Why You Shouldn't Dream Of Going To County Jail.

MATHEW FRANKLIN I’ve managed to avoid getting taken to county jail for anything worse than being an idiot (I ran up a LOT of unpaid parking tickets), and I was only there for about a day…after 3 days in the City of Houston Central Jail. Yes, I was a dumb, dumb, bunny back then. I was taken to the Harris County Central lockup around midafternoon and booked in to a central holding cell on a Saturday. Word of advice: if you have to get arrested for some small-time stuff, don’t do it on a weekend. I was crammed into a holding cell designed to hold about 100 persons with about 2–300 other people, with barely enough space to sit indian style. There were three toilets and three water fountain/sink combos bolted to one side of the room. The sheer number of bodies punched up the temperature and humidity in the cell, a lot. And it stank. That many hot, sweaty people packed in that close has its own type of funk that I wouldn’t smell again until I got to Afghanistan and went without bathing for three months. Tempers are short. You may be in there for a day or two before processing, it’s too cramped to sleep, and everybody else’s elbows are in everybody else’s faces, so a fight may break out. I saw two guys get into a brawl while I was there. Every few hours, they may pass out something that barely passes for food—a peanut butter and jelly “bar” made of PBJ between two slices of something more like a cookie or a cracker than bread, wrapped in printed wax paper, which means someone, somewhere makes those things. It was worse than the local cuisine I was served in the Army by some of the poorest people on the planet—at least they made their food with a certain sense of pride and self-respect, knowing their food in a way, represented them. Eventually, your information will be excreted through the system. You will appear in an assembly line-like court arraignment, make arrangements to take care of your transgressions, and be returned to detention to either be processed out or serve out your sentence. A number of other batches of prisoners were processed before me, gradually emptying the cell until it got to the point where you could actually sit on the solid cinder-block shelf for seating that ran along the longest walls of the cell. Once you’ve been processed, they break you up into small groups of less than 10 and sequester you in different cells. These are actually air-conditioned and cleaner, with tile finish as opposed to just rough, painted cinder blocks. This is because from here, you’re either going to be out-processed and released, or you’re in for a longer stay. You may be in one of these cells for some time in the latter case, or sent on to an actual semi-permanent cell block with separate cells with bunks and a common area. I wasn’t there long enough to enjoy more “comfortable” cells at County with bunks. I spent my time with four teenagers who had just come of legal age and gotten in trouble for being drunk and disorderly. They also had part-timed as street-level drug dealers, and were happy to talk me through the ins and outs of producing and selling crack cocaine. So I guess I learned a trade during my time in. Bottom line: you spend a lot of time uncomfortable, crowded, hungry, and tired. It blows. Prashant Singh. works at Working at Encore Capital Group 69w ago i haven’t seen a jail from inside so can’t really comment on the same,talking about the judicial system in India. If you are an Indian, being a middle class one then you should learn to adjust with each & every thing life is not that simple, as all other diversified issues this as well is a issue in India as here people spend more of there jail term before getting sentenced. Chief justice of India has already cried on national television as we are running short of judges & cases are lakhs,just a data hardly few months back i read here in India we have, 3 lakhs 73 thousand prisoners among the 2 lakhs & 45 thousand are still not found guilty cases are still in the court for the decision to made. They may be innocent,there lives are behind bars no one can return there time they have & are spending in Prison .