Thursday, January 8, 2009

Going to Jail

Not me, but a dear friend of ours. We knew there was a chance of this, but there was a motion to suppress evidence from an illegal search, and the judge had ruled in favor of the defense on a similar case recently. Not this time, though.
Finding out was like a block of ice in the pit of my stomach--and that was just me. I hate to even think about how she felt when her lawyer called: "Next time you come out here, you need to be prepared to stay for 30 to 60 days." Yeah, well, staying isn't the problem. I happened to have been reading a legal novel in which the main character went to jail and was traumatized by the experience. The problem is the body cavity search (which would be "sexual assault" in other contexts), it's not being able to bring books, it's not having any choice about who's sleeping in the cell with you, it's people watching you shower and use the toilet, it's wondering every day whether you will get stabbed or beaten up, it's not having any choice about what you do, or when, or what you wear, or anything else. I know the author of that legal novel researched the Virginia Beach jail; hopefully the one our friend will actually be going to, in a small resort town, is better.
And she's not going to somewhere nearby, where at least we could visit every day; it's in Utah, with none of her friends or family nearby.

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