this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] [email protected] 218 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I knew a guy in the late 90s who checked himself into jail every winter. He just didn't have enough money to heat his home and buy food at the same time, and he was disabled and couldn't land a job in construction no more, so that's the only thing he found to stay alive.

When the snow started to come down, he'd go to our local minimart with a plastic gun. You know, like the really cheesy ones with a red cap at the muzzle, to make sure nobody would think it was real and gun him down my mistake, and to avoid getting a harsh sentence. He knew the store owner, since it was a small town and everybody knew each other.

He'd say hello, point the gun at him and gently say "Could you please call the police like last year?" The store owner used to try to talk him out of it, but he'd say "Don't force me to make it real because I don't wanna."

Then the sheriff would show up - they knew each other too of course - and he would try to convince him this wasn't a good idea. And the guy would say "Look, will you book me or not? Because if you don't, you'll come back next week to my place but with the coroner this time."

So the sheriff would book him. And the judge, who knew exactly why he was there at the trial, would sentence him to 5 months - time enough to get out in spring.

After I left town, I heard he kept doing that for many years, until he got tired of being poor and committed suicide.

[–] [email protected] 113 points 4 months ago

Well that story just got bleaker with each sentence

[–] beirdobaggins 35 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I lived in Austin, TX and used to know a homeless guy, Walter Dwight Green 1955, back in '98 that spent winters in jail for public intoxication for the same reasons.

Including name, in case anyone else knew him and wants to chat. He was originally from Kentucky.

I was a teenager at the time but I tried to help him as much as I could.

I had to leave town for a year, when I came back, I found out he froze to death in the winter I was gone.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

Didn't know your Walter, but a family member of mine was a corrections officer at a small town jail in Podunk Tennessee. 17k people in the whole county, and each winter the jail would triple their numbers for this exact reason. First snow's coming, time to buy 50 bucks of booze and get lodging for the winter. Fucking horrible people have to do that. I've been desperate. Like, living in a shack with no plumbing, no electric, and by the grace of God and some clever shop lifting a propane heater to keep 4 of us warm in 110 square feet in -26 degrees level of desperate. I can't imagine being so desperate as to willingly go to jail. Which just shows despite all that, how fucking lucky I am. I worked in commissary, family members have been jailers and cops. It's better than freezing to death, of course, but no one should ever have to make that choice. Housing is a right, and our laws need to catch the fuck up with that.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago

God bless this pitiful country.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I know someone that got shot by the cops with one of those toy guns...