April 30: Beth and Melanie really wish they understood the rules regarding coats
Of course, Beth and I got lost on the way to the Justice Center Facility.
In Beth’s defense, this was because I have no sense of direction whatsoever. In my defense, I was actually trying to follow directions this time. However, Siri directed us to get on Highway 14 and drive to Portland.
We turned around at Jantzen Beach, again gave Siri the address we were looking for, and headed back across the river. This time, Siri sent us the right way.
Me: “Oh. It’s on the way to the dump. I wish I’d known that.”
(I have made a number of trips to the dump. Which Siri actually found for me without incident. So I guess it would also have been easier for Siri to know that the Justice Center Facility is near the dump. We shall not make the obvious mental leap, even though it is RIGHT THERE in all our heads.)
Beth and I spent the trip imagining thank-you desserts we might bring to the last class, as a substitute for the nightly cookies (the coffee would still be the responsibility of the Sheriff’s Office.) We decided on a sheet cake with “Happy Jack’s Tomato Ranch. U-Pick. Breathalyzer tests while U wait.” And possibly a plate of cookies shaped like handcuffs. Beth was certain that somewhere on Amazon such cookie cutters must be for sale.
The Justice Center Work Facility is a weird place. It’s along a road that looks like it ought to lead to the dump, and we were following a truck for the last couple of turns, which made us wonder whether Siri was still giving us faulty instructions. But it turned out that the truck was headed to the facility’s commissary. When it pulled up to a big building with roll-down doors and backed toward one of the doors, we saw the cheery “Justice Center Facility” logo on the side (and it did, in fact, look cheery—it was in bright colors). We knew we’d found the place at last, and drove a few more feet to discover a parking lot, as well as everyone else in the class, who had likely looked at a map rather than relied on Siri exclusively.
It was really cold.
The thing was, we weren’t sure how to dress, except for long pants, closed-toe shoes and our polo shirts. The instructions said “no hooded coats or hoodies” (Beth totally missed that and wore a hoodie) but they were vague about coats, as well. I brought my jacket without a hood, which wasn’t entirely warm enough, but was warmer than just a polo shirt. At least Beth was allowed to wear the hoodie at the work center. The jail would not be so understanding.
I didn’t lock my car. I mean, if you can’t leave your car unlocked next to a building staffed with corrections officers, what’s the point?
We joined the group chitchatting at the edge of the parking lot, next to a knee-high decorative brick wall with a broad opening and a sidewalk. They are diligent about landscaping at the Justice Center Work Facility. But not imaginative. The lawn is mowed, and a random collection of lodgepole pines and short, ambiguous deciduous trees poked up out of it here and there.
Beth and I were, thankfully, not the absolute last to arrive. But we were distressed to see that Tangentia had beaten us there. Yes, Tangentia had come to Jail Night.
Sergeant Handsome was also there, cheerfully answering questions about the current status of his foot injury. Meanwhile, Kasey was handing around a clipboard while she revealed a few interesting facts about herself. For example, that she had a twenty-one year old daughter. That. . . took some mental adjustment.
We signed Kasey’s clipboard. Then we followed Kasey up the sidewalk, past the loitering trees and through the gate of a ten-foot chain link fence.
The entrance to the work facility looked like any office building you’d see anywhere. It had glass doors. Of course, the glass was polarized so you couldn’t see inside, so when you opened the door and squeezed into the little waiting area, which was about the size of a public restroom, you saw what it was really like. The chairs were all hard plastic with thin metal legs, the tables were long, formica-topped and rectangular (with metal legs) and the floor was pale yellow with thin smears of pale gray. The room was both cavernous and bleak; everything in it had a faded, yellowed look. Except for the big wooden support beams along the ceiling, jutting through acres of cheap soundproofing tiles. They were very pretty. Possibly the architect’s attempt to wade free from a slough of despair.
We sat at the tables and looked at the doors spaced evenly apart on the left side and front of the room. They were metal, and labeled “Dormitory” (and labeled numerically. “Dormitory One,” “Dormitory Two,” etc.) Between the two left-side doors were three phones without number pads. Two at chest height, and one lower down, presumably the Justice Center’s attempt at ADA compliance.
At the front of the room was a sink, and next to that, a framed poster, propped on the counter and angled in a way that further disguised a picture that was impossible to make out in the first place. It was smears of pink and blue and gray and lavender.
