GWOT IV - Count

[drewkitty]

GWOT IV - Count

GWOT IV - Count

This was my first time running a prison.

i'd run Site. or at least the physical security for it and anything I decided was vital to keeping 3500 people alive.

We'd had a tiny prisoner holding facility, and an even smaller brig with two cells. The brig was very temporary, a place to sit for Employees and contractors between misdeeds and sobriety and/or judgment. Made from a repurposed janitor's closet, and just big enough for two bunks across from each other. Brig occupants had to be policed to the single occupancy toilet down the hall.

The holding facility was a pop up canopy over a concrete picnic table with chains to attach to handcuffs and fetters, a nearby water tap with metal cups, all under the unwinking eye of an exterior camera. A bucket was their sanitary option.

Then we had captured prisoners. In a world without courts, with limited policing services, and in an air of general catastrophe that many including myself thought was an apocalypse, we had two basic options: kill them or let them go.

Neither appealed so I created a third. The Trash Yard.

Out of sight, out of mind, those dangerous people that we chose not to kill yet decided not to let go were housed in a combination trash and recycle facility made up out of a whole lot of nothing, mostly fencing that we could spare from the perimeter and repurposed scrap and pallets. The one reliable feature was a truss structure made of metal pallet racks and repurposed carport parts, that provided overhead cover for the work area. We brought in horse barn stalls to delineate the prisoner sleeping areas. One of their tasks was to improve their own living conditions, as time and materials permitted. We'd installed hand sinks, flush toilets and drinking fountains immediately. Hot water and a rudimentary kitchen came later.

At first there were seven of them - the survivors of the massive attack that had somehow coincided with Major (Pain) Cartwright's convoy arrival. They had been released from infirmary in ones and twos, all requiring return visits for routine care. That several were confined to wheelchairs and walkers helped with security. But I'd wanted to start off strong and my advisor on prison life, one of the janitors who had taken up the mantle as the Trash Yard supervisor, had sketched out one of the most important tools for controlling correctional housing.

Count how many prisoners you have. Count them again. Count them often. When the number decrements, even by one, hit the alarm and declare an escape. Lock the rest down until the escapee is recovered, dead or long gone.

I asked, "How often is often?" and he'd said "Every couple hours."

The count in the brig was really easy. One, two or none. Still done every two hours by the dispatchers, who doubled as jailors.

The count in the Trash Yard was also really easy. The assigned guard to the Trash Yard would go around and count noses every two hours and update the electronic log accordingly. Twice a day, morning and evening, the prisoners would be paraded in front of the Trash Yard camera so the dispatcher could confirm the count.

What works for two or even ten doesn't work for thousands.

The Employees wouldn't tolerate a count. Some contractors would even object, such as our profane Janine. So they were tracked by card access software, as they always had been. The software warned of anomalies, such as someone badging into a building twice without badging out of a building at least once. Another anomaly was failure to badge at least once every 24 hours. More than once, we'd discovered an unauthorized departure from Site that way.

So everyone authorized to be on Site was responsible to someone, such as a supervisor or manager. The magic of chain of command. The higher links were expected to keep track of their underlings. It mostly worked. Mostly.

Alviso Prison wasn't Site. None of these people wanted to be here. Some were violent. Some were potentially very violent. Some had even worked in prison systems previously, especially Homeland's camp systems.

A few knew my job as Warden better than I did, and were looking for ways to screw stuff up.

So one of the first things I insisted on at Alviso Prison was the count. Seven times a day. Morning count - just after wake-up. Workday count, after breakfast. Lunch count. Mid afternoon count. Dinner count. Night count, just before lights out. The seventh count was the 2 AM count. That was the only one that a prisoner could be asleep for. But a face or hand had to be visible to the guard walking past. No dummies under blankets for us.

The count was a lot of work, especially when the numbers didn't match and we had to do a lock down until they did.

The first week was hell, because the prisoners would be counted during an early count and then hide, still in the secure area, for a later count. Their hope was to throw off the count and thereby open slots through which prisoners could escape.

This was a violation of prison regulations but I couldn't meaningfully punish them for it. Old, old prison problem - what do you threaten a person with when they know they are on track for execution?

I'd been on the other side of that one myself. One of my qualifications for _this_ job.

Finally we locked down each housing area, got a solid count using most of our personnel for that one zone, and rotated the selected housing area through each count until we had our solid total.

From that point forward, a short count was a lockdown for that housing area. No meals until resolved. Other prisoners would drag out the offender from their creative hiding spot.

This was just a security basic of runniing a facility. Nothing that difficult except that anything involving thousands of people is hard.

There was another, darker count. This one we didn't share, and the prisoners fed only in the most indirect sense.

How many murders had denizens of Alviso been convicted of?

This was a number the Governor's Office kept asking for. Pat's privilege.

This was also a number of interest to our general public. Later, when we had one again for the first time since the Firecracker, to the California press corps.

We had prisoners of war accused of war crimes. (If they weren't so accused, they weren't kept at Alviso. Mostly at Sunnyvale, or a sister site somewhere in Southern California I didn't know much about.)

We had unlawful combatants. By default they were war criminals - people whose legal status did not allow them to fight. Mostly they were also war criminals by commission.

All were killers. Only those who had committed war crimes, and those who were not privileged combatants, could be accused of murder.

Then we had to convict them, which meant getting the justice process up and running.

Moving prisoners around, to and from our internal courts. Military tribunals, which meet the requirements of military law. Tribunal implies three triers of fact (tri = three). We used one. Appointed judges, who had to be commissioned officers.

So I got to do that too on top of the rest of my workload.

I didn't pass on the pressure to get convictions. Just stupid bureaucrap that I didn't need to distract the other judges with.

But I did track that count.

Eventually, a ratio. Innocent vs. guilty. Number of murders convicted per person.

We ran about 15% innocent on the POW side, and 5% innocent on the UC side.

Average murders per convicted POW: 2.

Average murders per convicted UC: 6.

Nowhere near as many Californians who had been murdered, if you run those numbers. Admittedly some of the killers were dead. But others were still fighting us, or rotated back into America where we wouldn't get a shot at them.

Integers are so innocent until you put meaning on them.

A month into the tribunals, we were over 10,000.