A Day In The Life

Without Warning

One day I was working in this fabulous housing unit inside a prison somewhere. In the morning and in the afternoon during the week, we do a census check. Basically we check that those who are supposed to be at work are. So here it is, time for the morning census.

For the census, the inmates are not necessarily locked in their cells, but they are instructed to return to them in order for the officer to complete the check. So I walk out into the middle of the unit and announce census. The inmates start moving toward their cells.

Well, most of them.

I am standing in the middle of the unit waiting for all the inmates to take their places. But there is one inmate who I still sitting in front of a computer sending email. I walk over and tell him again that it is census. He tells me I can wait. His email is more important than census.

Um... no.

Again I tell him to return to his cell and he slowly walks to his cell, mumbling under his breath.

I begin my census. About 2/3 of the way done I come to a cell and no one is there. That's when an inmate comes running up. I ask him where he was and he tells me he was on the phone.

Really?

He wasn't on the phone when I started. He must have gone down to the phones when I was doing census and when no one should be moving.

Two cells down, the same thing happens. Except that inmate comes running out of the shower. Where he was not when I began the check.

I said nothing. I just finished my census.

Then I wrote them each incident reports.

I sent the reports to the lieutenant who calls for them at lunch. They go down to the lieutenants office and receive their reports.

Apparently they were stunned.

They come back and and ask me why I didn't give them a warning.

I inform them they had warning. None of them were new and were well aware of the rules. We do census twice a day every weekday. It's not like it was a surprise. And finally, I asked them to return to their cells and they refused.

They didn't get it. They went on and on about how they should have been warned.

Oh well.