Once we got inside some of the wards I realized how different it is from any jail I've ever seen on tv. There are no bars. No straight rows of prison cells. They said they have an old section of the jail that is like that but we didn't have time to see it. The section we saw (which contained mostly people that were in for life), was made out of thick plexiglass. There was an oval shaped control room with airlock type doors everywhere (and floors are only navigable by elevator apparently, and there are no call buttons, the elevators have to be called by the central control room which sees you waiting by them on camera). Around the control room was a small common area with a few metal tables and a tv, a tiny counseling room (like a visiting room) where prisoners get their demerits and such when they do bad things (like a write up...if they get too many points they lose privileges, eventually ending up in isolation, if they're good for a certain amount of time, their points start to drop off and they get those privileges back) and then all around that was a half crescent shaped row of two tiers (floors, essentially with a metal staircase) of jail cells. They looked about the size of small dorm rooms, had a big metal automatically controlled sliding door with one glass window in it and a little break on the bottom for food to be slid under if necessary. Bottom tier are single cells, top tier are double cells where the inmates have to sign an agreement that they know each other well and won't fight. Most cells have tvs inside, which apparently the prisoners watch pretty much all day (and it keeps them pacified from thinking about ways to escape and hurt others and smuggle things in).
The control room had a big panel of buttons which corresponded to the cells. If you pushed a button, the cell door would open or close. There were cameras in some cells, and many cameras on the common areas. All the monitors were in the control room. Every section of the prison we went to was set up exactly like this, probably about 25 - 30 cells to a control room.
They told us all sorts of stories about incidents, things the prisoners do, how you have to be in pretty top shape to control them if they get out because many of them work out for four or five hours a day. They make shivs by scraping away at metal objects (cell doors, bed frames, etc.) with the shaving razor they are allowed to have (required by law because the prisoners have a right to look presentable in court) for sometimes up to three days to get a piece of jagged sharp metal off. It sounds like the prisoners are much more interested in fighting each other than fighting the deputies, and many times their aim is not to kill with their shivs but to "mark" or "slice" a snitch with a big scar on the face so everyone else can spot him easily. They showed us pictures of incidents that have happened in the last few years in the jail. They said violent ones happen every couple of months.
The set up of the place and the attitude of the deputies reminded me of Jurassic Park. Like these guys would eat me if they got out. They could really only be controlled in small numbers. They were all dangerous predators, essentially, was the attitude. They were in some ways treated and talked about like animals, and it seems in some ways they are. It was sad and exhilarating at the same time. Anyway, those were my impressions.
