Arrests can happen to anyone. Incarceration, even for a day, can impact your life. It would permanently be etched on you and change your perspective. In this episode of Prison: The Hidden Sentence Podcast, host Julia Lazareck is joined by Lily, a native and retired hunter–jumper horse trainer as she shares her experience of being arrested, how it affected her life, and her view of the criminal justice system.
—
Listen to the podcast here
24 Hours Behind Bars
I’m here with Lily, who I met several years ago. It wasn’t until I shared the story about my brother that she shared her experience of being arrested and how it changed her life and chnage her perspective on the criminal justice system. Lily, thank you so much for being here and let’s jump right in. You told me you were arrested a couple of years ago, and the experience made a lifelong impression on you. Just start in the beginning.
Thanks for having me. I was arrested for a DUI in Arizona where I lived. They arrest so many people in Arizona for DUI. That’s the number one thing they arrest people for. Driving under the influence is my fault and my choice. I feel stupid for making that choice but it happened. The interesting part about it for me is it happened in three parts. It was not that late at night when I got pulled over in a parking lot of a Target or something. It was a big one. We got out of the car and they made me do the DUI walk a straight line and all that stuff.
When you are drunk, you don’t think you are doing badly, but one can only imagine what I look like and I don’t know. They said they were going to stuff me in their car and they put me in the cruiser. The first thing I noticed was I’m not exactly a small person, but I’m not a big person either. I’m about 5’6” and it was tiny back there. Not only was it tiny but it was a plastic molded benchy type of experience, and then the big wirey thing in front of it. It was uncomfortable. If I was any taller or bigger, they would have had to get me in there with a shoehorn.
I was like, “This is ridiculous.” Not only do I feel like an animal instantly but I feel like, “This is not great.” We drive down to where they had set up a lab or a field office for taking blood. It’s getting later. It’s dark and they take me to the place where they are going to draw blood. I have these tiny disappeary veins. That was not a fun experience. I’m sure the person doing it was a professional but it wasn’t their best professional. That was an unpleasant experience and I’m crying, “What’s going to happen to me?”
By the time I got through all the paperwork and all the blood tests, they said things to me like, “We are going to take your blood. If you refuse, it’s going to be worse for you.” It’s threatening stuff like, “Follow our plan or else.” I have never been arrested. I didn’t have anything to measure that experience by. It was like, “I’m going to get in more trouble if I don’t do exactly what they say.”
I did whatever they said to me. Ultimately, they stuffed me in a cab at the end of the experience and sent me home. I called a lawyer immediately the next morning. A person had put a flyer in my mailbox. It was a random flyer of a lawyer. In Arizona, they pick up everybody for DUI so I got a promotional flyer in the mail, and I oddly still had it. I called the guy.
We met over the phone. I told him my story and he picked up the case right away. I paid him. What happened was time passed between that moment and the time I was supposed to go to court. I showed up at court with him. He told me what to say. I met him before the appointment and we met in this room. He said, “Say this. Say that.” I get in there and I would say everything that he says to say. The judge goes, “You are going to have to spend one night in jail, and then you are going to have to be on probation for X amount of time. You are going to have to go to alcohol class.”
Two of them. One of them was a group alcohol class that was going to last for 6 or 9 months. The other one was the driver’s safety drunk driver course. They make you watch videos of people who don’t wear their seatbelts, people who are drunk driving, and texting while they are driving. All the super scary creepy stuff. I want to say a swear word, but I’m going to say it was creepy.
I signed up for all that, and I signed up for the time that I was going to go spend my one night in jail. I picked a weekday. I worked for myself and so I had a flexible schedule. I drove myself down there and they said, “Wear loose clothing. You are going to be there for 24 hours.” That means whatever you are wearing, you are going to be sleeping, eating and waking up. You are in the same clothes. You can’t bring a suitcase. Not that I was thinking that but whatever.
I get there in a pair of tennis shoes, a sweatshirt and my sweat pants. I parked my car and I’m petrified because I have nothing to judge the experience against. For the most part, minus this one experience, I’m pretty much a rule follower. I did whatever they said to do. I get there and they take my keys and license. They put me into this process of assimilation. It’s what I could say it was.
