Jailhouse Blues

On the tour through the Hillsborough County Jail, I found myself very interested when the tour guide, Officer Scott Smith, reached the confinement area. Although, Smith covered the entire jail including the booking area and the psychiatric ward, just to mention a few, I still found myself strangely draw to this small area of living space.

Misbehavior can cause an inmate to receive confinement. How does their behavior get determined into whether they receive confinement? The jail system at Hillsborough has what is called Administrative Hearings. These particular hearings not only decide whether they receive confinement, but also how many days an inmate will spend in their new home. And some inmates can get up to 30 days.

Because this area of living is filled with misbehaved adults, the officers on duty increase. In population, or the common area of inmates, there is one officer per 72 inmates. But in confinement, there are three officers per 64 inmates.

Smith states that inmates could spend up to 22 hours in solitaire confinement. I would defiantly have the jailhouse blues if I had to be by myself for that long. Also, if inmates wanted magazines they would have to get them from the publisher. You and a magazine seem pretty lonely.

Smith continues to explain that the officers on duty have to know what restrictions each inmate has in order for the officer to be safe. An example of this would the magazine that is issued. If an inmate is under suicide watch, the officers have to be aware of this because the inmate may take out the staples and poke out their eyes.

“There is a book with why they are in confinement,” said Smith.

So I went to the Internet to do some research to get some more details about these four white walls and this intimate book of the inmates. I found a Web-site about the Florida Department of Corrections that had some exceptionally interesting data under the “FAQs” tab.

Confinement is also called “Closed Management”. The definition of closed management according to the Web-site is “designed to house inmates who commit acts that threaten the safety of others, threaten the security of the institution, or demonstrate an inability to live in the general population without abusing the rights and privileges of others.”

I also learned that there are three different levels of closed confinement, CM I, CM II, CM III. One is having the most extreme security and three being the least.

In conclusion, my research turned up some more very interesting questions such as what is the difference between jail and prison, and what are the gangs like in prison. The Web-site has some great information and I’m lucky that I can find this knowledge through Web-sites like these; otherwise I would have jailhouse blues.