Do inmates experience boredom in jail? Can you provide an example of something an inmate might do for fun if they were bored?
Last Updated: 26.06.2025 01:04

You can only watch so many hours of basic cable on the shitty day room TV…play so many tricks of Spades…read so many chapters of Michael Crichton…listen to so much Top 40 radio over your earbuds, before it all just becomes too fucking much.
And a lot of this has to do with common comfort.
See those stainless steel stools?
That's where you typically shoot the shit with your fellow inmates.
Spartan circumstances only build character when you're allowed to maintain a certain level of self respect and esprit de corps.
Take a bunch of prisoners, lock them in a pen, make them as uncomfortable as possible and feed them shitty food, and if you're VERY VERY lucky, they'll only manage to take it out on each other.
Why do people who were very kind and loving once become cold-hearted?
That's where you play cards and board games;
That's where you watch The Price is Right;
They lash out under circumstances where they would normally just let things slide.
Image of giant volcano on Mars captured by NASA orbiter - ABC News
And that's where you've fucked right on up, since now you're inevitably going to nap, and nothing's more dangerous in jail than an intermittent sleep cycle.
And as the seconds, minutes, and hours tick by, your ass starts to ache, your eyes cloud over, and your brain begins firing on one single cylinder.
That's where you eat your meals;
Market's Slide Broadens in Afternoon Trading - Barron's
The perpetually tired don't think straight.
Some eventually relent and escape to their cells and those welded sheet metal bunks…really no more comfortable than the day room furnishings, but at least you can get horizonal.
Time to break out the CS canisters.
Hurricane Sandy May Have Affected The Brains of Unborn Children - ScienceAlert
Because it's hard enough to pass the nighttime lockdown in jail without having to deal with sleeplessness, what with the dusk-til-dawn florescent bulb over your burnished chrome shaving mirror shining in your eyes, and the CO’s slamming armored doors throughout the graveyard shift.
And if you're not…well….