Me: “This paint color is interesting. Maybe it’s. . . Eggshell white?”
Beth: “My parents’ house in Las Vegas had rooms painted this color. At the risk of being culturally insensitive, I think it’s ‘Navajo White.’”
We thought about that.
Beth: “Or I suppose you could call it ‘Tired White’. . .”
Me: “No, we should make it alliterative. ‘Weary White.’”
Beth: “Or maybe ‘Weathered White.’”
Since they still weren’t starting the presentation yet, we had additional time to contemplate the room.
Me: “Look at the wall clock up there. What do you suppose the red numbers are, inside the ring of black numbers?”
Beth: “Military time?”
As Beth has been in the military, I figured that was correct.
Me: “I’m trying to work out what that picture is. Next to the sink.”
Beth: “I was trying to figure that out, too. It looks like half a porpoise on top of a lion cub.”
Thankfully, that was when the first presentation began.
Sergeant Handsome opened ceremonies with a few remarks. He hoped we’d gotten a lot out of our trip to Camp Bonneville and our experience with shoot/don’t shoot scenarios. There was, he added, a lot that goes with these sorts of force-on-force decisions.
Yes, thank you, Sergeant Handsome. That message was brought home to me.
Also, Sergeant Handsome enjoyed his birthday party very much. “There’s nothing in the world like listening to a two year old and a three year old sing Happy Birthday.” He beamed when he said this, bright enough to temporarily turn the room less yellow and make the ceiling beams feel more at home.
Then he explained that the Clark County Jail was a separate entity from the Sheriff’s Office, and that he had worked for the jail for a little over a year before returning to patrol duty.
And then, he introduced Director Dave Shook.
Director Shook had worked in law enforcement for twenty-four years. The last twelve had been as Director of the Clark County Jail; in fact, he took the job when Sheriff Horch was elected. (A lot of careers changed when Sheriff Horch got elected, apparently. Although you will recall that everyone owes their advancement to Commander Duncan Hoss and his compromising photos of John Horch.)
Before we begin, some terminology:
Jails are: Short-term initial holding institutions. Inmates may stay there anywhere from one to four years. But the average is one to three days.
Prisons are: Long-term holding institutions. People might be there anywhere from a year to indefinitely.
Since January of 2023, three hundred and forty-four people have applied to work at the Justice Center. 323 applicants were disqualified. However, the Justice Center isn’t only jail stuff; the Lifeline Connections mental health facility, a county-run operation, also rents space there. Their mission is to get people ready to reenter the outside world, whatever that takes.
Director Shook: “Because normal is a scale, right?”
For some reason, the director looked right at me when he said that.
Beth: “He looked at you when he said that.”
Me: “Yeah, I know. . .”
The jail serves seven counties, and Clark County local government runs it. (Other states often have privately owned correctional facilities.) The center used to contain 600 beds. At least, that’s what everybody thought, because the jail was never overloaded.
During COVID, crime went way up, and the state sued the jail because they felt the living conditions violated people’s basic rights. As a result, the center had to let a lot of people out early because they didn’t have places to put them all. At one point, they had to release half to even two-thirds of the inmates staying at the jail; it was that, or put two or three people into each cell. That translated to 36 square feet per bed. For comparison, that’s about three times the size of a bath towel. You couldn’t try to cram more cots into a cell than that.
The jail redefined what constituted a cell. It now has 491 beds. It also puts more of a priority on basic constitutional rights: food, water, shelter, protection (from other inmates), mail and the observation of religious practices.
Now, before you start thinking to yourself, “Well, duh, this is basic human decency,” you should understand just what the news stories meant when they said crime went up during COVID. In fact, pre-COVID, the jail would get eight or nine new murderers each month. That number has since gone up to an average of thirty a month. In fact, ninety percent of the jail population at this point is people in for assault and murder. (Oddly, if I didn’t misunderstand the director, the other ten percent are plea bargains. It made me reevaluate the idea of a plea bargain.)
Am I saying we should deny inmates civil rights? Not at all. I am saying that we need to hear both sides of any argument before we get outraged. And that I would be far more inclined to listen to pro-civil rights activists who have been assaulted or lived through the murder of a loved one. Was suing the jail the correct approach? Possibly. I’m still not sure. The glimpse inside the jail was frightening. But more on that in a later post.
