Literary Hub
If there’s one place where gangs don’t have to worry about their literature getting read, it’s in the box. In New York prisons, the first week in the box is a special kind of torment. No reading material of any kind. No radio. No music. No pictures of family. No personal property. No paper. No pen. Nothing but a cell about the size of a parking space. Concrete floor and ceiling. Steel bed, steel toilet, steel chair, and steel sink, all of which are bolted to the wall. One blanket, one sheet, and a two-inch thick mattress. When you’re locked down, especially in the beginning, you’ll read anything. If somebody fishes you something to read, you don’t just read it. You devour it.