It’s said there are only two types of people in the Bureau of Prison system, those who told and those who wish they would have.

And a fink is defined as a rat or snitch.

In the penitentiary and mediums this isn’t a laughing matter but once you get to the lows and the camps it’s just a reality that you have to accept. The Feds have a high rate of cooperation and the majority of those individuals are present at the lows and camps. It’s one of those unspoken things by most but you have your groups that like to joke about it.

I had a friend in Milan that got six or seven years for a marijuana conspiracy, he chose not to cooperate, and if he did he could have easily got a sentence worth half that. He said he didn’t cooperate for one reason only because he thought it could put him at risk once he got to prison, but then he got to Milan and he was pissed. This is because he quickly learned that nobody checks paperwork and he would eventually go to a camp where it is even more acceptable.

I also hear a lot of people finishing up a 12-20 year prison sentence say “I may not have told on this one, but I sure as hell am going to tell on the next one.” I heard another inmate who was getting ready to leave who did 15 years say, “if anyone wants my number I will give it to them, but just know if we end up doing illegal activity and we get caught I’m going to tell, so you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

One thing about cooperating is if you do it you should probably make sure you are then done with the drug game or whatever activity you were involved in. Because even though your first sentence will be reduced and your place of designation will be a low or camp, that might not always be the case with your second or third prison sentence.

I have also heard of inmates who cooperated but had such a lengthy criminal history that they still received 15 plus years in prison and found themselves bouncing from one penitentiary to the next until they finally got to a medium where they could walk the yard. “Walking the yard” means you can simply stay on the compound without being checked into the hole, before being transferred for your next place. This could happen for multiple years on end and most of your time will be spent in fear or in solitary confinement which is not a healthy way for a person to spend their life.

If you are one that told and you are at a low or camp and people find out you cooperated there is a very small chance you are in any danger. In most cases, it’s simply embarrassing, and you may lose a small group of friends. Most times you are just labeled and after a while, people forget it ever happened and some people that initially shunned you might even come back around to at least being social or polite in passing. Also, chances are most of the people that shunned you probably don’t have good paperwork either so don’t take it too personally.

That is another thing about prison: many times the person most vocal about hating rats or sex offenders end up being one. This has happened multiple times in my time at both Milan and Yankton, someone who walks around all day politicking and hating on individuals who are known to have bad paperwork and eventually get their paperwork put out on the compound or they abruptly go home early when they are supposed to still have multiple years left on their sentence.

In prison right when you think you have seen it all, something else happens, and you realize you have not.

Thanks for listening!

Noah

To Fink or Not Fink | By Noah

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