What Public Records?

Once inside the Orient Road jail, I could close my eyes and smell my childhood all around me. Smells of starch, disinfectant and hospital food were everywhere, conjuring memories of my mom at the hospital or my dad at the customs office. Even the musky smell of the empty cells in 6-Alpha - the dampness and woody smell - was like my elementary school in a portable annex in Ft. Lauderdale.

Bits of anachronism snapped me out of my day dreams. There was a large guard carrying heavy chains who clanked loudly through the halls like Marley's ghost, his heavy jowls pulling his mouth and eyes wide-open. The waiting area had a bizarre attempt at modern art in the display of the jail cell doors through time.

One was green like oxidized copper, your standard jail door with interlaced bars. Two were black. One had bars shaped like a gaping maw. The other was black with Plexiglas windows and an air vent at the bottom. The finale was the modern door, undistinguishable from a classroom door, although it was ominously numbered 13. Another throw back to public schools was the ever-present yellowed analog clocks.

Adjacent to the first long corridor was an adorable garden. It was absolutely unnecessary right down to the bench that was too small for even a child. I had to double-check that there was even a door to get to it, but there was.

We were reminded to pin our golden identifier badge to our shirts so that the cameras could identify us as tourists and not prisoners as we moved through the holding areas. However, once in the booking area it was painfully apparent that the badges were overkill. No one there, prisoner or jail employee, looked anything like us.

The stout disheveled woman being searched in front of us was visibly mortified. Other people hid their faces from us, while some turned to stare. A lot of people in processing were haggard, tired, greasy and those were just the employees. The great unwashed masses would be a generous description for many of them.

Strangely, the prisoners would have looked just as natural had their clothes been exchanged with the people behind the desks for fingerprinting, identification, etc. The most disconcerting thing was the way Lieutenant Smith addressed us while the stout woman was being searched. She became an object, something to be poked and prodded. Once that CRA (a formal arrest document) was handed over and signed, she became something, instead of someone.

Perhaps that goes with the job. That behavior was almost understandable when Smith described the daily tussles with deputies, the sheer stupidity of admitting to a crime on a prison phone or trying to kill yourself from a second-floor staircase. It's a mad world in there.