"Super Max" is the North County Correctional Facility at the Pitchess Detention Center, the part of the L.A. County system at Castaic for major felons and violent offenders. I was arrested for possession of heroin -- barely enough to get loaded a couple of times. I'm not real violent and not a member of one of the cartels. But here I am in Super Max. Go figure. It's not written anywhere, but Super Max is also where you end up if the powers that be want you to be miserable, or if you're just plain unlucky. [...] The mainline is not separated by gang or color. Different crews of Crips have their own tank somewhere, as do the Bloods. Gays and transsexuals are kept together. Then you got the Nazi Lowriders and the Aryan Brotherhood, who aren't getting along right now, and a couple of neighborhoods that fucked up with the mob, like the Vineland Boys and MaraVilla. All these different groups have their own tanks; some because they're killers and some so they won't get killed -- like the straight P.C. cases who are scared to hit the mainline at all. P.C. stands for "protective custody"; supposedly it helps keep known enemies apart and protects the weak. But seeing some of the obvious victims makes you wonder. On the mainline, you got South Siders, Paisas, Blacks and Woods. Asians don't walk the mainline at all because they got a complete green light, whack on sight, which means it's okay to beat them to death or stab them, with no questions asked from the South Siders. Everyone else is going off so hard they may segregate the whole little city that makes up the L.A. County Jail system.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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12/19/2001: vive la france
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