If you’ve ever had the occasion to go to Mobile Metro Jail, you know the scene. You travel east on Canal street; to the north on a crisp Fall day the city skyline in view gleams with promise and self assurance…When crossing under I-10 Canal Street wants to lead you to the left towards Water street, past the cruise terminal and towards downtown, but to get to Metro Jail one continues counterintuitively straight onto a potholed road flanked by garish signs of Bail Bond businesses….. “James Bond’s Bonds” one sign reads; “Bandit Bail Bonds”, another…one such business was housed in an old railway car… “Make Tracks Bail Bonds”, the sign hawked; there were dozens more…the Las Vegas strip in caricature in a world upside down….I knew the Jail was to the right because above this squalid landscape I could see coiled razor-wire. I followed a police car figuring our destinations to be the same. I had to park at the curb because the visitation parking lot was full…A vast city, Metro Jail…a vast city of the damned… I was there to see my old friend Gordon Sturges who used to do handy work around all Saints. I know him to be a good man, a good man fallen from grace, arrested for armed robbery and kidnapping. He’s in big trouble. I had an appointment to see him at 10:00 a.m. I was the only visitor on his pre-approved list.
The waiting room was full of people, mostly women and their children, this world all too familiar to them I thought. The nine-thirty appointment people were ushered out of the visiting hall…and we with ten o’clock appointments were ushered in with the perfunctory instructions….instructions which the corporal has issued I presumed every day for many a year…no firearms, no cell phones, no sharp objects, only your car keys…Like a tenured airline stewardess she rattled off by rote our instructions…We had to present our IDs and our phone numbers…Gordon’s stall was at the end of the hall….I walked past despairing faces, faces drawn and perplexed…Gordon and I like the others talked to each other by phone through soundproof, bullet proof glass, just like you see on T.V. When Gordon saw me he wept…said he felt so ashamed…I had brought oil for anointing, but that was not to be since there is no way to touch…A shame I thought…probably what they need the most. He asked about Katharine and folks he knew at All Saints…I told him we send our love and prayers…He said I’m going to need all of that….finally he said I guess I’m going to have to just trust God in this…I said I guess I will too….We touched our hands against the glass and we parted and I walked past the others of the lost…. one asking about the baby… “have you talked to mama…does she know?” These tortured faces open for any sign of hope that might come their way….there were many sighs and many tears down that hall….perhaps that is where God is in the godforsaken places of the world…in the sighs and in the tears.
I walked to my car parked in front of New life Bail Bonds. I could hear in the distance over near the container docks or in a shipyard a pounding rhythmic thud….a metronomic metallic sound that excited the morning air…perhaps some dark heart that moves the brute and wrong blood through this nether world….I passed vacant lots overgrown with weeds and sedge littered with twisted and torn corrugated metal…artwork of this dark world reminding it of its darkness, lest it needed reminding…past buildings gone derelict, rusting equipment lying fallow for perhaps a generation or two… an artifact of some ancient enterprise towards some hopeful commerce failed or forgotten…I returned to Water Street and to town… back upon the earth’s crust…I was relieved and saddened, saddened still.
I’ve got to believe, for my soul’s sake, that God inhabits that world, that God is among the twisted wreckage that has always lived along side of us, invisible, but nearer than we think….that haunted and harried world lost from our sight. I couldn’t help but hear on my taking leave from the visitation hall words of love, and words of hope from the families and friends who love these desperate ones, these fallen among us…Oh that those words would take root and grow…I guess I’m just going to have to trust God about that….I must….We must.
How grim, how sad, how pitiful, and how true!
All the jabber about “corrections” or “retraining” or “improvement” is phoney and self-serving. Inmates in most “correctional” institutions aren’t even supplied with soap or toothpaste. They can’t be assigned to work, in most cases; there is little or no schooling. Many spend their days staring blankly at whatever comes in via television – game shows, “reality” shows (whose reality?) or whatever the corrections officers want to see.
None of this is going to change any time soon, imho. The corrections business is big business. The leaders in this “industry” have powerful lobbying organizations with easy access to “our” lawmakers at all levels. The corporation which can offer the lowest cost per inmate gets the contract; the lawmakers boast about how much taxpayers’ money is being saved, and life goes on . . .
Next time you are invited to go caroling or visiting at your local jail or your friendly local prison, Go! Pray with the inmates, entertain the inmates, but look around you.
mmg/