For the past three years I have volunteered with a local charity to visit people in jail. We visit people who are in the county's main jail awaiting trial. Most have not been convicted yet of the crime for which they are incarcerated. We visit them until they are moved to another correctional facility, allowed out of jail (rarely happens) or until they request that we stop.
I visit one person at a time, going every week. We talk using a telephone system and we can see each other through a glass window. I am no expert on our jail system, but having gone to the Main Jail over one hundred times, and having sat in the lobby waiting to be allowed to go upstairs to visit, there are certain things that I have noticed. Please see below the swirl for my observations.
The people who are visiting at the same time that I am are usually minorities, either African-American or Hispanic. Occasionally there are Caucasians, but not very often. Of all the times I have been to the Main Jail I can only remember one time when Caucasian visitors outnumbered other races.
The children break my heart. I raised two girls who are now adults. In their entire lives, they never had a reason to step into a jail lobby. Most weeks I see women with small children waiting for the visiting time. One is not allowed to take anything into the jail, so these children must wait to visit their loved ones with nothing to entertain them. Sometimes they sleep (I visit at 7:45 a.m. on Mondays) but frequently they are bored and cranky, and who can blame them? The experience of visiting a jail should not be part of childhood, but it is for these little ones.
Visiting the jail is scary, especially the first time. The manager of our program took me for my first visit and walked me through the routine. One has to fill out a form, stand in line, show identification and request a visit time. Show ID again when going through to take the elevator, wait in line at the door. Give your name and that of the person who you are visiting. Wait at the window. First time visitors have a hard time, because it is not obvious what one must do. The officers on duty can be helpful to them and sometimes they are.
While we wait for the appointed time, sometimes we visitors talk with each other. I have learned from other visitors that our county jail has the reputation of being the meanest in the state. That in other jails the inmates are allowed out of the cells longer than the one hour they are allotted here. Also, in Tennessee you never get to see the inmate you are visiting in person. Instead, you talk to them on a videophone. Together we wonder why the inmates in our jail are given breakfast at 4:30 a.m and lunch at 10:30 a.m. and dinner at 4:30 pm so they go 12 hours without food. Also why is laundry exchanged at 1 a.m.? We figure it has to do with the convenience of the jailers, or maybe there are staff shortages.
The program manager also told me when to visit. There are days when the officers on duty are likely to be nicer than those on duty other days.
I only visit on the days when the nice officers are on duty. I shudder to think what happens when the not-so-nice ones are on. I have seen people turned away because they weren't wearing the right clothes, or they didn't stand in the right line, or they had a purse that was too big to take into the facility. There are lockers one can use to put one's belongings in, but one must pay one dollar in quarters to do so. Frequently people don't have change and the officers won't give any. I now carry a couple of dollars with me to give to the hapless people who didn't know that they couldn't bring their purse or cell phone in to the visit. I have two dollars, because frequently the lockers "eat" the first dollar and there are no refunds.
Just because you have an appointment to visit, doesn't mean that the visit will take place. For a while our main jail had trouble with its elevators and no visits were scheduled. They did not allow visitors to use the stairs. Once we were told at the last minute that the telephones we use to talk weren't working, and we could take our chances and wait an hour and see if they were fixed. I didn't wait and I am glad I didn't because the telephones stayed broken for two days.
I continue to volunteer for this program because it gives me the opportunity to exercise patience, something I have in short supply.
So now I got you, dear reader, to the lobby of my county's main jail. The next diary will be about the actual visit to the inmates.