Journey to the Regional Jail

Prison and Jail are not the same. Everyone in a prison has been convicted and sentenced for a crime. In most cases an individual must be sentenced to over a year to even go to a state prison, otherwise he or she will pull the time at the local jail. The population of a prison is drawn from all over the state, I've worked at "my" prison for almost three years and I've never seen a former inmate on the street. There are several reasons for this, the first of which is that I do not get out much. Secondly, many of the inmates that were three three years ago are still there now, prison inmates do not return to the community as fast.

At a jail inmates may be housed anywhere from overnight to several years. Some are awaiting bond, some awaiting trial, some are drunks locked up to detox. A few have been sentenced and are awaiting a bed at a state facility. All of the inmates are drawn from the local community. If you work at a jail you are going to see former/future inmates on the street. the idea of working with men and knowing I would get to know all of the town drunks on some level made me drive past the jail on the way to work at the prison every day for close to three years without thinking about floating an application. But then things got bad at the prison and one of the nurses who had already made the transition from the prison to the jail encouraged me to come in for a tour.

When I went on the tour I could see the jail was for me. Only eleven beds in medical, so, a maximum of eleven patients. My primary duty as an RN would be to complete physicals, every new inmate booked into the jail needed a physical done by an RN within 14 days. Most of the nurses were LPN's, so the physicals tended to fall behind. I would also care for the inmates in medical, who were rarely total care. If someone was really sick they sent that person to the hospital. On my way out I picked up an application and spent my entire next day off filling in the blanks, writing essays, getting copies of college transcripts, and getting things notarized. It was like applying to Yale.

I knew I had to get out of the prison, every day was non-stop insanity. "Why can't you just go and work in a clinic, like a nice doctor's office?" my aunt asked me when I met my mom at my aunt's house in St. Louis. "Or in a hospital?" my mom asked. The three of us were sitting at the pool in my aunt's backyard watching my two cousins take turns on the diving board. I looked at them and thought about walking my rounds in Segregation back at the prison. The human zoo of sociopaths, female sociopaths. In my brief interactions with them to give their meds, draw their blood, or do their sick calls I peered into some of the most disordered manifestations of humanity. I thought about the infirmary and the variety of medical issues, cancer, HIV, high-risk pregnancy. I thought about the money I made, much, much more than the local university or private hospital. "I'm good at what I do," I told them. "I'm good at what I do and I get paid well for it."