Tuesday, July 12, 2005

All The Comforts of Third World Bureaucracy Without the Hassle of Having to Get a Passport

I spent a large portion of Monday desultorily attempting to find out what I have to do to pick up inmate property. What can I say? At a certain point, anything makes a nice study break: half an hour of Con Law, call the jail, repeat. I learned that the website is even more useless on the subject of inmate property than it is on all of the other subjects I've ever tried to learn about there. I also learned that no one in the jail warden's office knows anything about inmate property. I've come to think that inmate property is like the bastard child of jail services, maybe because they resent having any kind of ongoing responsibility to criminals of whom they've gotten bodily rid. Even their terminology is militant: they say that any property left there for more than 15 days will be "destroyed"... not "removed" or even "disposed of." Now that I know about the shit-flinging revolts, I guess I can't exactly blame them if they want to vent their spleens on the unclaimed property.

Finally I found the number for inmate property itself, which felt like a triumph until I realized that no one ever answers it and the voicemail box is full (always a good sign). I misdialed once and got all excited when it kept ringing instead of going to the full voicemail box, but that was predictably short-lived.

The whole information chase was frustrating because every time I've gone over there for visiting hours, I've stared at the sign on the inmate property window. I've read it over and over, but I can't remember anything it said because I never knew that it would apply to me.

This morning I woke up refreshed and prepared to overlook the ludicrous inefficiency that was about to occur: I metroed over to jail and read the sign anew.

But that's not the best part! The best part is that I happened to show up within the time window when "male property" can be picked up. I explained myself to the guard at the window and he looked me over carefully and then said that I should come back tomorrow because he had something he needed to do right then. And he picked up his hat and left. As he was leaving, another woman sidelined him and started asking after her inmate property, which was apparently approaching its fatal 15th day. He promised her that he wouldn't "destroy" it (again with the destroying!) as long as she would return tomorrow to take it off his hands.

I wish I'd been brave enough to attempt a bribe, because that seemed like the time to try it. I've been inspired ever since Denis told me how common bribery is in Honduras. If DC is going to insist on staffing itself with arbitrary and capricious (again with the Con Law--ugh!) public servants, I think that we should be allowed to bribe them.

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