My trip to Jail

For my next topic of random drivel, I would like to share with you all a rather extreme experience that relatively few people have the privelege of knowing firsthand. No, I'm not talking about skydiving or one of those other "x-treme" sports which are really all just a copout for people that are too chicken shit to just do a line of coke (I'm kidding), I'm talking about jail. Being locked within a small confined area and told that you aren't allowed to be free until "they" say so (who is this proverbial "they" we so often refer to?).
About a year ago, I was well beyond wasted and broke into a girl's house while under the influence of painkiller's and about half a bottle of vodka. I didn't have evil intentions that night, I just wanted to talk to the stupid little bitch. She wouldn't answer the door, so I didn't have much of a choice, you see (never said I was normal). The police came to my house and picked me up later on that night and off to jail I went. Upon my arrival at the local County Jail I was promptly heckled by one of the more ignorant guards there, being called "The Hamburgler". I wasn't in much of a mood for jokes, so I told him he was just shy of fucking hilarious. This got me slammed up against a wall until I promised to behave and let the guards poke fun of me as they saw fit.
During intake, I made the mistake of informing the guards that I was feeling just a tad suicidal, which got me thrown into the holding tank for several days (the logic being, I suppose, that you're somehow less of a danger to yourself in a 5 X 10, poorly ventilated, poorly observed room than on a prison block...?). There was this one guy in there with me by the name of Robbie. Robbie was the first bonafide schizo I've ever met in my life. He liked to eat grass whenever we went out to the yard for rec call. Robbie was in there for rolling around on some girls porch a couple of times. Whenever the local police came to arrest him, he took a swing at one of them, so they added assaulting an officer to his charges. I read in the paper that he got 1-2 years in a state penitentiary. Robbie really was a pretty nice guy, actually, just crazier than rat shit. His problem wasn't that he was criminal minded, he was insane. Now if Robbie or Robbie's family had enough money for a decent lawyer, I'm sure the state of PA could have invoked a little sympathy for him and sent him to a mental institution where he belonged. Judicial prudence isn't free, you have to buy it just like everything else.
I just realized that this blog could take me a couple hours to type up if I were to write about everything in detail, so I'll give you the summary.

-- My cellmate's mother was killed in a car accident and he wasn't allowed to attend the funeral. This kid wasn't in there for murder, he and his friends had gotten into a fight with another group of kids, during which no one was seriously injured.
-- The deputy warden took a little too much pride in telling prisoner's not to bother appealing his decisions on in-house rules infractions. After all, all appeals went directly to him.
-- According to the warden, I didn't need any medication for my ADD while I was in jail. Nevermind that ADD can contribute to impulsive behavior and rash decision making, and this doesn't bode to well when you're surrounded by criminals and smart assed corrections officers, I just didn't need it. He's the warden, after all, so he's an expert on all matters pertaining to his shit-hole jail, psychological concerns included.

That's about all I can take as far as blogging about Jail. I mean, yes, jails are a necessary evil and you shouldn't go around getting fucked up on pain killers and vodka and breaking into stupid little bitch's houses... even if you just want to talk things over with them. And most of the prison guards were actually pretty cool guys, it was just a couple of them that were real assholes. But I just don't think I go for the whole notion that treating people like dirt and locking them up in as shitty conditions as the law provides is a way to go about changing the behavior of subversives like myself. I'm doing much better these days because I'm fortunate enough to have the means to make a better life for myself. A lot of these guys don't have those kind of means and they honestly don't know how to go about living any other life style than that of the drunk or the criminal. Again, I don't know what the answer is, but there's got to be a better way than the current justice system.