posted by catherine / March 14, 2006 /
5 comments /
...sort of. rather, my last legal reporting assignment for the quarter was to visit, with my class and instructor, the metropolitan correctional center in chicago, the federal facility right downtown (next to the sears tower, in fact). it's designed to hold inmates before and while they need to appear in federal courts before their acquittal or sentencing. we all went on a funtimes tour with the warden, and i learned several interesting things. lucky for you, i will now relay them in educational bullet points. yes, you get catherine's wise lesson on federal prisons for the day:
the warden, while a very nice and intelligent man, dresses like regis philbin circa "who wants to be a millionaire." this is disconcerting.
the MCC is triangular and, though rather ugly, kind of looks like somebody put some sort of architectural thought into designing it. which, for what is essentially a prison, is disconcerting.
the MCC is 26 floors. the very top floor is an outdoor roof recreation area with a very nice view of the lake. each unit of inmates, 88 to every unit, gets to go outside for an hour every day. on the roof there is a volleyball net and a couple of basketball hoops. the area is covered with barbed wire on the walls and a wire netting over top. my first thought as to why the wire was there? something along the lines of, that makes sense, if a basketball were misshot and went over the wall and fell 26 floors, that could, uh, kill somebody. but no. the real reason is that once, somewhere, in real life, a couple of inmates escaped from a jail by helicopter. this also happened in some 80s movie. and thus the federal government was scared into covering outdoor roofs with wire. maybe not a terrible idea. also, along one side of the triangular roof area, the openings are covered by tarps so that you can't see the buildings next door. the reason for this? apparently a few years back, the facility staff discovered that "ladies," paid by some unknown angel funder, were "putting on shows" from the parking lot across the street every week at a designated hour. but the tarps put an end to that.
according to an inmate on floor 24, i have an "apple bottom." thanks.
the crepes of wrath is a featured book in the prison library. plot summary? "Just desserts? Lizzie Mast was the world's worst cook--there's little doubt about that in the chatty town of Hernia, Pennsylvania. So when someone kills her with a bad batch of crepes, most folks think she got what she deserved."
indeed.
in fact, most of the books in the prison libraries are masterful mystery/murder thrillers. should we really be teaching people accused of everything from mail fraud to murder how to execute cunning if improbable criminal plots? i mean, just think of the terror a david baldacci book could unleash in the real world.
according to the warden, the difference between the male and female inmates is as follows: "you get lots of fights with the men, they'll beat each other up, but a few weeks later they'll send a note saying it's over, you won, whatever. with the females, in january, they'll have a fight over some cookies: 'hey, you've got three cookies, and i've only got two, and why you give that other cookie to your friend instead of me?' come july, they're still fighting about the damn cookies."
well, i'm now a prison expert after my hour and a half tour, so feel free to shoot any inquiries my way.
