THE WOMEN OF CELL BLOCK B

Days And Nights In The King County Jail

When you are incarcerated in the King County Correctional Facility, your
cell is referred to as a "house"; I don't know why. At six by eight feet,
it is not exactly a grave, but neither does it resemble any house that I
have ever lived in. When you leave your individual cell, you are not
exiting your "house"; rather, you are "racking forward." Conversely, when
you return to your cell, you are not being locked in -- you are--"racking
back." All this talk of racking in and racking out reminds me of some
bizarre sadomasochistic sidewalk sale held every year at Halloween on the
sidewalk outside the "Bon Marc-Che."

Tonight, in cell block B on the ninth floor of the King County Jail, no one
can sleep.

This is because an addict in Four House is withdrawing from methadone. I
don't know if it is really true, but I am told that methadone is one of the
most debilitating narcotics to withdraw from without the benefit of medical
intervention. Over time, methadone eats away at the user's bone marrow.

Thus, in addition to the constant retching, diarrhea, and muscular cramping
the methadone addict experiences, she also -- quite literally---- aches in
the innermost core of what seems to be her soul.

In addition to the vomiting and the incessant flushing of the stainless
steel jailhouse toilet, the addict in question is kicking at her cell door
and begging for someone, anyone, to help her. In jail, we refer to the
answer of an unmedicated addict's pleas for help as "divine intervention."
This is because sympathetic and/or comprehensive medical intervention
arrives for the "kicking" addict about as often as the second coming of
Christ. Finally, at 3 a.m., three decidedly unsympathetic guards arrive at
the cell door of four house with mace, handcuffs, and baby-blue latex
gloves. The addict withdrawing from methadone has threatened to hang
herself; the three correctional officers place her in restraints and escort
her to the seventh floor.

The seventh floor of the King County Correctional Facility is reserved for
the jail's psychiatric services. "Psychiatric services" is basically
interchangeable with "administrative segregation," or the "hole" (used to
punish unruly inmates) except that in lockdown, you are allowed to have
your towel, your blanket, and your underwear.

None of this is allowed on the "rubber ward."

I have only been incarcerated on the seventh floor one time, for about
three days, but I can still vividly recall my feelings of dissolution:
confined to my cell for 23 hours each day with nothing to read, to write,
without being able to communicate with anyone.

Every now and then, a King County public health psychiatric nurse would
appear in the small paint-chipped hole in my door and ask me if I was
"hearing any voices." I replied that no, thank you, I was not hearing
voices, but after being in isolation for 72 hours I would have welcomed a
voice of any kind -- even if it was a voice I could hear only in my mind.

As if conditions on the seventh floor could get any worse, female
psychiatric inmates are now often "housed" outside of their cells on
synthetically wrapped mats, without blankets, in full view of the
correctional officers.

This is to ensure they are not harming themselves or anybody else.
Consequently, female psychiatric inmates are also now in full view of their
male psychiatric counterparts confined in the adjoining tank. Elaine, an
inmate at the jail who is diagnosed with both drug addiction and bipolar
disorder, told me that, in the context of being treated for her mental
illness on the seventh floor, she had never seen nor been flashed by so
many penises in all of her adult life.

On a more personal note, I am currently incarcerated in the county jail for
possession of $40 worth of crack cocaine in the Belltown section of
Seattle. While Seattle's West Precinct undercover vice officers gave chase
to the individual who had sold me my narcotics, I slipped serenely unaware
around the corner of Lenora and First Avenue. I would have gotten away, if
I hadn't stopped to pet a very cute puppy in front of Tully's. Talk about
feeling like one of America's dumbest criminals.

Like Elaine, I am dually diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and drug
addiction. To this end, my public'"pretender" (indigent counsel) and the
state's prosecutor are involved in a legal argument over whether I am a
criminally disposed addict or simply attempting to medicate the symptoms of
my mental illness.

This reminds me of the age-old discussion over which came first, the
chicken or the egg. In any case, the end result is the same. I have again
been incarcerated on a charge of Violation of the Uniform
Controlled Substance Act, and I must again write to my editor at Real
Change and advise him that my next article will not be submitted in a
timely manner.

On the subject of narcotics, I have never met an addict who, through the
usage of drugs, was attempting to better get in touch with herself.

In this sense, in my attempt to escape the ramifications of my poverty, my
mental illness, and my homelessness, I am no different than any other
addict incarcerated in the K.C.J. Despite the often positive outcome, I
hate 12-step groups.

I think their sayings are stupid ("easy does it," or "one day at a time"),
and I do not trust their dogmatic emphasis upon a male Christian God. I
don't want to pray to "our Father." Exactly whose father is "our Father"
anyway?

He's not my father.

My father, in the last years of his alcoholic life, was not a very nice
man. I don't want to pray to him. And, finally, when those individual
12-steppers gush on and on about how much they love me, I don't believe
them. For most of my childhood years social workers and foster parents and
court-appointed advocates told me how much they loved me and then used the
trust inherent to that love to annihilate me.

Having acknowledged my aversion to recovery groups, however, I must also
acknowledge that there are "things" in life I hate far more than
12-steppers. For instance, I hate the metallic clicking sound a pair of
handcuffs makes as they are placed firmly around my wrists by various
members of the SPD. And I detest the dirty, disowning glances I am given by
the average Seattle citizens who have seen me with those handcuffs upon my
wrists. And I really despise the carrion-like fragrance a jail holding tank
takes on upon holding hostage the lives of 20 or 30 unwashed, un-deodorized
male inmates.

