Second Chances

“Is this why you’ve been missing class?”

The young man stood in the doorway, head hung low, shoulders a little drooped. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied politely.

“Well, come on in then and tell me what’s going on.”

He shuffled the two steps to the chair and took a seat. Back then, I was only an adjunct at the local community college which paid well, but not quite well enough for me to raise three boys by myself on the one salary. I had two other jobs. One was a Sunday morning church organist gig, and this one was as mental health counselor in the county jail.

Fun job—really!

Anyway, the young man was Tommy, one of my students. He had disappeared from class for over a week, and I wondered what happened to him because before that he had perfect attendance. The last place I expected to find him was in the pokey!

He wasn’t sitting ramrod straight, but he wasn’t slumped down like so many of my patients who saw me in hopes of getting drugs. They’d claim to be ADHD or Bipolar or anxiety-ridden. Well, maybe that last one wasn’t a “claim.” Most folks who find themselves locked up are riddled with anxiety. However, jail is not a place to find consolation. Whether it’s medical staff or the guards, they have the same attitude as the sign I found hanging in the office on my first day: “Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.”

A better word to describe Tommy that morning was defeated.He didn’t have the confidence to sit up and look me in the eye. He was beaten down by a system designed for unvarnished accountability. No excuses inside these concrete block walls painted the saddest shade of drab gray you ever saw! Even the overhead fluorescent lights were unforgiving like the interrogation room in an old detective b-movie, as though their unrelenting brightness reached into the dark corners of your soul revealing all truth.

Not hardly.

On top of defeat, I could tell Tommy was embarrassed as well. After all, I was his college professor in the outside world. I represented a part of his life that carried hope for a second chance, and finding him here dashed those hopes against the rocks of mistakes and bad choices. I had a feeling that Tommy was at heart a good boy—just one prone to act before he figured out the consequences.

I gave him a minute to gather his thoughts. He took a deep breath and explained. “Well, a couple of weeks ago I went to a party over at a friend’s house. I had a little too much to drink, so I decided I’d walk home instead of risking a DUI.”

“Good choice,” I said, encouraging him to continue.

“I thought so, too,” he said, a little chagrined. “Cops caught me, though, and since I was out on probation, they arrested me for violating it.” He shook his head slightly. “Public drunkenness.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but his head hung even lower. I could hear the wheels turning. No matter what I do or how hard I try, I just can’t get it right.

I live in a county that has the highest rate of probation violations in the state—and we’re one of the smallest counties!! At one time, the area was developed through the hard work of farm families, but now we’re one of those “bedroom communities” that spring up within driving distance of a larger town. When a probationer gets picked up on a violation, they get an automatic thirty days in county. For a college student, that means withdrawal from all their classes for “excessive absences,” tuition non-refundable. Since Tommy had a record, he was ineligible for any financial aid, so that money came out of his own pocket—or a family member’s. Another reason for him to feel the shame of letting down someone he loved.

My job at the jail was to assess the inmates’ mental health and make a recommendation to the psychiatrist who dropped in once a week to prescribe medications. I rarely asked any of the inmates what they were in for, and that applied to Tommy’s original charge as well. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember how old Tommy was, so I don’t know if the drinking he admitted to was legal. My guess is he was over 21 because he didn’t mention a new charge other than the violation of probation. Most of the population was imprisoned on a variety of drug allegations, so it’s logical to assume that was his original indictment. They were released on probation pretty easily, although it could be pricey.

The rest of the prisoners had a variety of charges: burglary, shoplifting, simple assault. Women inmates were in their own pod, of course, and there were enough sex offenders that they were kept separate from general population in yet another pod. One inmate in that section was a trans-female who hadn’t had any gender affirming surgery. The jail couldn’t figure out where to put her, so they put her in with the sex offenders.

Jerks.

Medical, where my office was located, could hold ten inmates, and we were pretty much full-up all the time. If somebody made the mistake of saying, “I wish I were dead!” they got to wear a turtle suit until I came in to assess them. You’ve seen those on the news. They’re these dark green, quilted, one size-supposedly-fits-all Velcro closure sleeveless smocks the jail issues to any prisoner with an ounce of suicidal ideation.

And, yes, they were worn commando.

Holding was next door to medical, but I only went over there once. Had an arrestee smuggle a crack pipe in up her vagina. After she was put in holding, she pulled it out, broke it, and scratched up her arms. Yes, she was in a turtle suit for a suicide attempt when I came in.

I was surprised at how many inmates were “repeat customers,” as the sheriff liked to call them. We even had family members that seemed to take to heart the saying, “The family that preys together, stays together.” The only inmates you ever had to worry about, though, were the ones in red jump suits. Most of our residents were dressed in convict orange. The ones in red were high risk. They were in for violent crimes: murder, assault, and the like. They had either received or were facing decades-long sentences, and they really had nothing to lose.

Tommy was in orange, and it wasn’t a good color for him. Shoot, nobody could pull off that shade of orange! I asked him, “What about school?”

He looked at me warily. It was pretty obvious his hopes had been raised one too many times, and he didn’t need that right now. “I want to finish, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen.”

“If you’re serious,” I said, “there might be a way.”

His eyes flashed a lightning bolt of possibility and then darkened with reality. “How?”

I explained that he would need somebody on the outside to act as a go-between. I would contact his other professors and see if they would be willing to let him stay in class. “If they go along with this, and all of them might not, it would mean that you cannot miss so much as one class for any reason until the end of the semester,” I cautioned.

“Oh, yes, ma’am!” he said enthusiastically. “My sister, she’ll help me. And I promise—I won’t miss class!”

He talked to his sister. I talked to his other teachers. Together, we worked out a plan for when he got out. To his credit, he never missed a class and finished the semester in one piece.

In fact, he finished his degree.

I’ve lost touch with him, but I think about him every so often and wonder if he got his life straightened out. It’s a little rare to have college students doing time. Most of my inmates only had a sixth-grade education, so at least he had that advantage. I never saw him again at the jail.

I took that as a good sign.

A couple of months after Tommy showed up at my office, I heard a timid female voice greeting me from the doorway. “Hey, Dr. Mosley.”

I looked up and grinned. “Is this why you’ve been missing class?”