Snohomish County Jail

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Pre-sentencing

Interview with Jon, Sabrina, Ronchie Boy and Justin

JM: Tell us about the pre-sentencing process:
Jon: The 1st court apperance I had was in Video court. Your jammed packed in a room a lot of people, and most of them smell. I was later bailed and returned to jail for a commitment
Sabrina: it was pretty horrible, i have never been in trouble before and considering the circumstances i was arrested under i should have been abile to keep my clean record. i was pushed and shoved my the arresting officers (i am tiny) i can say i will not ever again feel ok about a police officer...my police report was so far from the truth, i ended up in the hole for over a day due to the lies. there was many whitnesses to test to my side of the story but still the officers took statements from whitness's that did not whitness the actuall crime. i was being treated as if i had commited a mass murder...i can only now laugh at how horrible the justice system is
Ronchie Boy: I didn't have one I had an outstanding warrant for non compliance with a DUI. I explained why I never went to treatment for it and it's been 8 years. The judge gave me 90 days
Justin: I was ordered to serve a day in Snohomish county jail as part of the mandatory minimum for a DUI. My paperwork said to be at corrections at 7pm. No instruction - just an address and a time. I got there at 6:45 just to be safe. I checked in with the information desk and sat down and waited for 45 minutes. By this time 2 girls and another guy had shown up and we were told to go round the building and ring a buzzer, which we did. A male officer brought us inside and wrote our (mostly misspelled) last names on brown paper grocery store bags and told us to put everything inside that wasn't clothing or shoes. He padded me and the other guy down pretty thoroughly -the girls got cuffed (had the officer been female she would have searched the girls and we would have been cuffed.) We were then instructed to keep our hands out of our pockets and walk single file ahead of him to the reception room. Girls, do not talk to guys and vice-versa during processing. Stage one: take off socks, show bottom of feet, officer checks socks and returns them with a pair of standard issue plastic sandals. Suddenly I heard a girl scream at the top of her lungs. I looked around, only to find that I seemed to be the only one in the room of at least 25 people who had even heard it. No one so much as glanced up, including the new detainees. "Wow," I thought. We were then called individually in 10 minute intervals to walk through a metal detector and enter the scary room: strip search and change. I took off all my clothes and faced the officer as instructed. "Lift up so I can see" he said gesturing toward my genitals. I complied. "Turn around spread your cheeks and cough hard." I did. I was then given the "uniform": green and white horizontally striped shirt and grey pants. The reception room was busy. There's a constant stream of detainees coming in at any given time. Some of them on warrants, some having just committed a crime. The room is lined with holding cells and in the center is the reception area with a bunch of officers sitting at terminals. After my strip search I was led to one of them and answered an exhaustive number of questions that seemed to be designed to ensure my identity. Next I was put into a very small holding cell with 6 other guys. It was all concrete with a toilet in the corner and concrete benches on either side. Two very rough looking dudes wasted no time lying down on the benches and shutting their eyes. This meant that 2 guys had to stand. No big deal though, because the two guys who stood wanted to anyway. They were window people. They commentated and asked rhetorical questions aloud about the general scene outside as they took turns putting their heads up to the small window on the steel door. The girl screamed again. "I wonder what SHE's on. Oh, they got her in a straight jacket... look, look" one said to the other. He looked "yup". Everything is done alphabetically in the courts and in jail too. My last name meant I waited a lot. It was about an hour and a half before I got out of the holding cell to be officially booked. I answered another long string of questions and then had both of my hands scanned by a computer in every conceivable position. I asked how my life- line looked. My funny question was not acknowledged. My mug shots were taken and a wrist band put on which had my mug shot on it with some basic information. Back to the next stage of holding cells for an hour. Same deal as the first. Finally at around 10 pm an officer lead us out single file into a corridor where we picked up a plastic tray containing an "Inmate Orientation Handbook", two blankets, two sheets, sample-sized toothpaste, soap, shampoo, shaving cream and a 2 inch toothbrush. Two elevators and several long hallways of orderly-single-file-and-to-the-right walking led us to our cell block's staging room. The module deputy padded each of us down thoroughly and looked at our paperwork. He turned out to be a really cool guy. He saw that I was just in for a day and I must have looked a little freaked because he said "it's not so bad in here" and patted me on the shoulder. He looked at his chart of cells on the wall and said "I'm going to make it easy for you and give you an empty cell. Someone else may end up in the top bunk tonight or tomorrow though." I smiled and thanked him. He pointed at the cell and said the number and I went in and closed the door. I never really knew exactly what a cell block is. It is basically a big cube. There are two floors and the center of the cube is hollow. At the entrance on the first level is the staging area and inside is the module deputy's desk. He sits dead center with counter space on the sides. On the second level above this area are showers. On the first floor of the opposite wall is a door to an open air area. This area is also two levels - the lower level walls are concrete and the upper level is vented upward so that, while air flows freely and you can see the sky, from the outside you can't see in. It's just wide enough to walk back and forth around the perimeter to stretch out your legs. The rest of the cube walls are all cells. About 8 cells per wall on both levels, each with a steel door with a small window, a bunk bed, steel toilet and a concrete counter and stool. There were about 45 or 50 inmates there. This is a "classification block". No one is in these blocks for more than 72 hours. Everyone goes to one of these first. The next stop may be the general population blocks, a judge (and possibly back through the whole process again), or in my case freedom. I made my bed, which must be made at all times when not occupied. The mattress is just a pad about 2" thick. There are no pillows so I rolled one of my blankets up to use as one. It turns out that this is against the rules. I decided I would break that rule until I got busted. The rest of the inmates were milling about in the general area until 10:30 when lockdown was called. "Lockdown: 1.) You are to immediately go to your cell when lockdown is announced. In the event your cell door is locked, you are to stand and face the wall in front of your cell until the door is unlocked and you may enter." Lockdown is in effect after 10:30 pm through morning and throughout the day for various reasons. Some of these reasons are mandated by the rules, the rest are at the discretion of the module deputy. While I was there it worked out to about 60% lockdown. I peeked out the window to get a feel for where I was and saw several people doing the same thing. But I was just peeking - they were window people and would be there each time I looked out. Then I laid in the bed, unable to sleep for about 6 hours. It's hard to describe what it's like to have absolutely nothing to distract yourself with. I knew the 23 page Orientation pamphlet inside and out within an hour and a half. By the third I knew that, although all of the products in my bin contained the word "Fresh", the only item that didn't come from the same Chinese supplier was the "Amero-Fresh" shaving cream. The one good thing I will say about the experience is that it really leaves you with just your mind for a while. Thoughts begin to take on a new dimension. You can't write them down because there's no pen and paper... if you want to pass the time thinking, you need to become orderly about it... you have to keep your train of thought and use both your short and long term memory in the process. Otherwise it's just random crap and it feels kind of crazy after a few hours.

