Latest / Red Onion Randy - Life in a Supermax Prison / ROR 128: Answering listener questions

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ROR 128: Answering listener questions · Red Onion Randy - Life in a Supermax Prison

• 0:00
  Hey, I'm Amelia, and I just want to say that I think you're
• 0:06
  doing fantastic and that keep it up the great work. And I can't imagine
• 0:12
  how hard it is to be in that situation. I just wanted to say
• 0:18
  that and that I think you're pretty cool. And I listened to your podcast
• 0:22
  from way beginning until now, and I'm very happy that you got transfer.
• 0:26
  So God's looking up to you and amen, take care, buddy. Mm
• 0:40
  hmm. Hello, this is a prepaid call from and make it differt an
• 0:48
  Apartment of Correction read I mean state present to accept this call Press zero.
• 0:57
  This is Rando Bob. I'm currently serb in one thousand, two hundred and
• 1:00
  fourteen years for capital murder right on your state person in state of Virginia in
• 1:04
  the USA. This is my podcast right on your brand. I hope you
• 1:10
  enjoy listening to me today. This is Randall Baum. I'm currently serving one
• 1:34
  thousand, two hundred and fourteen years for capitol to murder and on barbary Na
• 1:38
  Keene Mountain Correctional Center in Ovoid, Virginia. This is my podcast right on
• 1:44
  your Randy. I have a toll free number you would like to call.
• 1:52
  You know, leave a message, encouragement, ask a question, whatever it
• 1:57
  may be. The number is one eight eight, five two four, one
• 2:06
  nine three two. That's in the United States. Anyone outside of the US
• 2:14
  simply put a plus in front of the one and it's the exact same number.
• 2:17
  I hope to hear from me. Today is a calling episode. I
• 2:24
  have my own hotline. As most listeners are aware, the phone number can
• 2:30
  be found at the beginning and end of each episode. I hope you reach
• 2:35
  out to me. Do you have a question for me? You know you
• 2:38
  just want to leave encouragement or cuss me out. By all means, call.
• 2:45
  It's toll free and it won't cost you nothing. The first question comes
• 2:52
  from Dalton Man out of Missouri. Hey man, I'm a really really big
• 2:57
  fan of your podcast. Actually, I learned about you the documentary as they
• 3:00
  did on you. My name is Dalton Man. I'm twenty two. I've
• 3:05
  been about three years in the Missouri Department of Corrections. I just I guess
• 3:12
  my question would be, how do you well? I don't know, it's
• 3:14
  kind of a hard question because you ain't really been out that much, But
• 3:17
  like, what would you say about people that kind of want to go back
• 3:23
  if that makes any type of sense. Like, I don't know, man,
• 3:27
  just I have a battle in my head sometimes where I feel like I
• 3:29
  abandoned people that you know that that we would I was clicked up with type
• 3:34
  shit. But just random question. I enjoyed the podcast and I love it
• 3:38
  man, and God luck to you, brother, and I hope to see
• 3:40
  you outside one day. Dalton. That's a good question. I know where
• 3:49
  you're coming from. You build bonds in here and Missouri. Missouri's are rough
• 3:57
  through the system, so you know when you're in a system like that,
• 4:02
  you get around the click of guys. They have your back. And I've
• 4:08
  known guys that have literally served time in the military that it fought in Afghanistan,
• 4:15
  that it fought in Iraq and other wars, and they compare prisons to
• 4:23
  war. So in essence, you're in the foxhole with these guys. You
• 4:30
  know, you watch their back. They watch your back when you leave the
• 4:34
  pond. They keep an eye on yourself to make sore some shifty ass punk
• 4:40
  doesn't slide up in there and steal your stuff. You get close to guys,
• 4:49
  you know, so I know where you're coming from. When you say
• 4:53
  that you want to go back because you feel like you abandon them in there.
• 5:00
  First of all, it goes without saying, but I almost say,
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  regardless, don't do something that's stupid, Brom. It's not worth it.
