Confession #5: County jail isn't what I thought it was.

We are not in Mayberry anymore.

In the 80s, I was a scrappy kid with a dare-devil, partner-in-crime younger brother.

We rode bikes all over town, menacing the elderly neighbor-ladies who called the phone attached to our kitchen wall to tell our mom that we were jumping our bikes off the buckled sidewalks again.

Back then TV time was minimal for us (cuz 4 channels), but one thing was certain: We sat cross-legged on shag carpet once a week, engrossed in the ruckus caused by the Dukes of Hazard County.

Funny thing, it never occurred to me that I was rooting for two cousins on probation. Back then, county jail seemed benign.

It was even funny.

My son’s county stay would be a tad less entertaining.

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Before any prisoner enters a (capital p) Prison, they have usually been birthed into a new life via county jail with all of the shit and blood of an actual birth.

The documented purpose of the local American jail is to make certain of two things:

1. You are not a danger to others.

2. You do not flee before you can be seen in court.

Any person in this pre-trial circumstance is to be considered an innocent citizen, as recognized under the due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We, Americans, cannot be deprived of freedom unless we have been found guilty of the crime which we have been accused thereof.

Or…

You are too poor to afford bail.

Or…

A probation/parole agent or ICE says that you cannot go home.

Or…

The court is backlogged due to Covid shutdowns (or other delays).

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Like most law-abiding citizens, I used to think it was pretty straight-forward:

If you do something “bad,” you get arrested. Then, you get fingerprinted. You get a hot meal and a cot; like a hospital admission, only you’re in trouble. You get to make a free phone call and an attorney will hurry down to see you. On the next day, in front of the discerning judge, you get clear instructions and next steps. You can post bail (even if you have to borrow the money) and then you go home to wait for your court date. Later, reasonable people will make reasonable decisions about your fate.

How cute.

Did you know that a person can sit in county jail for, in some cases, up to five years awaiting trial? One man in Georgia spent 10 years waiting. My own son has survived approximately 12 months of his one, precious life in a county jail.

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In spite of being considered “innocent until proven guilty,” the booking process post-arrest is several hours of degradation. You will, at some point, strip naked; lifting and spreading wobbly bits in order that every hole in your body can be witnessed by a stranger.

They didn’t show that on the Dukes.

Of course, there is the expected cold concrete, locked doors, and a BO scented jumpsuit. There might be a cold sandwich and a scratchy blanket. And, of course, you will get that adventure snapshot for mom (and the rest of the public) to commemorate the special occasion.

If you are poor and unknown, this is when the real games begin.

When attempting to climb onto his first bunk, my son was swiftly redirected. His skin color had pre-determined segregation. When he called home, I could hear all kinds of fun things being shouted in the cell. I could even hear women screaming from another area in the jail, muffled only by the constant banging. Jail is, if nothing else, deafening.

Getting a shower is, indeed, another hazard, and not for the reasons that you might assume. Dirty mop water has smeared together the remnants of puke, feces, blood, and/or urine on the floors. Staphylococcus and MRSA infection runs rampant.

In an extra-unlucky twist, my son did his local time during the heightened panic of Covid, which, no surprise, overtook jail populations en mass. He tested positive 3 times, and was lucky to receive an OTC Tylenol while writhing in isolation. My worries then included whether or not someone would contact me if something went really wrong.

I worried non-stop.

Only a week after the court date described in Confession 4, social media and news outlets were chattering about the overdose of 3 inmates at his jail. 1 had died. I waited through an entire workday to hear that he was not one of them.

For those caught in addiction or alcoholism, county jail is not designed to help in anyway. In some cases, you may very well die waiting for medical assistance. Go ahead. Google deaths in American county jails. Just please know that the numbers are grossly under-reported. Making it to a hospital before the time of death means the death did not “technically” happen in jail.

Each day an average of 731,000 people are detained locally. That is more people than the entire population of Atlanta in lock-up on the same day. Pre-trial detention alone costs us taxpayers over $13.6 billion (with a b).

The overcrowding and taxpayer expenses are due, in a large part, to our monetary bail system.¹

The difference between the Duke-Boys-era county jail experience and the current one is a 4x increase in bookings and a 2.7x increase in average pre-trial detention lengths of stay. Since the 1980s, local jails have gone from being a quick stop between arrest and court to a housing option for the massive backlog of pending cases. They are also, increasingly, a waystation for individuals waiting for admittance to mental health and substance abuse rehabilitation centers.

And no, it is not because criminals are “more criminal” these days.

Consider the case of adoptee Kalief Browder, age 16 upon arrest, who spent 3 years at Riker’s awaiting trial for [allegedly] stealing a backpack [which it now seems he did not]. He was beaten by correction staff repeatedly and spent 320+ days in solitary confinement. Netflix did a series on this. Watch the abuse clips here but use caution, please. His charges were eventually dropped but when he got home, he completed the suicide he had attempted in solitary confinement. This young boy was subjected to 3 years of torture and abuse at the hands of American jailers, and he was never seen in court.

Sadly, this is common.

The truth is that nearly 75% of people in the county clink are there for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses.

An actual sticker in my son’s county jail.

