MC Shakie's Blog

  The Miscorrection of MC Shakie My Second Prison Husband: Part 3 by Rodney "MC Shakie" Roussell By the time they transferred me out of Elayn Hunt, I thought I understood prison. I knew the rules—spoken and unspoken. I knew how to carry myself, how to read a room, how to survive. Elayn Hunt had made me literate in a whole other language. Catahoula laughed at all of that. The Catahoula Correctional Center was a private prison—private meaning it was run by a company, not the state, which meant it had a fraction of the funding, a fraction of the programming, and a whole lot of improvising. It sat near Alexandria, Louisiana, halfway between the New Orleans world I knew and the deep country I was about to learn. They sent me there because I was non-violent. Because the state was moving people around to cut costs. Because some office somewhere looked at my file and checked a box. I got there and immediately knew I was not in Kansas anymore. Eight Dorms and a New Educati...

  Everything Got Complicated My First Prison Husband: Part 2 By Rodney "MC Shakie" Roussell   Nobody tells you what happens the morning after you get a prison husband. They tell you to get one. They explain why you need one. They run you through the hierarchy, the protection, the social math of it all. But what nobody sits you down and explains is that the morning after you exchange those locker keys, you wake up and you are now somebody's wife. For real. Not symbolically. Not loosely. Wife. With responsibilities. With an emotional landscape to navigate. With a whole other person's needs inside a place that was already trying to crush yours. I woke up the day after my prison wedding and realized that the education had only just begun. Prison Wifely Duties Let me tell you what being Mike's wife actually looked like, because it was not what I expected. Mike worked maintenance—painting, fixing things, whatever needed doing around the compound. He...

Married Before I Knew His Middle Name   My First Prison Husband: Part 1 By Rodney "MC Shakie" Roussell The moment I stepped off that bus at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, something shifted in my chest before my brain could catch up. Not fear exactly — I had done fear in jail already. This was something else. This was the silence. Not church-quiet. Not library-quiet. A controlled quiet. People were moving all around me, but nobody was loud. Nobody was reckless. Everything felt like something — or someone — was orchestrating it from somewhere above, and everybody in that yard had already memorized the choreography. Everybody except me. I had been in jail before. Orleans Parish. Baton Rouge. I knew jail. Jail was loud and chaotic and unpredictable, with a deputy somewhere in the back not fully paying attention. Prison? Prison was a different planet. And I was standing on the surface of it with no oxygen tank and no map. Jail had not prepared me for this. Not even close. Two St...