Reefer madness part II: One day in jail

Editor’s note: The following is one SCC student’s personal experience with laws regarding marijuana possession. This is the second article in a three-part series.

First and foremost, I am not complaining about my one day in Issaquah’s correctional facility. When I heard I was going there, I was glad that it wasn’t King County, where it is volatile and overcrowded. Just the same, there are people in the Issaquah jail who are losing months if not years of their life for (quite possibly) crimes smaller than the one I was in for. Certainly, when up against the likes of those whose sentences were longer, I was not going to go on about my 24 hours.

I know a lot of pot smokers and it would take 100 facilities the size of Issaquah to hold them all for doing the same thing I did. Mathematically, I was just taking one for the team as part of some sort of cosmic weight-scale of the justice quota for pot heads.

I had taken the luxury of waiting as long as possible to check myself into jail. I had only two more days on the calendar before they would have come for me with warrants and stiffer penalties.

Instantly, I remembered why I didn’t want to go. There are so many things one misses about the comfort and freedom of his own surroundings: the ability to go anywhere and do anything, freedom of choice of food, coffee (not just good coffee but any coffee), entertainment, females; and I greatly missed my records.

It was hard to decide what day to go in. Would I miss work? Who would watch my son? I went early with the idea that I could leave early only to find that there was no room for me right away. I waited a couple of hours until a bed opened up.

Most of the people who shared time with me were there for much longer than I; many of them for upwards of six months. The most common offenses were probation violation, driving under the influence, and drug trafficking of some sort. People have misconceptions about incarceration, based on TV and things they read, such as constant violent overtones and sexual deviancy, but that is really more at the penitentiary level. I just tried to chill. However, I did take notice that there is a system among inmates. Being in for drug trafficking is like a way to increase business with a number of new clients and contacts. Did I get in any fights? No. Did I see some? Yes. I just kept in mind that there were a lot of crazies about and violence can be inevitable amongst thieves, druggies and any man who has seen the same four walls for an extended amount of time.

In essence, prisoners are desperate, and lonely. Disconnected from the world, they are governed by their own selves in solitude and, outside of the cell, governed by the people who put them in there – the law. For whatever reason, that is where they are and you don’t know what path they took to get there. An old mafia adage I often apply to any situation is that you have to listen with both ears. I asked myself, “Do some of their stories merit their prosecution?” It was quite possible. I viewed everyone the same and got on with my sentence.

The jail layout itself is not very complicated. Within the walls that lay beneath the Issaquah courtroom there is a facility that maintains somewhere between 50 and 75 prisoners, both men and women. The genders are separated by a central check-in and guard post which has watch over both sides and the visiting booths. I did not see the women’s side but I am sure it is similar in layout to the men’s. The men’s side has three 10 person dorm rooms and what is called the “hard side,” which is for the more volatile criminals and those awaiting their day in court for violent or more severe crimes. There is also a recreation room which houses a small paperback library, a bible study room, and a changing room which is an extension of the check-in desk and is connected to a nurse’s office. There are also rooms I didn’t see, like the kitchen and solitary confinement, but I know they exist.

My intake process was cut and dried. After the initial body search (no cavities involved), I removed and signed off on all items that would be waiting for me in a plastic bag when I got out. I traveled light that day. I had just $13.00 ($10.00 for intake), some gum, my ID and a silver chain. I was allowed to keep my asthma inhaler but was told to hide it and keep other prisoners from knowing about it. I have heard that inhalers can get you high. Next, I changed into a prison uniform with a musky smell, and some safety-orange colored slippers that were too small. I wear a size 10.5 and had to choose between size nine or 12. I was issued a blanket, a towel, a sheet, a bar of soap, and a little toothbrush and toothpaste kit. I stayed in dorm three, which was at the end of the hall.

It was lunchtime when I entered. As expected, I was greeted by a moment of silence amongst the inmates and the mandatory sizing-up. Every prisoner who ever walked into a room of other prisoners goes through this process of being checked out. Some looks were mean, some were the mirror image of my own frustrations and some were just curious. There was only one bunk so it was obvious where I was going to be staying.

It’s understood that the new guy gets the top bunk. There was no ladder and the bunk was a steel cage in itself so getting up and off of it was a pain. I came home with bruises on my hands and legs from poor mounting procedures. Once on the bunk, the only thing keeping me from metal was a two foot wide 20-year-old mattress insert. It lay flush with a metal ridge that was impossible to escape. Inmates are not issued pillows but everyone had a way of dealing with that. Folding the foam mattress once, which makes for a shorter bed, was one option. I personally wrapped my sheet around the rolled-up towel (I passed on showering for my one night stay) and tried to make do that way.

The room was literally a bathroom. There were two toilets separated by a shower with a curtain which took up one corner. The toilets had four foot walls that cased them in but there was no real sense of privacy, and no one was ever more than 10 feet from them. When anyone went to the bathroom, it was like a group grievance. The five bunks lined the walls and, in a smaller corner, a broken TV and some plastic chairs and tables were laid about.

There were not a lot of places to hang out. All the chairs were in use and as arduous a task as it was to get up on the bunk, I decided I would stay there for the moment. Within a few minutes a man named Keith introduced himself and asked my name. That was the first friendly thing that occurred.

Keith was a golf-pro in his early 40’s with a lot of stories, most of them about hard partying in his hey-day and dealing with his ex-wife. He knew a lot about Seattle and its surroundings and was a constant presence in dorm conversations. From what I could gather without prying, he was in there because of his ex-wife. I believe the actual charge was probation violation because he refused a urine analysis while serving probation for domestic violence. As he puts it, it was something of a set-up and not exactly fair when drinking was not initially related to his charge. He had been in the jail for seven months and was waiting for a bed to open up at a treatment center.

