the blinds I thought I was still submerged but the blockage was the earplugs.  Two inches from my throat hung a sheet of severed steal certain to have beheaded me if Big and Baby let go.  I was drenched from head to groin in vile stickiness, the scent of which turned my stomach.  The steal hung from a vent in the ceiling right where my cellmates glanced when I first walk in.  The secret location of the endless supply had revealed itself.

“Yo Bonez, I told you we needed to burp that bitch again before the end of the night.”  Bonez’s stoned stare remained fixed on my soaking cloths while Big kept talking,   “Tam-my-man it looks like we’re even on the tee shirt thang. Lets clean you up and see if we can save some of what’s left in this bag.”

 This was my crash coarse in prison brew.  Don’t feel let down, I know without barley, hops and the malting process technically this is not beer.  But just when you thought I brought you here to admit I’ve perpetrated a fraud, leave it to the Italians to once again save the day.

Pausa Cafe (Prison Brews) from Italy released in for the first time in the U.S.

First time in the U.S.

Pausa Cafe Social Cooperative

"The Pausa Café Social Cooperative was established in 2004, with its headquarters in the 'Lorusso e Cotugno' penitentiary in Turin, Italy. It was founded on a small set of principles. Firstly to support good social and economic development and sustainable practices, while giving special attention to help the more disadvantaged in both the North and South of the world. Secondly to promote a fair trade network based on the partnership between producers, manufacturers and consumers, allowing the producers to be closer to the consumer in order to improve food quality and increase the efficiency of the supply chain. Further Pausa Café also believes in: overcoming the many forms of social exclusion; more equality in international exchange; protecting universal human rights; valorization of the bond between food cultures, regions and their biodiversity, and how they are human heritage and should be preserved; environmental sustainability; and using nonviolence as a methodology to solving conflict." – importe

So there you have it.  While prisoners in states like Massachusetts are banging out license plates, Italian inmates are taste testing their product, Hell Yes.

VIEW FROM AN ITALIAN PRISON CELL