Having worked in the legal field for 20 years now I have made plenty of trips to prisons and jails. The only reason I disagree with prison justice is that they become a lawless place, and even prisoners with the potential for rehabilitation often become worse criminals just to survive the violence. You're right though, that in a men's prison, you don't stand much of a chance if you are a high-profile child molester or killer. But at women's prisons, I'm not sure they dole out the prison justice quite as much. When I worked at the Public Defender for Los Angeles I was put to work on my first day in felony arraignments. Simple job, just take the perps file back into the holding area and interview them. Simple questions like do you have any other pending criminal actions? do you know what you are charged with? Are you on parole or probation, who are your parents and can we contact them, etc etc. Just basic stuff the attorneys want to know before they decide who gets the case. My first question was why are the charges blacked out on some of their files? They said, we black out crimes against children and rape so the other prisoners won't see it. I then asked, if you only black out those crimes, won't they just know the person is charged with that if they see the file? I was told, who the **** cares. This was at the public defender, so you can only imagine that the DA could care less also.

How long did you work as a PD?

I worked as a paralegal for the LA Public Defender for about a year and a half. I'm not an attorney.