Yes unfortunately, quite a few times. Been to Central in St Louis quite a few times in my youth, mostly unpaid tickets, with 20 hours time served. Spent 45 days in Warren County jail back in the 90’s. Spent 62 days in Indian River County jail for a felony weed possession, and then another 10 for driving while revoked. That was the last time and that was about 15 years ago. Hope to never see the inside of a jail again.

Also got my MO record expunged, and working on getting clemency for my Florida record.

I sat on a jury in a really serious criminal case about 15 years ago. Crimes included armed robbery, kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated assault, etc. It was horrible. Defendants got 7 life terms and 300+ years. I'll never be able to unsee the girl crying on the stand because they raped her, or the guy that lost his life savings after he withstood torture because they threatened to cut his 12 year old son's hands off. Jury duty was not fun.

I've been in and out of jails and prisons as part of work for the past 25 years. Never got sent there and one of the perks of the job is I can tap on the glass and be let out.

To answer your question, are they as dangerous? Depends on the institution. Pre-trial facilities in places like Chicago or Baltimore or Los Angeles can be dangerous in part because people already know you. That is, they know who you hang out with or what charges you're facing and other matters. On the other hand, pre-trial facilities in my neck of the woods are fairly low key.

I say 'fairly' but pre-trial facilities generally have a much larger turnover so people are not as invested in making it habitable. Inmates serving longer sentences in prison frequently want things to be fairly quiet and to run smoothly. Whether the place is dangerous, though, can vary widely from institution to institution.

Federal BOP has roughly 3 levels of security classifications: minimum, medium, and maximum. BOP has a whole worksheet to determine classification. It considers an inmates: age, sex, offense, offense characteristics (did a drug charge involve guns or violence), criminal history, any history while on supervision/pre-trial release. This means that a 45 year old banker who is guilty of mortgage fraud and has no other criminal history will wind up in a different facility than a 20 year old gang-banger convicted of drug and gun charges. The prison where the banker spends his time is generally not violent and there are not likely to be any gang members there, let along requiring that you join a gang to get along.

Other places, though, are far more violent. I have a client who testified against some people. They sent him to Beaumont, Texas. It's called 'bloody Beaumont' for a reason. The gangs wouldn't take him because word got out he snitched and he had a rough time inside. Another client was not a Hells Angels member, but he was closely associated with the club up here. His attitude toward DOJ could charitably be defined as .... "bad". He got sent to a prison that is filled with Bandidos, a rival MC. He had to stand his ground a few times.

In many federal prisons with gang members, the prison will house primarily one gang. So one prison is primarily Bloods and another Crips. This diminishes the number of gang fights in the facility. I had a case where the pre-sentence report writer wanted to say my client was a Crip because some nobody told one of the agents that they were the '21st Street Crips'. My client, though, had Blood tattoos. We argued to the judge that the statement about 'Crips' be removed from the pre-sentence report because he needed to go to a facility where they housed Bloods, not Crips, based on his tattoos. (This was all on the record so I'm not breaking attorney-client privilege.) The judge removed the statement about the Crips.

As far as food, it's generally equivalent to bad college dorm food: largely institutional. In some lower security facilities, inmates can actually cook their own food. In higher security facilities, food can be a means of punishment or recognition of an inmate's danger. At SuperMax, for example, inmates are frequently fed a 'loaf' that is nutritious but very bland.

3 times.

FYP/s

Jail twice. Basically, amounted to about a week. Prison, never.

Nothing creepy/violent ever happened during my two stays. Well, except for the guy that chose to talk to the toilet as if it were the judge. But his defense was pretty funny at points.

Did anyone ever hit on you while you were in the joint or vice versa?

The first time I got locked up in Indian River County, I was sitting in the holding cell until they figure out where to put us. There’s 8 of us in there, one dude is completely wasted on alcohol. They bring us dinner in styrofoam containers. We all eat except the drunk guy who’s passed out for the most part. His head is getting closer to the ground by the minute. So we all start stacking our boxes up in front of him. He eventually gets his head lowered to the level of the boxes, and we all started yelling and clapping. Then the guards come in cuz we’re being loud. Soon as they open the door, the guy kinda wakes up, and knocks the boxes all over the floor. They yelled at us, we cleaned the boxes up. Dude was incoherent the whole time in that cell.

And here I thought I just lost my wallet at Nzoner's first bash.

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Nope

Once for beating the shit out of my sisters boyfriend because he hit her. I spent a night in there and was out the next morning. Paid a fine of some sort, he got in more trouble.

Once. While at college at K-State. I was leaving Manhattan to head back home for deer hunting. Had all my gear and gun in the back of the truck. Got pulled over leaving town for taillight out. Cop ran my tag, and found a warrant for a parking ticket that I supposedly got on campus, and never paid, and missed a court date for. I never saw a ticket because my address wasn't current. But he took me downtown anyway. (Old Riley County jail before they built the current one). It was only a $35 fine, but I didn't have enough cash, and they didn't have an ATM. I called about 5-6 friends, and couldn't get anybody to pick up. Was freaking out because all my stuff was still just sitting in the back of my pickup across town. Finally called a buddy who picked up, and told him what was up. Didn't really know him very well at the time. First thing he said was "Dude, you have no idea how high I am." But he still came down to bail me out. The cop was cool enough that he didn't even put me in the holding cell, I was just hanging out with him in the main office. My buddy showed up, and we could see him on the camera at the front desk, and the stupid bastard was flipping off the cameras. They didn't give either of us any issue though, and he paid the $35 to bail, we went to an ATM and I paid him back, and went on to go hunting. Technically never actually behind bars even though I was arrested...

Lots of shoulda-bens though... LOL...

How the hell you get those high profile government jobs?

When I was applying to work for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court I spent 45 minutes explaining a underage drinking charge from 10 years ago.

Got the job and nope, never been.