It was the day before Christmas when Operation Hooch was put into effect. The three convicts gathered everything they needed from the institution cafeteria to brew a little over two gallons of top-shelf prison firewater: two gallons of orange juice, two pounds of sugar and several slices of bread, a five-gallon bucket and an old sock.

They mixed the orange juice and sugar into the bucket. Then they placed the two slices of bread inside the old sock and tied a knot in the end so the bread wouldn't fall out. The sock was then placed inside the liquid mixture; it would create a filter so that the bread particles wouldn't float all through the hooch, but the yeast inside the bread would create a chemical reaction and begin the cooking process.

The brew had to be stored in a warm place for six or seven days. The convicts found a warm place inside of the heater duct in the laundry room. They wrapped the bucket with a prison shirt that was found lying in the laundry area. By New Year's Eve, it would be time to party.

Everything went as planned until the morning of December 31. Four rollers entered the cell block and headed directly for the laundry room. They immediately removed the hooch that had been brewing inside the heater duct, and instantly saw that the bucket had been wrapped in a shirt that had a name tag on the front pocket. The name was Jones.

So naturally the rollers head directly to that convict's cell. They begin questioning Jones as to why his shirt had been wrapped around this bucket of hooch. But they don't like his answers, and all at once the rollers put handcuffs on Jones and escort him out of the cell block and to the segregation unit, a separate unit where the cons are placed when they've broken an

institutional rule. Segregation remains on lockdown status 24 hours a day.

Upon arrival at the segregation unit Jones is further questioned by a captain: Why would he wrap his own state shirt around this bucket of hooch? Of course Jones denies everything, insists that he had nothing to do with putting the hooch in the heater duct, didn't even know it was there, but he does tell them that he had thrown away one of his state-issued shirts earlier in the week. The captain is skeptical, but Jones' story is credible.

Several days pass, then the three cons who are responsible for the hooch fiasco are rounded up and escorted into the segregation unit. The same captain questions the three, and they admit that they acted alone, that Jones wasn't involved.

I was still fairly new to prison then, and this incident showed me that there can be honor among convicts; these men didn't let an innocent man take the fall. It also proved to me that there are a lot of snitches in our midst.

The convicts were found guilty of an institutional rule infraction and sentenced to 30 days inside the segregation unit. Afterwards they were placed in a drug treatment unit for an additional 90 days where they lost all visitation and phone privileges. It's a shame that one day of potential fun led to a lot of heartache and pain for these men and their families.

Lidge is a Cleveland-area man serving a lengthy sentence in an Ohio prison for a violent crime.

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