I am so sorry to hear about your son and his problems with the other inmates.

He is at intake now, which I assume you to mean reception, which is a prison where they classify inmates before they ship them off to the state DOC.

All the reception areas for each most of the state's DOCs are maximum security in that all inmates-----regardless of the nature of their crime or the length of their sentence----are placed in the same pod or area. This will NOT be the case once he is assigned to a state prison----his destination prison. This is the reason he is seeing these bigger, more experienced inmates, since they are all placed together. That will change after classification.

The entire purpose of reception is to classify inmates so the tougher, older convicts, who are serving long sentences for violent crimes are not place at the same prison as the non-violent offenders with shorter sentences. If prisons worry about anything, they worry about security and it is a big security risk to mix the two groups of inmates.

If your son is classified to be sent to a minimum security prison, he will never see these kind of tough inmates again. But if he is sent to a medium, he will live with them.

If he has never been to prison before----or even jail----he needs to know what to do and what not to do in there. If you will send me a private message with his crime, his sentence, and his state, I will help you both get through this.

Right now, while at the reception center, he needs to keep a low profile, mind his own business, don't ask personal questions of the other inmates, do NOT talk to the guards unless spoken to, do NOT get into debt by borrowing, and do NOT EVER snitch on another inmate. If he will do that, he will be fine for now.

These bigger, tougher inmates are not likely to harm him anyway. I have no idea what he has in that locker that they want so badly, but these reception centers are heavily monitored with cameras and a lot of COs----guards-----so they most likely spotted a newbie and decided to cause some problems by scaring him. I doubt they will do any more than just yak their jaws as they would be in a real pickle if they assaulted another inmate before they were classified.

I will send you a PM. For now, tell you son to mind his own business and stay clear of these troublemakers.

rewdiazepam

PM I am pretty busy these days, so if I forget to send you a private message---a PM---you need to send me one to remind me. I won't be mad as I need reminded at times.

Thank you so much for your reply. He is actually at the intake where he is being placed but has not been transferred to his actual block yet. His prison is classified as 1-5 and he is level 2 medium. He has vitamins in his locker. That's it. But they wanted them and he didn't back down even though he's about 1/3 their size. He has been keeping as low profile as possible but they house them all together in a big room. All the blocks are dorms. He will live in a large room with 60 inmates. They said it could be 2 more weeks before he's transferred to his permanent block. I don't know how to private message. Again, thank you. I'm so frightened for him. He is not street wise. This is his first time in prison and he is very young.

Here is how you send and receive a PM from someone.

To send----

On the left hand side of the page under the title "My Profile" you will see the words "My messages." It is green text on my computer. Double click the words "My Messages."

That should bring you to a screen. About a third of the way down, you will see an underlined link which says, "Send a Message." It will be underlined one time and the text is green on my computer.

Click the text "Send a Message." The next screen will have an elongated box that says "To", one that says "Subject" and then a much larger box where your type your message.

In the "To" box, type the name of the person you want to send the message to. In the subject, put anything. It does not really matter although you might want to put one word about the subject matter of your message. In the much larger box, type your message.

When you are finished typing your message, click "Send Message" at the bottom of the page and you are finished.


To Receive a Message----

When you have a message from someone, you will see a yellow like circle symbol, and it will say "new message" or something. It will be on the left hand side of the page, just to the right of my messages. You cannot miss it as it is in yellow. Hell, I have forgotten; I have done it so many times that I just click the yellow circle-like symbol.

Doing that will take you to a list of your messages.

There will be a "From" and a "Subject" column. The sender's name will be under the "From" title. I never click the person's name as that will take you to his or her profile. Instead, click the subject line corresponding to the sender's name. That should take you to the message and from there you can read it.

Hope this helps and I did not confuse you too much.

rewdiazepam

PS If my instructions were confusing or I did not explain them clearly, below is a link that you can use to guide you through.

http://tinyurl.com/q53us45