Watching someone die is rough. Seeing him murdered in front of you for no particular reason is numbing (at best). Carrying on with the rest of your day after his body is carted away, somehow forgetting it took place, THAT is how prison robs you of your humanity.
Daniel Duran went by the name Snoop because he bore an odd resemblance to the cartoon character. Snoop was not the typical idiot gang banger. We first met when he was researching his conviction and he needed help getting copies of documents for the raid on his mother's house.
I'm very picky about who I help. It's never a sex offender, particularly a child molester, and rarely a murderer, because if a guy has senselessly killed, I tell him to get lost and find someone else. My soul has too many mortgages to perdition already, I'm not going to add to the debt by helping a killer get out.
I saw that Snoop was different. For one, he didn't do it. Not to say that he wasn't there, or that he wasn't peddling dope, killing his victims a shot, snort, or puff at a time. But he wasn't the shooter. He'd taken the case for one of his own. I knew this to be true because I lived on the same concrete and tempered steel  tier as him and his boys. They'd all been there that night and they often gave him the badge of courage for keeping his mouth shut. They had no reason to lie about it amongst themselves.
At first he accepted his fate of dying in the place he now called home, prison. But one day, I started seeing him show up in the law library. We would speak in there often, and I was surprised that such a bright guy was doing life, and hanging around the clowns he was.
After looking over his case for myself, it became obvious that there were some serious problems with the search warrant for his mother's house. The cops, as often seems to be the case, invented a reality of facts, that would get them their license to ransack a family and their life's possessions. This case was sloppy. Cops hate gang bangers like everyone else. Cases like these - the victims today, were the perps yesterday. Great efforts are rarely wasted in these cases.
Snoop started asking me about my life, and we began having conversations about life outside of prison, about getting out. He was one of those kids that, had he been in a better environment growing up. he'd have done some great things. He was a leader, and a bright one at that. He's also one of the few people I've ever met who wielded power but wasn't intoxicated by it.
I spent a few months teaching him some basic business skills, trying to show him ways he could make money and support his family without having to sell dope and pack a 9mm every day. It was all advice I had taken myself a long time ago. In a way, Snoop was very much like myself at a young age.
Soon he began working on a business plan for a small cellular phone shop he dreamed of opening. I understood that with his drug world counterparts, a pre-paid anonymous cellular business, while legal, was hardly ethical. But everyone has to take baby steps. I knew that given the chance he'd make it work.
We  began the records requests on the search warrant, and I showed him how to file challenges with the court. Based on the early responses, it looked promising that he was going to get a second chance at life. There was no doubt he'd hit speed bumps after he was kicked loose, but eventually he would find the right path. I felt confident about that.
One miserable January day we packed into the dining hall. It was a weekend and the place was packed because everyone went to eat. Any other day that place was deafening with idiots making themselves heard, but that day it was silent. All the rage, hate, contempt, and jealousy had been sucked into a black hole vacuum, and was ready to explode.
Snoop and his boys usually sat in the next set of tables over from us. We all had our own seats, it was one way of keeping sex offenders and rats at bay. The undesirable weeding out the undesirable.
Junior was part of the same gang as Snoop. He was a typical prison inmate - institutionalized. Having been locked up for killing his bondsman, he was a regular in the concrete jungle before he was able to drive.
Something compelled me to look up at Junior as I shoveled down scraps of food my dog would likely reject. I locked on his eyes and my stomach grabbed onto my ribcage. There was hate, rage, and a deplorable amount of excitement in his eyes. The devil was inside of Junior, pulling the levers as he approached Snoop's table. Junior looked at me and threw me a smirk as an invitation to enjoy his handiwork. His skin was oily, without any color. It looked like he was a walking phantom, an empty cask whose insides had dried up a long time ago.
From the side of his leg he raised a homemade knife, ten inches long, and by the reflection of where it had been ground meticulously on the could concrete, I knew it to be as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel.
Looking back, every frame of that moment is burned into my mind, replaying itself in slow motion, asking me to examine every grain in the footage.
With both arms force, Junior lunged the weapon into Snoop's neck. The knife sliced through his neck like warm butter. The steel tore into Snoop's lung cavity, and as Junior ripped the knife out, Snoop's lung filled up with blood from the sliced artery, like a tank being pumped full.
The guy on Snoop's left jumped up to run, but Junior managed to skewer his leg like a piece of tomato shish kabob. As the blade came out, blood sprayed on my lunch, head, and shirt. However, I wouldn't notice that until later.
The guards slowly walked the gurney to the chow hall. Their lack of enthusiasm was noted by everyone screaming and pounding on the windows, both fell on deaf ears. Snoop was blue by the time they loaded him up and wheeled him away. Another casualty in the war of senselessness. They hauled him away like trash on its way to its next container.
We were all brought to our cells, I turned my TV on to the football game. There was a touchdown within minutes. I poured myself some coffee, the events that had just unfolded evaporated away like a quick storm of rain sprinkles. An hour later I got up and looked int the mirror, finding the blood dried on my forehead and my shirt. I paused in brief recollection, then wiped away the blood and changed my shirt before getting back to the game.
Snoop became old news, as did my humanity. The Bears won that game, but by how much I don't remember.

Going to Jail in Prison

It's called "the hole". It's intended to be a jail within a prison reserved for the malcontents of the already incorrigible. But it is often used as a tool to strip you of any humanity you may have left.
Today was my turn to have my teeth kicked in and my soul sucked out by a stystem that is about retribution, not rehabilitation. My crime was complaining about having my visits suspended and filing in court to have them reinstated. The warden didn't like the scrutiny the courts will put him under, so he decided to teach me a lesson.
You are thrown into a cold concrete cell without the comforts of clothing, reading material, or the other comforts of life. A day goes by - you get boxers, maybe a sheet. By day four when you have your skivvies and sleeping gear, you are accustomed to the 60 degrees this place is kept at (unless it's winter like now and it's kept even colder).
At  any given time, half of The Hole is filled with the mentally ill they couldn't manage in general population. In Lieu of heavy medication, the went bezerk. The guards make it a point to stagger the cells, so one crazy man is on either side of you. This way, you get to hear the chalkboard screeching, bloody Mary murder screaming, all night long.
Once a week you witness a shit bomb. That's when one of the nutcases takes a couple days worth of feces and flings it in the face of the guards. It may seem funny, if the bombee were one of the sadistic asshole guards, but that's usually not the case. The victim of the shit bomb is usually some young rookie, scared to death of working in a house of murder in the first place. The foul stench of the shit bomb is left to linger for several days. A reminder of the house of horrors you know call home.
Food is served in lastic trays, but depending on the guards working, its 50/50 whether it was spit in or not.
They came by with mail a few minutes ago. Some dude down the tier is crying because his mom just died. I think to myself - sad, they are both dead now. He died the minute he got here.