on the cover / By Helen Sanderson

On the Inside

A snapshot of the Humboldt County Jail

(June 7, 2007)  The first thing you notice when you walk inside the Humboldt County Correctional Facility is the smell. It’s overpoweringly sterile. “Pine-Sol,” says Sgt. Dean Flint, walking briskly across the gleaming tile of the booking station. “This place gets mopped three times a day.”

As one might imagine, people are not at their best when the cops bust them. DUI cases vomit on the floor and on themselves. Drunk-in-public transients come to jail in urine-stained clothes, wearing socks that could walk off on their own. Some “stink to high hell,” says Flint.

Brenda Godsey. Photo by Helen Sanderson.

GALLERY >

On an average day 27 people are brought to the Humboldt County Jail and 25 are released, but right now, at 9 a.m. on Thursday, May 23, there’s little activity in the booking station. At this moment, only one guy is here, sobering up. He’s been patted down, fingerprinted, photographed, entered into the computer and nowhe’s slumped in a bolted-down plastic seat, shoeless. He’s either sleeping or watching TV; from this angle you can’t tell. On the back of his T-shirt there’s a peace sign. Whether he realizes it or not, his life is going to be different. He’s in the system now, he’ll have fines to pay, rehab classes to attend, probation restrictions to adhere to, and if he doesn’t do these things — more jail time.

Flint’s still preoccupied with the topic of cleaning products and hygiene when Public Information Officer Brenda Godsey interrupts. Godsey (above) is also a senior correctional officer and works in the jail on weekends. But in her main role as PIO, she deals with the media.She arranged this tour of the jail for me. Her job, essentially, is to represent the Sheriff’s Department well, and she reminds Flint that his gross-out stories might wind up in the paper. He gets the hint and wraps up his point with some finesse: The best officers, he says, are compassionate people. “We have a mission to treat people with dignity,” he says. “And if a guy has poop in his pants, we’ll launder his clothes.”

The Humboldt County Correctional Facility (HCCF) is that salmon-colored behemoth in the center of Eureka — hence its moniker as the Pink House. It was opened in 1996, right next to the old jail, which now houses the District Attorney’s offices.

The new jail — modern, mostly dorm-like — is hardly the picture of prison life portrayed in the movies. Serious criminals don’t spend much time here. The maximum sentence you can serve is one year. More serious offenders, felons mainly, are transported to San Quentin.

The jail can hold up to 410 inmates and often hovers at maximum capacity. In particular, the women’s housing units are almost always at their limit. Overcrowding is a problem that the entire California prison system is wrangling with right now. Last month, after facing a federal takeover of the state’s ailing prison system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB900, which calls for $7.7 billion to add 53,000 more beds to state prisons, county jails and “re-entry” facilities where inmates can learn to adjust back to life on the outside.

Critics of the plan say that Schwarzenegger’s “bigger is better” policy won’t relieve California’s overcrowded prisons. Instead, they say sentencing reform is the only real solution.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT PAGE >SHARE