every year, about 55,000 men and women pass through the booking department of the hamilton county justice center in cincinnati. can i get my panties, please? most will be released within hours. but for those who stay, the jail will become their home for an indefinite period of time. the job of keeping it clean falls to inmate workers, known here as porters, like thomas schiele. our day starts with empty trash cans, taking care of the walls, cells as they empty, and then on to the holding tanks. in jail, i am somebody. in here, i feel needed, i guess. i have a purpose.
at the fairfax county adult detention center, feeding the 1,200 men and women incarcerated here falls to inmate workers like rasheed conte. in this kitchen, they learn to do things big. right now what i m doing is i m just going to boil the potatoes first, for 45 minutes or an hour. then i m going to take them over, mash them with butter and milk. most jails use instant potatoes. we re using real potatoes here. conte is part of a crew that serves about 26,000 inmate meals a week. they order approximately 30,000 pounds of food per week. 18,000 cookies, 10,600 eight-ounce cartons of milk. approximately 1,400 pounds of sandwich meat per week. the food is prepared by inmates.
population can be found in the theo lacey kitchen, where inmate workers prepare 9,000 meals per day. i ve actually heard that if an inmate had to be incarcerated they prefer to come to orange county jail because they are fed well. they are fed more colorfully. and our nutritional guidelines and standards are the same as the rest of the state. but we put a lot of care and energy into what we do. while lower security level inmates eat in the chow hall, the majority of inmates are confined to their cells. their meals are delivered by inmate workers, like robert mason. really helps that i used to work at denny s. it makes me thankful where i am at because at least we get to come out three times a day. it passes the time a lot quicker. these guys are locked down 23 hours a day, 22 hours a day. time goes by real slow up there. we re kind of like their only
contact. you can do little things for them and they act like i ve known you a long time. mason likes giving his younger customers something extra with their meals, a serving of rap. my mind s not right but still got game bet my dope puts yours to shame judges today have it all wrong they re far to late to try the bomb these crews are cool but they re living in sin they re robbing the pharmacies for vicodin when their shift ends, mason and other inmate workers make their way back to their housing unit. k-70, sir. better known as the workers barracks, it s still jail. but life in the barracks allows for more freedom of movement. and is one of the few housing units where daylight streams through the windows. this is where we re coming into the projects here. as we get further down this section we come into the
me in trouble while i m out in general population. that means you are not allowed to flagrantly advertise any homosexual tendencies nor induce others to commit or participate in that activity. do you understand? yes, ma am. sign for me right there. beauchamp has requested to move to a trustee pod, a housing unit for inmate workers. though they re not paid. there are some other benefits to be had. more time out of their cells and extra food. the trustee, on the day that they do work, which is more than likely every day, they would get two trays at the end of their work period. is that your main motivation? that is my main motivation for being in trustee pod. but eloy orosco need not worry about getting an inmate job for extra food. i m quite excited. yes, you are excited. he is able to purchase more than enough snacks from the jail commissary to quell his appetite. one white rice. three instant coffees. orosco pays for commissary from money put on his books, a