Friendly, affable Bobby would do anything to get drugs. Despite the risks, he smuggled drugs into prison. If he had been caught, he would have gone to the “hole,” which is solitary confinement, and he would have received a prison sentence on top of the one he was already serving for armed robbery. I interviewed Bobby as part of a study I did on men who had committed violent crimes. In his own words, Bobby tells a story about smuggling drugs in prison.

I’ve had some terrible, terrible experiences in that visiting room. I mean I used to bring in dope. I’m a drug addict. You buy in prison for a tremendous amount of money which I couldn’t afford or you smuggle it in. It’s the only way.

I used to have people drop it off at this woman’s house. I would get a half, or I’d give them a third. I’d keep two-thirds. It depends on what it was. When you get some narcotics like heroin or coke or dolphine, that’s real, real precious. That’s something you don’t get in prison very much. I loved dolphine. That was my drug.

I remember the first time I kiestered. For a long time, I used to swallow all these balloons. I used to get these headaches. I’d go and I’d puke up fifteen or twenty balloons this big. (He put his thumb and index finger together to form a sphere about three inches in diameter.) That’s a lot of work. Oh, you sweat. Your veins break in your face. Your eyes get bloodshot because of all that forced vomiting.

I was watching TV once. They had on a show about anorexic and bulimic women. How terrible this purging, this vomiting, is on your body. Enlarges your heart, liver and all that kind of stuff. The acids come up. Then I knew why I was getting those headaches. I never realized. I never hooked it up that that was causing the headaches and stuff.

I wouldn’t even want to get high sometimes because I would feel so funky and shitty after I would puke all this up. So, anyway, I saw the show, and I’m never going to do that again. I’m going to start kiestering.

I tried to explain this to Tammy. (He laughed. Tammy was his “mule,” which in prison talk means a person, usually a woman, who smuggles drugs into prison.) “OK, the next time you come, I want you to get a package,” I told her. A buddy of mine had a bunch of pills out there–dolphine. That’s methadone in pill form. I told her to put the pills in a baggy, fold the baggy over, take some tape,and put it on it. Electrician’s tape, that shiny electrician’s tape. It has one side smaller than the other so it will fit in your rectum. It will go in easy.