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Twelve broken payphones. That’s all of them.
Frustrating calls with soon-to-be-ex wives, questioning children, lawyers losing interest in appeals, and girlfriends giving bad news. The wall is streaked with black scuffmarks from the plastic handsets. The phones are screwed to the wall in a scarred, silent monolithic bank.
The prison can afford new payphones every six months.
The men just can’t control themselves. You can tell how well the inmates are doing or how close to overflow the population is by the number of broken phones.
All twelve were working once in 1993. That was a record. It was a great summer. The weather was an unbroken but mild stretch of sunny days. The men played cards, chatted softly, and the guards had no reason to act like guards. That was a great summer.
We got as high as eight working phones for a whole week in 98. Ironically, that was during a week of heavy rain. Everyone was so despondent from the unrelenting darkness and damp that phone calls seemed unimportant.
Right now, there are no phones working and we won’t get a new one for at least twenty days. The inmates are crowded three to a cell. There are only two beds in each room. There has been a casualty at ‘lights out’ twice in the last three days. It’s not pretty.
No phone calls means that we might be looking at a riot.
I can see the phones from my desk. I named them after every attendee of the Last Supper. It changes up, depending. Jesus is always the first one to be repaired and Judas is always the twelfth phone to break.
They’re looking at me now. Cables dangling at different lengths with exposed, colourful wires poking out blind from the silver cords. Every handset is missing. They scream silently with frustration. The prison has been turned up to eleven and there is no way for the inmates to call outside.
Out of hearing, out of mind. The prison has become their world now and it’s July and no one has any room. The prison is an oven. These are all men who are here because of their poor impulse control and anger issues.
The guards don’t wear their cel phones while they do their rounds right now and they have their pepper spray uncapped and good to go.
We’re all very tense. We’re all very silent.
Twelve broken payphones.
tags
Frustrating calls with soon-to-be-ex wives, questioning children, lawyers losing interest in appeals, and girlfriends giving bad news. The wall is streaked with black scuffmarks from the plastic handsets. The phones are screwed to the wall in a scarred, silent monolithic bank.
The prison can afford new payphones every six months.
The men just can’t control themselves. You can tell how well the inmates are doing or how close to overflow the population is by the number of broken phones.
All twelve were working once in 1993. That was a record. It was a great summer. The weather was an unbroken but mild stretch of sunny days. The men played cards, chatted softly, and the guards had no reason to act like guards. That was a great summer.
We got as high as eight working phones for a whole week in 98. Ironically, that was during a week of heavy rain. Everyone was so despondent from the unrelenting darkness and damp that phone calls seemed unimportant.
Right now, there are no phones working and we won’t get a new one for at least twenty days. The inmates are crowded three to a cell. There are only two beds in each room. There has been a casualty at ‘lights out’ twice in the last three days. It’s not pretty.
No phone calls means that we might be looking at a riot.
I can see the phones from my desk. I named them after every attendee of the Last Supper. It changes up, depending. Jesus is always the first one to be repaired and Judas is always the twelfth phone to break.
They’re looking at me now. Cables dangling at different lengths with exposed, colourful wires poking out blind from the silver cords. Every handset is missing. They scream silently with frustration. The prison has been turned up to eleven and there is no way for the inmates to call outside.
Out of hearing, out of mind. The prison has become their world now and it’s July and no one has any room. The prison is an oven. These are all men who are here because of their poor impulse control and anger issues.
The guards don’t wear their cel phones while they do their rounds right now and they have their pepper spray uncapped and good to go.
We’re all very tense. We’re all very silent.
Twelve broken payphones.
tags