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paper_title: "It Wasn't That Bad, Cunt. I'd Do My Time." paper_subtitle: "The Chorus Song of the Prison Population, and Why It's the Most Dangerous Sentence in Criminal Justice" paper_authors: ["A. C. Applebee", "A. D. Masters"] paper_date: "2026" paper_series: "OMXUS Research — Prison Trilogy, Part 1"

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"It Wasn't That Bad, Cunt. I'd Do My Time."

The Chorus Song of the Prison Population, and Why It's the Most Dangerous Sentence in Criminal Justice

A. C. Applebee and A. D. Masters
OMXUS Research Papers
2026

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Abstract

The single most effective defense mechanism protecting the modern prison system from scrutiny is not policy, not legislation, not public apathy. It is the testimony of the people it destroys: "Jail ain't shit." This paper argues that the minimization of carceral suffering by formerly and currently incarcerated people is not evidence that conditions are tolerable — it is evidence that the system is working exactly as designed. Drawing on prisonization theory (Clemmer, 1940), system justification (Jost & Banaji, 1994), masculine performativity research (de Viggiani, 2012; Ricciardelli et al., 2015), and the structural exclusion of incarcerated voices from academic research, we demonstrate that self-reported minimization is a survival artifact, not testimony. We further demonstrate that laboratory animals in research facilities receive more legally mandated welfare protections than human beings in prisons — including ethics board review, minimum space standards, environmental enrichment requirements, and the right to an endpoint. Every objective health measure contradicts the self-report: PTSD rates 4.6–10.4x the general population, post-release mortality 3.5x higher, life expectancy loss of two years per year served. The person who says "it wasn't that bad" is doing the state's public relations for free, and the state has designed it that way.

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1. Introducti