P-Wing Demographics and Dayroom Tension
In prison, everything revolved around race. Blacks sat together, hispanics sat together, and whites sat together. They ate together, went to rec together, and even showered together. In Texas, most prisoners are black or hispanic. Those groups further subdivide into gangs. In the day room at Beto, there were benches enough to seat 108 people, albeit snugly. There were also five tables, which seated four men each. I lived on P-Wing, where all the benches but one were owned by gangs. The hispanics had eight benches. Four for Tango Blast, divied up by the city they “represented,” one for Valluco, one for the Mexican Mafia, 1/2 for Mexicles and 1/2 for the Puerto Rican Mafia (which, incidentally, had no Puerto Rican members). Valluco had one of the tables as well, and Tango had another. The Blacks had six benches: four for Crips, and 2 for Bloods. The Crips also had the other three tables. The Woodpile (assorted white boys, some in gangs, most not) had the last two benches, and no table.
Despite the seating being divided by gang, the important thing to keep in mind was what ethnicity sat where. This was because the dayroom was where race riots were started, and if you sat on one of the benches I just mentioned, you were expected to fight for your “race.” I put race in quotes because I believe there to be only one race: the species homo sapiens, but I digress. The last bench was called the Ho bench. Hardcore Christians sat there, along with child molestors that hadn’t been dealt with yet, and a few very old men. This was the only place someone could sit and not be expected to fight. It didn’t mean someone who sat there wouldn’t be attacked if a riot kicked off. It just meant there wouldn’t be repercussions for him if he escaped the fighting by climbing up the bars that made up one of the dayroom walls. If anyone else did this, their own people would beat them or shank them for cowardice after the riot.
The dayroom accomodated the full wing population of 196 men several times a day, such as at chow and shower time, because we were staged there before being allowed off the wing. Even worse were special events, like commissary day, when everyone stayed in the dayroom all day, trying to get a chance to be one of a shot of 10 people allowed to make purchases. Fortunately, this only happened every three or four weeks. Needless to say, it was pretty crowded. Now, from the bench break-down, you might expect that most of the inmates on the wing were hispanic. That wasn’t the case. Most were black, and therefore many black men found themselves with nowhere to sit. To exacerbate the situation further, the guards often ordered us all to find a seat, and threatened those who didn’t with disciplinary action.
Can you guess what the leading cause of race riots was? People sitting on benches that didn’t align with their ethnicity.
It was always crowded and there were always men looking for a place to sit down, and loathe to sit on the filthy floor. The tables were home to gamblers, slamming dominos down with all their might. Two televisions, on either side of the dayroom, attracted crowds of people to stand around them. They were always turned up to full volume, but no-one ever heard a word. And somehow, in the middle of this huddle of people there was always at least one bench with just one guy sitting on it. Holding it down, it was called. The guards shouted at the men standing up, and pointed out that there were a few seats available. The guys holding down those seats cracked their knuckles or fingered their shanks.
The part of the dayroom farthest from the guard monitoring the door, and from the windows looking in from the hallway, was where fights were supposed to happen. The gangs all had contraband in the dayroom all the time, so if a minor fight broke out it was in their interest to keep the guards from noticing it. Two men who started hitting one another would be restrained and shoved “under the TV,” where a standing crowd was normal. Bare knuckle fights very rarely last longer than a couple of minutes, especially when bigger guys are involved. Body builders hit hard, and quick knock outs were common. As long as the fight was race on race, and within the same gang, nothing else would go wrong. If, however, the fight involved any other ethnic pairing, the winner was immediately ganged up on by the loser’s homeboys. This naturally escalated into a gang war or a race riot. I wish it had been more uncommon, but it wasn’t. It happened all the time, and as long as it didn’t spread off the wing to other parts of the prison, the guards didn’t much care.
Reading this , you might think to yourselves, “Why go into the dayroom at all, other than before meals and showers?” Most people new to the penitentiary think the same thing, and try to spend as much time as possible in their cells. Unfortunately, a 9′x5′ cell is home to two men, and both need at least some down time every day. Can you guess what most cellies fight about?
