aren't qualified to handle it.'
I considered the notion of a thousand or so mentally disturbed felons cooped up without treatment and asked how long the average stay was.
'Usually it's days, not weeks. Again, it's a matter of processing; we have to move out as many as we move in or there'd be no place to put 'em. As is, we've got inmates sleeping on the roof in the summer and in the aisles when it cools down. Once in a while you come across someone who should have been released a month ago but wasn't because the paper work got lost and his lawyer was incompetent. Plenty of attorneys do a lot of screaming and filing of writs,
but they don't understand the system and end up causing more trouble for their clients.'
'Plenty but not all,' I said.
He smiled and clicked the Life Saver against his teeth.
'Two hours ago an order came down from on high to give you the grand tour. Now here we are. That should tell you something about Mr. Souza's influence.'
'I appreciate your spending the time.'
'No problem. Gives me a little respite from paper work.'
He chewed the candy and swallowed it, took another from the roll. The ensuing silence was punctuated by a loud scream, followed by several more. Several hard thumps vibrated the wall behind us - the slatted bench being pushed repeatedly against the plaster. More screams, a blizzard of running footsteps, the whisper of a scuffle, and all was calm. Montez had sat through it without moving a muscle.
'Back to lockup for Mark,' he said.
'The blond kid?'
'Yup. Comes up for trial next week. Seemed to be calming down. You never know.'
'What did he do?'
'Ate a lot of PCP and tried to decapitate his girlfriend.'
'A guy like that doesn't get locked in a cell?'
'He came in too disturbed and too pretty to be put on cellblock, too healthy for the infirmary. We have a thirty-five-room inpatient unit - isolation rooms for prisoners too iffy for general custody - and we stuck him there, but when he started to get lucid, we moved him out to make room for someone crazier and put him on the ward. Ward patients get to move around under supervision. He started to look a little "spacey this morning, so they cuffed him. Obviously he's' slipping again - pretty typical for a duster. He belongs back in isolation, but we've got no vacancies, so he'll have to go to a cellblock with twenty-four-hour lockup. If an empty room comes up, he'll be moved back here.'
'Sounds like juggling,' I said.
'With live grenades. But don't take that to mean it's a shlocky system. The public wants bad guys caught and put
away, but no one wants to pay for a place to put 'em. Considering the situation, this is probably the best-run system in the country. You've got enough violent offenders to populate a small city, and despite that, things go smoothly. Take initial processing, for example. When a guy comes in, we've got to find out if he's a member of a street gang or a prison gang to know where to put him. Some gangs coexist; others will rip each other apart on sight. Until recently we didn't even have a computer, but screwups were rare. If they weren't, there'd be blood in the halls, and last I checked, things still looked pretty yellow.'
'And blue.' I smiled.
'Right. School colours. Probably some urban planner's idea of what soothes the savage breast.' The phone rang. He picked it up, talked about moving Cochran from 7100 to 4500, made inquiries about a leg abscess on Lopez and Boutillier's need for twenty-four-hour nursing, put the receiver down, and stood up.
'If you're ready, we can check out the campus. Then I'll take you to see your client.'
He took me to the inpatient unit first - thirty-five isolation rooms set aside for inmates with profound psychiatric problems. Five were marked COED and had been set aside for women, but men occupied three of them. Visual access was provided through a mesh window in the door of each room. A scrap of paper identifying the prisoner was taped below the window. Some of the
I considered the notion of a thousand or so mentally disturbed felons cooped up without treatment and asked how long the average stay was.
'Usually it's days, not weeks. Again, it's a matter of processing; we have to move out as many as we move in or there'd be no place to put 'em. As is, we've got inmates sleeping on the roof in the summer and in the aisles when it cools down. Once in a while you come across someone who should have been released a month ago but wasn't because the paper work got lost and his lawyer was incompetent. Plenty of attorneys do a lot of screaming and filing of writs,
but they don't understand the system and end up causing more trouble for their clients.'
'Plenty but not all,' I said.
He smiled and clicked the Life Saver against his teeth.
'Two hours ago an order came down from on high to give you the grand tour. Now here we are. That should tell you something about Mr. Souza's influence.'
'I appreciate your spending the time.'
'No problem. Gives me a little respite from paper work.'
He chewed the candy and swallowed it, took another from the roll. The ensuing silence was punctuated by a loud scream, followed by several more. Several hard thumps vibrated the wall behind us - the slatted bench being pushed repeatedly against the plaster. More screams, a blizzard of running footsteps, the whisper of a scuffle, and all was calm. Montez had sat through it without moving a muscle.
'Back to lockup for Mark,' he said.
'The blond kid?'
'Yup. Comes up for trial next week. Seemed to be calming down. You never know.'
'What did he do?'
'Ate a lot of PCP and tried to decapitate his girlfriend.'
'A guy like that doesn't get locked in a cell?'
'He came in too disturbed and too pretty to be put on cellblock, too healthy for the infirmary. We have a thirty-five-room inpatient unit - isolation rooms for prisoners too iffy for general custody - and we stuck him there, but when he started to get lucid, we moved him out to make room for someone crazier and put him on the ward. Ward patients get to move around under supervision. He started to look a little "spacey this morning, so they cuffed him. Obviously he's' slipping again - pretty typical for a duster. He belongs back in isolation, but we've got no vacancies, so he'll have to go to a cellblock with twenty-four-hour lockup. If an empty room comes up, he'll be moved back here.'
'Sounds like juggling,' I said.
'With live grenades. But don't take that to mean it's a shlocky system. The public wants bad guys caught and put
away, but no one wants to pay for a place to put 'em. Considering the situation, this is probably the best-run system in the country. You've got enough violent offenders to populate a small city, and despite that, things go smoothly. Take initial processing, for example. When a guy comes in, we've got to find out if he's a member of a street gang or a prison gang to know where to put him. Some gangs coexist; others will rip each other apart on sight. Until recently we didn't even have a computer, but screwups were rare. If they weren't, there'd be blood in the halls, and last I checked, things still looked pretty yellow.'
'And blue.' I smiled.
'Right. School colours. Probably some urban planner's idea of what soothes the savage breast.' The phone rang. He picked it up, talked about moving Cochran from 7100 to 4500, made inquiries about a leg abscess on Lopez and Boutillier's need for twenty-four-hour nursing, put the receiver down, and stood up.
'If you're ready, we can check out the campus. Then I'll take you to see your client.'
He took me to the inpatient unit first - thirty-five isolation rooms set aside for inmates with profound psychiatric problems. Five were marked COED and had been set aside for women, but men occupied three of them. Visual access was provided through a mesh window in the door of each room. A scrap of paper identifying the prisoner was taped below the window. Some of the
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