“Really Bad Day: Corrigan Prison (Part 6)”

The prison was extremely intimidating. The fences were at least twelve feet high, with loops of razor wire (an extremely unfriendly variation of barbed wire) at shoulder level and on the top of the fences. At least one rifle-toting prison guard patrolled the inside of the fences.

My first thought -- after realizing how intimidated I felt -- was, "I can't believe they made him stay here over night because of tickets and failure to appear in court."

The prison grounds weren't very well marked... I had no idea where I was supposed to go, so I let Shane guide me. We drove around to the side, and into a caged area with fencing and razor wire to left, right, forward (a gate), and above. This felt wrong, but there was an intercom system there and that's how (he said) we were supposed to communicate with them. "There are cameras all over, they know we're here, just wait a sec."

A police van came flying through the parking lot and pulled up to our bumper, so that we were trapped. A voice said through the intercom, "What do you want?" Shane answered that he wanted to pick up his belongings, and the voice said, "Yeah right!"

This wasn't going well at all.

One of the officers from the van came up to my window, and asked what I wanted. I explained, and he relaxed. "This is only for prisoner dropoff. You need to go to the front, over there." He got back in the van and let us out. There still weren't any signs, but he'd pointed to where we needed to go, and I found it.

While Shane was picking up his stuff, I talked to an off-duty guard who was waiting for his wife to "punch out" so they could go home. I told him how intimidating the place was, and that I couldn't believe Shane had stayed there over night for missing a hearing for a couple of tickets. He was a little surprised that they wouldn't have found somewhere else to put him, as this was a medium-security facility with murderers, rapists, etc. "Sometimes they send the relatively innocent ones here to scare them."

I mentioned that Shane had been in "solitary" over night, and he said we should be thankful for that. They do that with the "over-nighters" to keep them safe from the other prisoners! Good point. He (the guard) said that his brother-in-law had stayed there over night after being arrested for a first-time DUI, but this was before they put you in solitary. He'd been "roughed up" by his cellmate, but "hand't drank much since."

Shane finally came back out, and we high-tailed it out of there, headed for Worcestor.

Continued: Worcestor and Back