To begin with, let’s get our terminology correct. Jail is where one is sent prior to being sentenced. Generally, people are only in jail from the time of their arrest until they are released on whatever bail requirements are set. So I never spent any time in jail. I was arrested and released both times conditional on meeting some basic requirements. After you are sentenced, you are serving a prison sentence. If your sentence is under a year, you will often serve out your prison sentence in a county jail. My husband always refers to it as my time in prison. We’ve jumbled up the two terms so much now that few people understand that a prison sentence need not be spent in a facility called a “prison.”

My three-month sentence was useless and meaningless to me. I learned no lesson except that our criminal justice system is a hot mess. From the moment you are led out of that courtroom and handcuffed and shackled in a room with other men and women, you lose your humanity. You essentially have no say or choice in anything. I was a mess, of course, and sobbed through the hours spent in that room up through the short van ride to Wayne County Correctional Facility (WCCF).

Many of those in that room were in court for hearings from WCCF and went back to their cell blocks. I was new, so I was processed. That, of course means a full body check, which fortunately, as a former nurse didn’t bother me at all. Which is just as well, because modesty is not a commodity you can afford. I was given the regulation marigold yellow uniform and brown underwear (seriously), socks and slip-on sneakers. I signed off on my property. I had given my husband everything but my clothing in court in anticipation of this. I was asked a lot of questions. I swabbed my mouth to collect my DNA, which is permanently in a national database now. I believe I was fingerprinted again.

I believe that, normally, one is held for a few hours to a day prior to being placed into general population, but I was a problem. I had been born in Switzerland, where, at the time, it had been routine to vaccinate for the most common strain of TB, which was not done in the U.S. That meant I always showed up positive because I had developed the antibodies as an infant. So I could not be tested for TB in the usual manner. For people like me, it’s standard to receive a chest X-ray instead.

Because I was an inmate, it took five days for my chest X-ray to be taken and read. I was briefly led into one of the isolation rooms in one of the cell blocks, but was shortly moved to an isolation room outside the nurses’ station for the five days. I knew the company that performed the X-ray; I had used it many times while working, and it typically would have the X-ray taken and read within a day.

I could not make or receive phone calls or leave the cell for any reason. I was fine, really. I knew my family must be terribly worried—as they were—but I had already given in to the inevitable. It was going to be three months as a nonentity. No point in fighting it. I slept most of it. There were no windows or clocks. I knew time only by the meal deliveries. I had a toilet and a shower.

The correctional officers (CO’s) were kind. They asked what I liked to read and did their best to pick out books for me. So I read what I was given. There was some comic relief the first morning. I awoke to about five people staring at me. I had no idea what was going on. One of the more official looking men carefully asked if I spoke English and understood where I was or something to that effect. I was groggy and thought they must all be insane. I had already been there for nearly a day and spoken to any number of staff. So half asleep I simply said “Well, I have a BA in English.” And then they all just kind of looked at me and dispersed. Someone had apparently noted only that I had been born outside the U.S. and made the assumption I might not speak English, or at least not well. I asked the CO who had processed me about that later, and she just smiled and shook her head and said she had told them my English was just fine; but her word apparently was not enough.

Outside of not being able to contact my family, I would have gladly served out my three months where I was. I am an introvert. I can do just fine with minimal human interaction. But the assumption was that I was likely going stir crazy in there and was anxious for human interaction, and, finally, I was told to pack up my things in the cardboard box we were all issued for our personal items, and moved in with the general population (GP).

Once one is placed in GP, life follows a routine that rarely changes. Breakfast at 6:30. Lunch at 11:30. Dinner at 4:30. And that was it. I had considered that there may be a way to continue running in some form while there, but the yard was about the size of my living room, with high walls. It was less depressing to simply stay in.

The most difficult part of life for me those first two weeks was actually the lack of coffee. It was not served with breakfast and needed to be bought through the commissary. Friends and family could put funds into your commissary account via money order only. This made it possible to buy instant coffee and tea and snacks and extra clothing. I had entered the jail at the wrong time and missed the weekly commissary order, so it took two weeks of waiting for that. If you had no friends or family to send you money, you were given basic toiletries as well as a number of stamps, pencils and paper. The showers were fine, and you could shower whenever you wanted. Laundry was Saturday mornings. You just had to throw all your laundry into a bag and then reclaim it later. We were given the opportunity to shave twice a week, I believe. Razors were dispensed and then collected and counted after an hour or so. As for toileting, the dorms had more private facilities with curtains, but the cells did not.

Nearly everyone was on medication. Meds were dispensed three times a day. You stood in line. Took your meds from the nurse, swallowed them, and then opened your mouth so the nurse could see the medication had been taken. No narcotics or what would medically be known as scheduled medications were dispensed, even if prescribed by your physician. So no Xanax or painkillers stronger than ibuprofen, regardless of your medical situation. This included those who were going through detox.

One friend of mine came into the jail several days after me, drunk—a violation of her probation. Her detox was relatively uneventful, but detoxing from alcohol is particularly dangerous. I recently spoke to a woman I know who had been incarcerated for fencing jewelry for heroin. While it was made known to staff that she had a pretty serious habit, her detox simply had her confined to the same room I had been in while quarantined near the nurses’ station. No comfort measures were provided, and when she wanted to shower, she found her soap and shampoo taken from her cell so she wouldn’t consume them. She was on suicide watch, which she claims was also nonsense. I had seen people detoxing in the hospital and do not believe that proper precautions and comfort measures were provided for these women.

Phone calls could be outgoing only and cost a fortune. Your calls would be announced via a recording to the person who were calling, and they needed to accept it. The phone calls are a racket unto themselves, and currently the monopoly that handles nearly all of the jail and prison phone systems was charging up to $14/minute. This issue has finally come to the attention of the government, so ideally this will be altered.

I eventually bought a personal radio that received exactly two stations. Reading material could only be received directly from a supplier, such as Amazon. My husband sent me books and crossword puzzles. There was also a jail library, and the book cart went to the various cell blocks. The variety was sometimes surprising. There were games available in the cell blocks as well. I always had reading material as well as writing. My husband wrote to me every night. It was noted that my name was called every day when mail was distributed. This was rare. Also noted was the fact that I always had visitors. There were two a week, if I recall. Visits were through plexiglass and via a wall mounted phone—just like on TV. My mother and eldest daughter came during the week and my husband Saturday mornings. I was lucky. Only one other woman had that kind of support. Many of these women were around my age. I was the only one married, who owned a car and a house and had a stable home life.

[The next installment of The Addict Next Door will go beyond the routine and into the particulars of my stay: the people and events of my three months there; women—fellow inmates—who, it turned out, are very, very different from most of the common conception of women who commit crimes. Like me, for example. These are stories that are worth telling, and I’m happy to give them life.]