Interview with Aaron, Jessica, Walter, Margaret and Sherry
JM: How many different blocks were there? Aaron: 36 cells in our pod and there were at least 50 pods in the jail. 18 of
our cells had two occupants and the other 18 were singles. Jessica: There were a few areas, but I was only ever kept
in the one block. Walter: 12 Housing Units made up of 4 PODs(Prisoner
Occupied Dormatory) Margaret: THERE WERE FOUR DIFFERENT BLOCKS Sherry: I would say four blocks.
JM: Did they have names? If so, what were they? Aaron: They all had numbers except for ours which was called the trustee
pod. I was not familar witht he names of the other pods if there
were names for them. Walter: HU(Housing Unit) 1-12 1A 1B 1C 1D @A 2B 2C 2D etc Margaret: THERE WAS A BLOCK, B BLOCK, C BLOCK, AND D BLOCK Sherry: 5 alfa 5 bravo 5 charlie and 5 delta blocks.
JM: Which types of inmates were housed in the different blocks? Aaron: Some of the blocks had sex crime inmates and a bunch of them
were for the more violent jailbirds. Ours as well as a few others had
non-violent inmates in them. Jessica: Inmates were mostly mixed in together, the
people I talked to were there for a variety of
crimes, mostly waiting for court dates. Walter: The housing is dependant on sex(men and women),
and custody level. Most PODs consist of
unsentenced inmates or inmates sentenced to
county time, or waiting to leave for prison. If
you are facing 25+ years they keep you in with
the regular inmates, but if you are convicted to
that much time for safety purposes they have you
moved from the POD before returning from court. Margaret: THE A BLOCK WAS THE CHRISTIAN/CHURCH BASED
BLOCK, THE B BLOCK WAS THE SCHOOL/GED BLOCK, THE
C BLOCK WAS FOR GENERAL POPULATION, AND THE D
BLOCK WAS FOR THE THRUSTEES Sherry: 5 alfa was a regular block, 5 bravo too, 5
charlie was for inmates who were bad, and 5
delta I believe was for inmates that were in a
program.
JM: What do you remember being the nicest and worst parts about the different blocks? Aaron: The best part was the vast array of books that were available to
us. Many of them were in good condition and informative
magazines were also available to us. I also liked how quiet it was
because we had a deputy standing in the pod watching us. He
didn't ever let it get too loud in there. It made it easier to read,
watch TV or have a conversation. The worst part was being in
lockdown for 4-5 hours a day. It was warm in the cells most of
the time with very little air flow so sometimes it was hard to
breathe in there. That normally made people more irritable
which made it hard to get along with people sometimes. Walter: The olderest housing unit(2) has single showers,
other than that the units and PODs are all the
same. The worst part easily is in the majority
of PODs you have shower trees. That's a shower
room with two poles coming out of the floor, and
each of these "shower trees" has 4 shower heads
for a capacity of 8 people in the shower at once Margaret: THE GUARDS WERE PRETTY NICE TO YOU AS LONG AS
YOU FOLLOWED THE RULES. THEY TREATED YOU WITH
RESPECT.THE WORST PART WAS THE FACT THAT THEY
FED YOU DINNER AT 4:00 P.M. AND IF YOU DIDN'T
HAVE NO COMMISSARY MONEY, YOU WOULD BE HUNGRY
UNTIL THE MORNING. AND THEY KEPT THE BLOCKS SO
COLD IN THERE Sherry: The nicest is that if you had a problem with an
inmate you were able to move to a different pod
or block, but the worst was the different guards
some were really mean and nasty, some would let
you watch tv, some would'nt, some made you go to
bed early.