Question Time

Lonnie: Shaun, were you allowed to shave your head in prison, or would that cause you beef with skinheads?

Shaun: In prison, I did shave it. Nearly everyone did. Hair is not a good thing to have if you get attacked, plus the less hair then the more your head cools off in the heat. With nearly everyone shaving their heads, it is not a problem for the skinheads.

Lonnie: I had no idea they would let you shave your head in prison because I thought they would be all worried about you turning the razor into a shank or something.

Shaun: In America, jail and prison are different. Jail is where you are held unsentenced, and after you are sentenced you go to prison to serve the balance of your sentence. In both jail and prison, there are many different security levels ranging from minimum security to supermaximum, and your security level dictates what you can or cannot have.
You asked about prison. In prison, as you work your way down to the lower security level yards, there are more things available. In medium and minimum security, I had a Norelco plug-in razor. At the higher security levels, there were very few things allowed, so I had to rely on an inmate barber.
In the jail, the guards brought really useless razors in the middle of the night, so you had to wake up if you wanted one. They gave us so many minutes to shave, and we had no mirrors, so we had to shave by touch. There were people going around with all kinds of gashes and cuts on their faces. To get a haircut you could see the inmate barber or find someone who knew how to cut hair with a stolen razor. There was usually a Mexican with a stolen razor offering haircuts for a couple of items of candy.

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