Not everybody has gotten to go to jail or prison. But, current statistics tell me that one in four people have, and this is what I'm thinking about that.
This story today, has got me thinking about injustice and blunder. Now I have to tell you a story so I can purge it from my memory bank. I need that room for much much more happy stuff.
All of this is true (as best I can remember it) and I don't think this leaves me open for any kind of libel trouble. You may not like me anymore, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
About a million years ago (that's how all my best stories start out) I had the distinct pleasure of getting pulled over for a DUI. I'd love to say that this was unjust and I was as pure as the driven snow, but that would be a flat-out lie. I was so jacked up on Valium, it's a wonder that I could walk, much less drive. These pills were a prescription gift from a thoughtful doctor, following the entire year it took my father to die.
I don't have the benefit of having made perfectly reasonable choices for all of my 49 years, and this one was definitely one of my worst. I got a DUI and it was a just call - I should have gotten one, I deserved it.
I was summarily hauled off to the holding tank at the Sedgwick County Jail. If you've never been there, I don't advise rushing off to make that happen. The holding tank is a cinder block room that is about 12' by 8'. It has a toilet thing (that didn't look anything like any toilet I'd ever seen) and it has built in cement benches on two sides - enough to hold about 10 people if nobody lays down. It's about 32 below zero and it's got one whole wall of glass so you can see your captors, and your captors can see you. It reeks of this industrial Pine-Sol kinda cleaner that hurts your nose and mouth when you breathe in. The smell didn't make it feel any cleaner.
On this visit, there were about 30 women in there, in various states of undress, and the majority of them were visiting for meth and crack related offenses. Most of them seemed to know each other and it quickly became apparent that this wasn't their first rodeo. Any of them. All of them. I'd never felt so much like an outsider in my whole life, and was I fine with that. I kept my head down, avoided eye-contact and was pushed through the system in about 26 hours (with no food and no water.) A court date was set and I got to leave. I was really happy that I didn't have to go to the bathroom, because that would have been a total drag in front of all those girls.
Before I could make it to court, I was needed for my mother's death. She had cancer (again) and this time it was terminal. I called the D.A. and explained my situation and he said that I just needed to stay in touch. I called him once a month for the next 5 months or so and never once got the impression that this problem would be a life-changer.
After the funeral, I called and arranged to come in and meet the D.A. at 8 am on a Monday morning. It was my (erroneous) understanding, at the time, that I would get a court date and pay some heinous fines. Instead what I got to do is go directly to jail - The Sedgwick County Jail, to be specific. This did not take me completely by surprise and I had the good sense to wear two pairs of undies. (My brother has a lifetime investment in incarceration for drug-related offenses and this was his one piece of sage advice the night before I went to Wichita.)
The holding tank detention only lasted about 13 hours this time, and there were only about 10 other women in there. One of them, though, was an older (like in her 60s or 80s maybe - the ravages of meth make it hard to tell how old anybody is) woman wearing only a house dress and a pair of unlaced, gigantic, high-dollar men's tennis shoes. At some point I accidentally stepped on one of her toes and in one swift and seamless motion she grabbed me by my hair at the nape of my neck and slammed my face into the cement wall. She went off like a rabid monkey and was really quite strong for what I thought to be a little old lady. The captors came and took her off to her own private holding cell and tossed me a roll of toilet paper with 3 squares on it to clean up the blood from my broken nose.
I was then taken through a series of places where they checked to be sure I wasn't smuggling in drugs or guns in all the obvious (and not so obvious) places. I got to take a shower with a female officer standing about 18" away, watching the whole process. I'm not real big on sharing my naked self, but I already felt so violated and resigned... and it was WAY not the worst thing that had happened to me while in their company, so I showered in record time and jumped into my new orange scrubs.
Two lovely and highly personable young male officers came and got me by either side and left bruises on my forearms where they had gently guided me into what would be my new home until my hearing. Through some unfortunate twist of fate, the powers-that-be had designated me as a Violent Offender, so I got to go to the Violent Offenders "Pod." (Apparently there are many layers of criminals in this facility, and the Violent Offenders were a group of mostly young women who had committed violent crimes against other people. One girl had killed her baby, another had killed her grandma.)
I stayed in my cell, without a room-mate for the first two meals and I refused to come out. It stands to reason that they had a vested interest in my eating, and they came and drug me out for dinner on my second day. Dinner looked exactly (and, I shit you not) like Alpo wet and smelly dog food. For real. I remember thinking over and over again how this could only happen on television, or maybe I was dreaming.
I sat down at the only available spot with a group of women and looked around for the first time. My minority-ness struck me then - and it was harsh. I was one of only 3 white girls in the company of about 75 women. I pushed my tray in front of me and said something to the effect of "I'll die before I eat this crap. You girls go for it." At which time, a wonderfully scary and insane riot broke out. The girls at all our surrounding tables had heard me say this, and it was literally elbows and assholes for a good 10 minutes. Several officers were able to restore order and I was taken back to my cell and locked up.
I was told that if I chose to not eat breakfast the next day, I would be sent to Solitary. Solitary in this case, is just another cell, but this one comes equipped with a camera and you don't get to have any clothes on. I'd seen the audience of officers gathered around the TV screen watching a woman wail and writhe the night before. They provided commentary and laughed, some of them went to her door and taunted her. That was about the last thing I wanted, I would have eaten baby kittens to avoid that.
The next morning we had something they called oatmeal. It wasn't like any oatmeal I'd ever seen, but I ate some of it anyway in order to avoid being mocked on TV by my captors. Through all of this, I never stopped crying. At some point they decided I needed to talk to a Holy Person. The first Holy Person was noncommittal, I don't know what flavor she was, but she was no consolation. I then requested a Catholic Holy Person, thinking that maybe because we had shared an island at some point in my past, she may be more reasonable.
