I recently discovered that the police department of Denton, Texas (my home from 1992 to 2001) maintains a website for the Denton City Jail. There are currently two jails in Denton. The county jail is where people go to serve out a sentence after being convicted of a crime. The city jail is more of a holding center. When someone is arrested by a member of the Denton Police Department (as opposed to the Denton County Sheriff's Office), they are usually first booked into the city jail where they either wait to be bonded out or until they are transferred over to county.
I'm neither proud nor ashamed to admit that, in the very late 90s, I spent a night or two in both of these jails. Fortunately for me, my youthful run-inswith the law were more of a case of me being young and irresponsible as opposed to me being a criminal. As such, my infrequent stays in the various holding cells of these two institutions never lasted for more than a couple of hours and never cost me anything more than the occasional fine. That said, I can still say that, from my limited experience, I was always relieved whenever I found myself being booked into the city jail as opposed to the county jail. Whereas the county jail was always overcrowded, loud, and was run by a bunch of pot-bellied rednecks, the city jail was almost peaceful. The guards were always polite and quick to laugh at a good joke. Since the Denton City Police tend to arrest fewer people than the Denton County Sheriff's office, the city jail was never all that crowded. One could be sure that, if nothing else, he'd at least get a private holding cell where he could lie down on a fairly comfortable cot and enjoy the quiet.
Add to that, the food was better in city jail. Indeed, the only bad thing about the Denton City Jail in the late 1990s was the total lack of television in the cells. However, it was a small price to pay to avoid the claustrophobia of county jail.
I don't know if that description is still accurate. It's been a while and, quite frankly, repeating the experience holds little appeal to me. In fact, I probably would have blocked all that from my mind if not for the fact that I've become rather addicted to visiting the homepage of the Denton City Jail.
On this website, they post the name, age, and latest mugshot of everyone currently being held in the jail, what they're being charged with, and how much it is going to cost to get them out of jail. This is, of course, a public web site which means that if you're arrested in Denton, the entire world can know about it within a matter of minutes. The Denton Police Department claims that the reason they're doing this is so that concerned friends or relatives can know if their loved ones are currently in jail and in need of someone to post bond.
Now, I have to admit that, personally, I'm not really comfortable with the idea of putting someone's picture on the Internet just because they've been arrested for a crime. Quite frankly, it seems like a massive invasion of privacy as well as a blatant violation of the whole concept of innocent until proven guilty. As a concerned citizen and a Libertarian, I think that the web site should be taken down.
However, as an individual, I'd be sorry to see that happen. The site, as reprehensible as it may be in the grand scheme of things, is just too addictive to maintain any sort of outrage towards.
One of the key components of this addiction is the fact that the site is updated in "real time." What this means is that each time a person is booked into the city jail, that new name is immediately added to the site. By that same token, whenever someone is finally released (whether by completing a sentence or getting bonded out), that name is removed from the site. As such, one could spend several hours just continually reloading the page and seeing if any names have disappeared and if any new names have materialized. Words cannot begin to describe just how entertaining this can truly be.
Each time the page is reloaded, it's like turning the page on a trashy but involving novel.
For instance, when I was visited earlier tonight, the first thing I noticed is that the two cute girls who were arrested for shop lifting have apparently either finally been bailed out or else have transferred out to the country jail. I'm hoping, for their sakes, that they bonded out and are free tonight. After all, they spent the last three days in the city jail. During that time, six separate guys were all arrested on DUI charges, booked in the jail, and subsequently released. With each visit to the web site, I would see their two names remaining even as all around them, new prisoners were being brought in and then released. I found myself feeling a lot of sympathy for these two strangers as I imagined what it must have been like to be setting in those cells and watching as everyone but them was eventually allowed to leave. I wondered if those two shoplifters were best friends or were they just casual acquaintances? Was one of the girl trying to impress the other by stealing? Were they just two spoiled suburban brats who were stealing because they could get away with and was their subsequent abandonment in jail the punishment of an outraged parent who refused to bond his daughters out? Or, I wondered, were they two desperate runaways who were shop lifting because they desperately needed something to bargain with?
It was better than a soap opera. Indeed, I was on the verge of driving to Denton myself just to bail these two out of jail.
The web site's genius is that it gives us just enough specifics to get our attention without giving us any of the details that would serve to limit the imagination. For example, when I visit the site, I might discover that a 47 year-old individual named Tom Smith has been arrested for public intoxication. I might click on Tom Smith's name and be presented with a mugshot of a balding, overweight white guy with a grim expression on his face. However, what the site won't tell me is who Tom Smith is and why he was intoxicated in public. Those facts are left to me to try to uncover based on the thin evidence provided.
As a result, I might find myself spending a lot of time examining Tom Smith's mugshot. I'll look at his grim expression and I'll wonder if the frown is a permanent feature or is it just a result of being arrested. I'll look at the face in search of any scratches or bruises or scars, any evidence of a struggle. I'll look at that mugshot and I'll ask myself, "Is Tom Smith a villain or is he a tragic hero? Is he a man with an addiction or is he a man trying to cope with pain?" In the end, the only thing that can be said for sure is that the Tom Smith of my imagination will probably turn out to have a far more interesting story than the Tom Smith of reality.
That's why I can't help but visit as reprehensible a site as the homepage of the Denton City Jail. In its own accidental way, it shows us that the greatest fiction comes from trying to understand the most unknowable of a facts.
