There are no truly foolproof methods for navigating prison, because prison is many things, differing from era to era, person to person, and place to place. But there are better routes to take. They are all loaded with landmines and IEDs, but some less so than others.

Sadly, much of your success will depend on luck, vigilance, and the ability to constantly adapt to your surroundings. Much of what happens in prison today has neither rhyme nor reason. (And drugs like K2, a hallucinogen, aren’t helping.)

The only truly monolithic thing about prison is it’s always a place which denies freedom—and sometimes humanity. New arrivals are, to a degree, universally regarded as green, and seen as prey or a come up of some kind to the onlooker, no matter who they might be. The new arrival should bear this in mind and, as soon as he can, get the most accurate reading on his surroundings—tier, unit, and compound.

My first advice—a universality that’s time-tested—is to mind your own business. Once, this behavior alone could pretty much provide safe passage for the softest of targets. Though not exactly as it once was, it is still valuable advice. So is the advice to have impeccable manners.

What does it mean to mind your own business? As one might suspect, it’s not entirely black and white. It doesn’t concern sticking your head in the sand and leaving yourself exposed. Nothing that doesn’t immediately concern you is of interest. You have to discipline yourself not to have an opinion about things, because you have no idea how much gossip goes on in prison. Neither do you know how gifted some of the guilty are at drawing people in. You can see yourself in retrospect asking, how is it I ended up saying things about people I don’t even know? Don’t do that. It’s a really bad move.

What are impeccable manners? They are much like they sound. In addition to a good way to gauge how dangerous of a prison you are in, aside from the obvious and visibly “off the hook” person you may encounter, take particular note of those always excusing themselves. Many times, they go from zero to 10 for things most people would ignore, if they notice it at all. Yet, they don’t want to be accused of being “crazy,” because that’s a form of weakness. Then others, like the “off the hook” individual, don’t mind it being said of them. They like the persona and will try to live up to it, or create it. In order to have impeccable or even good manners, you have to understand the psychology. As my father told me after I had been in a couple of years, “Prison is a real close look at a lot of crazy mother fuckers.”

Use thank you, please, and excuse me or pardon me a lot. Match or outdo others. It can’t hurt, specifically, with those who use them in like manner.

The best advice I can give, and which sort of covers everything, is what I was once advised. When I was 15 years old, with a brand-new life sentence, headed to the Maryland Penitentiary and scared to death, I wrote to my father, who was at another prison. I was told, “You can’t take no shit. None. But, more importantly, you can’t give none.”

It was a pretty good formula. And served better for survival than it plays with the parole board.

But for some of us, the second part becomes a lot harder than it sounds. After the initial alarm and anxieties dissipate, the previously fearful forget themselves, and develop loose lips, do more drugs than they can afford, borrow more than they can return, exhibit bad faith, become a gangster, and pretty much carry themselves with bad manners. And these bad behaviors will certainly always lead to all the trouble one wants in houses of corrections.

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David Webb #187689