• 5:15
  You don't have to abandon them just because you're home now. You don't have
• 5:20
  to feel like you abandon You know their names, you know their state numbers,
• 5:28
  find out where they're at. Go wanting uh inmatelocator dot com and you
• 5:33
  can find out whatever prison they're in, and you just reach back out so
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  them, you know, and you just you shoot them a email, you
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  write them a letter or however you're getting such a Missouri with you know,
• 5:48
  with with prisoners, and you just you help them out, man. You
• 5:54
  know. You you give them your phone number, y'all, email, you
• 5:58
  write, you do whatever. Man, but you you stay in touch and
• 6:00
  you let them know. Look, man, I apologize that I've been out
• 6:03
  of touch this long man, but it's it's hectic out here on the streets.
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  You know, you get so caught up in this bullet out here,
• 6:12
  you know, trying to survive, trying to live, and you know,
• 6:15
  do all these things. But I'm back, you know, and you know,
• 6:20
  if you feel like you betrayed them like you you abandoned them, then
• 6:25
  just simply man up and be like, yo, look man, I'm sorry.
• 6:28
  I apologize. You know, I didn't mean to do this, just
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  you know, things got away from me. But I'm here now. Man,
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  How can I help bruh? Like, I mean, do you need
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  something? You know, I might not be able to send you a lot,
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  but I'll at least try to send you a few bucks every month.
• 6:44
  You know, I can order you some books or you know, whatever the
• 6:47
  case may be. Bro, you was in prison, like, you know
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  what these guys are going through. You know what they need, So just
• 6:59
  do what you can to help them out, you know, get online,
• 7:04
  man, try to tell their stories. Maybe do with some of my friends
• 7:10
  have done for me and start a podcast, let them talk about life in
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  Missouri prison. The more prisoners who can get our stories out there, who
• 7:19
  can get our voices out there, the more change we can enact inside the
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  prison system, you know, not just in a state or two, you
• 7:30
  know, but hopefully across the whole board. Don't go back to prison,
• 7:36
  dude, like I can't again, Like I am fighting tooth and nail to
• 7:45
  get out of prison. I'm doing everything I can to get up out of
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  here. Look at the impact I've made from this side of the prison ward,
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  imagine how much more I could do on the other side. The same
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  goes for you, bro. I hope you take my advice, man,
• 8:13
  reach back out to and good luck whatever. Man, I hope you take
• 8:20
  my advice. I hope you don't go back to prison. Man, don't
• 8:24
  throw your life away, you know, just reach back out to you boys,
• 8:30
  help them however you can let me know how that works out. The
• 8:35
  second question comes from Alan in Chicago, Illinois. Hey, Randy, this
• 8:41
  is Alan from Chicago, Illinois. I just want to say I'm a big
• 8:46
  fan of the podcast and listen to every episode up until today. And my
• 8:52
  question for you as compared to Red Onion and Walling's Ridge. I know you
• 9:00
  mentioned a little bit about the food at Keene Mountain, but I'd be interested
• 9:05
  to hear about the people there and how they vary from Red Onion and Walln's
• 9:11
  Ridge, because if you listen to your podcast, it sounds like the people
• 9:16
  at Wallen's Ridge were more annoying, frustrating, more difficult to deal with than
• 9:20
  at Red Onion, and I'd like to hear how that translates over to Keene
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  Mountain and whether that's the same different or if the people there are a whole
• 9:33
  lot better being that it's a medium security person. But do really appreciate the
• 9:39
  podcast. I listen to it almost every day I'm away into work, so
• 9:43
  I always happy to hear your updates, and hopefully you can answer this question
• 9:48
  if you've got the time too. But sending my support from Chicago. All
• 9:54
  right, Alan, again, great question, and it's actually something I've been
• 10:01
  contemplating on my own the last couple of weeks. It's red Onion was a
• 10:11
  whole different ballgame. You know, Wallas Dridge was, it could be a
• 10:20
  somewhat dangerous prison from time to time, but when red Onion first opened up,
• 10:26
  like red Onion was hell on wheels, like it was. It was
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  not a prison that you played games in, you know, especially for the
• 10:35
  first say fifteen years. It's changed, you know, it's it's turned over
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  a new leave recently, but back in the day, you know, it
• 10:46
  was, yeah, I mean it really was. I mean it was an
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  l like it was extremely violent, you know, in Ma's fighting inmates,
• 10:56
  in May's fighting CEOs, l CEOs fighting CEOs. You know, like it
• 11:01
  was that kind of environment. It was extremely violent, it was extremely brutal.
