Training for Jail

On Friday I attended four hours of Civilian Training at the Denver Sheriff Department Academy. Ahead of time Dree said, "Don't let it scare you; it's designed to do that. And just look away when the guy blows his head off." So I arrived at the Academy at once curious and trepidatious.

The Cons' Con

The first half of the training focused on teaching us how to avoid being conned by inmates. Our instructor, Deputy Burroughs, reminded us that inmates have nothing to do all day except scheme. They are astute observers and will explore every means possible to get the upper hand. They will try everything from asking to borrow a pen to charming us into giving them special favors to brushing against us as they walk by. We need to firm and clear with the word "no."

We learned how to dress (no open-toed shoes, no heels, no skirts, conservative necklines, no flashy jewelry or scarves with which we could be choked), not to let an inmate pass behind us and to always sit next to the door. We learned to pay attention to our surroundings at all times, to be careful of what we say that could be overheard, and to always maintain a safe distance between ourselves and the inmates.

Encounters with Contraband

The second half of the training consisted of Deputy Yamaguchi explaining about contraband. Due to recent cutbacks, there are about 70 prisoners for every officer, way too many for the jail to be thoroughly policed. Consequently, contraband is found all the time. Contraband is anything that prisoners aren't issued or allowed to buy, which is pretty much ... well, anything. The rule is, if you bring it in with you, take it out with you.


Drugs
The most popular contraband is repurposed prescription drugs, especially the anti-psychotics that are distributed twice a day to inmates. Inmates swallow them, regurgitate them, dry them out, stockpile them, and use them for currency. (The nationwide closing of mental hospitals has turned jails and prisons into unstaffed mental wards - see PBS Frontline The New Asylums).

In jail, there's a lot of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and meth, with the latter two being the most popular in Colorado. Prisoners are ingenious in the ways they hide their stash. We saw pictures of various caches, including flip-flops soles, hollowed out soap bars in cleverly resealed boxes (toothpaste, apparently, is an effective adhesive), and a bag of marijuana fashioned into a penis and sewed into boxer shorts.

Weapons
After drugs, the most prevalent contraband is weapons. There are guns, knives and shanks - objects with pointed ends designed to maim or kill. Shanks can be and are made from just about anything, from pens, to deodorant twist-up mechanisms, to newspaper. One clever inmate removed the tongue plate from a door jamb, made a duplicate from the shiny side of a potato chip bag, replaced it, and then sharpened the metal plate into a nasty weapon (they sharpen objects by scraping them on the concrete floors of their cells).

One enterprising inmate used newspaper and water to create paper mache armor and a lethal spear.

Another item that inmates manufacture is handcuff keys. Apparently these are very simple to create from almost anything - a small piece of chainlink fence, a paper clip, a metal envelope clasp. Hence, handcuffs are no guarantee of safety.

The Cost of Contraband
Contraband is brought in by arrestees, inmate work crews, the U.S. mail, corrupt staff, and civilians. We heard stories of official visitors - counselors, lawyers, a priest - who'd lost their livelihoods because they brought in contraband for inmates. One lawyer fell for an inmate's romantic con and ended up being debarred for bringing him in a phone.

The deputy told us the story of a fellow who was arrested in Denver and brought to the city jail. He was detained overnight, brought to court the next morning for arraignment and then transported to the county facility. We watched a video from the closed circuit TV of what transpired next.

The arrestee and officer enter a room. The guy sits down in a chair across from the door. The officer leaves and returns with a cup of water for the arrestee, and then the officer leaves again for a minute or so. As soon as the officer leaves the room the second time, the guy reaches into his waistband, takes out a sizable revolver and fatally shoots himself in the head. We see the officer reappear and holler, "Aw shit! Nobody shook him."

The lesson for new recruits was obvious: this guy could have done a lot more damage than just killing himself because several people failed to search him when they should have. 

Although it wasn't quite "blowing his head off" (thankfully!) seeing a man kill himself was pretty disturbing. And this was after viewing photos of a guy lying in the street with his intestines on the outside of his body after his mobile meth lab exploded and of several inmates hacked up and sliced open by contraband knives, shanks and razors. It was not a morning for the squeamish.

Am I Crazy?

I know that's what my sister wanted to ask me after I recounted some of this. I had asked myself that question on the way home. My conclusion: no, I don't think so. The training was designed to scare us into putting safety above all else and not becoming complacent in a room full of potentially dangerous people. But we won't be counseling people in handcuffs and leg irons. All counseling is voluntary, so these will be people on their way to halfway houses or trying to earn early release or actually wanting to make sense of their lives.

My interest in the incarcerated began many years ago when I read Jack Henry Abbott's account of his life in prison. In the Belly of the Beast contains Abbott's letters to Norman Mailer, who ended up  championing for Abbott's release. (This backfired on Mailer when Abbott fatally stabbed a waiter after he was released.) What intrigued me about Abbott was his distorted values and complete desensitization to violence - he describes the pleasure of feeling the waiter's warm blood on his hand. His is a world apart from ours, but it is part of the real world.

I've likened this whole experience to an internet date: looks good on screen, but you won't know until you meet whether there's any future together. I suspect I'll find out quickly whether this is for me or not. We'll see what happens when the rubber meets the road. More soon...

P.S. Thank you for your kind emails. I miss you all terribly and wish we could just spend an afternoon catching up. Soon, soon, I promise!