Alternative story telling: Half an hour in jail

October 01 2006

Half an hour in jail Tours of the jail are one part of DuPage County Safety Day


James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer

It's hard not to get a sinking feeling in your stomach when stepping onto a DuPage County sheriff's bus.

Outside, the signs at the DuPage County Fairgrounds on Saturday morning read "10th Annual Safety Saturday." Inside the bus, it was me and the rest of the criminals.

Alleged, that is.

I walked down the aisle looking for a friendly face, a would-be cellmate to endure the trip to the big house. I settled on a seat across the aisle from an unusually short and young looking guy toting a blue "Sheriff John Zaruba" balloon.
Talk about a criminal just asking to get arrested.

The bus was segmented into four compartments by black metal cages. The same cages adorned the windows, letting us know we weren't going anywhere but jail.

"Ready to go?" the sheriff's officer asked after yanking the bus doors closed.

"Yaaaaaaay," responded my fellow inmates. Clearly these were rookies to the criminal justice system.

Smiling officers awaited our arrival at the jail. For some reason, they took the time to show us their crime investigation facilities, perhaps mocking us for how easy we were to catch.

It was there I found my one glimmer of hope. Forensic Scientist Leroy Keith told us finding fingerprints and identifying matches is still mostly done by hand, and much more difficult than TV shows like "CSI" would have us believe.

"People really have unreal expectations on what we can do," Keith said. "We can't compete with some of the shows."

On to the lockup. Officers escorted us through the metal detectors. All the while we were conspicuously free of handcuffs or shackles. My potential 3-foot cellmate still grasped his balloon, smiling.

We were led into a small room dubbed "the mantrap" and the metal doors closed behind us.

"Now we're in trouble," said yet another unusually short criminal, holding the hand of someone named "Mom." It seemed to be an evil nickname.

An elevator ride later and we were all inside a small gym. One basketball hoop. One weight machine. One chin-up bar. We'd be able to use the facility about 10 people at a time, one hour a day.

Then came the visitation room. It's just like in the movies. No human contact. You can only stare through the glass and chat on a phone. If you're lucky, there's a bin your lawyer can pass documents to you for signatures.

Then came the dreaded cells. Two floors of rooms too small to lay on the floor width-wise and not have to scrunch your legs. The beds are green pads with thin blankets. There are rubber bins for your belongings, and an actual hole in the wall to store toilet paper. Perhaps that's where I could start digging for an escape.

The officers told us this room, and the commons area directly outside, would be where we'd spent our entire day. Checkers, chess, dominoes, Scrabble and one television are the entertainment.

Then, a miracle came. Maybe there was some legal glitch that let us fall through the cracks. We were all whisked back onto the elevator and led to an escape route out the back door.

I decide to high-tail it out of there before anyone changed their minds.

"That was cool," said the balloon-toting, short man. Apparently, he hasn't learned his lesson. I suspect a long life of crime may be ahead of him. There was even talk of going back to the fairgrounds to meet a particularly good, but dog-faced, detective named "McGruff."

Not me. Maybe the jail is nice for the 800 or so people living there, but I count myself lucky to not be one of them.