What are they thinking?
We took a day trip today down through Kearny to Tucson, peeked through the fence at the Boneyard at Davis -Monthan AFB at some of the old planes. Then we drove up the west road through Florence to come home.
We made a beer- and pit-stop on the spur of the moment at the River Bottom in Florence, “By the Banks of the Mighty Gila River, where the water is so clear you can see the bottom.”
It’s a mile or two up the road towards Superior from the prisons and jails.
We ordered us each a Miller Lite, and noticed a young woman sobbing at the end of the bar, asking the bartender to use the phone. He asked where she wanted to call, and she said, “Superior, I need to get someone from Superior to come and pick me up.”
He said the bar phone only called Florence, so and one of the guys playing pool gave her his cell phone to use, and when no one seemed to answer for her, Jim interrupted and said, “we are going to Superior, we can give you a ride when we are done with our beers.”
Her name was Erica, and she was happy to wait while we finished our beers and Jim talked with Jaime the bartender.
A young African American man walked into the bar, wearing plaid flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt. He asked how to get to Phoenix, it turned out he had just been released from prison and literally booted out the door. He said he’d been in for a couple years, and cleaned up the drug habit he’d been locked up for.
But he had no money, so had found a homeless shelter in Phoenix that would take him in, he just had to get there. He had no money going into prison, so had none when he got out.
He had been farmed out from Chicago - when he was convicted, the Chicago prisons were too full, so they contracted space in Florence and shipped him there. He didn’t even have small change in his pocket.
The bartender gave him a soda, even though he had no money to pay for it.
The other people in the bar debated the young man’s options. Casa Grand, Apache Junction - each 30 miles away but in different directions, might have a bus to Phoenix, but no one knew for sure.
We left and headed for home, with Erica in the back seat. She was carrying heeled sandals, that she said had blistered her feet.
We asked how she got to the bar and why her feet were blistered, and she too was just released from jail, after being picked up on Christmas Eve for a warrant on a ticket.
She had walked in the cold to the bar, which was the first stop after leaving the prison complex. Even though her court date earlier that morning had been in the Superior court house, procedure required her to be taken back to Florence and her release papers processed and she was booted out at the end of the day, again with nothing she hadn’t had when she was arrested.
The bartender had talked about how disgraceful the release process at the prison was, that just the other week, he had an 80 year old plus man show up at ten PM.
The man had spent 63 days in jail after throwing a shoe at his brother’s window during an argument. He waited 63 days for a preliminary hearing, and then the judge just cut him loose with no penalty.
The bartended ended up driving him home to Globe at midnight that night.
The man’s grown daughters brought the bartender $100 cash in an envelope the next day. They had been frantic, as no one had known where to find the old man after the police had taken him away. They were afraid he was dead, or worse.
We chatted with Erica on the way home and dropped her off at her mom’s house.
But while we were on the road from Florence, heading to the 60, we passed at leasts seven or eight other people walking along the side of the road, in sneakers, T shirts or whatever.
What quirk of fate had us hit that establishment just as a girl at the end of her rope was there? Just when she needed us?
What is the County thinking, with their jails with some of the highest recidivism rates, putting people out to fend for themselves after dark with no clothing suitable for the weather, and no money, in a town with no taxis, no public transportation, not even Greyhound bus service?
Erica was lucky, being locked up only ten days or so.
She doesn’t know if she still has a job at the Marble Plant, she wasn’t allowed to make a call to let them know why she couldn’t show up for work. At least she has a family to take her back in.
But people locked up for years, sent out with no preparation for life outside, what are they supposed to do?