Bert Burykill
There's No Sex in Prison Showers
The average guy in jail is so scared of homosexuals or people thinking that he might be gay that we all wear our underwear in the shower. We’ve all seen the jail shows and heard the endless “Don’t drop the soap” jokes, but in all the years I was locked...
Burying the Dead and Unloved
Part of a 15-cent-an-hour job I had while in prison was burying inmates who died and had no one who could claim the bodies, or else didn’t have anyone who gave a shit to arrange a proper funeral. They had died over the winter and their bodies had been...
HardWhite and Harry Potter
Harry Potter was fresh from the world and had a sickness to feed. The weakling fiend probably hated everything right now, but mostly he hated that his drug was gone. All Harry Potter will want is to get high and the boys are about to swarm on him...
The Trials of Job
After my sweet release from prison last year, I struggled for about a year looking for a decent job. I badly wanted to work, but I quickly became discouraged when my first ten applications were shot down, probably thanks to my status as a felon. Those...
Bert Meets a Real Rapper Who’s a Year Out of Prison
A lotta dudes in prison are rappers, but I don’t pay them much mind. But in the case of SunBlaze, I had a feeling that he was serious bizness—the way he kept to himself, quietly writing and not talking a lotta shit like lotsa dudes do. He got out last...
Addiction Isn't a Disease, I'm Just a Dick
When you’ve been sent back to prison multiple times for dirty pee like I have, you end up thinking a bunch about addiction—whether you’re a screwup or a bona fide addict, and if you’re an addict, what that means. Lots of people define addiction as a...
Dying of a Dirty Mouth
Don’t think appearance matters? I once saw an old man get killed in prison for having bad breath. He was Puerto Rican, but we called him Miagi 'cause he had a very Asian look and resembled Pat Morita. Unfortunately, his mouth was completely decayed and...
RockBottom Heads Toward Bottom
The early morning air stunk of pissy pussy and unwashed balls. RockBottom did his thing all night like always, dispensing drugs to the party people. The fiends were nodded out, neck-cramp proper, and the freaks spun out on E were in the bedroom...
Prisons I've Known and Yelped
I was kicked off Yelp probably about 15 times. I’m the ORIGINAL prison reviewer, along with some guy named Craig who did a nice review of Rikers four years ago and who probably got kicked off too. I lost my classic reviews, so I decided to make some...
Inmates Love Lawsuits
A prisoner named Kim Millbrook won a Supreme Court case with a handwritten petition, which is impressive. Thanks to him, inmates have the right to sue scumbag pork chops in federal jails, but the truth is that an assload of taxpayer money gets wasted...
Don’t Stick Dominoes in Your Dick
Some guys in prison like to get together in the bathroom, puncture their penises with a little slice, and then insert an implant. From what I hear, usually they break off a piece of a domino and insert it up under the foreskin area, or sometimes, down...
Home Is Where the Prison Is
The latest article I’ve seen about reforming the prison system is from something called GovLab, and it’s all about “data analytics” and “geo-driven decision making” and “virtual incarceration.” It sounds all nice and fancy when they say it, but it’s...