“There Were More Drugs In That Small Yard Than There Probably Were In The 10 Mile Radius Of The Jail”

February 10, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

An 18-year-old in Arizona was arrested for a DUI and wound up in Joe Arpaio’s Tent City jail compound, the Sheriff’s  self-described “concentration camp” for those awaiting trial, many of of whom are made to wear pink underwear and all of whom sweat it out in desert heat. The teen just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Tent City, what’s that?

Answer:

It’s jail, but you’re outside in these big military style tents with bunk beds. In Phoenix, and I was there in the summer; So needless to say it gets pretty toasty. They pay more for their dog food than they do for their inmate food apparently.

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Question:

You said it was easy to get drugs. How did they get in? How much did they cost?

Answer:

Not too sure on prices since I didn’t do any of them, but I know they were seriously close to street prices if not a small premium. Got offered to smoke spice (which they called “chicken.” funny story on how I figured that one out.) for free.

I witnessed some guy next to my bunk get hooked on pills, “lose” his wallet and was just a whole mess and came out with an addiction he didn’t come in with.

On the way in they said cigarettes are against the rules but the guard said “if you pay more than $2 each though, you’re getting ripped off” which I laughed at.) Anyway, this guy got caught smoking and if you get caught they make you clean up trash or something like that for an hour or two.

He was walking by asking us if we had some trash, and word for word this is what he said “Got any trash?…[looks around a tiny bit]. Want some morphine?” Someone next to me sounded interested (i just said, Nah man, no thanks) and asked what it was like and he related it to heroin. He’s like “you want some man–I got it on me right now”.

There was more drugs in that small yard than there probably were in the 10 mile radius of the jail…seriously.

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Question:

Did you wear the pink underwear?

 

Answer:

Nope!

There’s two totally separate areas. The “N-yard” which is for the inmates who committed more serious crimes and were there for longer. They had the striped jumpsuit and pink underwear, etc. They had to change in front of everyone on the processing in as well (get naked in front of like 20 dudes).

Luckily, being my first offense and I “had a job” (work for myself, Judge was pretty lenient since it was a first offense..ever.. for me), I got what’s called Work Release.

Work Release means on the weekdays, I got to leave at 7am and had to be be back by 7pm to spend the night there. You had to spend the whole weekends there as well (60 hours total). But you also got to wear your civilian clothes, and that alone was quite awesome. Thank god.

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Question:

What was the weirdest thing you learned? 

Answer:

Um, the weirdest thing I learned from the whole experience was that you could cook a burrito in the lint catcher of a dryer. 

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