What if these bozos did succeed in getting a contract from the state? When it came to the state, anything was possible. What kind of havoc would ensue then? Gwen envisioned management so cruel and incompetent that an armed insurrection would not be altogether unlikely. She looked at the twentysomethings gathered before her. If each and every one of them were blown away in an Attica scenario she wouldn’t be sorry at all. She’d only regret that the inmates would be forced to serve more time. And as far as Gwen was concerned, it would be grossly unfair to serve time when you were just trying to perform a service for humanity.
Gwen was growing weary and angry at these jackals. What if the staff whom she had hired and trained over the years was fired so that some twenty-three-year-old ‘executive’ could take over? What if she herself was replaced by a ‘facilities facilitator’ or an ‘inmate output management specialist’? Jennings was a correctional facility for women, not one of those ‘country club’ joints for the white-collar crooks from Wall Street.
That reminded Gwen of the intake meeting that was scheduled for that afternoon. Jennifer Spencer – the Wall Street showboater who the papers said was ‘sentenced to three to five at a country club prison’ was due to arrive. A country club! Someday Gwen wanted to visit one of those fabled facilities for herself. Maybe they existed somewhere for male white-collar criminals, but to her knowledge – which was extensive – there wasn’t a correctional facility for women anywhere in the United States that was not miserably overcrowded, pathetically understaffed, and/or dangerously in need of major repairs. There was nothing at Jennings that even remotely resembled the amenities of a country club.
Gwen had all kinds at Jennings. She had women who had violently murdered, and she had a grandmother who had done nothing more criminal than to grow a little marijuana to help her grandson with his MS. And why? Because when the governor declared his war on drugs, and the legislators passed mandatory twenty-year sentences for even the most minor offense, everyone caught in the net – dolphin as well as tuna – eventually wound up on Gwen’s doorstep.
And when they did, it was up to her to take care of all of them. She fed them, housed them, put them to bed, and tried to attend to their medical needs. At the same time she did her best to maintain the discipline and decorum that kept the lid on the Jennings pressure cooker of anger, resentment, and – most perilous of all – boredom. In the meantime, there were no full-time medical professionals on staff, the educational and training programs were substandard, there were no special facilities for family visits or overnight stays with children, and while there were a few on her staff who were hardworking men and women, Gwen also had more than a few union-protected liars and sadists who she fervently hoped would eventually end up on the other side of the bars. A country club? Gwen hardly thought so. A profit center? That was even more ridiculous. Gwen actually snorted out loud.
Quickly she took the handkerchief that she kept tucked in her sleeve and wiped her nose as if she had sneezed. Well, she thought, as long as Warden Gwendolyn Harding was still at the helm of the Jennings Correctional Facility for Women it would be neither a country club nor a corporate headquarters. It would be a place where sad, damaged, and angry women were locked away from a society that required their removal. And if she had the courage and the stamina to make it happen, when these women were released, they would leave Jennings somewhat healed, more hopeful, and partially rehabilitated and acceptable to society. That was her modest dream.
She shifted in her seat and cleared her voice. As Warden she was used to being watched and obeyed by hundreds of people. Even the slightest narrowing of her eyes usually brought a response. But in this meeting she could probably set her hair afire and it wouldn’t stop the young woman who was now babbling on and on about telemarketing. Telemarketing?
Gwen glanced at her watch. She’d give them four more minutes and then they were out of there. She had to meet with today’s new prisoner, tell her the rules, and assign her to a cell. Jennifer Spencer was going to be a tough call for Gwen. She was coming in as a ‘celebrity’ inmate. Everyone in America had read all about her long before she had been sent to Jennings. Her story had been in all of the newspapers and magazines, and the photos of her and her handsome young lawyer looked like something right from the society pages. Even when she was led into the courthouse in handcuffs, she held her head high and kept her nose in the air as if she was going to a meeting of the board of directors.
Gwen Harding was afraid that Jennifer Spencer was coming to Jennings to cut herself a deal. In all of the stories that she read about the arrest, the trial, the conviction, and now her imminent incarceration, Jennifer Spencer looked and sounded like a thoroughbred who always came in in first place. Jennifer Spencer was accustomed to being treated like a winner. And that meant that there were probably a lot of losers who were fashioning a knife out of a contraband piece of metal wrenched off a window frame just so they could slash the face of a woman like Jennifer Spencer. Unprovoked violence wasn’t epidemic at Jennings, but it did occur and it was a constant worry to Gwen Harding. But she took her mind off it and tried to focus on the snip of a girl in front of her.
‘So, in effect,’ the young woman was saying, ‘the telemarketing personnel could be monitored by only three shifts of management, which would give twenty-four-hour coverage of an operation that could sell nonstop, guaranteeing a –’
That was enough. These people were only visitors. She didn’t report to them – yet. Gwen stood up, looked at Jerome and nodded her head. ‘Well, thank you,’ she said briskly. ‘This has been most informative.’
Informative and beyond Gwen’s grasp. The JRU people began to shuffle their papers and regroup. They had no idea what they’d be dealing with. Who was going to train the women? And more importantly, what was going to motivate them? All of Gwen’s staffers and all of Gwen’s guards couldn’t get them to do the laundry with any care, or even to prepare meals that were anything better than slop. Many of the inmates were content to live in squalor, and few took any pride in their appearance or personal hygiene.
Gwen stood, opened the door of her office, and bid the fools from JRU good-bye. They all walked out without so much as a glance toward Gwen’s receptionist, Miss Ringling, or Movita Watson, the inmate assigned to Gwen’s office from the prisoner population. Movita was the notable exception among the inmates at Jennings. Gwen knew she shouldn’t – really couldn’t – afford to have favorites, but Movita was … well, she was one of a kind. She was more competent, more clever, more stylish, with more attitude, intelligence, and tricks up her sleeve than anyone Gwen had even known. Movita ran the tightest crew in the prison, and perhaps ran the prison as well. Her crewmates loved and respected her in a way that Gwen – in her more perversely ironic moods – almost envied.
If the fools from JRU had any sense at all, Gwen thought, they’d be talking to Movita rather than me.
They try to strip you from the very first minute … When they brought me in county jail, the first thing they did was take my wedding ring and my earrings. Then they stripped me stark naked and made me jump up and down on the floor in a squat position – while they all stood around watching. They have to forget we’re human beings to treat us that way.
A woman prisoner. Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison
As the prison van moved past the crowd at the courthouse and into the city streets, Jennifer put her face up to the smeared, barred window. As the van lumbered through the tunnel and then through poor suburban streets it was as if Jen was traveling back in time. She watched overworked women lugging laundry and groceries through the littered blocks, the kind of low-rent neighborhood