Touring the Jail

One part of my job is meeting up with school tours and making sure they get to their correct destinations on time. I occassionally will go on the tour with them, just to hear if they're learning anything useful. The one tour I go on the most is the Jail Tour. We never toured our County Jail when I went through school. I never had a big desire to since my Uncle, who is a Corrections Officer, could tell me everything I never wanted to know about being incarcerated. I guess I get nervous that some prisoner will accost a student or that the class will get stuck in the tunnel that goes underneath the road from the Jail to the County Courthouse. Apparently, a class did get left in the tunnel one time and since the door leading to the tunnel on the Court-side was locked and out of the way, it was quite awhile before someone noticed them.

Today's class was small (seven high school students), but fairly inquisitive. One thing I hate about the tour is the smell. I now know what humanity, good or bad, smells like. It's not pretty. It's odd to walk in areas where it distinctly smells like prisoners and then get a whiff of the aftershave on one of the Corrections Officers. Little bits of reality and "normal" life filling your nostrils. I'm always glad to be done with that tour.