The first thing to make clear is the distinction between county jails and state prisons. This distinction is something I didn’t understand until spending time in a county jail. I have never been in state prison. County jails are designed to hold inmates temporarily or, in most cases, up to two years. Thus, people convicted of most misdemeanors spend their time in county jail. The other large population of inmates in county jail is those awaiting trial or sentencing because they could not afford or a judge denied bail. A small number are inmates from state prisons who are nearing the end of their sentence. It was never entirely clear why the department of corrections moved these inmates to a county jail, but I suspect it had to do with overcrowding. For some reason, they were not allowed to be cellmates with “county” inmates. I’m not sure if this was just the policy of Centre County or if it was statewide.
While I grew up within a couple of miles of a federal prison, I had never been detained or incarcerated in a jail or prison until these events unfolded. I think the closest I’d ever been to being in a prison was to get permission to pick up wood from Rockview State Prison, which is also in Centre County, to help heat the McBath Street house.
Being in jail was certainly overall a very negative experience. However, incarceration helped me tremendously with overcoming being a professional worrier. In jail, you have to give up worrying if your children and family are safe because there is no way to contact them regularly to know. This lack of contact was particularly bad for me with my children. After a few days of essentially being panicked because I didn’t know if they were okay, I had to force myself not to worry about it. I finally realized this didn’t mean that I didn’t care about them or love them. It just meant that I had no control over their wellbeing and had to assume Rita was taking good care of them. I learned in jail that I strangely equated loving someone with overly worrying about them. Initially, I felt very guilty when I found myself not worrying about the kids’ safety and realized that the guilt was because I thought I loved them less if I wasn’t worried about them all the time. I finally convinced myself that this wasn’t true and was able to decouple worry from love.
Most inmates I met were there for drug offenses, PFA violations, or repeated drunk driving offenses. There were, however, people there for much more severe crimes, including murder, rape, child pornography, and sexual abuse of children. I met people accused and later convicted of all of these offenses.
The jail where I spent my time was officially called the Centre County Correctional Facility (CCCF), but I will not use that name here. Calling it a “Correctional Facility” is one of the biggest misnomers I have ever encountered. There is essentially no attempt besides volunteer addiction treatment to correct anyone’s behavior. It seems like jail is a place to go to learn how to conduct your criminal behavior, so you’re less likely to get caught. I learned so much about illegal drugs while there; some of the inmates really should have been chemists. This education constantly reminded me of the quote from the movie Blow where Johnny Depp, playing George Jung, says, “Danbury (prison) wasn’t a prison, it was a crime school. I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a Doctorate of cocaine.”