Keith and three other men played cards at one of the tables and we took in a few hours of Univision. Some of our Spanish speaking inmates had made a deal exchanging cleaning after meals for control over the TV. No one really minded because we all agreed that the women on Univision were more attractive than the women on channel five.

People were in and out all day. There were about two hours of visiting time and someone was always on his way to or from court which served as a general catalyst for legal conversation.

When 5 p.m. rolled around, it was time for dinner and dinner sucked. I had only gotten out of bed once since I arrived and that was to use the bathroom. We gathered around and received our dinner: cabbage roll, mashed potatoes, carrots, cake and a roll; all of it over cooked and bland. I wasn’t expecting any more than that but it left me hungry. Drew, a 50 year old Appalachian cowboy type who was missing some of his top teeth, hipped me to a way to add flavor to the roll by breaking open a used bag of microwave popcorn and scraping out the salty butter that coats the inside of the package. He offered me some and I accepted. I had been there all day but for the first time he engaged me in conversation.

Drew had been in the military and at sea for awhile. From the sounds of it, he has had some trouble with the law for awhile. He complained a few times that all of his trouble revolved around women, which I could believe as he had three different female visitors while I was there. He told me that he played cards with Gary Ridgeway in the county jail and that he was basically an alright guy. We watched Fraser during dinner, followed by King of Queens and then I returned to my bunk and fell asleep.

I was awakened by some loud noise. It was a new cell mate; a transfer from the hard side who had been in a fight and needed to be separated. He was African, and judging by his demeanor he was not the aggressor. He went right to his bunk which had just opened after the release of an 18 year-old drug dealer who had been in since September.

Sometime later in the evening another new inmate was introduced. There was some minor drama surrounding his entrance. A guard entered and informed us that someone was going to have to give up a bottom bunk because someone was coming in with a bad leg. The rule is that the new guy gets the top bunk, and that is governed by the inmates. In conjunction with that rule is another that when a lower bunk opens up the most senior of top bunk residents is the next to occupy it. Somehow a young man who had been admitted the same morning as I, had leapfrogged the chain of command and landed a lower bunk directly after another’s release. There hadn’t been much said about it because none of the top bunk elders cared to move down (one of the top bunks is the best TV viewing and the other is closest to the sink). The problem was that after the announcement everyone agreed that the last to get a bottom bunk would have to give his up – especially since it was a guy who had sneaked into one. He complained that he too had leg problems and refused to go. This is the sort of thing that goes on in jail. After a lengthy debate, Keith complied and gave his up with the perspective that he had court the next day and would likely be transferred. Hard feelings continued when the officer left. “We’ll see how much your leg is bothering you tomorrow when I’m chasing you around,” Keith threatened, and everyone agreed that the dude who wouldn’t give his bunk up was a little punk. The guard came back a few minutes later with the new inmate and told Keith that his act of selflessness had earned him some coffee.

It was nearly 10 p.m. when we were finally allowed to go to the recreation room for a little while. It is a privilege to go and they don’t allow it every day but we were lucky. Rec. time is when inmates can check out books or buy things like paper and stamps from the commissary with something like a jail debit card (people from the outside can bring money to put into the card). A ping-pong table, which rests on four overturned garbage cans, is positioned in the middle of the room and there are some comfy seats.

Recreation time isn’t mandatory and not everyone chooses to go. The options are stay in the room, go to rec., or go to the bible study offered at that time. Everyone except the two guys with bad legs and our Mexican cell mates went to rec. and I spent most of my time looking through books. Dominic, something of our cell’s conscientious objector, pushed for Keith to get two cups of coffee. Coffee is a precious commodity and when it arrived the five of us split it. I made sure to thank Keith for the coffee. Even though it was not great, it did remove the taste of dinner from my mouth. Rec. time was over.

I made another friend named Brandon. He was in his late 20’s and the father of a foster son. He had not passed a sobriety test and had his earlier convictions come back to haunt him. When he finishes out his six month stint he will have three months of house arrest to serve which will require him to wear an ankle bracelet notifying the police if he leaves his house. Brandon seemed to be a decent human being. Most of his stories involved his son who had been told that his dad was out of town but was starting to get suspicious. We talked for a good deal at the end of the night until they called for the TVs to be turned off. The lights went down, not off, just to a point where it was too dark to read and also too bright to sleep. I learned that the other discomfort about the top bunk was that one of the stupid lights that didn’t turn off was directly above my head, close enough that I hit my head against it.

I found that sleep would only come when I was totally exhausted and no sooner with that light six inches from my head, no pillow, and never-ending Spanish conversations below. Before I even knew I fell asleep I awoke out of the silence of the night to my last name being called over the intercom. It was 6:30 a.m. and Keith and Brandon were already up. We all agreed that they must not want to pay for my breakfast so I was on my way. I didn’t mind, I had purposely left myself some money in my entry bag to cover donut and coffee expenses. My friends saw me off and I gathered my plastic bag and clothes and was released while it was still quite dark. I am going back to visit my cell mates sometime this week and will try to bring them something from the outside: Keith, Brandon, Dom, Drew, Guillermo and the other Hispanic kid who was always laughing and singing but did not speak any English. They are all right people whom I hope to see on the outside where the majority of my life is to be lived.

Next edition: Legal costs and lasting reminders.