• 11:07
  It was very very harsh living conditions. So it toughened a lot of
• 11:11
  guys up. You know, it broke a lot of guys. You know,
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  you had some punks, you had some crybabies and winers and whatnot.
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  But I don't know, I think at the Onion, guys would just better
• 11:28
  equips to deal with it, you know, simply because they knew that if
• 11:35
  they cried too much, they was going to be perceived this week, you
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  know. So I think a lot of people kept their complaints and everything to
• 11:43
  themselves, whereas at Walling's Fridge, it wasn't like that, you know,
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  especially the part that I was in. I was in a really messed up
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  part. Yeah, it was great that I was in a single cell,
• 11:56
  you know, and that part got a little bit more, you know,
• 12:01
  Pod Wreck and the other pods did, and we had a mic awave when
• 12:05
  he was the only one that did you know, other than the kitchen pod.
• 12:07
  You know, there was a few good things about it, but it
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  was just just the caliber of guys in that pod got on my nerves like
• 12:16
  you would not believe. It is a miracle. I made it off of
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  there without running my time up or messing everything up or throwing everything away.
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  You know, there was numerous, numerous times where I had to call I
• 12:35
  had to call Nicole, I had to call Paulie or Michael or John,
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  you know, just you know, to be able to talk to you know,
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  to talk to him and just like, look, this is what's going
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  on. And like, you know, they let me fence. And if
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  they wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't I wouldn't have made it. There's
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  no way on earth I would have made it off of there. Hear a
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  keen man, It's better than both. There was one little small group of
• 13:07
  guys I was kind of hanging out with it first, and a couple of
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  them, okay, but you got one guy, you know from another state
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  that you know, all this dude does is complain. All he does is
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  cry and whin and he points. He's a snitch, he's this, he's
• 13:26
  that. You know. Eventually, I just had to be like, all
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  right, you know what, I'm either going to have to just like really
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  put this guy in his place, or I'm just gonna walk away. So
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  I walked away, and I walked away from that table. Every now and
• 13:41
  then I stopped to speak to a couple of the guys that are You know,
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  I was actually okay with I just I left the complainers behind. I'll
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  put them in my rear view. I'm not talking to him no more.
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  And if you come up to me with that complain and stuff like, I'll
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  give you a couple of minutes, you know, the kind of event to
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  kind of get it off your check a little bit. And after that,
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  man, the fuff, because I'm not gonna sit here and be your therapist.
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  I'm not your daddy, I'm not your mama, and I ain't your
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  dog. I don't have a PhD behind my name. So but if it's
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  so much better, I don't know how to explain it. You know,
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  for the most part, a lot of guys in the pond that I'm in
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  actually did time at Red Onion and Waller's Ridge. You know, you have
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  a couple of guys, Oh, man, I would like to go back.
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  I won't go push your sea home. I guarantee you you'll get back
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  up there and it won't take you by the day. You'll be on the
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  bus tomorrow to go back up there. Nope, you all right, then
• 14:50
  deal with it. But there's just there's there's a lot more to do.
