A Brief Guide to Prison Laundry

You know you've arrived when they tell you to lift your sack. They're referring to your scrotum. They're supposed, one guard told me, to have you roll your foreskin back as well. "If they want it that badly," he said, referring to contraband drugs that might be stored there, "they can smoke away, in my opinion." After reasonably thorough examination, you're given a pair of boxers and socks and a white jumpsuit, it is the first thing that wraps you in it warm embrace, that puts itself between you and a cold, uncaring situation. (I wonder how many people would still fly in airplanes if they had to show the bottoms of each of their bare feet, shake out their hair, squat and cough.)

My point is that the jumpsuit, which you promptly exchange for three slightly less embarrassing khaki uniforms, and prison laundry in general quickly becomes a central part of your daily life. Prisoners are meticulous about their sneakers, their creases, their outfits and accessories.

A Lakota inmate showed me his bandana. "We're the only ones who can have these," he explained. The bandana, like the weekly visits to a sweat lodge constructed behind one of the housing units, is considered part of the Indian population's religious expression. Likewise Rastafarians, Muslims, and Jews each get their respective head covering. Bafflingly, Muslims are expressly forbidden from "rolling up their pant legs" in a prominently posted memo, on the ground that doing so would "identify them as a religious group." I rather think the little hats and all the praying already gave it away, yes?

The only other way an inmate may distinguish himself by dress is to have been transferred from elsewhere, and to have brought some 'rec clothes' with them. Rec clothes are commisary-purchased clothes intended to be worn on the rec yard and in the housing units but not on the regular yard during normal business hours. In reality, many inmates only wear their khakis for a few hours a day, going to and from the dining hall; those who hang around the housing unit all day and pay others to steal food or cook for them, may never wear a uniform. Each facility will sell one variety of shorts , one type of sweatshirt, one brand of thermal underwear. They'll have a variety of sneakers, confined to black and white only by BOP policy. Modifying these clothes is a gray area -- you'll see T-shirts with the sleeves cut off but not sneakers dyed or painted some other color. In theory, any modification is a violation. But inmates who transferred from a facility where the shorts are gold instead of sparkling silver, or where the sweatshirts are white instead of gray, have a rare and recherche item, and can keep it or sell it for any price they name. A few years of wearing the same three hues can make one salivate at the prospect of walking into Old Navy with money in one's pocket.

Love your uniform and sweatpants, or hate them you've still got to keep them clean. To do so, there are several options. Officially, the proper way to launder one's uniform is to carry it to the prison laundry and turn it in: in after breakfast, clean after lunch. You turn in your clothes in a mesh bag with your name printed on it; the clothes never leave the bag through the whole process and you're give a bag full of wrinkled uniforms of presumptive cleanliness. You're expected to check out an iron by giving your ID to the officer in your unit; although every other unit has an officer on duty due to budget cuts and of course all of the irons have been stolen. (Every so often, someone has to go around and ensure irons haven't been stolen; the officers get on the P.A. system and demand their temporary return until the inspection is over.) Most inmates have no use for the laundry except to exchange their bed linens once a week -- this is much easier than washing them yourself; the only risk is that you'll get a ripped blanket or under sized sheet when you trade -- and get new t-shirts, underwear socks every six months after their first year (three sets maximum).

For those who eschew the prison laundry, what options remain? Each housing unit has a handful of washers and dryers per hundred inmates. These run from dawn to dusk, and inmates whose offenses demonstrate blatant disregard for others, and who are hardly being treated in a manner conducive to personal dignity and responsibility, are quite punctilious about moving each other's laundry from washer to dryer when someone is ahead of them, and who's next on this washer. And does he have fabric softener he wants to use? If you can get your laundry into a washer, you can return an hour later to find it hot and dry in its bag on the shelf next to the dryers. (Come back a little sooner to catch your shirts while they're just a little damp, to obviate the need for ironing.)

Where are the irons, anyway? Each has been appointed by an entrepreneurial inmate who will iron your uniform for a price. (The going rate varies from four to six stamps; customers tend to be loyal to one provider and so it's not very competitive market.) The inmate who irons is responsible for finding (stealing) his own supply of starch, and spray bottle to store it in, he will also loan you the iron and sell you some of his starch if you prefer to do your own ironing.

Likewise, there are inmates who will do your laundry. Pour some powder detergent into a bath towel, tie it in a knot, and place it in your dirty clothes bag. When the bag fills, your laundry man will pick it up, baby-sit it through the wash and dry, fold it, and bring the whole lot back, neatly stacked and sorted in the mesh bag, and hang it right where you left it.

One knows one has arrived when one has bought an assortment of rec clothes, stolen enough t-shirts and underwear that one needn't do laundry every three days, and found a lucrative enough hustle to pay someone else to do one's laundry.

That flash of pride almost makes up for having to lift your sack.