This said, upon my release, I will go to whatever "12 step" or "rational
recovery group" or "voodoo narcotic's withdrawal fest" the State of
Washington deems necessary to my rehabilitation.

It is dinnertime at the K.C.C.F. According to the correctional
institution's web site, exactly 63 cents is spent per day to feed each
inmate. This fact is evident in this evening's meal, which is commonly
referred to by the county's prisoners as "bicycle parts." We call it
bicycle parts because it tastes like rubber and looks likes tiny metal
bolts. This evening's bicycle parts are accompanied by seven sodden green
beans, two pear pieces canned sometime prior to the First World War, and
three slices of fake "enriched" wheat bread designed to fill the belly and
psych the stomach into believing it has eaten something it can actually
identify.

After dinner, I am called outside the northern ninth floor wing of the jail
for medical "triage," a process that typically involves an overburdened,
ill-tempered public health nurse, a closet-like examination room, and an
abundance of Maalox or Metamucil. The same nurse who is now ready to see me
has just treated a case of suspected lice, taken a blood pressure reading,
and changed the dressing of an infected abscess with the same unwashed and
ungloved hands.

I decline to be treated and the guard who oversees the safety of the nurse
threatens to "infract" me (write me up), a gesture which may or may not
send me to the hole for punishment.

Finally, it is 9:45 p.m. and we are racked back for the night.

Despite the fact that it is about 70 degrees outside, in the King County
Jail the air conditioner seems to be permanently on overdrive.

We deal with the arctic climate in three essential ways. One, we wear both
sets of our prison-issued clothes.

Two, we poke holes in the feet of our extra sweat socks and turn them into
REI-like detachable sleeves.

Three, we stealthily collect extra blankets from departing prisoners.

Feeling fortunate to be in possession of all three of these things, I
quickly snuggle under my linens and settle down for the remaining night.

It is usually about then that the dreaded "vent people" come out to play.

The vent people make themselves known during the periods when we are
confined to our individual houses.

They are male and female inmates who speak to one another by way of the
institution's ventilation ducts.

For some inmates returning from various prisons across Washington State,
the ventilation ducts are most often utilized to ascertain who is or who is
not also incarcerated in the King County Jail.

Typically, it begins like this: I, an inmate with a life, am trying,
despite the cold, to go to sleep.

All of a sudden, as if on a loudspeaker, an anonymous male voice shouts
out: "HeyEpick up the phone!" What this actually means is for you to climb
out of your bunk, step up carefully upon the rim of your seatless toilet,
lean into the air duct, and yell back: "Yo, this is (insert your name
here). I just got two days in the hole for telling (insert guard's name
here) to go fuck himself.

But it's a'ight, you can't keep a good (insert
man/woman/bitch/bro/sister/native) down." I really would like to tell you
that the conversations get more creative than this, but, typically, they do
not. Usually at some point in the conversation an inmate like myself will
scream at her fellow inmates to be quiet or the guards on each of several
floors will intervene and simply "disconnect" the "party line."

About this time, you, the citizenry of Seattle who are reading these words,
are probably saying to yourself, "Why should I give a damn what happens to
a junkie or a criminal dimwit in the King County Jail? What does it matter
to me if they spend the rest of their lives locked out of my civilization?"

Well, foremost, you should care about the addicts and the mentally ill
imprisoned in the KCCF because it is far more cost-effective and less
burdensome to the county's and the state's judicial systems to rehabilitate
addicts, and to provide the mentally ill with proper psychiatric treatment,
than to simply and to continually jail them for minimal offenses.

Also, decriminalization of narcotics possession in the state of Washington
and alternative sentencing programs that emphasize recovery and proper
mental health would free up judicial resources.

This would allow the judiciary to focus their attention on more violent
offenders: those individuals accused of rape, or robbery, or theft of an
individual's identity.

On a more personal note, what do the women of the ninth floor, cell block
B, minimum-security unit of the King County Jail want you to know about us?
We want you to know that, beyond anything else, we take care of our own
while in jail. When a junkie imprisoned in our tank is sick from narcotic
withdrawal, it is we who will minister to her most basic needs, who will
help her to shower, who will talk to her when she screams, who will
stealthily supply her with medications prescribed to us for sleep or for
pain or for nausea.

And when an unmedicated schizophrenic is sent into our midst, it is we who
will act as her quasi-social worker or nurse or emergency medical paramedic.

We, the women of cellblock B, want you to know that we are innovative in
our problem solving.

Two plastic spoons, when inserted into an air vent, become a clothesline
upon which to hang our underclothes. The plastic dispenser of a tampon when
inserted atop a 4-inch jail house pencil extends its life two fold. And for
those women in the county jail who must have their feminine side addressed,
cherry Kool Aid becomes both lipstick and blush upon visiting day. But as
innovative as the women of the KCCF are, we cannot simply create tricyclic
antidepressants or mood stabilizers, nor can we access treatment centers
and mental health facilities that do not already exist.

The women housed upon the ninth floor of the King County Jail want you to
know that we feel deeply the disdain heaped upon us by the police, the
citizenry of Seattle, and society at large, and we are drowning in the
wells of absolution by which society wipes its collective hands of us. But
until the issues of drug addiction, mental illness, and dual diagnosis are
addressed by the judiciary of King County, until the state of Washington
revises its criminal laws to emphasize treatment of the addict and the
mentally impaired, until jail cells are replaced with treatment beds and
comprehensive care for the mentally ill, you citizens of Seattle will
continue to lose and your tax dollars, like crack cocaine, will continue to
go up in a useless cloud of smoke.