Life Inside Victim-ville by Lanard Miller
Homosexuals were forbidden for the gang members and the Muslims. If anyone affiliated with a gang or that was governed by the Sunni Muslim community got caught having sex with a homosexual they’d be on the first thing smoking to the SHU or sent up top. Being sent up top is when your car (group you were affiliated with) makes you check in the hole under P.C.
After I left the chow hall I went to the unit and at six o’clock outside yard was called, but I was told I couldn’t go because the yard was split up, which was when they let one half of the jail outside for an hour and then they let the other half go out afterwards. This was another result of the riot. The compound was in fact, separated into two parts for activities.
The administration knew that the other races were outnumbered by the Mexicans. So they tried to minimize the number of people on the yard at one time. They thought that this would keep the violence more isolated. But this really did nothing but made time harder to do in Victorville for inmates. In fact this turned the tension up times two.
We stayed on lockdown. If somebody moved the wrong way we were placed on lockdown. Lockdown was when there was no inmate movement. We were put in our cells for twenty-four hours a day, only coming out to shower once a week. It was the same as being in the hole.
We were feed like animals. No hot food, only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They gave us small boxes with peanut butter and jelly, a Kool-Aid, and a small bag of chips. This was lunch and dinner for grown men. For breakfast it was a kid sized box of cereal, milk, and one piece of fruit. We were in there starving.
If you were indigent, which was the majority of the population, you were hit. There were cellies fighting each other over food. A man’s cellie would eat in his face every night and he would start something with him, but all the time it was because he was jealous of him having something to eat and he was starving.
Then you had the guys that were doing life sentences that didn’t care about nothing. They would take off on a Mexican or anybody just because, and we all would go on lockdown. Any racial conflict and it was an automatic lockdown. Then the SIS lieutenant would pull the shotcallers (representatives for each group) to his office and feel the situation out before we were let off lockdown. This process would take months at a time.