The State Penitentiary
So today was the big trip. I went to the Kentucky State Penitentiary. It was so fucking cool. I could work there. I loved it.
I sat in the electric chair. It's still working, the last person they executed in it was in 1997. There have been 134 people killed in that chair. I sat in it. I felt really weird afterward too. I was shivering and shaky for a second, it was totally nuts.
Then we went out to the yard. It's where all the general population inmates hang out outside. There weren't any fences separating us. We were right there with the prisoners. They were standing not two feet from me. It was eerie and surreal and just crazy man. It was also the visitation day for the death row inmates, and we happened to go to the visitation room while they were there.
Like I said, it was surreal. These people have to spend their lives there, most of them. We took a two hour tour and left. I'm seriously considering a job at a place like that.
The biggest shock, I wasn't nervous or scared. I felt safe. Even when I first got there and I was waiting in the same room by myself with two prisoners and no guard. They were nice. They asked where I why I was there and where I went to school. The guard came in to tell me something to tell my professor when he got there and then took the two prisoners with him.
It didn't feel weird to be in the prison. Maybe it's not normal to not have any anxiety over being in a maximum security men's state prison, or maybe I'm just not as nervous as most. Whatever it is, I really enjoyed being there. I learned a whole lot.
I'm such a criminology nerd.
I sat in the electric chair. It's still working, the last person they executed in it was in 1997. There have been 134 people killed in that chair. I sat in it. I felt really weird afterward too. I was shivering and shaky for a second, it was totally nuts.
Then we went out to the yard. It's where all the general population inmates hang out outside. There weren't any fences separating us. We were right there with the prisoners. They were standing not two feet from me. It was eerie and surreal and just crazy man. It was also the visitation day for the death row inmates, and we happened to go to the visitation room while they were there.
Like I said, it was surreal. These people have to spend their lives there, most of them. We took a two hour tour and left. I'm seriously considering a job at a place like that.
The biggest shock, I wasn't nervous or scared. I felt safe. Even when I first got there and I was waiting in the same room by myself with two prisoners and no guard. They were nice. They asked where I why I was there and where I went to school. The guard came in to tell me something to tell my professor when he got there and then took the two prisoners with him.
It didn't feel weird to be in the prison. Maybe it's not normal to not have any anxiety over being in a maximum security men's state prison, or maybe I'm just not as nervous as most. Whatever it is, I really enjoyed being there. I learned a whole lot.
I'm such a criminology nerd.