Trump pardons Santos from his 7 year prison sentence

[Magical Realist]

Look, I don't like the guy at all, and he obviously did some pretty shitty things like screwing people out of money and outright lying about himself. But there is something inside me that is always joyous when anyone is freed from living within a 6 by 10 prison cell. Call me a softy, but it is at least one less person having to live in that sort of life-squelching hellhole. I know prisons are probably a necessary evil in our society, but they still seem to me cruel and inhumane. A grey and grotesque monument to the continuing power of the collective over the freedom of the individual.

[C C]

Well, prison is certainly a more miserable and dangerous environment in real life than it is on paper. Particularly with respect to low-level offenders potentially having to rub shoulders with high-level violent offenders. And the Black-White animosity divisions, the rape, HIV, pecking orders, guard favoritism and smuggling, etc.

That said, though, I really don't know if it's extra-hazardous (these days) for LGBT+ inmates or not (setting aside whatever Santos's GOP affiliation might attract). Richard Hatch spent several years behind walls for various tax evasions, and the biggest horror story he related was the incredible boredom of having to endure the antics, habits, conversations, and interests of the "most intellectually deficient and abysmally stupid group of people in the world"[1]

And if one went purely by interviews and appearances on old daytime talk shows, prison was one domain where transvestites and trans-women acquired a highly valued status. Of course, that pertained to legit members of the population group, and not "persuaded" Tobias Beecher types that are "encouraged" to accommodate Vernon Schillinger types as makeup-adorned "bitches". ("Oz", first season.)

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[1] (EDIT) Looks like the worst of that was during the first half-year of his 51-month stint, though: After his conviction, Hatch says he spent "six horrendous months" at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Plymouth, Mass. "We were all in a small room -- 52 people: child molesters, murderers, rapists and me," he recalls. "For six months, I never left that room. There were no doors, no privacy."