In What I Remember Most, my character, Grenadine Scotch Wild, goes to jail for three nights. She gets into two fights, is put in isolation twice, and meets different women, including one who is mentally ill and pets imaginary animals.

In order to portray jail accurately, I went to a jail for almost three hours.  It took me three days to recover.

Here are a few things I learned about jail.

1) You never, ever want to go. Trust me on this and do not commit a crime even if your husband runs out on you with a blonde bimbo with a brain the size of a bean.

2) The women, at least at the jail I was at, spend 22 hours a day in a cell.

3) The cell had a silver toilet and sink and a window in the cell door that anyone could look through at any time.

4) The cells also had a slit of a window to the outside. You can then look outside and see what others are doing that you are not because of what you did.

5) If you are not crazy when you enter the acute psych ward in the jail when you arrive, you will be in two weeks.

6) There were many prostitutes who were locked up. If they don’t make money, their pimps beat the hell out of them. If they stand on a street corner and get arrested, they go to jail. There is no win here for them.

7) The girl who was detoxing from a heroin overdose was skinny, pale, and slept like she was dead. She was very young. She was someone’s daughter. I felt like crying when I saw her. Drugs had eaten her life.

8) I have never seen so many people in uniform in my life. They did not look like people you would want to mess with.

9) And to that end…To work in a jail looks absolutely miserable and dark and dangerous. The people that the employees have to work with can come in screaming and hitting, spitting and vomiting, raging and murderous.

10) People deserve to be punished for committing crimes.  I’m a tough on creepy criminals kind of gal, especially for people who hurt children and women. But we must re – think the length of SOME jail sentences for SOME inmates, especially the ones who were very young when they committed their crimes.

11) Drugs are a curse on this country. One wonders how much better off we would all be without them. We need to regularly lock up the dealers who are dealing death and destruction, and get more, and better, help for the users, of which there were many in that jail population.

12) Jail is absolutely no place for the mentally ill. We as a society need to fix this immediately.

13) I saw a small, tight isolation room with green walls for people who are a danger to themselves, or others. If you want to picture hell, picture this.

14) Undergoing the fingerprinting, mug shots, and strip checks, including bending over and coughing while spreading your butt, would be demoralizing and devastating.

15) I would lose my mind in twenty four hours.

16) Did I mention that you should not commit a crime?

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