The Dry Cell

There is a special room up in Central that is termed the "Dry Cell." We keep it in reserve for idiots who we suspect have swallowed something or have introduced something into their digestive tract from the opposite direction.

The room is kept completely empty and thoroughly searched before the offender is put in there. He is put in a coverall that is duct taped shut at the wrists and ankles and placed in restraints with a belly chain, the black box to hold his wrists apart and a set of leg irons.

Then we set an officer right in front of the cell door to watch his every move and tell him "Whenever you are ready to give it up, let us know." And if he makes a move to reach inside the coverall at any time, he is pepper sprayed.

A nice little system. For us, anyway. Not so good for lieutenants or higher.

If the offender has to go to the bathroom, a little portable toilet with a plastic bag underneath is brought in and he gets to go in that. Afterwards, the lieutenant gets to search through it and see if we got anything.

It has to be a lieutenant or above, according to policy. Apparently, we COI's are too stupid to search poop.

It's not so bad being at the bottom, some times.

The downside, of course, is that there has to be an officer sitting in front of that cell at all times. Which means that we need extra bodies pulled from somewhere. They rotate people on two hour shifts from all over the camp to sit and watch this knucklehead.

What the hey, it beats working, ya know?

We had one knucklehead a few months ago down at the Hive that refused to be strip searched. Actively resisted and stated "You aint getting what I got!!"

So up to the dry cell he went. For four or five days.

And what was it that he was hiding?

Absolutely nothing.

Just wanted to be an a**hole, I guess.

One of those little gems about working in a prison that you don't hear much about.

P.S. As I predicted, staying at home for all this time is driving me crazy. I'm ready to go back to work so I'll have something to write about. I imagine by monday I'll be wishing I was back on vacation.