Corrections officers escort a prisoner, wearing the red and white stripes indicative of the highest risk inmates, down a corridor in the Lewis County Jail in Chehalis.
Jail Administrator Kevin Hanson stands in one of the Lewis County Jail's holding facilities that uses mirrored safety glass so corrections officers can see in, but inmates cannot see out.
The Lewis County Jail's minimum security rooms house up to 50 inmates in an open room filled with tables and bunks. "It's not comfortable," said Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield. "I don't give them anything except time."
Correction officers leave a minimum security holding area after making an hourly check on their prisoners.
Prisoners prepare the food eaten at the Lewis County Jail in Chehalis, including its bread, which these inmates make each day.
Corrections officer Erin Aitken works in the control room at the Lewis County Jail in Chehalis where she controls the locks on all the jail's doors and monitors prisoners' behavior on an array of video screens.
Prisoners prepare the food eaten at the Lewis County Jail in Chehalis, including its bread, which these inmates make each day.
When I walked into the Lewis County Jail, my first thought was that it smelled like my old elementary school’s lunchroom. It was a stale, clean smell mixed with the stench of feet and weird food.
I never thought I’d ever be in a jail, considering I am the type of person who is respectfully terrified of authority and has never even been pulled over for a speeding ticket.
But when Sheriff Steve Mansfield and Kevin Hanson, the administrator of the Lewis County Jail, offered to take me on a tour, I said yes out of morbid curiosity.
The tour reaffirmed what I already knew: I never, ever want to go to jail.
Mansfield emphasizes that in addition to saving tax dollars and respecting humanitarian needs of the inmates, his philosophy is to run a “tough, no frills” jail.
And when he says “no frills,” he means it. There is absolutely nothing for the inmates to do.
In the section where the minimum security inmates live, there was one small TV hoisted up in the corner of the room. Mansfield said the TV gets only two channels: a weather network and a regional news channel.
In another section of the jail that didn’t have a TV, inmates dressed in green jail garb and orange crocs walked in circles around the room.
I am a person who can’t sit still for more than two minutes at a time, and the thought of walking in circles around the same room was enough to drive me crazy.
For the most part, the rooms resembled large, unattractive dorm rooms with the inmates sleeping on a series of bunk beds. They sleep on green, plastic mattress pads like the ones used at summer camps. For bedding, inmates received two blankets, no pillows and no sheets.
The sheets, Hanson explained, cause too many opportunities for the inmates to attempt suicide.
In one of the hallways, there was a large stack of puzzles. I asked Hanson if they ever take pieces out of the puzzles before they give them to the inmates. The only thing more frustrating than being stuck in one room all day is trying to put together a puzzle with missing pieces.
Hanson laughed and told me that no, they didn’t, but said I’d make a good corrections officer.
The best part of the jail was the control room, which unlocked the various doors throughout the jail, controlling everybody’s movement in the jail.
With multiple computer screens showing footage from various security cameras, the room looked like the command center from the movie “Jurassic Park.”
Hanson said that if a riot were ever to break out in the hallway outside the command room, the individual working could transfer control to another room in the building, then go into the bathroom, and get into an escape pod that goes up to the roof.
Other than the escape pod, there is nothing cool about jail.
Even though I didn’t need it, the jail tour gave me extra incentive to obey the law.
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Stephanie Schendel: (360) 807-8208
