April 30: Beth and Melanie are fascinated by the horrific details of prison life
At this point, Sergeant Karcher took over.
If someone has been particularly violent, they are reclassified as a 2-on-1, 3-on-1 or 4-on-1. Meaning, the number of officers required to escort a single inmate from place to place. Even an inmate in shackles.
[Beth: “That’s fascinating.”]
It didn’t seem like a good time to ask her why she thought that was fascinating, and I forgot to ask her afterward. At some point, somebody really should.
Sergeant Karcher: “They spit, they throw feces. . . they’re the worst of the worst. They have to be shackled: ankle cuffs and wrist chains and handcuffs.”
These people have their cases reviewed every week, and mental health professionals get involved and provide input.
Sergeant Karcher: “Our goal is to get them back into the general population. Some people, they just can’t. They’re too violent.”
There has also been what the sergeant called a “huge spike” in the number of inmates requiring protective custody, usually because of addiction and mental illness. To quote the sergeant: “They just can’t be in with the general population.”
When the sergeant started at the jail, they had three one-occupant protective custody cells. Now, they’re up to forty-five. At the jail, there are two pods of protective-custody inmates that must be kept separate from the general population.
There are two ways to be put in protective custody. The first is voluntary: the inmate requests protective custody. The second is Ad-Seg: Administrative Segregation. In some cases, a prisoner will ask to be housed in a dorm, but is picked on and victimized, at which point the officers alert Karcher and Bohnn’s unit.
Sergeant Karcher: “At which point we’ll hear from officers, they’ll say, ‘Hey, this guy’s just not a good fit.’”
(This is the sort of mild remark I might use to describe a pair of shoes. Jail offers a unique perspective.)
If the inmate refuses protective custody even under these conditions, he is moved to an isolated cell anyway. This jail-mandated rehousing is “Administrative Segregation.”
Side note: it is both interesting and creepy that the jail is considered a kind of city within a city, where jail cells are “housing” and phrases like “general population” are used to describe the inmates. It makes the whole thing feel like the slums in a fantasy novel. Until you are actually inside the jail. There is no place for imagination there.
Sergeant Bohnn: “A lot of times we’ll place them in protective custody and Administrative Segregation to keep them safe. Because you get somebody who’s in the news. . . they’re in the general population and all of a sudden the news pops on and there’s a story about the guy, and now you’ve got forty-five other guys who want to beat the crap out of this guy.”
Then again, it maybe isn’t so strange that the jail is considered a city within a city. It’s almost a world within a world.
Question from the class: “Is it true that that happens with certain kinds of inmate, like the sex offenders and child abusers?”
Sergeant Bohnn: “We have an entire housing area that is all sex offenders.”
Now, there’s an idea to make you run screaming. Which would be the sensible thing to do.
It gets weirder. There’s a form that an inmate can sign, in which they agree that they are at their own risk entering the general population despite a sex-offender sentence. And that they have been warned about what could happen and are waiving the right to be housed separately.
The problem is, this is an age of cell phones and online media. It’s customary for other inmates to ask a new inmate, “what are your charges?” (Yes, people in jail actually do ask each other, “What’re you in for?”) If an inmate has a suspicion about somebody, the inmate can use a designated phone hour to call a friend and ask for details about that person.
Sergeant Bohnn: “And the friend calls back and says, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s in there ‘cause he’s a sex offender.’ And now this guy goes to the other one and says, ‘You need to tap out.’”
(“Tap-Out” is the slang term used by inmates and officers to describe a decision to move someone to another area.)
Anything dealing with children, the general inmate population is against.
Every Wednesday, the jail administrative personnel have an IDT (Inter-Disciplinary Team) meeting. The commanders, Classifications, Operations sergeants, Medical and Mental Health. They have a list of people who need consideration, and they check in to see whether everybody is aware of the things going on with each person on the list.
Sergeant Bohnn: “Say you’ve got a guy who’s not taking his psychotropic meds—you go in and talk to him and he’s presenting just fine one-on-one, but then you get him out in the general population and he’s running around all paranoid schizophrenic.”
[Melanie thinks: “Oh, yeah. I’ve probably seen most of those guys on the computers at my workplace.”]
The jail does also have a separate dorm for folks presenting mild mental illness, or things like autism, and groups that have twenty people or less for those who can handle smaller numbers. The jail also has a dorm for people over fifty. Quote: “we’re not going to put them in with a bunch of twenty-year-olds who like to gangbang and stuff.” (Note: he is referring to gangbangers, not the sexual practice of gang-banging, which is a thing, and I’m sorry I encountered it while verifying the meaning of “gangbangers.”)
According to Sergeant Karcher, the jail is seeing more people with dementia (go figure.) Also, the oldest inmate he’s ever seen was “pushing ninety.”
[Melanie feels a reluctant admiration for a ninety year old man who is still active enough to get himself thrown in jail.]
Question from the class: “What method do you use to encourage inmates to take their medication?”
A correctional facility cannot force-medicate, but it can “encourage people with unhousing” (meaning, they offer to move someone from protective custody to a regular dorm, as long as the person remains med-compliant.)
Tangentia: “What do you do about gang activity?”
The biggest problem the jail is dealing with is conflicts between the Nortenos and Surenos. The jail gets a lot of young men from Norteno and Sureno gangs who have never been in jail before, and are looking to make names for themselves. When the Crips and Bloods come in, the Crips will side with Surenos, because they all wear blue. Meanwhile, the Bloods will side with the Nortenos, who wear red.
