If you’re currently eating, then don’t read this. Or if you plan to eat in the near future. Or perhaps ever. Because today’s topic is about a scatological prison practice known politely as “gassing” and less politely as “shitting out.”

This story is about assaulting someone with bodily waste.

I spent almost two years incarcerated in the supermax unit at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, a prison in Nashville, Tenn. There was little opportunity for direct confrontations when inmates had beefs with each other or staff members. That’s because many of us were in solitary confinement, locked in our cells for 23 to 24 hours a day. When we moved outside our cells to recreation cages or medical appointments, we were restrained with cuffs and leg shackles. 

Rather than preventing altercations, however, such enforced isolation and lack of social interaction fostered frustration and bad blood. Minor issues took on magnified importance. Shouting matches behind double-locked steel doors were common, with insults, epithets and slurs being traded for hours. 

People had almost no ability to act on these frustrations. Well, almost no ability. That’s where gassing — throwing urine and feces at an adversary — came into play.

The mechanics of these excretory assaults were simple, if unpleasant. The usual weapon of choice was called a Draco, an homage to a compact, short-barreled AK-style pistol of the same name. 

The prison version is commonly made from an emptied 20-ounce soda bottle from the commissary. You cut or grind a hole in the lid, about a quarter-inch in diameter, then insert a short piece of plastic pen barrel — the hollow part of the pen without the inner ink tube — through the hole, secured with tape wrapped around it on both sides to ensure a snug fit. The Draco is now ready to be loaded.

Those who participated in this vile form of biological warfare filled the bottle partly with urine and partly with feces fished out of the toilet (using plastic gloves if available). The lid is then screwed on tightly and the mixture left to ferment for several days until it becomes a foul slurry — a sort of shit smoothie with a gag-inducing aroma.

Cell doors in Riverbend Maximum’s segregation units — where people were sent to live apart from the general population, sometimes for their own protection — were solid steel with a piehole-type slot. The slot had a cover that could be slid open and closed from the outside to pass through food trays or other items. The cell doors were more secure in the supermax unit at Riverbend Maximum — an even stricter segregation unit — with hinged enclosures on each side of the pieholes, allowing items to be exchanged without any contact with those inside. 

But no system is perfect; the pieholes had to be fully open when laundry was taken out and returned, when commissary orders were delivered, and when inmates used the phone that was wheeled around to each cell.

An open piehole presented an opportunity for gassing, with assailants pointing their Draco out of the slot at their desired target and forcefully squeezing the sides, which caused the odious contents to shoot out the narrow opening of the pen barrel at high velocity, like putting your finger over the nozzle of a hose. I’ve seen the resulting jet of fecal fluid reach 30 feet or more, with surprising accuracy.

I twice saw inmates targeted when they were removed from their cells, hit with gassing attacks while being escorted out of the unit. People also shoot feces through the piehole of an adversary’s cell or the crack under his cell door. Prison staff are sometimes victims too — usually for engaging in actual or perceived harassment, unfair or arbitrary application of prison rules, or the catch-all category of “disrespect.”

Nor was gassing limited to within housing units. Occasionally it carried over to the recreation cages, where people have limited exercise time. I’ve known of inmates who have concealed Draco bottles when they went to rec, then used them to spray enemies in other cages through the chain-link partitions separating them. For that reason, some men in segregation elected to forgo recreation time for weeks or even months if they were feuding with another inmate known to engage in gassing. 

During my time there in 2020 and 2021, staff members assigned to the supermax unit always wore clear face shields to protect them from getting shit-faced. Those on the receiving end of gassing attacks usually got time off work. (The Tennessee Department of Correction did not respond to PJP’s request for comment.)

Prison officials tried to address this issue without much success. It has long been a disciplinary offense to assault staff members or other inmates with bodily fluids — in my experience, they cared much more about staff getting gassed than inmates. Such incidents could also result in new “street charges,” or new criminal charges for assault.

For a while, inmates weren’t allowed to take soda bottles or other containers to recreation. But there were no water fountains in the rec cages, and the temperature could be hot, so that rule was changed.

Prison officials eventually posted a memo saying that people in segregation “who have displayed the propensity to assault staff or other offenders by throwing liquid are prohibited from ordering bottles or containers of any type (i.e. drinks, shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, etc.)” from the commissary. That did little to resolve the problem, though. Draco-type devices were also fashioned from the half-pint milk cartons served at breakfast every day. 

The underlying cause of gassing is simple. People have no other outlet for their anger and frustration. They’re locked in their cells 23 or 24 hours a day, often for years at a time. During my stay at Riverbend, when people filed grievances over misconduct or policy violations by staff members, those grievances were routinely denied, with the denials rubber-stamped on appeal. 

Segregation by its very nature prevents normal social interactions that would help alleviate the stressful, sanity-eroding effects of prolonged isolation in solitary confinement. There’s a reason the United Nations has said it considers prolonged solitary confinement (more than 15 days) a form of torture. 

Overall, relatively few prisoners commit gassing attacks. For those who do, condemnation should be directed not only at their crappy behavior but also at the conditions of their confinement that drive them to engage in such revolting acts. 

If you treat someone like an animal, they tend to act like an animal; if you lock them up under extreme conditions, they will do extreme things. In the end, everyone suffers from such degrading treatment and the execrable reactions it evokes.