Dear New Inmate

Dear New Inmate,

Look, we’ve all seen the movies. I know that you think that fighting an extremely large man such as myself will frighten all of other inmates thus making you safer during the rest of your time here. I’m writing this letter in the hope that you will reconsider this god awful plan.

Despite numerous obstacles, we’ve managed to build up a nice community here at Leaside penitentiary except for one small nuisance. It keeps getting ruined by assholes like you always coming in and trying to “shake things up”. I can understand how the fact that I, a 349 pound man serving life for double murder, am head inmate in charge might lead one to believe that I got here solely due to my physical prowess but that is far from the case. In fact, there were no fisticuffs involved whatsoever and up until last year’s release of the Heinson brothers I wasn’t even the biggest guy in here. It’s purely coincidental. I was selected to be head inmate in charge in a fair and democratic inmate election. Sure, running unopposed yet again was a little disappointing but I guess the guys are just satisfied with how I’ve been running things. I’ve successfully improved relations with the guards and I’ve been able to keep cigarette inflation far lower than my predecessor.

Now that you’ve been made aware of how we do things here at Leaside, I strongly encourage you to reconsider any plans you might have regarding physically attacking me and I instead encourage you to proactively get involved. We hold our inmate town hall meetings every Wednesday evening in the yard and I’ve taken the liberty of attaching this month’s rec schedule to this letter. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any fresh ideas for how we can continue to improve our community. It would bring me great pleasure to know that I’ve got your vote in the next election. Welcome to Leaside!

Love,

Inmate 7585-8393 (Big Mike)

PS: I should mention that as a consequence of a number of newer inmates choosing to view this welcome letter as a sign of weakness, I have actually gotten quite good at fighting. I can assure you that while I certainly don’t want to, I will whoop that ass if I have to.