The interview room is small, probably 9 feet by 9. Neglected light green walls, one blue door and large smash resistant windows. A plastic table and chairs sit in the middle. Fluorescent lights hover overhead. A box filled with disregarded medical records and paperwork sits to my right. It is quiet and cold to keep them docile, like lions at the zoo.
No phones allowed; all you have to do is think and sit. The guards snicker when they hear I’m going to the ninth floor. So do my co-workers who warn of incoherent speech and creepy feelings – the mental health wing. A hellish mixture of unmedicated paranoid schizophrenics who smell blood and feel shadows overtaking their souls, freshly arrested people whose despair dips dangerously close to suicidal action and elderly men who require increased medical attention and protection. But it also seems like they can put you up there for just about anything if they deem it necessary.
My thoughts race, and I slink to base fears and ideas. Just then, the outer door zaps open. A white guard leads in a tall, slight, black man with an accent hard to pinpoint. His green suicide prevention vest is hanging on his body, backside exposed as he is chained to the wall. The man starts talking, and I lean in to listen. I tell him I’m from the public defender’s office. He’s relieved and says that I’m the first person he can talk to about what happened to him. He’s been in jail for more than two days with no real prospect of getting out soon.
The bail was set too high, and he’s not sure anyone knows where he is. I can’t really help him with any of that, but he is soothed to talk to someone who’s “not crazy.” The small interview room, much like the public defender system, serves as a damaged shark cage during a feeding frenzy. It’s a refuge and the best chance for survival, but it is always in incredible danger from the predators who want an easy kill.
Most people don’t think about jails much. They are seen as places reserved for the fringe, the evil element of society, where we put the scourges, the lazy and refused of our tattered race. The lies and falsehoods about the system that feeds and sustains our ever-growing and deteriorating criminal justice network allow for increased abuse and shame. Jail is not just for bad people. Anyone can end up there after one bad night or misunderstanding.
While it’s true that most people incarcerated probably deserve to be so, there are countless tales of people serving time for crimes they never committed. Sometimes, the only people looking out for the innocent are those in the local public defender’s office.
Our legal system is based on the idea of justice before the law. There can be no justice if the accused is not given a chance for effective counsel. Every American deserves that, no matter who they are or if they can afford it. The price is too high otherwise.
Rich Robinson is a junior majoring in telecommunication and film. He spent the past summer as an intern for the Early Representation Unit of the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office.
