L.A. County Jail – My Yelp Review

Yelp reviews of prisons and jails? Fantastic. Count me in.

 I couldn’t be happier to throw in my 2¢, so here goes:

Itching for that classic nightmare detention experience? Look no further than L.A. County’s Men’s Central Jail, located at the 9th Circle of Hell in downtown Los Angeles.

If you’ve seen prison movies or watched cable TV handcuff porn, you may think you know what to expect. Yet L.A.’s 2nd oldest jail never fails to surprise and inform. Not only will your experience unlock the power of contingency-based behavioral conditioning, you’ll travel down an interpersonal rabbit hole of unimaginable depth, where each “teachable moment” is more fantastic than the last.

So ask yourself: how much would you pay for a vacation souvenir that allows you to walk away from annoying coworkers with the knowledge that they wouldn’t last two minutes in the trauma grinder from which you’ve just emerged? Even your overbearing boss would be reduced to a bedwetting mute! Every time you see a self-important schmuck rolling up his car window at the sight of an approaching homeless person, you’ll be able to call up the memory of what happened to that uppity lawyer from Encino, awaiting arrangement on DUI number five. Whoops! He didn’t see that on MSNBC’s “Lockup!”

At MCJ, every conceivable custody horror will play out before you: gang initiation rituals, cockroach infestations, sleep attempts on a soiled newspaper pillow, 10-men-to-4-man-cell, your colon on jail food, the sounds of forced gargling at 3 am, and the ever popular jumping mice. Yep, with successful suicides and bi-polar berserkers always only a few feet away, yours will be the Adventure Staycation Package of a lifetime!

Afraid you don’t speak the language? No problem! Even if you’ve only joked around with naughty Español while waiting for your Benz to be washed, on this voyage you’ll learn the sort of Spanish that may well save you from indelible psychic scars. And didn’t you learn from your acting class how Crips and Bloods talk? Now get schooled on the hand signals that separate the “Busters” and “Slobs” from the “CRABS.”

MCJ is unique in every way, offering custody themed entertainment you’d otherwise have to go back in time to experience because it’s a dungeon as as cruel as any Level-4 prison. And your host, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, strives to maintain a hospitality worthy of ongoing FBI excessive force and corruption probes.

Extras include getting “lost,” where, despite headcounts and bar-code wristbands, your bellyaching will guarantee retaliatory placement in a forgotten cell module! Inmates will be transferred in and out daily, giving you countless opportunities to prove yourself to a whole new crowd.  By the time you are finally moved, you’ll have become hardened and bitter enough to get by. And then your stay will end.

When it does, you’ll emerge as a new person, someone unafraid of stopping up a toilet with a breakfast orange to wash his underwear and socks. Friends, no money can buy a motivational seminar more permanent than time spent at MCJ.