Let me tell you a thing or two about jail.
From the very moment in which the words “under arrest” are uttered, everyone you encounter contributes to rendering you powerless.
When I was preparing to begin student-teaching, I talked to a number of experienced teachers who advised me to remember that the most negative response you can give a student (or anyone else for that matter) is to ignore him or her. Not to rebuke, nor to deny, but to ignore. If you have a student who speaks up too frequently and too often without a point, and who is generally disruptive, the best response is to say nothing at all. Let their talk be answered with empty silence. Render them invisible—non-existent—by treating them as such.
The police who arrest you, and then the sheriff’s deputies who are your jailers, similarly negate everything that constitutes your sense of self: your will, your intellect, your emotions. They do so by ignoring you completely. No answers to your questions, whether about the charges, about the process you are going through, about your ability to communicate with anyone outside—about anything. You are something that they process, the ultimate objectification.
Everything is uncomfortable and debilitating. The handcuffs hurt, and having your arms behind your back makes it hard to get into the back seat of the squad car without falling into it. The back seat itself is hard molded plastic, without upholstery of any kind. You can’t sit with your back supported by the seat-back because your manacled arms are in the way. You slide across the hard plastic with every turn, every acceleration or deceleration the driver makes.
At the precinct station house, they hold you first in a tiled room with hard wooden benches bolted to the shiny concrete floor, in the midst of which, as in every room you will now occupy, you see a drain toward which the floor slopes from all sides. Through a small window with wire mesh suspended within it, you can see someone going through papers in the adjoining room. She occasionally looks up at you, and occasionally others appear in the room with her. Eventually a couple of cops, their equipment swinging and rattling heavily from their belts, enter the room you are in and, still refusing to answer any questions, take you back out to the car, load you in, and drive you to the county jail. (...)
I mentioned mindless routine.
You are awakened at 4:30 a.m., ordered to dress and make your bed in the exact manner of this particular institution, made to wait standing for the carts to arrive, and then called one by one to get a tray of food from the guys who came with the cart from the kitchen.
As for the food, I must tell you about the peanut butter. You get a wad of it, wrapped in wax paper, about the size of a lemon or an egg, with some soft, easily torn white bread and no utensil to help spread the wad, which is itself only semi-soft. In every holding cell in the system, you see wads of peanut butter stuck to the ceiling overhead. The ceilings are always fifteen or more feet high. It takes a powerful arm to launch a stiff, hard wad of peanut butter at that ceiling hard enough to get it to stick. Once it is there, however, it seems to stay for perpetuity. I never saw, nor did I ever hear tell of, one of these peanut-butter hardballs coming down.
At about 5:15 a.m. you are ordered back to your cell and locked down for a few more hours of sleep.
The rest of the day consists of a rotation of time spent locked down in your cell and time spent in the common area, where you can find conversations, card games, books, magazines, and loud televisions tuned either to movies (action pictures, crime, jails, violence—lots and lots of violence) or to sports.
This common area is semi-circular and two stories high, the cells ranging along the rim of the circle, their interior walls all glass. A steel staircase and catwalk provide access to the upper story of cells. Everyone is visible at all times. The only nod to privacy is the pony-wall, about two feet high, in front of the toilet in your cell. It assures that when you sit on the toilet you are visible only from the waist up.
The guard’s desk, a miniature command center, stands at the hub of this semi-circle. She or he is watching you all the time.
From the very moment in which the words “under arrest” are uttered, everyone you encounter contributes to rendering you powerless.
When I was preparing to begin student-teaching, I talked to a number of experienced teachers who advised me to remember that the most negative response you can give a student (or anyone else for that matter) is to ignore him or her. Not to rebuke, nor to deny, but to ignore. If you have a student who speaks up too frequently and too often without a point, and who is generally disruptive, the best response is to say nothing at all. Let their talk be answered with empty silence. Render them invisible—non-existent—by treating them as such.
The police who arrest you, and then the sheriff’s deputies who are your jailers, similarly negate everything that constitutes your sense of self: your will, your intellect, your emotions. They do so by ignoring you completely. No answers to your questions, whether about the charges, about the process you are going through, about your ability to communicate with anyone outside—about anything. You are something that they process, the ultimate objectification.
Everything is uncomfortable and debilitating. The handcuffs hurt, and having your arms behind your back makes it hard to get into the back seat of the squad car without falling into it. The back seat itself is hard molded plastic, without upholstery of any kind. You can’t sit with your back supported by the seat-back because your manacled arms are in the way. You slide across the hard plastic with every turn, every acceleration or deceleration the driver makes.
At the precinct station house, they hold you first in a tiled room with hard wooden benches bolted to the shiny concrete floor, in the midst of which, as in every room you will now occupy, you see a drain toward which the floor slopes from all sides. Through a small window with wire mesh suspended within it, you can see someone going through papers in the adjoining room. She occasionally looks up at you, and occasionally others appear in the room with her. Eventually a couple of cops, their equipment swinging and rattling heavily from their belts, enter the room you are in and, still refusing to answer any questions, take you back out to the car, load you in, and drive you to the county jail. (...)
I mentioned mindless routine.
You are awakened at 4:30 a.m., ordered to dress and make your bed in the exact manner of this particular institution, made to wait standing for the carts to arrive, and then called one by one to get a tray of food from the guys who came with the cart from the kitchen.
As for the food, I must tell you about the peanut butter. You get a wad of it, wrapped in wax paper, about the size of a lemon or an egg, with some soft, easily torn white bread and no utensil to help spread the wad, which is itself only semi-soft. In every holding cell in the system, you see wads of peanut butter stuck to the ceiling overhead. The ceilings are always fifteen or more feet high. It takes a powerful arm to launch a stiff, hard wad of peanut butter at that ceiling hard enough to get it to stick. Once it is there, however, it seems to stay for perpetuity. I never saw, nor did I ever hear tell of, one of these peanut-butter hardballs coming down.
At about 5:15 a.m. you are ordered back to your cell and locked down for a few more hours of sleep.
The rest of the day consists of a rotation of time spent locked down in your cell and time spent in the common area, where you can find conversations, card games, books, magazines, and loud televisions tuned either to movies (action pictures, crime, jails, violence—lots and lots of violence) or to sports.
This common area is semi-circular and two stories high, the cells ranging along the rim of the circle, their interior walls all glass. A steel staircase and catwalk provide access to the upper story of cells. Everyone is visible at all times. The only nod to privacy is the pony-wall, about two feet high, in front of the toilet in your cell. It assures that when you sit on the toilet you are visible only from the waist up.
The guard’s desk, a miniature command center, stands at the hub of this semi-circle. She or he is watching you all the time.
