From Dragonfly: Attention Inmates

At first, I thought it was interesting. Then, I started to get annoyed. Now, I want to throw stones at the megaphone that emits prison-wide announcements:

"Attention inmates: Male and Female staff routinely work in and visit inmate housing areas."

That is the announcement. It plays every morning around 6am, every evening around 4:45pm, and every night around 10pm. Sometimes, it also plays around 11am. Some inmates haven't looked at their watches or the clock to know that there is a method to the madness. They think that someone just presses a button every so often, and the announcement plays.

Given that it is a "live voice" (sometimes male, sometimes female) with errors sometimes in the reading of the message, I know that it is not a recording.

I believe the timing of the message is not by accident. I have deducted that they do the message at the time the count is "cleared." Our counts are at 5am, sometimes 10am, 4pm, and 9:30pm. They take 30-60 minutes to get through all the housing units, ensure everyone is where they are supposed to be, and then, clear the count. During morning, afternoon, and evening, that also means that the chow hall will soon be open for business and those inmates requiring insulin should be released to pill line for their insulin intake. Of course, the CO's do not use the announcement as the gauge, though, they wait for the next announcement that says to release insulin line inmates.

So, why that message? Why not a different message? I believe that this announcement must be the result of some dispute between an inmate and the institution. It's not DOP wide (several inmates, who transferred here, say that the announcement was not made in their old institutions. It's content is obvious. I mean there are male and female Correctional Officers, so of course male and female staff work in and visit our housing areas. Perhaps a female inmate complained that male staff were in the unit. I don't know. I have no idea when the announcements started. I am only guessing at the reasons for the announcement.

What I do know, is that it is LOUD and wakes me up, those few times I am able to sleep past 6am. It also wakes me at 10pm, if I am lucky enough to have fallen asleep soon enough after 9:30pm count. It doesn't help that the announcement megaphone is hung up about 10 feet from the opening to my room. When I was in the bus stop, I could barely hear it (it was the top floor, all the way across the unit, from where I am now). But, instead, it is said, and, now, I am in the habit of saying it right along with the announcer. Every time it occurs, I hear someone say something like, "no sh*t," or something else dramatic and sarcastic.

Sometimes, things are not always logical here. But, things happen because it is just what it is. There is an announcement 3-4 times a day that tells me something obvious. It is not something anyone really pays much attention to. It just is.