You get in there. You answer all the questions. You get your picture taken. It was like being put into a plant where they package something. You are stamped, packaged, and wrapped like everybody else. What struck me and I can still feel it in my body was getting in there and instantly not being me anymore. You are no longer Lily. You are the package. Whatever your number is, you are the package.
Going from a name to a number is hard on the spirit. Share on XThey tied me up and I was straying, not literally, but like a package. They stuck me in with a group of other incarcerated people who were in for various reasons but were being assimilated at the same time. I’m a chatter. I’m a talker. I’m like, “Hi, my name is Lily. Who are you? What are you in for?” Not too inquisitive because it doesn’t seem like a cocktail party or anything, but I’m nosy.
I’m asking a few questions. I thought it interesting too that some of the people I was with in that group of people were offering the information like, “This is what we are going to do next. This is what happens next.” They are trying to help you get the picture of what was going to happen next. It was simply being processed like I was a cow or a sheep or something. What struck me was how the correctional officers’ energy was so different from what I had experienced. It was like they don’t know me. They can’t tell whether or not I’m a good person or a bad person, but a different person.
You committed the crime or not. Your background. They don’t know anything about you.
They don’t know anything. It struck me that they don’t have an opportunity to treat anybody any differently. They do have to treat everybody the same way. I was guilty of a DUI but I don’t feel like I’m a bad scary person or a threat to society. It made me feel like, “They don’t have any choice. They have to assume everybody is the same,” and that was interesting. It was interesting and energetic. My point is I couldn’t change their opinion of me by acting nicer or not nicer. It didn’t matter. You are in jail. You are there for a reason. Somebody decided that you did something wrong and you need to go there.
I get from the part where they hold you, and then it’s Arizona. There’s a piece of the group that gets shuttled off to Tent City. That’s where I was headed for, which was a faraway place on the property from where you enter. It was a series of, “Go here. Sit here and wait. Next. You are going to go to this spot. Sit here and wait. Next, you are going to go this way.” It was like leapfrogging. Pretty much I felt like, “I’m going to shut my face and do whatever I’m supposed to do.” Finally, I and 4 or 5 other ladies get let out of this Tent City.
If you could explain that too. I don’t think everyone knows what Tent City is.
It’s outdoors and it’s like barracks tents. I honestly can’t even remember whether they were wooden or metal but they were structures that big canvas tents were draped over. There were probably 12 to 16 stacked bunks long. They were pretty big. Dirt floor and on the bunks was barracks blankets. No pillow and no mattress or anything. It was a barracks blanket and you pick a spot. The thing is I got in there at 6:00 or 7:00 by that time. There was a communal area and they brought dinner. The dinner consisted of rotten fruit and some gruel-looking and bread-looking stuff.
I’m pretty careful about what I eat. I knew I was only in there for 24 hours. I did my best to pick an apple that didn’t look so gnarly. The rest of it, there was no way. Honestly, it looked like rotten food. As I said, I’m chatty. I didn’t go to my own spot. I cozied up to some people who were nice to me. I sat with them and one of them was a girl who was in Tent City. She was being transitioned out of a different part of the jail that she had been in for several months. She was not getting along with the people that were in that group so they were transitioning her to another spot.
During the holding period, they threw her in Tent City because that’s the catch-all cattle pen for short-term and long-term. She said, “I worked in the kitchen. This food that you are looking at right now comes in a bag that’s very clearly marked, ‘Not for human consumption.’” I was like, “I wasn’t going to eat it before but now I’m for sure not going to eat it.” I know if I was there and I was quite hungry, I probably would eat it. It pissed me off. It made me angry that that was the situation. Here was the alternative.
The alternative was you were allowed to keep money, and I had a little cash or something like that. I think I was instructed prior to going in to bring a little cash because there were vending machines. These vending machines were behind the cages and you could use a vending machine. It was either this gruel that was marked not for human consumption or you could somehow get some money or borrow money. I don’t even remember why I had money. I think they told me to bring a couple of bills. I had like $5 or $10 or something like that. I got those crackers with the peanut butter inside, the orange ones because that’s my favorite thing. It was junk food, chips, candy and soda, which I’m very into nutrition and I might as well eat the gruel if you ask me.
