Not Guilty!

Not this time, anyway. I definitely didn't do it.

One of the things that we take very very seriously in the prison is count. And when the count gets screwed up, somebody is taking one in the shorts for it. If it's an offender screwing around and messing up count, he gets locked up for it. If it's an officer, he gets chewed out for it.

If our count is screwed up for too long, we are supposed to notify the local sheriffs department that we may have a problem. That is how serious we take it.

Normally, our 4:30 count takes twenty minutes. Twenty five if things are hectic. After almost forty minutes when they called and said send all of the workers back to their houses, I knew we had a problem somewhere and I fervently hoped someone was not missing for real. I didn't want to be there all night long.

It wasn't me and no, nobody was really missing.

It seems that around two this afternoon they told some guy over in a house on B-side that he was moving to A-side. To which he replied "F*ck if I am! I aint going!" And they locked him up.

But apparently they never told whoever was doing the room moves in the computer that he was getting locked up and they moved him anyway.

So in the little virtual world of the computer, we suddenly had one more inmate than we actually did.

And let me tell you what, that sort of thing will give someone who works in a prison some serious ulcers.

I was on the phone with Vinnie up in the Control center when he figured it out. The conversation went something like this:
Vinnie: "You got an offender Cheesehead this afternoon? Which house did he come out of?"
Me: "My paperwork says he came out of seven house."
Vinnie: "Oh yeah? Look in the computer and see what it says."
Me: "Ok, it says..... Oh snap. Four house. Wait.... and seven house..... Oh snap."
Vinnie: "Yeah. That is a problem, don't ya think?"

And of course captain Crane was shift commander. He wanted copies of everything we had that said where this knucklehead came from and he wanted it right now. Sgt LB sent Big Mess up with an armload of paperwork to get copied.

I am so glad I didn't do it.