She was kind and soft-spoken, I was hopeless and completely deflated. She asked me to atone for my sins and explain why I'd committed a violent act against another human. When I'd wailed for long and hard enough, explaining that I had just turned myself in for a first time DUI offense, she agreed to look into it. I was only in the Violent Offenders pod for another 12 hours before two more gentle and kind gentlemen officers came to help me get to my new cell.
The whole way down (they put the really bad guys up high in this building) in the elevators, and through the endless halls, I was sobbing, crying and explaining that I really wasn't "jail material." I told them about my 12 years in Catholic schools, and taking care of my dying parents, and my genius children and how all I ever really did was smoke pot... I was never even a hard-core drinker. They never looked at me or acknowledged that I was alive... or a human. It just kept getting more and more bizarre. I told them that NOT only was I NOT jail material, I didn't even KNOW anybody who had ever gone to jail or prison except my brother, and he had a crack problem, or maybe it was a meth problem. I just know it was a white powdery rocky thing and it was a problem and I'd been helping him get out of jail for the better part of a lifetime.
They open the doors to the pod that would now become my home and I couldn't see through the tears, but heard a whole chorus of "Hey! Moe's here!!! HEY MOE! HEY MOE!" I think my knees buckled from the weight of feeling like I'd just told the biggest lie ever in the history of time. I'd told them that I didn't know anybody... and yet, here was my own personal Welcome Wagon. Great.
Turns out that during one of his batches of freedom, I'd let my brother live with me. He had, in turn, let a whole bunch of young women who were also chasing the white powdery stuff into my home. They stole my clothes and used my toothbrush. They had stolen every piece of identity and every single thing of value that I'd ever had. And, here they all were. Awesome. Freaking awesome. It just kept getting better.
I didn't get to go into my new cell just yet, because there was a cleaning lady in there, polishing things up for my stay. A couple of the girls who had liberated my identity and stuff came over and told me that, just that morning, the girl who was in that cell had had a miscarriage and she was 7 months pregnant. They said that she'd told the captors for two days that she was in severe pain, but she was a meth-head and they didn't allow her the benefit of a doubt or any of her human rights to see a doctor. The girls told me that she had miscarried and had to stay in her cell with her dead infant for hours before anyone came to get her out and help her clean up. Truly stellar. Life just kept getting more surreal. And, this was going to be my new room.
It's already, like, day 3 or 4 of my stay and I hadn't slept one wink or eaten more than a handful of food since before I had arrived. The lights never go off in this jail and the TVs are turned up to full volume at all times. Usually there are two TVs on different channels, so the cacophony of noise is mind-numbing. I'm sure they aren't consciously trying to make people lose their minds, or find their religions - but that is the direct effect. It has since made me think about water-boarding.
I get inside my new suite and am pleased to find out that it's a single-person cell and I don't have to share with anyone. But, I was dismayed (to say the least) that I didn't get a mattress or a pillow or sheets. That kinda bummed me out, but I wasn't about to talk to anybody in here - captor or company - and surely I'd be released within hours. I spent my first night sitting on a cold steel frame built for a mattress. They probably had bedbugs in those mattresses, anyways. It's not like I would have laid down on it even if I could.
About the middle of the day on my second day, I took a stroll around my new surroundings and noticed that everybody else had mattresses and pillows and sheets, so I said something to one of my brother's girls and she threw a hissy fit and went storming up to The Desk and railed on the official watching soap operas. I got my mattress and nasty, icky, blackened sheets within the hour.
I found out a lot while I was there. My most favorite piece of knowledge was this: These girls, almost all of them, were there because they had severe drug problems. Almost all of them had bondsmen and attorneys who came to see them with some regularity. These visitors brought the girls meth and crack sometimes and little drug parties were held in cells without the captor's knowledge (or with, God only knows) and everybody had a job to do. The girls job was to keep the rotating door of the system alive with illegal and self-destructive activities, and the captors job was to turn a buck and make sure nobody died (mostly.)
I also found out that bologna can, indeed, be green and not kill you.
On my 21st day I was told that I would be seeing the judge in the morning and I would be released. And, true to their word, I did see a judge in the morning and he told me to get along little doggie (in so many words.) I placed the call for a ride out of Wichita and sat down to wait for my release.
Lunch came but they didn't bring me a tray because I'd already been released. My brother's girls shared their food with me. Dinner came, and again - no tray for me because clearly I'd already been released. Bedtime lock down happened and they secured me in my cell. At about 11:45 someone opened my door and told me to get my stuff because it was time to leave.
My ride had left hours ago. She sat patiently and waited for about 12 hours, but had to get back to her town (my town,) to her home - and didn't think I was really going to get out. So, at midnight on some hot day in June, I was released into the night of downtown Wichita, Kansas with nobody to pick me up. I walked about 5 miles east to a home where I knew someone who would let me sleep on their porch (at least) and maybe even help me find some food.
Sometimes I think about this slice of my life when I'm considering the events that shaped me. As awful as this one was, (it has impacted every single other thing that I've done or known since) - I don't suppose I would un-do it if I could. But, I am way more inclined to think in terms of "Revolution" and "Rising up" against the injustices that happen every day to millions of people in our country... on our island.
The problem here is not so large that it can't be addressed, but it's going to take some forward, and critical thinkers to resolve it. I really, honestly and whole-heartedly think it's time for a Revolution.
There is so much broken and so much apathy in this country. This is going to be harder than pushing an elephant in a shopping cart (with a broken wheel) up a flight of stairs in a lighthouse. Don't we have some obligation to the future and positive change if we even know about the wrongs now? How can people know about grievous injustice and not do anything to change it? You help me understand it, and I'll quit pushing for change.