Junk food or spoiled food were the two options. If you didn’t have any money, you were SOL for the junk food. It was crappy. I was most struck by the eating situation because once you are in there, it’s not like you can go on out to McDonald’s or go on out to a store. You are stuck there for whatever time they say.
I met this one girl that was in there. She was a young girl. She had gotten a DUI and unlike my sentence, she had two weeks in there. I looked at her and thought, “What are you going to eat for two weeks?” There was another girl in there who had been in there for almost a month and she was fat. She was like, “I have been eating junk food out of the vending machine for a month so you tell me.” I was like, “This is poo.” It was not great.
I then laid down on my little cot at night. It was about 10:00 or 11:00 and I lay down there. All this while, it’s like you’ve been in a hospital. In the hospital, stuff happens and they have to use the loudspeaker. Even though they know people are trying to get rest, stuff is happening. There’s no way around it. Just like that, in the jail, there were announcements that were going on. Every hour, there were some announcements of so-and-so needs to be at the gate. It was a bunch of announcements, but it came over a loudspeaker that you could hear for 4 or 5 miles. I was looking forward to the sleeping portion. I’m laying horizontally but I’m clearly not going to be getting any sleep.
About midnight, they call my name and say, “Lily, get to the gate. You are going out.” That’s all they said. I’m like, “What’s happening next?” I go to the gate and the lady opens the gate. They said, “Go get on the shuttle. Yes, ma’am, get on the shuttle. Sit in this room.” You are again with a bunch of male and female pile of people getting assimilated. I’m not being told by any correctional officer what was happening. We’re being told by correctional officers, “Don’t ask any questions because I don’t know what’s happening with you until I know what’s happening with you. I don’t know you. Pretty much don’t speak until you are spoken to. There’s nothing I can tell you. I’m not going to tell you.”
They weren’t very nice and I can’t blame them. They are dealing with people who are guilty and not guilty and they don’t know, and some of the people weren’t very nice back to them. If you mirror the experience, they were unhappy and it was not fun. I’m getting closer to a different space in the jail and then finally, “You are leaving now.” They give you your stuff and they kick you out the front door and say, “Drive away.”
I still got a wave of goosebumps right now. I’m still so pissed about the food situation and the whole experience. I got out of there thinking, “What can I do about that?” It bugged me. The people in there looked super unhealthy and uncomfortable. Honestly, I know enough about nutrition. If you feed people junk food that long, they are not going to be able to smile.
That doesn’t go anywhere for their attitude. I drove away and I was forever changed. That was a lifetime deterrent for me to never have that experience again. I wouldn’t even think of stepping on the opposite side of the law for any other reason, not DUI or any other minor infraction. No way would I ever want to go back there mostly for two reasons. One was the nutrition and that made me so angry, and the second was there’s no way around that correctional officer having a bland or blank attitude toward you.
They don’t have a choice. I felt sorry for them. I felt compassionate toward them that they have to have that energy poured at them, however long their shift is. I thought if I was a correctional officer, I would spend the other twelve hours of the day singing happy songs to myself and trying to make myself smile, pouring good positive energy into myself to try even that out. It was so rotten.
It’s a whole another world that people don’t know about. That’s why I wanted you to share your story because a lot of times we talk with family members and what it’s like on the outside. In your situation, in the big picture, you were pretty lucky. You didn’t have to serve a lot of time. I want to make a note about the nutrition was something that somebody told you. We can’t validate. I’m not saying it’s not true. However, I want to make a point here that we can’t validate what that person said. I wanted to go back to something that you had told me offline about how there were people there that you might not have spoken to on the outside and how that changed you also?
As I said, I’m chatty. I questioned people, “What are you doing here?” Over that meal, everybody was feeling talky. What are you doing here? How long you’ve been here? When do you get out? What do you do on the outside? I met people there and the one segment of those people who struck me the most were the ones who had been in and out. I listened to what they were saying and I kept thinking to myself, “My one little tiny scratch the surface trip in is enough to keep me out of it forever.” They had a certain comfort level with the known territory of being in.
