Prison Radio
Torrey Braxton

Hello world. My name is Torrey Braxton. My inmate number is 313197. I’m currently incarcerated in the Michigan Department of Corrections. I’ve been in prison since May 24th, 2000, most of which has been in administrative seg, a long-time lay down for just a bunch of bad, belligerent, inappropriate behavior.

I can’t really say it’s all the authorities’ fault, but a lot of it is just me being me, but I’m currently doing flops, and for those of you that don’t know what that means, that means your sentence is being continued after your minimum is up, but I see the board probably like next month, I’m doing the 12-month flop, but I’ll be getting out pretty soon cause my record has been pretty clean for the last few years. I haven’t been that bad.

I only got a couple of misconduct since then, but since I’ve been in the Michigan Department of Corrections, I done caught well over 150 major misconducts, you know? So I can’t just say it’s all the authority fault that I have endured long times of a segregation, you know what I’m saying?

But since I’m in a prison, being in a hole, being in seg, you realize that it have a bad, negative impact on a lot of guys. Sometime it get to me, sometime it don’t, but after being in prison so long, you can just get used to the day after day stuff that go on in prison, you know what I’m saying? The longer you be in prison, the more you get used to it type of deal. Prison culture, it cause you to do stuff that you wouldn’t normally do in society.

But in a lot of cases, I can’t just say specifically mine, but in a lot of cases of what I’ve seen in Michigan, authorities tend to put guys in seg for long periods of time for a BS infraction, maybe like a fight. It seem like, “Well that’s a violent incident,” but you surrounded by each other all day, so of course guys is going to bump heads and have incidents with each other or what they call the threatening behavior, like if you threaten an employee, you wind up doing like three to six months in solitary confinement. You know what I’m saying? If you smart mouth them or something like that, you might end up in seg.

And you know, a lot of times guys get placed in seg for minor petty stuff. I don’t know the solution on how to stop it. That’s something that the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Michigan legilsators, and those who make the policy directors and operating procedures have to figure out, you know what I’m saying, but, I will tell you this. Over the last several years or whatever, the Michigan prison system has kind of laid back on us, sending guys to the seg for long periods of time, you know what I’m saying? But it’s still a problem though. It’s definitely still a problem.

Time will tell, but if anybody, any of the listeners out there, got any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to contact me on Jpay.com. Add me to your Jpay, I got plenty of stamps. I will certainly write back or respond to what you have to say.

You know what I’m saying? I would like to thank all the viewers for taking the time out to listen to me, hear what I got to say.

These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.