The Worst

I did not get a collect phone call. Indicative of our times, I got a text. My son still had his phone in booking, and he wrote: “I’m in jail. I love you mom.” If I pull up his name on my phone, that is the last text he sent me, to date.

I would find out where he was later that night, and my own journey through an underworld would begin.

Within a few days of my son’s arrest, I had navigated the phone calls and websites necessary to sign up for three separate online accounts. One was for a phone account, one for messaging, and one for commissary. They all required:

• my state ID

• my picture

• my bank account or credit card number

• my physical address

• my email

• my phone number

• and my first born, obviously

God bless the enterprising spirit of American commerce.

In order for my son to obtain underwear, soap, and toothpaste, I was given the choice to pay for it or let him go without. Here are a few of the actual figures from 2022 that we privately paid:

$2.39 for bar soap

$3.39 for one pair of boxer shorts

$5.48 for a t-shirt

$17.67 for long johns (it was December)

$2.09 for a 1.7 oz. package of Peanut M&Ms

Families regularly go into debt trying to support and/or communicate with their loved one in jail. And that is usually someone’s mom. One study found that of the family members primarily responsible for these costs, 83% were women.

And then, we get the emotional and mental burdens:

Can you pick up my stuff?

Have you heard from the attorney?

Can you put money on the phone?

Could you call my girlfriend?

I’m sorry I'm a failure, mom.

My son would call often from county jail. It cost me .19 cents per minute to chat with him. Quick math: A 15-minute phone call was about $2.85.

In the first 4 months of his county jail stay, I paid $924.14 for food, necessities, and to be able to talk to my son. That was just my cost. His other family members have their own bank records.

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Falling Apart

When I inquired about how he was doing during calls and messages, my son was stoic about his own condition but often reported on the physical conditions of the 70-year-old building in which he was housed:

Black mold in showers and along ceilings.

Raw sewage dripping on people.

Old metal keys, failing lock systems; stuck cell doors being opened with blowtorches.

In the 1950’s, 15 beds were adequate for the average amount of arrests made in our county. Today, that jail holds up to 185 individuals at a time, and there are currently over 10,000 outstanding warrants county-wide.

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In spite of my passion, I do understand that most readers don’t stress about any of the things outlined above. After years of reading comments online (and hearing people talk), the message has not been subtle.

“Well, boo-hoo. Don’t go to jail then.”

Even in a city that has been built upon the labor and revenue of a prison industry for nearly 200 years, voting citizens still do not see any reason to “improve” life for prisoners, nor for their law enforcement. The latter, we figure, can just make do with blue lines of support on bumper stickers and profile pics. But a tax hike to make things safer for them? No way.

The year that my son went in, our local Sheriff was on the news trying to rally the community to pass a millage to fix the crumbling infrastructure over my son’s head. I was rooting for him. In spite of his sincere concerns, that poor man has been denied his requests in the past 3 elections- including one on the ballot in 2024. I now know what he has always known:

Jail reform is not just for those in jail.

Local cities and counties have to pay for their lock-ups out of the same bucket of tax money that we dip into for our schools, parks, public transportation, and health care. This is an “us” not “them” issue.

Right now, as I type, the county that held my son is hosting public meetings about cutting a percentage of its road patrol officers to make budget. Yes, they are essentially defunding the police who would respond to regular county emergencies because we, collectively, refused to give up approximately $19 a year per household.

That is the equivalent of about 2 Starbucks runs.

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If you have read this far, I am infinitely grateful for your time. Some of my posts are deeply personal. Others, like this one, require factual discoveries and sobering statistics because jails are not only designed to keep people in, they purposely keep public awareness out.

County jail was, for me, the most acutely exhausting down time that my son has served. While I was not actually there, my soul-experience was also that of yelling and banging and desperation. I didn't sleep. I laid awake, every night, wondering if he too could hear the train whistle in the distance. We were only geographically 1.8 miles apart. It might as well have been Mars, though, as we were never (not once) allowed to visit him there.

In a bizarre act of self-flagellation, I changed my route through town in order to drive past that ugly, dystopian box building with no windows. I would look up and whisper things, like “Hi,” and "I love you.” I even pulled in and parked in the parking lot, willing him to know that I was there. I'm still not sure what I would have said if a cop had asked me what I was doing.

I did go in a few times, with purpose, to get information and pick up his things. There isn't someone tending the window, no officer with boots up on a desk. You can ring a bell and wait, dwarfed and timid, like Dorothy at the big door outside of The Emerald City.

”May I help you?” An impatient voice asked over a broken, crackling intercom box.

Um, yeah. You have my son in there and I'm just wondering if you could tell him that I'm here and that I love him and to not give up.

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He was moved in the middle of the night to another county jail in order that he face the sentencing judge. I was not there when he was ordered to prison. A 10-year maximum sentence. A van arrived the next day to transport him to the State intake facility.

It had been 5 months since I had last seen him in court, and many months before that since I had given him a hug. I wrote to him when I learned he had left the county jail, “The one good thing is that I’ll finally be able to visit.”

1. I am not going to attempt to unpack bail reform (which is needed) because of my paucity of knowledge about current reform proposals and frankly, because it requires more than a single blog post to explore. Perhaps I can find a collaborator in coming months to illuminate the current issues. Until then, learn more about “Incarceration’s Front Door” HERE and HERE.