Cell phones are actually one of the deadliest things in any prison. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation traced a rise in inmate deaths across the entire state to the use of cell phones by gang members in prison. Cell phones allow gang leaders to stay in contact with their people on the outside, meaning they can credibly threaten the families of officers and other inmates. In 2008, a death row inmate used his cellphone to call and threaten a Texas senator. Guards try to confiscate phones whenever possible -- which, as our source noted, can be dangerous: "I've seen officers get assaulted over cell phones."

And it's not always fights over the cell phones. Sometimes it's the device itself, and the ... feces it's covered in: "I've seen an inmate crap out a cell phone and throw it at somebody."

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
That's modern phones. You don't want to know how they did with the Zack Morris ones.

As you might imagine, turnover is incredibly high. In 2011, Florida hired 2,200 new guards ... because 1,400 had left during the previous year. Turnover is a problem in prisons all over the country. Hey, quick question: When you think of jobs with shitty pay, no training, and high turnover, what sort of workers do you imagine? Yep! Prisons often wind up filled with kids barely out of high school guarding other kids barely out of high school:

"It was a bunch of children watching children. Everybody was 19. One day, they had walked off almost the entire shift and had to have my shift come in from another unit -- mine was across the street. I got moved from that unit ... the place smelled like a bar, like alcohol and cigarettes. The inmates were tattooing -- they didn't care, and that spreads disease. And the officers were sleeping with the inmates. That's everywhere. It's a huge problem."

Wait, what? Was Caged Heat a documentary?

Obviously, this particular kind of corruption can lead to serious danger for everybody. As our source related, "A nurse in one unit was fooling with an inmate and brought a gun in for him ... the guy escaped." Of course, that nurse wasn't the only one at fault: "He was in a wheelchair, and they didn't search him like they were supposed to because he was peeing and pooping himself."

Angela Carone / KPBS
They presumably did the same when they found out he escaped.

Our source says: "It's just part of the job, performing a proper strip search. When I first started, you had to perform it with a professional walking you through it. You put gloves on, you pat-search them, you search the cells ... there are people who will not make the inmates squat, not check the inside of the inmates' nostrils -- they'll hide razor blades in their nostrils, in between their toes. They won't check shoes; I've found money and notes to officers in shoes."

It got much more explicit than quid pro quo fucking. Our source reported an outright brothel in one prison she worked for:

"One officer started working there. She was the madam, and she got her other girls working there and they managed to get put all on the same dormitory buildings, table dance ... other inmates would sit around and masturbate. They've got video of a woman walking around in her stockings and garter belt ... the inmates would just come talk to [the madam]. They were having big parties ... they shut down the dorms for two or three months. They busted everybody at once. They put cameras everywhere, they took the girls ... started pulling them out one by one. If they gave it up, they let them quit. If they lied about it, they'd show 'em the footage. I think they only terminated one person. It's easier to give them the option to quit ... in order to get fired, it takes everything but an act of Congress." And knowing Congress, you'd have a better chance getting Kristen Stewart to act.

New World Pictures
In a remake of this.

So the inmate decided that hoes ain't worth dying for, and the guards overreacted: "They had to handcuff him to the gator to keep him from jumping off ... they pull him back there and beat the hell out of him and called him queer the whole time, and there was nothing I could do about it ... The LT rode up on his horse, and they beat this dude mercilessly. He had to have dental work done. If the dude wasn't gay, they still woulda beat him up some, but not that bad."

Yeah, physical abuse of inmates isn't exactly rare. "I'm not gonna say I haven't whacked an inmate with a clipboard, but I've not hurt an offender on purpose. A guy who hit me in the face with eggs, we had a fistfight. But that was a fistfight between us. And I didn't leave him beat up so bad ... neither of us had marks. And he hit me in the face with boiled eggs, I was pretty mad about that."

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It's hard to know how you'll react in that eggxact situation.

Even when inmates are outright killed by guards, the perpetrators are essentially never punished. The Marshall Project looked into 126 prison workers convicted of "sexual misconduct and assault." Only nine served any jail time.