Prison Skin: Thicker Than Steel Bars

Chuck Skinner stands tall at about six-foot-six. He’s ripped, but you’d never know it because his clothes are all way too big. He’s covered in tattoos from his neck to his knuckles and from the bottom of his legs to the top of his head— almost all prison ink. The hair on his scalp is shorn to the skin and his bright blue eyes are charged with the enthusiasm of sustained freedom. His smile shows off his bubbly personality, and years of methamphetamine use.

He loves his daughter, his dirt bike and his new job at the lumber mill. He’s from the Bay Area, but he just can’t live here anymore.

Skinner was born and bred in Hayward, California, but moved up to Oregon about seven years ago when he was last released from prison. That’s the only way he ever saw himself getting off parole. Now he is.

“I just know way too many people in the Bay,” he says. “I’d be up to the same old shit in no time.”

Skinner has always been a bit of a trouble maker. He was a bully of a kid, but he didn’t have any legal problems until he started using drugs as a teenager and running with the bad crowd.

“A lot of people don’t really care about going back to prison,” he says. “You get institutionalized.”



Getting into Prison

Between San Quentin, Tracy, Susanville and Folsom; Skinner has been to prison five times—for a total of just over nine years. He just turned 37 years old.

He did his first stint in the Alameda County Jail (Santa Rita) on drug charges, at only 19. But he didn’t make it into the big house until he was busted for burglary when he was 21. Since then, he’s been convicted of strong armed robbery, battery, and numerous drug charges related to crank and crystal meth.

“I was scared my first time,” Skinner says. "I felt like I was being put into a dungeon.”

Like most convicted felons from the Bay Area, Skinner was first taken to San Quentin State Prison for reception. He ended up serving his entire first sentence there—about 18 months.

“When you first get there you’re on 23-hour lockdown,” he says. “You’re stuck in reception until they house you in a mainline prison.”

From there prisoners get assigned into housing units or “pods” where there are about 50 cells for inmates to shack-up in.

Skinner says he learned quickly that inmates are the ones who really run things in prison and that the guards can only try to watch over them.



Getting in a Prison Gang

“Different groups have their own societies in there and it’s been that way for years,” Skinner says. “It’s a whole new way of thinking, and they all have their own different sets of rules.”

“It’s always been segregated.”

Most lines that are drawn by these rules get respected, as crossing them can often result in harsh consequences. Skinner knew he’d have to side-up in order to survive.

If you choose to be on your own, Skinner says, you are considered a “lame,” and if anything happens to you nobody will back you up.

“One day I was sitting out on the lower yard and a bunch of whites came by and introduced themselves,” he says. “We made friends right away.”

Skinner became a skinhead in prison. In huge letters, he had “White Power” tattooed onto the side of his neck. He assumed an identity that befitted the color of his face.

The choice wasn’t hard for him. Between the Bloods and the Crips, the blacks and the Christians, the Native Americans and the Muslims, there’s no shortage of prison sets to roll with. But Skinner says most people just stick to “their own kind,” and often those who are also from the same county.

White inmates don’t care what county other whites are from, Skinner explains. As long as they’re down for these two principles: White Power and White Unity.

Skinner says that there’s usually some sort of initiation involved, but he can’t really get into that. He’ll only say that if you want to be any kind of gang member, you have to do something—to someone.

As in most gangs, rank is an important factor of influence. In San Quentin for example, Yard Reps serve as a mouthpiece for orders that come down from other prisons like Pelican Bay, where a lot of the real leaders are serving time. Sergeants back up the Reps and make sure everything runs smooth. And then there’s the Mission Boys—who Skinner says do most of the stabbings, or whatever else they’re told.

“Racism is unstoppable in prison,” he says. “It’s so segregated by race that it just breeds hate, and it sticks with a lot of us.”

“You see a whole different kind of people in there.”



Getting into Prison Gang Relations

Not all inmates want to get involved in prison violence, according to Skinner. He says that the Christians and the Muslims and the Native Americans usually just do their own thing and don’t really get involved when tensions arise.

Conversely, one of the worst moves an inmate can make is to start running with more than one prison gang. And if you’re already running with one, don’t switch sides.

“You can’t be fence-jumping like that,” Skinner says. “You’ll usually get fucked-off.”

There are some traditional relations between certain California prison gangs. For instance, the Whites can have associations with the Sureños and the Blacks are allowed to kick it the Norteños, but never the other way around.

“White boys that run with the blacks or the Norteños usually end up getting stabbed by us,” he says. “Sometimes that jumps-off a riot and the guards come out with their mini-14s and their block guns.”

When a melee breaks out, guards usually fire off a warning shot. But if it doesn’t break-up quick, they’ll start shooting inmates with rubber bullets. After that, Skinner says, they shoot to kill.

As a result of such violence, he says: “Sometimes shit gets squashed, other times more people get stabbed. It all depends on the situation.”

Skinner can’t stand certain inmate populations in the prisons he’s been to— mainly the blacks, but he doesn’t like the Jews or Asians either. This is where he shows his hate.

“The niggers are so disrespectful in there—they’re garbage,” he says. “It’s like being at the zoo and watching chimpanzees throw shit at each other.”

“The Norteños are cool, but they run with the niggers so they’re garbage too.”

Skinner says that the Northerners hate the Southerners, the Blacks hate the Whites, and the Whites just hate everybody. And that’s just the way it is in prison.



Getting Out and Staying Out

Nowadays, Skinner tries to stay away from the people he knows through incarceration. He hears things that are going on in certain prisons from time to time, but never tries to get involved anymore. He’s still as racist as ever, but he’s laying low in southern Oregon and staying out of trouble.

“I know the whites have been killing a lot of Norteños recently,” he says. “We’re trying to P.C. them all up—get ‘em off the yard.”

Skinner just got full custody of his four-year-old daughter, and says that he’s been sober for over seven years now. He wakes up early in the morning to drive his kid to preschool, and reads children’s stories to her every night before she goes to bed.

“Now I just want to work, chill and raise my family,” he says. “There are a lot of Skinheads up here, but most of them are in and out of prison, and doing drugs all the time—and that’s gonna be the downfall of our cause.”

The years spent in prison have changed his life forever. He made choices, and he lives with them. And he’s not ashamed of them either.

And he doesn’t neglect his skinhead ethics.

“We’re all about keeping our race white,” says Skinner. “No mixed breeding.”

“That’s how I live.”