Administrative Isolation

Everyone in Deare always talked about what it must be like, locked up all day. Well, where did they think he was all day? Locked up, on the catwalk overlooking B block, or walking the floor outside AI, or making the rounds in General. Locked up. When was the last time he even got to take an Outside Supervision?

With the way this place was managed, he was locked up at least two nights a week also. So don't come crying to him about how bad these inmates have it. Because Officer Reese S. Feurlin has it just as bad. And no visiting hours.

He was on the floor outside Administrative Isolation, marking time with his footfalls. AI was the worst. Square-foot glimpses into hell. Two rows of them, one on either side of you as you made your way to the sergeant's desk at the end of the corridor. He tried to be decent and professional. He didn't curse at the inmates. If they looked at him—really looked at him, made some genuine eye contact—he tried to give a quick nod. Just something to say, "You are still a person, even though we got you in a box." The chicken-wired, inch-thick windows were usually smeared with, well... with substances. Being sent to hell for a week at a time (but some of these men had been in AI for coming up on two months after the riot last March) will shoot holes in your mind.

"987701 Lyddle, H." was shouting on his side of hell. Reese couldn't hear what he was saying. The doors down here translated everything to the same furious mumble. Lyddle pounded on the glass. A wild animal was trapped in his eyes.