One wonders how bizarre a color would need to be before gangs refuse to side with it. Would Mauve side with Mauve against Chartreuse? (I admit, I side with anyone who is against chartreuse.)
Unfortunately, when the jail does an intake interview, the gang members often refuse to admit that they are associated with a gang, because they hope they will be housed somewhere they can beat people up. These people also sometimes refuse to admit gang affiliation because they think it will negatively affect where they are housed.
Tangentia: “You said they wore red and blue? Is this just the bandanas or jackets, or what?”
Sergeant Karcher: “It’s just the gang colors.”
Tangentia: “Then how do you tell? I mean, if I come in there and I’ve got a red shirt on—”
Sergeant Karcher: “Uh, no. The questions that we ask, ‘Are you part of a gang?’ Ninety percent of the time, they’ll tell you, ‘Yes, I’m part of a gang.’”
Tangentia: “I guess I still don’t understand. I mean, say I’m walking down the street and I saw a couple guys—now, if they have red on, does that mean that they’re. . .”
Sergeant Karcher: “No. No. Each gang has a preferred color.”
Sergeant Handsome: “Kind of on my end, on the street, these guys run into each other, they will remember a face. Like they might have had a previous fight with this person. So that’s typically how they would recognize someone. And there’s quite a lot of beefing that goes on.”
[Beth grins, delighted that someone is using the word “beefing.”]
Tangentia: “But you hear about innocent people involved in shootings. That’s why I said, how do you know if they’ve been in a gang before?”
Sergeant Handsome (obviously regretting his impulse to chime in): “Yeah. . . That’s. . . yeah.”
Tangentia: “That’s what I mean! It’s concerning!”
[Melanie thinks, “Please just let it go, we still have a jail tour to do and I’m so tired.”]
Sergeant Handsome: “It. . . uh, it is very concerning. Most of the time, their violence is directed at each other. Unfortunately, their violence is conducted out in public, where all of us walk around.”
Question from the class: “Are they in a particular neighborhood?”
Sergeant Handsome: “It’s all throughout Clark County.”
Tangentia: “Do they wear bandanas like. . . I mean, that used to be what they’d do.”
Sergeant Karcher: “Sometimes.”
Sergeant Handsome: “It’s tattoos, it’s. . .”
Sergeant Bohnn: “Sometimes they’ll throw hand signs at each other.”
Sergeant Handsome: “They basically have their own uniform. They will never wear a certain color.”
Tangentia: “Oh, so you have to study each one?”
Sergeant Handsome: “Right. And these gentlemen, they have knowledge of what these tattoos affiliate with.”
Sergeant Bohnn: “I grew up in Southern California. And my experience was with the San Fer. They were a Sureno gang. And what they wore was a San Francisco Giants hat. Because it had the S-F on it.” He listed two other gangs and the hats they wore, then added, “It’s all sports-related stuff.”
(Evidently there is also a specific gang that is only in the OSP (Oregon State Prison). Once these inmates get out, they are no longer affiliated with the prison gang.)
Tangentia: “So the motorcycle gangs of yesterday are nothing compared to today gangs.”
Actually, motorcycle gangs are still around. It’s just that the young kids who want to make a name for themselves are in the newer, more dangerous street gangs.
Sergeant Handsome: “The motorcycle gangs—as rough and rugged as they are—a lot of them approach their business as a business. It’s very organized, there’s a very distinct pecking order, and they will even communicate with each other. They don’t war like they used to back in the eighties. For them, they understand—they’re going to make more money if they stay to their certain areas and work with each other to make sure their cash flows don’t dry up.”
That said, they don’t always work together. Sergeant Handsome told us that recently, while he was still a detective, one motorcycle gang kidnapped a former member, tortured him, killed him and dumped him near the West Precinct. He said this in a flat, careful voice, which communicated clearly that he had seen the body, and it had been an absolutely horrifying experience. One that, if he did his job right, we would never have to experience for ourselves.
Sergeant Handsome: “And that was an interesting case to work. It. . . Uh. . . Started in Oregon, they tortured and killed him in Cowlitz County, and then dumped him in Clark County.”
By the end of the sentence, the sergeant’s voice was so soft it was almost a mutter. This was not a case he would forget. Not for the rest of his life.
His voice did brighten for the next part of the story: “They weren’t very smart, though. . . one of their buddies in a Portland jail made a phone call and really spilled the beans.”
With that, it was time to end the session: “Well, the next part of the show is, we’re going to take you over to the main jail.”
Things to know about visiting the main jail:
- No bags
- No phones
- No photographs inside the jail, especially the inmates.
- No asking security-related questions where inmates can hear you.
- Visitors wear name tags and put belongings in lockers.
- Officers do not carry firearms in the jail; they use pepper spray, pepper balls, tasers and batons. (Outside the jail, when transporting prisoners, the officers do carry firearms.)
- If you walk with a cane, they’ll keep a close eye on you because it’s considered a weapon
Vignette: Beth and Melanie walk out of the Justice Center:
Melanie: “It’s really cold. I need some turtlenecks for under my—”
Beth: “You need termites?”
Melanie: “Wha—? Oh. Yes, Beth. I need termites.”
Beth: “I have dyslexic hearing!”
Melanie: “I need to go to the store and buy termites. To wear under my shirts.”
Next up: Inside the jail!
