No, I guess I’m not destined to become an inmate who’s “on the path to reform” 😔 I’ve only been in my cozy little maximum-security penal colony for a week, and they’ve already slapped me with an “official reprimand issued under the authority of the facility head.” Let me explain: incident reports, reprimands, and rewards are the most important part of life in so-called “red” penal colonies (prisons controlled by the administration rather than inmate hierarchies). That’s how everything here is run—along with beatings and torture, of course. If the administration likes you, you’re constantly getting rewards, which means care packages and visits. If they don’t, they invent violations for you, write them up in reports, and issue reprimands. Two reprimands, and they can send you to the punishment cell. And there you can easily die of “pneumonia” or break your neck falling from a bunk (and then someone will probably get rewarded with a visit from his mom for it!). Reprimands stay on your record and only “expire” a year after the most recent one. My last reprimand, with the wording “broke the ceiling” (don’t ask), was last August. So this August, all 30 of my reprimands were supposed to “expire.” But no! It turns out my first penal colony filed a report saying that, literally in the last two hours before I left, I had “violated the dress code.” At 6:30 a.m., I was walking to the washroom in a T-shirt instead of prison uniform. Just so you understand: at 6:30 a.m., all the inmates are washing up and shaving, and they all go to the washroom in T-shirts. But I was walking dangerously! I was walking like an extremist, and my T-shirt was threatening the authorities in power. So my new colony, after reviewing the letter from the old one, summoned me before a commission, condemned me for this outrageous offense, and issued me a new reprimand. So now my previous 30 reprimands will stay with me for another year too. Very convenient—at any moment they can declare me a repeat serious violator, throw me in the punishment cell, and so on. Moral: want to live a dangerous life? Just wear T-shirts once in a while 😉