A Little Off the Top: The jailhouse follow up

It's been a couple of months since I spent 24 hours in the county jail to write about the conditions and living situation there, but even today I still get a number of questions and comments from people. I regularly have people come up to me and ask me about the experience. Despite devoting three stories to it and doing a follow-up interview with three of my cellmates, I've found that I still didn't address all the issues involved, both for the public and myself.

"You look good in orange," has been the most common comment, followed by "You're crazy," and "Weren't you scared?"

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't before I went in there. I knew I was going into medium security lockup, which meant that I would be surrounded by people charged with and/or convicted of serious crimes. The most harmless one was facing felony DUI charges — not to say that driving drunk can't be harmful, but not in terms of personal safety in there — while others in there were facing homicide charges, assault charges, and multiple other felonies.

One of the things that made us (the Sheriff's office, myself, and jail administrator) feel better about the idea is that I would, presumably, be one of the bigger guys in there, which might discourage any potential problems once I was locked in. Obviously I wasn't going to look for any trouble, but we just didn't know how the other inmates would react, especially if one of them recognized me.

Either way, there were a lot of unknowns, but we all took some consolation in the fact that I am 6' 2, about 200 pounds. It took about 10 seconds for me to realize that didn't mean squat when I entered the cell area.

While two of my cellmates were two or three inches taller than me, and about 20-30 pounds overweight due to inactivity, the other three were just the opposite. With nothing to do but work out, they were fit and muscular, and spent much of each day doing pushups, situps and other muscle-building exercises. It had paid off.

The first hour was the most nerve-wracking because I just didn't know what to expect. One of them started working out behind me as soon as I got in, and I would say that was the equivalent of a woman walking down a dark street and hearing footsteps behind her. I really had to fight the inclination to turn around and look, but in the end, there really was no reason to worry. Ultimately, the biggest thing I had to fight was boredom.

Perhaps most interesting is the number of convicted felons who have come up to me and talked to me about my articles. My experience has brought out some interesting reactions from them, mainly that my description of what it's like to be locked up was right on the money, but more importantly, a deterrent to people who might be headed down the wrong path.

All of the people who have served time and come up and talked to me about it have one thing in common — they seemed to have turned their lives around, and they felt that my description of jail life could help others understand that it just isn't a fun place to be or an easy way to skate through life.

Despite what some people might think of as coddling prisoners with things like cable TV and access to medical care at taxpayer expense, the reality of that 24 hours was that I would go absolutely nuts if I had to spend even 30 days in the slammer. I couldn't imagine six months or even a year.

That's pretty much a universal feeling among most of the former prisoners I've talked to. I guess there's plenty of prisoners out there for whom cable TV, medical care, three meals a day and a dry place to sleep is a step up from their former life, but the one thing prison takes away is, of course, freedom.

You can't just go for a walk, you can't have a beer and watch a baseball game, you can go for days or months without smelling fresh air, and almost everything you do is dictated to you by someone else.

After my experience, I'm a firm believer in the fact that if you took every junior high kid in the county and led them through the main hallway there, past the cell blocks, and just let them peak inside to the lives those men and women have, the amount of petty crime would drop by 50 percent overnight. That's a little optimistic, of course, but I know it would hit home.

The felons who come up and talk to me seem to agree. But more importantly, I've had junior high and high school students ask me about the experience, too. They will come up to me at a sporting event or stop me if I'm at their school to take someone's picture or do a story.

That makes me feel good, too, that maybe they took something away from my experience.

I've also seen three of my cellmates since then, all in district court for routine hearings. One didn't acknowledge me, another gave me a polite "what's up?" nod-of-the-head (I'm one of the guys now — they accepted me!) and I spent five minutes chatting with another during a court recess. He told me the response to my articles was good in that it was accurate of their situation.

One thing is for sure — my 24 hours has raised more questions than answers. With that, if you'd like to e-mail me or call with a question that wasn't addressed, I'd be happy to answer it. You don't have to give your name — I will just list the questions and answers in a future column, depending on the response.

Hopefully, we can all learn a little something in the process.

My e-mail address is editor@leaderadvertiser.com, or you can fax a question to 883-4349, drop it off at our Ronan office, or call me at 883-4343. I appreciate all the feedback I've gotten, but want to make sure everyone's questions get answered, too. After all, the whole reason I did it was so we could all learn something about a life most of us won't have to experience.