The Single Hardest Day Of the YearInmates Mark the Yuletide With Reflection and RegretBy Nick Miroff <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/nick+miroff/> Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday, December 26, 2006; Page B01 It's easy to forget Christmas when you're locked up, Earl Walker said. But that wasn't exactly true.It was midmorning, and Walker sat alone on the fifth floor of the Arlington County Adult Detention Center, reading the newspaper and drinking hot cocoa mixed with decaf coffee. He was nine months into an 11-month sentence, trying to kick a drug problem."You're in a building all day, so you forget about the seasons," he explained. "You don't even notice the weather."But reminders of the holidays crept in all around him. A construction-paper cutout of a Christmas tree hung in the lounge. In Walker's cell, holiday cards were on display, lined up on his desk as if arranged on a mantelpiece.A year earlier, he had spent Christmas morning with his 6-year-old son. Warren woke him at sunrise with an announcement: He had discovered a trail of presents from his bed to the Christmas tree. "He said, 'Daddy, Santa Claus has been in my room!' " recalled Walker, 36.After dinner, Walker planned to call Warren at his grandmother's house, and next year, he was sure he would be back with Warren again. A job as a janitor in a D.C. school was waiting for him when he got clean, he said.But this wasn't his first time in jail for drugs."New start at 37?" Walker had written on a handmade addiction recovery poster over his bed.For inmates, their families and jail staff alike, no day of the year is more difficult than Christmas. The absence of a loved one is more acute, the guilt is sharper and tensions are highest. Jail staffs try to make the best of a bad situation by arranging extended visiting hours, better meals and additional religious and psychological services. But there is a delicate balance to find in celebrating a holiday that hurts while encouraging behavioral changes and reinforcing family commitments.A total of 587 men and women spent Christmas in the Arlington jail, one of more than a dozen jails across the region where inmates and their families came together for a less-than-perfect holiday. Unlike prisoners at state and federal facilities serving long sentences for more serious crimes, jail inmates are typically confined for less than a year, on charges such as drunk driving and parole violation.For many, it wasn't their first Christmas in confinement.At the Arlington facility on North Courthouse Road, a steady stream of visitors came through the metal detectors beginning at 9 a.m., waiting for their 15 or 30 minutes of conversation through a thick glass barrier. Inmate David Jones, 24, said that if he put his face up close to the vents that allow the confined and their visitors to communicate, he could smell his girlfriend's perfume or his sister's candy. He showed them the white rosary necklace a fellow inmate fashioned using thread from a sock. He was making a rosary himself to give to his girlfriend, Tina Sousa, this one made from jumpsuit thread and wax and fingernail clippings shaped into a heart."I miss y'all so much," he said to Sousa and his younger sister, Sydney."It's the first time I've ever been without my family," said Jones, who is serving three months for an abduction charge stemming from a fight with Sousa. "I don't like my little sister seeing me like this."Jones, a rapper who goes by the name Southpaw Slim, was scheduled to be released next weekend, just in time for New Year's. He was full of pledges to change. He'd had anger management classes, relationship counseling. "We're going to make this work," he vowed.But if Christmas is the season for promises, District resident Diane Cokly is sick of hearing them. She arrived about noon to visit her husband, Floyd Jones, and said she was tired of hollow pledges to change. "Are they really sorry for being in here?" she asked. "A lot of them keep doing this over and over again, going back to jail.""I hate coming down here," she said, waiting her turn to pass through the metal detector.Thirty-one sheriff's deputies were on duty yesterday, and Lt. Bruce Black, shift commander, said they were careful not to exacerbate inmates' stress by blanketing the facility with holiday decorations that would impose false cheerfulness. "It could have a negative effect," he said. "Holidays are a time when family members come together. They're supposed to be joyous."Having special meals and extended visiting hours is part of the effort to rehabilitate inmates, he said. "I think it is therapeutic when they see the position they've placed themselves in -- in relation to what their family has to do to see them," he said. "There's some soul-searching going on."In a TV lounge on the seventh floor, Sean Mullins, 33, and Jonathan Lehman, 36, were simply searching for a distraction, flipping between the HGTV and "E.T." Anything to forget Christmas, Mullins said. This was his first in jail, and his first away from his family. He had been there 87 days, getting treatment for the meth problem that landed him there in the first place."I was locked up for my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and I'll be here on New Year's," he said. "I just have to treat it like every other day."Mullins, a network engineer, said he has a large extended family that gets together every year for the holiday, but he wasn't in a hurry to pick up the phone. "If I called, I'd lose it," he said.Lehman sat next to him, more than halfway through a 25-day sentence for his second DUI conviction. He said he had been battling depression and anxiety since being laid off from WorldCom four years ago. He was supposed to spend Christmas with his girlfriend, but "managed to blow that."Lehman has an MBA from the University of Maryland and said that just before landing in jail he had launched a Web site, http://www.artisanboulevard.com <http://www.artisanboulevard.com/> , that sells art on consignment. Now he was trying to repair his relationship and help manage the business through the jail's pay phone. "At least I've got that to look forward to," he said.Mullins also works in the jail kitchen, and both men said they were looking forward to the special holiday meals. Lunch yesterday was roast chicken and gravy, and inmate Gregory Henderson was in the kitchen shuttling between a huge steamer of green beans and big trays of chicken legs. He dusted them with a blend of spices he called "my little hookup" -- a secret recipe."I like being part of the meal," he said. "That's how I get my joy out of the holiday. That's my present for being in jail on Christmas."
This is a great article. It really made me think about the people who are spending their holiday behind bars. Thank you for bringing something this important to the website.
Bye, Ro