The jail uses inmates to do quite a bit: they help make the food, they keep the areas clean, they do the laundry, they mop the floors… you get the idea. Not all inmates are allowed to work in jail though. Inmates are classified into different units, and if they do well (keep out of trouble, etc) they are allowed to become what we call an “Inmate Worker”.

This inmate worker status is fairly beneficial to the inmate because they get extra time off of their sentence. If they don’t get into trouble, the inmate will get an extra 1/6 off of their time. If an inmate is sentenced to 6 months, that means they would get a whole month off for being an inmate worker. In jail, a major bonus for them is they get double the food a non-worker would get. If the normal inmate gets one sandwich, the inmate worker gets two; if normal inmates get two sandwiches, they get four, etc, etc.

This is what happened today.

Today, I was eating lunch (we had just finished feeding the population) when I got a call from control. He told me that while the female laundry workers walked back to the laundry, they grabbed some food off of a spare cart in the hallway. WHAT!?

The officer told me that the cook had spotted it first, and let the control officer know, just in time to watch the second inmate worker swipe a couple bags of Cheez-its® and a sandwich. The control room officer told me that he listened to the girls after they returned to the laundry room, and heard one of them say, “That’s how I roll“, as she opened a bag of Cheez-its®.

I waited until my next round to confront the inmates.

I walked into the laundry room and told them that they knew what they did, and that they needed to pick out some greens (inmate workers wear blue). One of the workers looked at me like “What are you talking about, I can’t believe you would think I would do anything wrong”. I told her that I wasn’t going to say what it was she did. I knew what she did, and she did also. (I wasn’t going to explain what she already knew.)

The other inmate looked sheepishly guilty, so I pointed at her and asked if she knew what I was talking about. She said she did. I pointed out to the indignant inmate that if the other girl knew what I was talking about, she did too. Uh, duh…

So, I had them get some greens (what we call our normal jail clothes) and walked them back to their area. They asked me if I wanted them to put the food back. I told them no. I figured that they “paid” for it, they might as well get to keep them. I also figured that the sandwiches wouldn’t taste as good as they thought they would.

Just as I got to the door, I turned to them and said, “And that’s…. how WE roll.”

I could see a glint of a smile in each of their faces. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we had heard their conversation. Very little was said after that.

I know that the allure of breaking the rules is sometimes overwhelming. I know that sometimes there may even be a good reason for breaking said rules. This case just baffles me though. Each girl had full bags of food when I went to get them. They each had food left over from the last meal also. Why in the hell do anything that is possibly going to result in not getting out of jail as soon as humanly possible? They won’t get more time, but they won’t get all of their goodtime either. How stupid!

I guess this is an age old problem; Lack of forethought. Is it that easy to forget what got them there in the first place? Is it not a constant reminder to not forget to think before acting? I guess not. At least it wasn’t for these two girls. Jail sucks. If being in Jail doesn’t stop you from doing stupid things, then I don’t know what it’s going to take.