JM: Did you have police stop by your house for questioning? If not please give us details on how you came to be arrested.
Jon: No
Sabrina: No absolutly not
Ronchie Boy: nope, I was arrested for an outstanding warrant.
Justin: I finally fell asleep around 5am. 6:30 - the sound of all the doors electronically jolting unlocked in a long series woke me up. Breakfast. Two hard boiled eggs and some potatoes, grits, and bread. It was gross but I ate some of it for something to do. Lunch was some unidentifiable meat in overcooked noodles. The meals sucked in a way which said "we worked very hard to make this perfectly edible, nutritious food taste like jail." But the inmates sit there trading it among themselves (against the rules) like it's crack. I got the feeling they just missed making deals behind the man's back. I did get a roomie. He was brought in because, after he was pulled over for a traffic violation, it was discovered that he had a warrant for his arrest for failure to appear in court on a shoplifting charge. He didn't make it to court because his car had been impounded he said. And that's a fact. And this was $10 worth of Chinese food from Safeway after all so he hoped to get off with time served. King County jail is his favorite. He also told me that it's bad when you first get in, but then you get into a groove for a while and time passes. You read lots of books (we had a choice of a single book - 140 accounts of miscarriage by women who'd had them. Pass.) Then when you're down to just a few days left it gets really bad again. You want the time to just pass but the more you let that feeling in the slower it goes. I liked him. He was a nice guy and I felt sorry for his lot in life. He said he was an addict... I assume heroine. He said this time he's staying clean for sure... he's too tired and he doesn't have time to live the way he's been living. At dinner time people put more books on the shelf and I managed to score a mystery novel about archeologists that had great reviews. It was well written. That made a huge difference. It was weird but, while I knew I would be let out late, I was still counting down to 7pm. I knew it'd be 8 or 9... they get to you when they get to you. (The guy booking me had said "ok, we'll be up to get you tomorrow night at 6:45 ish." He'd enjoyed his little joke and I got the message.) For some reason I just wanted to get to 7:00. When it came and went I was no longer watching the clock and I just read and patiently waited until our module deputy went above and beyond and took 6 of us down on his break at 9pm. Every little moment of the half hour release process was an indescribable joy. Even after just a day. Everyone was giddy getting their possessions back, putting on their clothes and eventually being led into an airlock kind of corridor. After the inner door was secured came the beautiful sound of the electronic release of the outer door. I hope I never see the inside of another jail.

JM: What as court like? Please give as many details as you recall.
Jon: It was verry impersonal and kinda dehumanising
Sabrina: very aweful, my lawyer was more condernd about his relaitionship with the judge than my case. my judge was completly byist and as court would go on and on he would become irritated over unnessicary things during court. my judge also refused to give me a continuence for my fathers death, so on the day of his funual i was standing infront of that same judge that gave the 10 criminals before me a continuence.
Ronchie Boy: It lasted less than 3 minutes. I told the Judge I just wanted to be sentenced and that was that. I had already been in for a week waiting to see a judge.