one of the deputies in the glass booth stuck his head out and scanned the hallway in both directions. Montez took me to an elevator. We rose several flights and exited into more glossy yellow, trimmed with blue. I caught a glimpse of rumpled hospital beds through an open door at the end of the corridor.
'My office is over there,' he said, pointing across the hall.
A slatted wooden bench ran the length of the wall outside the office. Two men in yellow pyjamas sat slumped at opposite ends. The nearer one was a squat dark Mexican in his sixties with rummy eyes and a fallen face. The other was a young man with a full head of surfer-blond curls -tan, muscular and scarcely out of his teens. His face was male-model perfect except for the tics that caused his
features to jump like Galvani's frog. As we passed, the wino looked away. But the blond boy turned toward us. Something feral slithered into his eyes, and his mouth twitched into a snarl.
Suddenly he strained to rise. I looked quickly at Montez, but he seemed unperturbed. The blond boy grunted and raised his buttocks an inch from the bench before snapping back sharply, as if forced down rudely by an invisible hand. Then I saw the shackles around his wrists - metal cuffs chained to stationary bolts running through the bench seat.
A deputy appeared, nightstick in hand. The blond boy cried out gutturally. The deputy stood watch from a distance as the prisoner slammed his back several times against the slats, then sank back down, breathing hard and mouthing silent obscenities.
'Come on in, Doctor,' said Montez, as if nothing had happened. He took out a ring of keys, unlocked the door, and held it open.
The interior of the office was standard county issue: desk chairs and table of grey-painted metal; a corkboard pinned with layers of official documents. The room was window-less and ventilated by a ceiling fan. A table beside the desk held a thriving potted devil's ivy and a police scanner that hissed and spat until the social worker leaned over and turned it off.
'This is the largest jail system in the world,' he said. 'Official maximum capacity is fifty-one hundred inmates. Right now we've got seventy-three hundred. On a good weekend, when the city really gets down to partying, we process sixteen thousand.'
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a roll of Life Savers.
'Want one?'
'No thanks.'
He popped a candy into his mouth and sucked on it.
'You're a psychologist?'
'Right.'
'In theory there are two parallel systems here: mental health and custody. We're supposed to work together. In
actuality mental health is a guest. The jail is run by the sheriff's department, and the main emphasis is on processing and maintaining criminals. Psychiatric input is viewed as another tool to make that work.'
'Makes sense,' I said.
He nodded.
'I start out with that spiel because I always get questions from mental health people about our treatment philosophy, modes of therapy - all that good stuff. The truth of it is this is a giant corral: We lock them up and work at keeping them alive and reasonably healthy until trial. Even if we had time for psychotherapy, I doubt it would help most of our guys. About fifteen percent are seriously psychiatrically disturbed - more impaired than the patients at County Hospital. Bona fide psychotics who're also murderers, rapists, armed robbers. If you include your everyday ambulatory sociopath - guys judged to be too dangerous to be released on bail - triple that figure. On top of that are the derelicts and gomers who do something especially outrageous and can't make ten percent of a seventy-five-dollar bail. Most of them are head cases, too.'
'Do you medicate them?'
'If the inmate has a private psychiatrist who's willing to administer and monitor dosages - like Cadmus - he gets medicated. Otherwise no. We're not staffed for it - one part-time psychiatrist who comes in once in a while and a handful of nurses for the entire jail. The deputies
'My office is over there,' he said, pointing across the hall.
A slatted wooden bench ran the length of the wall outside the office. Two men in yellow pyjamas sat slumped at opposite ends. The nearer one was a squat dark Mexican in his sixties with rummy eyes and a fallen face. The other was a young man with a full head of surfer-blond curls -tan, muscular and scarcely out of his teens. His face was male-model perfect except for the tics that caused his
features to jump like Galvani's frog. As we passed, the wino looked away. But the blond boy turned toward us. Something feral slithered into his eyes, and his mouth twitched into a snarl.
Suddenly he strained to rise. I looked quickly at Montez, but he seemed unperturbed. The blond boy grunted and raised his buttocks an inch from the bench before snapping back sharply, as if forced down rudely by an invisible hand. Then I saw the shackles around his wrists - metal cuffs chained to stationary bolts running through the bench seat.
A deputy appeared, nightstick in hand. The blond boy cried out gutturally. The deputy stood watch from a distance as the prisoner slammed his back several times against the slats, then sank back down, breathing hard and mouthing silent obscenities.
'Come on in, Doctor,' said Montez, as if nothing had happened. He took out a ring of keys, unlocked the door, and held it open.
The interior of the office was standard county issue: desk chairs and table of grey-painted metal; a corkboard pinned with layers of official documents. The room was window-less and ventilated by a ceiling fan. A table beside the desk held a thriving potted devil's ivy and a police scanner that hissed and spat until the social worker leaned over and turned it off.
'This is the largest jail system in the world,' he said. 'Official maximum capacity is fifty-one hundred inmates. Right now we've got seventy-three hundred. On a good weekend, when the city really gets down to partying, we process sixteen thousand.'
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a roll of Life Savers.
'Want one?'
'No thanks.'
He popped a candy into his mouth and sucked on it.
'You're a psychologist?'
'Right.'
'In theory there are two parallel systems here: mental health and custody. We're supposed to work together. In
actuality mental health is a guest. The jail is run by the sheriff's department, and the main emphasis is on processing and maintaining criminals. Psychiatric input is viewed as another tool to make that work.'
'Makes sense,' I said.
He nodded.
'I start out with that spiel because I always get questions from mental health people about our treatment philosophy, modes of therapy - all that good stuff. The truth of it is this is a giant corral: We lock them up and work at keeping them alive and reasonably healthy until trial. Even if we had time for psychotherapy, I doubt it would help most of our guys. About fifteen percent are seriously psychiatrically disturbed - more impaired than the patients at County Hospital. Bona fide psychotics who're also murderers, rapists, armed robbers. If you include your everyday ambulatory sociopath - guys judged to be too dangerous to be released on bail - triple that figure. On top of that are the derelicts and gomers who do something especially outrageous and can't make ten percent of a seventy-five-dollar bail. Most of them are head cases, too.'
'Do you medicate them?'
'If the inmate has a private psychiatrist who's willing to administer and monitor dosages - like Cadmus - he gets medicated. Otherwise no. We're not staffed for it - one part-time psychiatrist who comes in once in a while and a handful of nurses for the entire jail. The deputies
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