Going to Jail

The Monroe County Jail
Credit: Rochesterhomepage.net

I was fidgeting; my hands repeatedly tugging my old black T-shirt down over my jeans or playing with the pen and notepad I was allowed. My hands just didn’t know what to do without a phone to occupy them. But it was lying with my other personal belonging in the locker the sheriff assigned me when I’d checked in.

Only my pen and notebook were allowed in the jail, she said.

I’d been looking forward to a tour of the Monroe County Correctional Facility for days. Weeks ago, I’d interviewed Cpl. Providence Crowder about being a Corrections Officer and later asked for a tour of the jail. To my surprise, she arranged it. 

But now I was nervous. And I realized this stemmed from stereotypes that eight weeks of research for this blog couldn’t even get rid of.

“Tianna?”

I almost didn’t hear my name at first. I was too deep in imagining inmate riots, assaults and a possible jailbreak.

But the sheriff looked up at me and I quickly realized I’d been called.

I rounded the corner to meet Cpl. Crowder at the door leading into the jail. It was my first time meeting her and I was taken aback. I was shabby in my T-shirt, jeans, unmade face, and my hair pulled sloppily into a bun. And she wore a gorgeous shade of purple eye shadow and her hair swept up in a glamorous ‘do. To put it simply, she was pretty. Not what you see on TV for female guards.

“Lady, don’t you know you’re in jail?” I thought to myself as I shook her hand. “You don’t want to look like that here.” I was unconsciously echoing the words my friends and family had spoken to me as they advised my wardrobe for the visit.

But as we made our way through the facility and no inmate spoke rudely or lasciviously to her. Instead, they greeted her warmly, clearly happy to see her.

Nor was I treated to these comments despite not being as commanding with my 5’2 stature and 90 pounds of what I consider pure muscle.

My favorite stop along the tour was the tower.

It’s set up with a large courtyard in the middle. Cells lined the back wall, which was split into two floors. When I entered inmates were sitting at tables in the courtyard. They were watching football and conversing.

I was immediately overwhelmed by the ocean of orange jumpsuits.

We crossed the courtyard to speak with the lone officer on duty. He was responsible for the 50 or so inmates that surrounded us. If I hadn’t written down his answers to my questions, I wouldn’t remember them. I was too focused on the inmates who were just feet away from me. My brain was anticipating a danger it thought to be imminent.

“You’ve spoken to their girlfriends, their kids, their officers, families, not them,” it hissed at me. “You don’t know them- or what they’re capable of.”

A few minutes later, I walked out, feeling foolish.

It was this moment that shattered every remaining stereotype I was holding onto. Granted, I was only in county jail and we’d avoided the male minors area because Crowder believed they would be lewd, thinking I was their age. But I was taught that any inmate will harm me in some way if given the chance, and I believe to some extent, most of us feel the same way.

But they hadn’t. They were gracious, advising me in my tour, and offering their stories and perspectives.  They were people. Dressed in orange or khaki, but people nevertheless.

I asked myself, at what point had we stopped seeing them this way? And was doing so thought to deter future crime or just another way to dehumanize criminals in a way that the loss of freedom and time, colored jumpsuits and sheer chaos in prisons and jails couldn’t do?

I’d walked in with one set of questions: what if they attacked me? What if they verbally assaulted me? And left with a different set of questions. But this time I wasn’t asking whether the stigma and stereotypes were true but what they said about us.