Minus Cellie and the Cellie Roulette
It's a little after midnight as I start to work my fingers over the keyboard on this tablet. My cellie was awakened at half past 23:00, told to be ready to roll up in the morning -- he's transferring out to another facility.
This brings a lot of noise, a wringing of hands, a gnashing of teeth. There are at least three people playing Cellie Roulette: Him, the optional guy who he will be celled with (if he ISN'T going to an Open Bay dorm, or a dorm where everyone's single cell wherever he goes), the new person that will eventually be housed in this cell...
And myself.
Frankly, most of us dread playing Cellie Roulette: we worry about a number of factors.
Am I going to be compatible with the new guy?
That is the biggest worry we have. Maybe the new guy jumps off the bunk every 30 seconds. Maybe he snores like a chainsaw. Maybe he's an incessant chatterbox. Maybe he turns the light on at all times of night. Maybe he eats sardines in bed. Maybe, maybe, maybe. There are a lot of variables we consider in the 75-80 feet of space we share with another human.
There are also variables that Housing have to consider when they are rehoming a person into an occupied cell:
- Do the residents have similar length sentences? is one consideration Housing makes -- they like to avoid putting a person with a life sentence in a cell with a guy leaving in four to six months.
- Are the residents of similar faiths? is another consideration. You would probably avoid putting a practitioner of Santeria in a cell with a devout Orthodox Jew to stop an issue before it starts, as an example.
- Are the residents of similar sexualities? also comes into play. If one person is very much out and cruising (even here, with no prophylaxis available), it is considered bad form to put them in a cell with a known homophobe -- that just about guarantees paperwork of some sort as it typically degenerates into a fight, often within the first day or two.
- Do the residents have similar charges? -- you probably won't be assigned to share a cell with someone whose charges are grossly dissimilar to your own. That is, a person in for a vehicular homicide whilst under the influence is not likely assigned to share his room with a person in for, say, sex trafficking.
For the person leaving, the next several hours are fraught with headaches. You spend time figuring out what to leave behind as detritus, what to take as necessary, what you have to surrender to the facility (uniforms, underwear)... you have to then get inventoried and issued a property slip that follows you to your new facility.
That slip is meant to stop trades onboard PiSSBUS, the Florida DOC operated BlueBird bus network for prison-to-prison transfers.
Hours after you board, and the rank scent of urine embeds itself into your skin (because no, the buses are not cleaned), you'll disembark at a new facility. That property slip is already in the hands of officers who will re-run inventory with you to see how much of your stuff disappeared on that bus that's already pulled out with a load of prisoners due somewhere else.
From there, you're the new cellie in the game of Cellie Roulette, fresh on the camp, where you may or may not know anyone. Wring, gnash.
Meanwhile, the cellie you left behind gets ready to receive a new person with all of those concerns from above. If they're lucky, they won't receive one fresh off the bus, but instead, an intracamp shuffle of someone they may know will happen. Someone else will then join and play the roulette wheel.
I expect that because this is a programs dorm wing, I'll get the intracamp transfer: someone who has been waiting to enter this program for months and does not have a Low Bunk pass (a permit to have the bottom bunk).
Someone else today will play the Fresh Off Boat Bus version of Cellie Roulette.
For now, it's almost half past one, and I'm going back to sleep now that he's packed and off to inventory. This may be my last, best chance. :)