Tobacconist

The other folks here have given you good advice but not very thorough. I'd like to expand on it:

1. Keep clean. This means showering and keeping your area neat. It's a sign of respect and helps your cell not get tossed around during inspections so much.

2. Work out daily. What else do you have to do? Besides, it's in his own self-interest.

3. Do not join a gang, ever, period, I don't fucking care the reason. They only lead to more trouble than they're worth. If he's in a gang already, drop out. Hell, more than half the yards (in California, at least) are "drop-outs" already.

4. If his prison allows it, and if he's interested, a guitar is a great way to pass time.

5. Don't fuck around with drugs. Weed is sometimes okay (provided he won't risk added time) but usually the weed in there is overpriced and weak. Same with pruno.

6. Use phone calls sparingly. I know that sometimes you just need to hear a loving voice, or sometimes family just needs to hear you. But in the long run it's an expensive and exploitative market. You'll pay way too much for those calls.

7. If he's doing that much time, he might look into getting a degree by mail.

8. Faith and religion isn't my thing, but if he's into it I would stress being careful. There are regular services in prison that are fine, but stay away from the psychotic inmates who think they're preachers but secretly on a shit-ton of meth.

9. Get a hustle. Crafts, reselling coffee, whatever kind of hustle he can. This kills time and buys more canteen snacks.

10. Visits are the fucking reason for living.

11. If he can get a job, I strongly suggest kitchens. The work isn't too hard and the extra food is worth it.

Oh, it's pretty much that.

A guy who called himself something quite like "Preacher Tommy" had a large following. He'd hold services every day in the yard, 20 or so fellas watching. Lots of TV-style yelling to praise HIM! At times, Preacher Tommy would go into convulsions and 'speak in tongues' (really just babbling, not at all the biblical meaning of different languages). It was all a really great show.

And of course, people loved Preacher Tommy. So they often shared food, canteen goods, etc with him. And it took far too long for the news to break that Tommy owed a little too much money for uppers. Then he left my yard.

I've been to prison and he's right that you don't see many Asians. The ones I saw were the ones who were doing a lot of time. Maybe when they fuck up, they tend to fuck up big. I'm also willing to bet that a lot of Asian crime is handled internally by the community, since the ones I know are very close-knit and almost isolated.

1. I was never in a gang so don't take my word as perfect. Dropping out has become much more common. Like I said, half the California yards are full of drop-outs, sometimes they even make drop-out gangs. But my mentality when I was in there was "Do as little time as possible" and gangs only add to that time.

2. Pruno is prison wine. It tastes like a bad wine cooler. I guess enough could get you drunk, but I only tried it.

3. Hustle is various. The coffee thing is you might buy a jar of instant coffee for $8 that gets you 50 cups worth. Sell "shots" of instant coffee for a top ramen (25 cents ea) and make four bucks off the deal. Other hustles exist. I was in the electrical vocation school for awhile. Smuggled out scotch tape, wiring, pens, etc for bartering.

Probably best not to name-call and insult without saying what in the sam hell you're talking about.