Incarceration

As I walk the path of the aspiring writer, I have a day job to pay the bills. Well, it's an afternoon job. I work swing shift at the county jail, supervising inmates for eight hours a day. Before I started working here I had no clue what jail was like. I had never been in jail, and I had never been to the jail. All I knew was what I saw on TV. Jail is nothing like what you see on TV. If you want to see a great show about what jail is really like, check out Inside American Jail on Court TV. That's what it is really like. But that is not what I wanted to focus on in this entry. What I have discovered since working here is how easy it is to end up in jail! I had no idea that even the most innocuous of "crimes" like jaywalking or speeding could land you in jail. And it has given me a much better perspective on the power that law enforcement holds in this country, and how easy it would be for them to set someone up. I don't think it happens nearly as often as it is claimed, but it would be surprisingly easy for a cop to plant drugs on you if he wanted to, and there you would be, sitting in jail.

Another thing that surprised me was the kind of people who end up here. Mostly it's people who can't learn from their mistakes or can't handle the responsibility of having to show up for court when their ticket says to. There are bad guys in here, too. Drug dealers, rapists, child molesters, murderers. But even among them, there are few evil people. Mistakes, bad decisions, even stupidity account for a lot of crime, but the truly evil person is a rare breed. They're almost like an exotic animal. When you actually see one it is almost exciting. I have worked at this jail for three years, and in that time have dealt with thousands of inmates, we booked around 24,000 in that time, and of all those, two were people I would consider evil.

What would be considered evil? Well, in my eyes, aside from the biblical definition, an evil person has a blatant disregard for anyone other than themselves. In one particular case, an individual enjoyed watching others suffer from the things he did. He even enjoyed thinking about the pain and worry he caused to the families of his victims. He told me right before he went to prison that as soon as he got out, the first thing he was going to do was hurt someone. Now in some people you can chalk this up to tough talk and someone's desire to be perceived as a thug, but this guy is the real deal. When you see them, you know.

Now, that being said, this is still a tough world to live in, and there are a lot of guys in here that I would not want to live with. In our medium and maximum security units, inmates live 18 1/2 to 23 hours a day in an 8x10 cell... with another guy. Not ideal living arrangements. Even the most patient people can be pushed to the breaking point. So make sure you stay out of here. You won't like it.