The Chair, for all the hype, really was not so imposing. A simple metal chair with several straps tucked into a corner of the Lane County Jail serves as the last resort in suicide prevention.
As he led me on a tour of the jail, Capt. Doug Hooley explained that several hundred inmates attempt suicide every year. If a person scores high for suicide risk when entering the jail, he or she is put on suicide watch, in a small room off the yellow cinderblock hallway of the segregation area Two or more staff may stand watch constantly to intervene. If necessary, the staff will take everything away, even the person’s jail-issued clothes.
I already had one near miss when men returning from court were readmitted and strip searched as I was passing through with the captain. “Naked guy!” a deputy had shouted. Then Hooley had said, “Try to stay close to me — just in case …” I stuck close and chattered nervously, hoping he would not hold a grudge about the delay in re-opening the jail beds this May.
In the women’s dormitory, a plump African-American woman wrenched a comb through a young white woman’s long blond hair. The recipient of these ministrations reminded me of one of the girls in my Baltimore elementary school — her eyes slanty from the tight braid, and stony against the pain. Unlike the men, the other dozen women clustered around the action at the table, talking softly in the vast common area.
“Modern jails don’t even have these clear walls separating the jail staff from the inmates in the main dormitory,” he said.
“Wouldn’t that be more dangerous for the staff?” I gestured at two not particularly tough looking deputies sat in the control area, observing the inmates behind the window.
“Actually, no. By taking down the walls, we have more mixing with the inmates, and more opportunity for role modeling and developing relationships.” Few people change without a relationship with someone who supports them. But in a jail?
“Of course, if you asked one of the guys who worked in this kind of jail for 20 years, they’d be pretty against it. Having those walls between them make you think you need them,” he added.
Through the tour, Hooley gently made his case for the recently funded 84 jail beds, what services they could offer with funding for another 72 beds: more medical staff to assist the diabetics; a nurse practitioner; dentists to pull teeth; more mental health specialists to help disturbed inmates get stable and ready to consider change, not to mention more safety for everyone. Maybe fewer suicide attempts?
I would do a lot to avoid spending one minute in the jail as an inmate, yet dozens of people check in every day. Many looked fairly comfortable, as though some time inside a concrete cage was routine. Something in their social environment has to explain this.
I was a little afraid for the staff, too. Even with training, how could one survive, with basic values intact, a lifetime of having to control others, even to the point of strapping them to a chair to force them to continue living?
This is the first in an occasional series about Lane County government, as experienced by Lane County Budget Committee member Rose Wilde. She speaks only for herself.