I got arrested on my Birthday for being stupid and drunk. So I have to do 5 weekends of jail (This being my first) at Elmwood Correctional Facility which sits at the intersection of Highways 880 and 237 in Milpitas, just down the street from the Great Mall. From the front, it looks like a mall itself, with gray buildings capped by peaked green facades. I turn myself in at 6pm friday and get released 6pm Sunday. There are a few other weekenders there. We turn in our property then shuffle into Processing and take our seats on a row of plastic chairs that seem to want to dump us out of them. Then it's finally time to get our uniforms: green T-shirt, green "thermal shirt," and bright orange pants and sandals. Since the pants are darn near symmetrical, I put them on backwards at first. We also pick up a towel, two sheets, two blankets, and a Ziplock bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, a cup and a spork.

Next we're given our barracks assignments on index cards. Most of us in the same barracks, being weekenders. The inmate handling our intake points us in the direction of the yard and sends us on our way. We each grab a thin gray mattress pad, pass through a guard station with a metal detector, and shuffle out to the yard, somehow managing not to drop anything. I discover that the yard is fairly attractive: a chapel in the middle, and landscaping featuring an impressive variety of trees and flowers. "Stay on the path or be infracted," warns the signs. Barracks 4 is the barracks down on the right. This barracks is for weekenders only, so most of the other prisoners know your a weekender. I step inside as quietly as possible, go to my bunk (Bunk13) and settle in.

For reasons that I never quite figure out, breakfast takes place every morning around 4:30, and then everyone goes right back to bed. I barely avoid getting infracted when I fail to notice that you're required to walk all the way down to the next available seat. (I haven't watched enough prison movies recently.) Breakfast this morning really sucks: S.O.S. and milk. I pass on it...Lunch is mostly meat, I trade mine for fruit. Lucky for me I'm bunked next to a guy who's done his share of time, so he tells me to rules and do's and dont's. He also gives me a few soups to hold me over.

The Barracks

The "house" is the central unit of social and organizational life on the Farm. My house, Barracks 4 consists 15 double bunks on either side. At the each end there are little tv's and an entrance to the bathroom and showers. Over the course of my stay, I learn just a bit about the government which the cons use to maintain order. It turns out that there are four distinct groups: the Homeboys, the Asians, the Brothers, and the Woods. (Woods is short for Peckerwoods) These groupings generally break down along racial lines, but there are exceptions based on mutual acceptance: some white folks fly with the Homeboys, some Asians join the Brothers, and so on. If you don't choose to fly with any group, you become an Other. The Others keep to themselves, and if they can manage it, nobody thinks less of them for it. However, if an Other gets on someone's bad side, even if it's for a completely arbitrary reason, he can find himself in a pretty bad spot with no support whatsoever. Cons in that situation have a nasty tendency to get rolled. One Wood from another barracks found out that I was a first timer and a weekender, so I guess he wanted to fuck with me and tried to roll me up. Thats when you roll up your shit and leave your barracks. If you get rolled you go to lockdown and when you go to lockdown your weekends get fucked up, which means your stuck there for straight time. I wasn't about to be stuck there so lets just say I had to get into a little bit of a fight...but that night the same Wood who messed with me got himself rolled up for doing things I guees your not supposed to do. I guess I'm an other, then again I'm only there for the weekends. The bad part about being a weekender is they all know and want you to bring in ciggeretts. Since there restricted, you guessed it, you gotta stuff them in your trunk. Most of the guys in my barracks brought ciggeretts in, which they trade for snacks. One Ciggerette gets you 3 items...soups, candy, snacks. I don't think I'll be doing this.

Of course, there's a lot about day-to-day life in Elmwood that I wasn't around for long enough to experience, since weekends there are pretty much like weekends in the real world, except with a lot fewer services open. There are jobs, of course. There's a library from which most cons seem to have a few books checked out at any given point, and supposedly there are Internet-connected computers somewhere, though you can only use them for a couple hours a day. If someone sends you money you get a card and can buy stationary items, personal hygiene supplies, drink mixes, soups, snacks, vitamins, cups, and even radio headsets, plus various denominations of debit cards that can be used at the vending machines. Most of the weekend was boring, did alot of thinking and sleeping. Being released starts at 3:30 and your out at 6pm...only 4 more weekeds to go...