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I started Jon's Jail Journal back in 2004 to expose the conditions in the maximum-security Madison Street jail, Phoenix, Arizona, run by the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio. I wrote with a golf pencil sharpened on a cement-block wall or metal door, and my aunt Ann, who visited every weekend, smuggled my writing out of the jail. My parents in England posted my writing to the Internet. The blog went on to attract international media attention, and the Madison Street jail was shut down a few years later.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is still in charge of the Maricopa County jail system and its various facilities. His detractors call him the Angel of Death, not just because of the abnormally high amount of murder and death in his jails, but also because he actually promoted guards that the federal court had found responsible for murdering inmates.

Where I was housed, there were only two guards supervising hundreds of inmates, so gangs like the Mexican Mafia had more control over the inmates than the guards. I got used to the sound of heads getting smashed against steel toilets and bodies getting thrown around. Here's a video of an Aryan Brother murdering another inmate in the jail:


On the right hand side of this blog below the banner is an archive menu you can click on. If you click back to March 2004 you can read the early blog entries.

Here are excerpts from the first two blogs I wrote:

19 Feb 04

The toilet I sleep next to is full of sewage. We’ve had no running water for three days. Yesterday, I knew we were in trouble when the mound in our steel throne peaked above sea level.
Inmates often display remarkable ingenuity during difficult occasions and this crisis has resulted in a number of my neighbours defecating in the plastic bags the mouldy breakfast bread is served in. For hours they kept those bags in their cells, then disposed of them downstairs when allowed out for showers. As I write, inmates brandishing plastic bags are going from cell door to door proudly displaying their accomplishments.
The whole building reeks like a giant Portaloo. Putting a towel over the toilet in our tiny cell offers little reprieve. My neighbour, Eduardo, is suffering diarrhoea. I can’t imagine how bad his cell stinks.
I am hearing that the local Health Department has been contacted. Hopefully they will come to our rescue soon.

20 Feb 04

My cellmate couldn’t hold his in any longer. He pinched his nose and lifted the towel from the toilet. Repulsed by the mound, he said, “There’s way too much crap to crap on, dawg. I’m gonna use a bag.” So as jail etiquette demands in these situations, I rolled over on my bunk and faced the wall. I heard something hit the rim of the seatless toilet, and him say, “Damn! I missed some!” When he was done, he put the finished product by the door and the stink doubled. He had no water to clean where the errant piece had fallen on the toilet, so it remained forming a crustation on the rim. We were hoping to be allowed out to dispose of the bag, until a guard announced, “There will be no one coming out for showers and phone calls, as we have to get one-hundred-and-twenty inmates water from an emergency container!”

The water came back on in stages. In our toilet, its level slowly rose.

“Oh no,” I said. “It’s about to overflow, and we’ll be stuck in here with sewage all over the floor.”

“One of us needs to stick his hand in the crap to let the water through,” my cellmate said. “And you’re the closest.”

The brown soup was threatening to spill from the bowl, so I put a sandwich bag on my hand. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said, plunging my hand into the mound. The mound took the bag from my hand. Almost up to my elbow in sewage, I dug until the water level sank.

“I owe you one, dawg,” my cellmate said.

“It’s your turn next time,” I said.

Because the tap water hadn’t come back on, I couldn’t wash my arm. Not wanting to contaminate anything in the cell, I sat on the stool until a guard let us out for showers hours later.

Jon’s Jail Journal was set up anonymously to avoid retaliation from guards notorious for murdering inmates. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has paid tens of millions of dollars to the family members of dead inmates. After I was sentenced and moved to the Arizona Department of Corrections, The Guardian ran blog excerpts featuring my cockroach companions, and the BBC and other media picked up on the blog.

In the state prison system, I focussed more on the characters I lived with. I’ve always been fascinated by extremes of human behaviour and in prison such behaviour is common. If you look to the top right of this blog, you’ll see some links. If you click on the top link, MEET THE PRISONERS, or click here, you’ll end up with a list of prisoners I chose to write about. They range from a Mafia mass muderer, Two Tonys who left the corpses of rival gangsters from Tucson to Alaska, to men who think they’re women, such as Xena, a six-and-a-half foot transsexual who almost bled to death attempting to cut “her” man parts off and was helicoptered to a hospital where doctors saved Xena’s life. To read the blog entries on any of these characters, just type the name of the prisoner you’re most interested in into the Blogger search box at the top left hand side of the blog. All of their stories should come up.

The prisoners I wrote about started to receive mail from fascinated people around the world, and the blog became a bridge to the outside for all of us. The highlight of the week was during mail call when we’d receive printouts of the blogs and public comments sent by my parents. Some of my friends would even spy on the pile of mail in the guard tower looking for UK postage stamps, so they could announce that the blogs had arrived.

When my sentence was almost up, I promised to keep the blog going so that my prison friends’ voices would continue to be heard. Prisoners in Arizona do not have Internet access, so they mail their stories, and I print out their blogs and the comments readers post.

Keeping Jon’s Jail Journal going has not been without its challenges from the powers that be and prison-gang members. Click here for an article on the issues I’ve faced over the years. Here's a video of my first live TV appearance, just out of prison and rather nervous, after the Arizona Department of Corrections tried to stop the prisoners from writing to me in order to sabotage Jon’s Jail Journal:

 
As for me, incarceration sent my life in a whole new direction. I put myself in jail by dealing Ecstasy and needed to mature as a person.

I got out in December 2007, and moved in with my parents, without whose support I don’t know how I would have survived. In February 2009, I moved near London, and now speak to schools across the UK and Europe about my jail experience and the consequences of choosing the drugs and crime lifestyles. The feedback from students, teachers and even parents of students keeps me motivated. My jail memoir, Hard Time was published by a division of Random House, and the prequel, Party Time, is expected in 2012. I'll end this with my final blog from the Madison Street jail:

13 Jul 04

A sudden spate of tragedies has compelled me to write this entry. At the weekend, two inmates on my floor attempted to commit suicide. One threw himself off the balcony and survived. The other was discovered trying to hang himself. Sadder still, an inmate housed in a medium-security pod was found dead in the shower. Inmates are often "smashed" in the shower area because it is out of view of the cameras. The jail has refused to release the cause of his death.

The temperature outside is 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The trickle of air into our cells feels like hot air blowing from a hairdryer. We are soaked in sweat all day and night. It is difficult to write on this sweat-moistened paper. The majority now have skin infections and rashes, which persistently itch. My skin is so soggy from perspiration that when I scratch it the skin detaches and I end up with clumps of it under my fingernails. Between the sweat trickling down my body and the cockroaches tickling my limbs, it is impossible to sleep properly. Last night, while sleeping on my side, my ear filled up with sweat, and when I moved my head, the sweat spilled onto my face. I woke up, startled. It felt like someone was touching my cheek.

I once asked a guard how the jail’s administration gets away with this and his response was, “The world has no idea what really goes on in here.”

When I was a small child, I imagined hell consisted of caves in which the damned were trapped, tortured and burnt. I imagined serpents and indescribable creepy crawlies tormenting the captives. I never imagined man's nature could be so hateful as to recreate these conditions on earth.


Tips for surviving Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail system:


Click here for my jail survival tips.

On Jailhouse cockroaches:

If you know a prisoner who would like to write a story for Jon's Jail Journal then click here.  
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.

Shaun Attwood