Brown County Jail
This is part of a series. For more please go to the Table of Contents.
The judge pronounced my sentence, making me an inmate. I waved and blew a kiss to my ex-wife. I was fingerprinted and handcuffed right there in the court room. Then down to the courthouse basement, handcuffs removed, and into a holding cell with other inmates on their way to or back to jail. I was the fourth person in my cell. Over the course of about two hours four more guys came in, ranging in age from what looked like a teenager (Hispanic) to an old black guy who talked a lot and apparently had been in and out of prison his whole life. Some guys just sat and said very little. Eventually we were all shackled, handcuffed and loaded into a windowless cargo vehicle for the ride to the Brown County Jail. There we were booked, property taken, including all clothes, and given jail jumpsuits, boxer shorts, and “slides” (slip-on rubbery shoes). Handcuffs removed, we were marched to “Pod E.”
In my state you don’t go directly to the state prison. Instead, you first go to the county jail to await transfer to state control. “The Pods” are a part of the jail where they often take new inmates for a few days while they decide what to do with them. They also serve as a solitary confinement area for troublesome inmates and for those who should be separated due to the nature of their charges, for example, sex offenders. Pod E consisted of a sitting room with a guard desk, 14 two-man cells, 7 upstairs and 7 down, which in reality held one inmate each. You are locked in the cell 23 hours per day. Each inmate gets one hour of “room time” on a rotating basis since only one inmate is allowed out at a time. If you want to make a phone call or take a shower you can do so only during that one hour. Meals come in through the door slot in Styrofoam containers. The food sucks and is usually cold.
This is where I spent the first week and a half of my sentence. The “Inmate Relations Officer” came to visit on the second day and described my alternatives in “general population” but they all involved dormitory style living, sharing bathrooms and showers with a whole roomful of other guys. I told him no thank you I’ll just stay here for the short time I’ll be here. I preferred to “be where other people are not” — especially considering that those other people would disapprove of me.
A TV blared constantly in the sitting room. It was over-the-air TV with crappy reception that frequently blacked out or broke up, the selection of channels was awful, and the sound echoed all over the room, making it difficult to hear through the solid cell door.
In spite of such restrictions I met and had a few conversations with other inmates. During room time you could stand in front of another inmate’s cell door and talk. It soon became apparent that most of the guys were there awaiting trial or some other resolution of their case. Either they couldn’t afford bond or were being held without bond. All they ever wanted to talk about was how they were going to beat their charges, or how to get a better deal on their sentences. It got old really fast.
In addition to Room Time, there was also “Rec Time”. Remember, I am talking about rec time for men held in solitary confinement. A walkway lead outside into a courtyard. On each side of the walkway there were three cages, each about 12ft. X 12 ft. Each cage had a concrete pad surrounded by a 12 ft. chain link fence topped by razor wire. Six inmates were brought out — individually of course — and locked into separate cages, where they stayed for an hour before being returned — individually — to their cells.
What the hell can you do with this kind of “Rec Time”? One thing you can do is stand around and talk to the guy(s) in the cage(s) next to you. This is where I met a guy who admitted he was there awaiting trial on child porn charges [see “Inmate Profiles: Peter”].
My greatest accomplishment while at the county jail was to get them to accept all of the prescriptions I walked in with. As I suspected, they were surprised to have an inmate walk into booking with a fistful of prescriptions — in fact one of the nurses was a little annoyed by it, as if putting this in front of him was an accusation that he couldn’t do his job. After a little consultation they decided to make copies of them all and put the originals back with my possessions, which would be going with me when I was transferred to state prison. I started receiving my “old guy meds” that very evening … except for Flowmax, which they must have decided was an unnecessary “luxury med.” Two days in, when I was “called out” for their routine medical check I told them about my enlarged prostate and again requested the Flowmax. They relented and gave me a prescription for Tamsulosin (the generic form of Flowmax). From then on I got all my prescriptions filled except low-dose aspirin and Vitamin D3, which are over-the-counter medications.
Of course there was nothing to do with my 23 hours per day locked up alone. Trying to watch TV was usually a waste of time anyway. You had to stand at the cell door the whole time and peer through the graffiti scratches in the window to see anything. However, the channel usually on in the evening showed “News at 10”. It turns out you can watch that with the crappy sound echoing all over the place because each story has a caption like “3 MURDERED IN CARJACKING” that helps you figure out what the hell they are talking about. The weather segment is mostly graphics.
There was no library. However, they brought a book cart around every two weeks. There was a book return box in the sitting room where you could put your book(s) when finished. I found Les Miserables and finished it in three days. In the meantime, to my surprise, the book cart showed up and I was allowed to pick two more books — Caveat Emptor, a novel set in Roman Britannia, and Grant: A Biography. I spent most of my time reading and watching TV news.
One night after I had been in the county jail for about a week and a half, I was awakened by the sound of my door opening noisily and the guard walked in. “Z, do you know why I’m waking you up?” she asked.
“No”, I answered.
“You’re leaving in ten minutes. Pack your stuff”. It was 2:00 am. It actually took about 20 minutes but no matter — I had very little stuff to pack. Then I was handcuffed — which the County always does whenever they take you anyplace — and taken from The Pods with a couple of other inmates to the Transport Station in the main jail building, released from handcuffs, and put into a holding cell with all the other inmates waiting transport to state custody.
Just as in the court house basement, over the next hour or so more inmates were brought in until there were about 15 all together. We had to turn in all of our property, since that was being turned over to the state separately. By that time it was almost 5:00 am, so they had to feed us something — which turned out to be exactly what we had gotten for lunch at the court house — bags containing two baloney sandwiches, an orange and two cookies — for breakfast. During the long wait all the same kind of chatter I had heard before between inmates kept up — about all the shit they’d done, what they would do when they got out, how they still planned to beat their charges etc. etc. But several of us just sat quietly the whole time, including the guys sitting on either side of me on the bench, one black and one white.
Finally they took us out of the holding cell and lined us up. Once cuffed and shackled, they loaded us into one of their windowless transport vehicles and we were off to state custody
If you liked this article or any in this series, or if it spoke to you, or if you think others could benefit from it please recommend it or comment on it, or both.
