Chapter 2 – The Tour of The Old Prison
As I pulled through the gate in my state car, I looked at the antiquated, single building and fenced in yard. If not for the razor wire on top of the fence and the swarm of women in blue uniforms milling around the yard, I would have sworn it was an old high school building. The sign said “State Reformatory for Women", but I doubted there was much reforming going on in here. In the past year alone, there had been three separate escapes, two of the escaped convicts still at large. I vowed that would NEVER happen on my watch!
After going through a weak security check, ( I snuck in a hacksaw blade in the band of my panties just to see if it could be done) I was escorted to Warden Jones’ office by an inmate who introduced herself as Corrine McManus, Warden Jones inmate assistant. She was striking….tall with beautiful long red hair and a full, beautiful body. She also seemed quite full of herself, especially for a convict. By the time we made it to the office, she had told me she was three years into a ten year sentence for shooting and nearly killing an abusive boyfriend. She said she had it good as a trusty and the warden’s assistant.
When she introduced me to Warden Jones, I was shocked. She was a petite, frail woman of 74 and the certificates on her wall indicated a background of social work. She seemed weak and world-weary. She said she was glad to be retiring, and was happy when I told her I planned to have the new facility up and running within a year.
We talked as she gave me a tour of the prison. I learned there were 630 inmates in the facility designed for 400, serving sentences of as little as six months, all the way up to life, with two women on death row, though she doubted they would ever actually be executed. Her philosophy was rehabilitation, but admitted they had such a small staff that the inmates were just being “warehoused"….wandering the yard all day in two or three person cells at night. No real work programs, schooling or real discipline. There were 40 solitary confinement cells used for violent infractions of rules, but they were usually only about half-filled.
We toured the empty cellblocks and they were all a mess…beds unmade, inappropriate pictures on the wall, clothes strewn about. “In the old days, we had enough staff to make the girls keep them spic and span, but no more." Ms. Jones said. It sounded like a lame excuse to me.
What really shocked me was a tour of the yard. The women were mostly dirty and unkempt, many with long, uncared for hair. They seemed to be hanging in racially segregated groups, with Caucasians and Latinas seeming to be the largest gatherings. Most of the inmates were to be smoking cigarettes, and there seemed to be lots of trading of packs of cigarettes, right in the open.
There was a softball field in one section with bleachers, and under them were several pairs of inmates engaging in sex acts. Warden Jones simply said “Alright ladies, that’s enough of that." And they dispersed. When the inmates left, she shrugged her shoulders and said “It’s a women’s prison….they’re all like that! Tongues interacting with Va-J-J’s and A-holes is a way of life in here. What are you going to do?" We’d just see about that when I took over!
When I’d seen enough, I got in my car and left. As I drove away, I KNEW I would be making a LOT of major changes.
