Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics & Spirituality

The following is an excerpt from Charles Shaw's new book, "Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics, & Spirituality, by Charles Shaw" (2009, Reality Sandwich)

"Dead Time"

The Cook County Jail is part of the Cook County Department of Corrections, a sprawling 96-acre detention complex situated next to the Cook County Criminal Courts along California Avenue in Chicago's Lower West Side neighborhood. Most refer to it as "26th and Cal" even though the jail stretches all the way south to 32nd St, a distance of nearly a mile.

The first County jail in Chicago was built in 1871 on the now historical site of 26th Street and California Avenue scant months before the Great Chicago Fire. That building is long gone, replaced in 1929 by what is now the oldest remaining building in the complex, Division 1. This squat art-deco structure has over the years, they boast, held a fine pedigree of criminal luminaries including Al Capone and Frank Nitti, Tony "Big Tuna" Accardo, gang leaders Larry Hoover, Jeff Fort and Willie Lloyd, and serial killers Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy.

Between 1929 and 1995 the jail complex was expanded into eleven separate divisions that range from minimum security to super-max. Cook County is the largest single-site pre-trial detention facility in the United States (Los Angeles has a bigger overall county jail, but it is split into two separate facilities). CCDOC employs more than 3,000 correctional officers and support staff and admits over 100,000 detainees a year, more than twice that of the entire Illinois penitentiary system. The reported average daily inmate population is around 10,000. The real figure, however, is quite likely higher since, due to overcrowding, it is a regular practice to put a third man in a two-man cell, sleeping on the floor.

It is also one of the most controversial correctional facilities in the nation, referred to by inmate and officer alike as the "Crook County Department of Corruptions."

In recent years the jail has come under fire for overcrowding, violence, and, naturally, corruption. There have been all manner of federal and Grand Jury investigations, and plaintiff lawsuits, into excessive beatings and inmate deaths at the hands of correctional officers. And if they didn't already have enough bad PR to defuse, between 2005 and 2006 there were a series of high profile escapes.

In June of 2005 an inmate named Randy Rencher walked right out the front door wearing a correctional officer's uniform and proceeded to rob a series of Chicago banks, sparking a nationwide manhunt featured on America's Most Wanted. On February 10th of 2006, Warren Mathis became the first inmate to escape from the new Division 11 "Super Max" unit by hiding in a laundry truck. Two days later, six inmates were allowed to escape in what the Chicago Sun Times called "a plan to give a political advantage to a former jail supervisor [Thomas Dart] running for sheriff" by making then-Sheriff Michael Sheehan look incompetent. It worked. Rather than face defeat, Sheehan, who had been Sheriff for sixteen years, retired, making way for Dart (a Chicago Democrat) who took over in December of 2006.

Welcome to Chicago.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of being behind its walls knows all too well about the violence, corruption and squalor that characterizes this institution. Simply put, Cook County Jail is a harrowing, unforgettable experience for anyone. It is so awful that for many of its detainees a quick guilty plea and a trip to the penitentiary, even for twice as long, is preferable to staying in the County. It is the proverbial lesser of two evils.

Or at least that was how I saw it when I was arrested in March of 2005 for possession of fourteen capsules of MDMA and was facing one year in prison.