Lest you think this evening was entirely without comedy, the Director fielded his first question from Tangentia:
Tangentia: “Do you have a dog to check the inmates?”
Actually, the jail does plan to get a dog for just that purpose in the future. Organized crime doesn’t stop once inmates are inside jail walls. That said, there are many ways for inmates to get out. Court rulings. Rehabilitation programs, although many don’t press for reentry. (On the other hand, the courts often rush people through the system and boot them out even if inmates aren’t ready to leave. It’s against the law to keep them in jail once they’ve been legally released.)
Director Shook: “Every inmate decides what they want to do in the end.”
Which means the rehabilitation programs focus mainly on the inmates likely to be released.
Facts about the jail:
It was built in 1984, and it badly needs remodeling. Funds are currently being raised and construction is scheduled to begin soon.
The remodel helps make sure that enemies aren’t close together. (Quote: “It causes an issue. There needs to be a buffer.”)
The remodel has to take women and transgender people’s safety into account.
[Tangentia: “How many men and how many women do you have?”
Seventy-five percent are males, twenty-five percent are females.]
The holding area is too small and outdated. Sometimes, they’ll have as many as twelve people sleeping on the floor in the observation area (which I saw. Again, more on that later.)
They need more “contact rooms” for inmates to talk to families. Currently, there are four rooms for four-hundred-plus inmates.
The non-contact spaces set aside for inmates to talk to rehabilitation specialists are dishearteningly impersonal. These specialists need to be able to form solid connections with inmates. (Pre-COVOD, Clark County was considered a leader in the social services arena. They’re struggling to bring things back up to that level.)
They need to update the organizational system. They’re still finding old court documents for people long since released. They also sometimes have communication problems: second responders will show up to help an inmate, only to discover that the inmate had already been released.
They also need to streamline the process for cops to book people into the jail; right now, a cop will bring somebody in and have to wait—sometimes for hours—to process inmates. Those are hours that cops really need to be out on patrol, especially with staffing so low. (Frustration over this state of affairs is undoubtedly what led to the nickname “Happy Jack’s Tomato Ranch.” Coping humor is a strange thing.) The plan is to build what the director called a “J-Pod”: a holding pen with sixty-four beds and officers watching over it, to streamline intake and processing.
The final facility will hopefully have at least 1,600 beds. But they also want to focus on getting people rehabilitated, rather than simply storing them. (This was something I wondered about by the end of the jail tour. It all seemed to be a series of stopgap measures. On the other hand, in some cases, it really is a matter of kill ‘em or store ‘em for life. I don’t know what the answer is.)
Director Shook: “We want to build the future of corrections in Washington State. As we build that future, we’re asking how to prepare for a county that will grow to seventy-thousand plus in the next few years.”
Questions from the class:
Classmate: “What’s the percentage of re-offenders?”
It depends on your definition of re-offender. Fifty-three percent of the inmate population will return to jail. But does “re-offender” include people committing crimes in Oregon, as well as Washington? If the person is admitted but found not-guilty, does that still count as readmittance? It’s difficult to establish a metric. What they try to look at instead is whether they’re seeing behavioral changes with the approach that they’re taking to rehabilitation. But when you see numbers of readmitted inmates quoted on the news, it would be a good idea to think about how “readmittance” is defined.
Classmate: “What if an inmate doesn’t speak English?”
Most can get resources and interpreters. Unfortunately, they don’t have any interpreters for those who speak Chuukese. It’s a language from a region in Micronesia, and there is a large Chuuk population in the Fruit Valley area.
Classmate: “Does the Clark County jail house any federal inmates?”
They could, but only if some of the criminal activity happened in this area. At one point, the Clark County Jail had a contract with the US Marshals, but that is no longer the case.
Classmate: “Do the inmates have a right to privacy under certain circumstances?”
No. Phone calls are recorded, and although there is no audio in the general areas, everything is caught on video.
Tangentia: “Does it help to wear masks when you deal with drugs?”
Opioids are skin-absorbant. Officers do try to use PPE, but sometimes a situation is urgent and cops just have to rush in. Inhalation is particularly problematic. In some cases, CPR has been necessary to get the poof of dust from a cop’s lungs.
It seemed only right that the presentation should end with a question from Tangentia.
Beth: “I’m gonna run to the restroom. Well, run may not be accurate. I’m going to schlep to the restroom.”
Next up: Rehabilitation programs!
