If there is one location in the prison which is regarded as “iconic”, it would be the showers. I’m sure most people on the outside have some sort of mental image of what happens in jail showers. Today I will share with you my experience of what really goes on in prison showers.
It’s worth contextualising proceedings a little. In here, there is supervision everywhere – CCTV, staff, mirrors, machines, intelligence… there are very few spaces without eyes.Showers are the only place where prisoners can gather which are pretty much unguarded. Therefore, they tend to be self-governed spaces. They’re volatile and they adapt swiftly to whoever is there.
One moment they are quiet and calm with eight blokes just getting on with showering and trying to ignore each other but then they can change in an instant – maybe someone comes in ad there are no free showers so he starts loudly complaining that people are taking too long. Then someone answers him back and a dispute erupts.
Or maybe there’s a score to settle. Kettling does occur if there is some sort of retribution required. Kettling is when a kilo of sugar is melted into a kettle full of boiling water and then thrown over someone. If you d it to someone in the shower then it goes all over their naked body and the victim will not normally “grass” on the perpetrator so as there is no CCTV or staff supervision, there is no comeback.
Contraband can also be passed in the shower – prescription medication, oft pornography and even things like erasers and rulers which are not allowed in some places. Debts can also be resolved with vaping pods or stamps. Although I have never personally witnessed this, there is obvious scope for passing controlled drugs, sim cards and other illegal items.
More broadly, because showers are unmonitored, the conversations that happen are totally unrestrained. I have been shocked by many conversations I’ve heard in there – disgusting racism and horrific stories about the degrading treatment of women. I’ve fortunately never been exposed to “locker room banter” before but I would imagine if you were to take the most extreme version of it and then ratchet it up another 50 notches then you might arrive at prison shower chat.
The poisonous ideas and views that spread and further ferment in the showers only serve to further embed offending factors and destabilise the shamefully few opportunities there are to address the causes of crime and I haven’t even mentioned the sexualized chat yet.
Maybe we need to accept that gatherings of particular sets of people may encourage particular conversations so perhaps I need to accept some level of vulgarity in prison showers. However, what happens here is just too much. Certain men seem totally obsessed with sexual matters and their preoccupation with sex is over the top. I don’t think I’m prudish, I just think I’m respectable and have decorum. What I sometimes hear in the shower makes me feel sick.
Prison showers are volatile places where unbridled communication openly takes place. They are horrible.
NaN.