All right, we need to fly now. We're going to record.

You're now tuned in to San Quinten's Ear Hustle from Radio Topia.

The following podcast contains language that may not be appropriate for all listeners.

Having spent all my adult life in the Marine Corps special forces been in combat,

raised in military schools. I thought, you know, okay, you know, prison, how back can that be?

That's Ron Self, an inmate at San Quinten. He's serving 25 years to life for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

He's been locked up for 20 years. His first stop was Corcoran, a level full maximum security state prison in California.

We arrive on the bus and we get off. We go through processing and part of processing is the reception area

or the issue your state blues and whatnot. And I meet this guy. He's Native American like myself

and his name's Duck and I stick my hand out. He mails well spit on me.

The sky's just evil. I mean, he just he scared the shit out. I mean, it not often that things or people scared me,

but this man actually scared me.

Ron was in receiving a release or R&R, which is basically the intake into the prison system.

It's where you get your ID card and your prison number, which will follow you through your whole incarceration.

And it's where you go through a litany of questions to find out where you would be housed.

It just felt like the whole time I was in R&R, this guy wanted to kill me.

And I was like, I couldn't get processed fast enough to get out of R&R.

So they finished processing me out. I go to the building, which is like a mile long walk in chains.

You know, guns out on the rails and I, you know, electronic door opens.

I walk into the building, the door closes behind me.

And then another door I hear pop open and that's the cell I'm going to.

And the door opens all the way and it's duck.

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