• 14:56
  You get a lot more freedom, you know, you got a huge breckyard,
• 15:01
  you get to go out, and you know, I guess a lot
• 15:05
  of guys are working out now, especially in summertime, you know, so
• 15:09
  they've been getting a lot of the stress off of them. Man, it
• 15:11
  makes it easier to deal with them when they do work out. And I've
• 15:16
  been you know, focusing on staying around more of the positive people and doing
• 15:22
  what I can to speak positivity into their lives so that they're willing to be
• 15:28
  even more positive in their own conversations in their own lives. There's a guy
• 15:33
  here named Ryan that I've really been working out. Like me and this dude
• 15:37
  are killing ourselves in the exercise, and he's a good dude. The thing
• 15:43
  is, he's not a criminal. He yet. Technically he's in prison,
• 15:46
  so technically that makes him a criminal. But by criminal, I mean somebody
• 15:52
  that just you know, they break the law just randomly for whatever reason.
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  They're just their criminal minded they think about breaking the law. This guy just
• 16:00
  had an incident where he you know, he's just having a really bad day
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  and he wound up pulling a gun on somebody, sort of like a road
• 16:07
  rage type of situation, and he wound up killing him. And now he's
• 16:11
  in prison, pulling life. I hang out with him a lot. Old
• 16:17
  man Red left, so I don't, you know, hang out with him
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  anymore, obviously, But Ron, he's a decent guy. You know.
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  There's a couple other guys here, you know. I try to I try
• 16:30
  to spend you know, more time with them than others. There's something here.
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  If they try to talk to me, I'll just tell them, looking,
• 16:37
  man, I ain't your front what you're stopping to talk to me for.
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  And I just simply look him in the eyes and they just I'm sorry,
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  and they shamble off. I'm not going to deal with that. I'm
• 16:48
  not your therapist. I don't want to be a therapist, you know.
• 16:52
  I don't mind helping someone out. I don't mind listening to someone. You
• 16:56
  know, But there's a point when you know, you complain about the same
• 17:02
  things all day long, every single day, Go write it up, go
• 17:06
  do something about it. Like if it's bothering you that much, stop doing
• 17:11
  the same thing that you're doing. Like that's insane. Literally that's the definition
• 17:15
  of insanity. You do the same damn thing expecting a different result. No,
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  it doesn't work like that. If you do the exact same thing without
• 17:25
  changing anything up, you're going to get the same result every single time.
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  And that's what you know, some guys in here, they don't want to
• 17:33
  realize that because it makes them feel good to be a martyr. It makes
• 17:37
  them feel good to blame everybody else for the mistakes that they've made, because
• 17:44
  if they have to face themselves, then they have to realize it. Damn,
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  I'm the one that put me in prison. It wasn't the police,
• 17:52
  wasn't a judge or the Commonwealth Attorney, wasn't Mama or Daddy, what,
• 17:59
  Trump, what Boden? What? None of them was. I'm the one
• 18:03
  that put myself in prison, So I'm the one that's got to suck it
• 18:06
  up to deal with. They don't want to do that. There's a big
• 18:11
  there's a night and day difference between you know, then cry babies at Walling's
• 18:15
  Ridge and here like this is the best prison out Vincent. You know,
• 18:21
  for the most part, guys have their own clicks. They kind of they
• 18:26
  kind of stay within those clicks. You know, and there's always a little
• 18:30
  bit of overlaugh. But it's easy to simply just walk away. You know,
• 18:37
  you can go in and out of yourself almost it will up here.
• 18:41
  Uh. You all, if you don't want to talk to nobody, if
• 18:47
  you want to don't want to be in the sell, which you want to
• 18:48
  be out in the pod for whatever reason, but you don't want to talk,
• 18:52
  you have one minute remaining. All you got to do is put your
• 18:56
  headphones on. And for the most part, guys respect that. You know,
• 19:00
  there's a little bit more respect here simply because there's more opportunity to do
• 19:07
  something and get away with it than there is it red Onion Wallansh Ridge,
• 19:11
  because there's quite a few blond spots here, because this is a much older
• 19:14
  person that was built back in eighty nine, you know, Red Onion New
• 19:18
  Wallan's Ridge of brand new prisons, and there are no blond spots there.
• 19:22
  But thank y'all for reaching out to me. I appreciate it. I appreciate
• 19:26
  the questions. Thank you, thank you for using GTL