I registered that and thought people can get used to anything and they can get normalized to anything. I would probably not have met people who were in and out of that system on any consistent basis on the outside. I’m not dead yet. Who knows who I will meet, but it was an interesting perspective that solidified my own path going forward in my life to keep my butt on the side where they don’t put me back.
People need to realize that incarceration arrest can happen to anybody just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Share on XI did not like the feeling of having my rights taken away and getting the clear impression that was too bad for me and that I could deal with it. It wasn’t like, “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to take your rights away. You are going to feel like a number for however long you are in here.” All I could think of was, “If I were in here for the rest of my life, that going from a name to a number thing is hard on a spirit.” It felt heavy and I didn’t want that.
I’m glad you brought that up because when somebody is taken into the system, they are institutionalized. They do lose their identity the longer they are in. It’s important for families on the outside to keep that humanity with their loved ones. If you were in any longer, you would have had family and friends visiting you, and how could they have supported you.
Even me telling them, how would they ever know how that feels? You don’t know how it feels but I can tell you, it is spirit-crushing. It was for me and a tiny teaspoon of it was enough to grab me by the internal throat and go, “Bye. I didn’t like it.”
That’s what you are here to tell your story and to share it because you have a little taste of it. Here you are being able to talk about it and share it with people with families so that they get a little snippet of what it’s like. That whole tent town thing, I don’t think it’s there anymore, but that was crazy putting people outside of Arizona in the summer. It gets hot there and even colder in the winter.
It’s very cold at night.
No matter what somebody has done, they are still human beings. There are still people on the outside that love them. There’s still retribution but people shouldn’t be treated like animals. It was interesting. I didn’t know about the Cruiser and I can understand why it’s plastic, so people don’t hurt themselves if people got sick or whatever.
It’s tiny like knees up in my nose and I’m only 5’6”. If I were 6 feet or if I were a 6-foot big person, forget it. It would be a real challenge and I would end up with a lot of bruising.
These are the things that we are sharing with the families and the people that are reading this. If you had my book Prison: The Hidden Sentence and read it prior to that, you might have had similar information on how to handle things. I’m doing a little plug here for my book that everybody should read. This show is important too because we bring in different people and we usually talk to families.
I was so intrigued by your story and how it affected your life and how you are seeing things differently, that when you meet somebody that has been incarcerated, you have more empathy for them. You would talk to them differently or not have that judgment that a lot of people have. The other thing I wanted to bring up, and not that I would ever wish this on anybody, is people need to realize that incarceration arrest can happen to anybody just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You had an experience that you will never do that again.
I broke the law but it can be for anything.
It could be for having a similar name. Especially for kids, if they are with other kids that are doing something. They are guilty of just being there.
They still have to remove your rights because they don’t know if you are guilty or not guilty. You still have that experience of turning into a number.
I still know my brother’s number. It’s something that person on the inside or person on the outside never forgets. Looking at your experience and what you know now, is there anything that you would have done differently?
Not drink and drive. Minus that stupidity, not really. I got super lucky. If you talk to many of the bazillions of other people in Arizona who are arrested for DUI, there are horror stories about Tent City. There are horror stories about the amount of money it takes. There are plenty of bad news on that front. I was super lucky to have it happen the way that it did, and to only have a short period of time of my incarceration, and to have that tiny experience. I’m pretty lucky. The thing I could have done differently is not getting there in the first place. As a result of that tiny experience, I won’t put myself and don’t put myself and would not even think of putting myself in a situation like that. For me, it was a total lifetime deterrent.
Sometimes things happen. It gives you a new perspective on life. In some ways, it made you more compassionate to other people and so it makes you a better person. I can’t judge that because I already think you are a good person, but having that compassion for other people and that empathy. For you to tell your story that any little thing that happens in your life can change you. It all depends on how you look at it and how you move forward with it. I want to thank you so much for joining us and I hope people get something out of it. You could reach out to us at PrisonTheHiddenSentence.com. Everybody, have a wonderful day and don’t drink and drive.
Important Links
About Lily
Lily is a California native and retired hunter-jumper horse trainer, she has spent her most recent 15 years in internet marketing and business development. Lily joined a real estate group with a grade school friend. She’s the fast paddling feet below the swimming swan’s graceful body whose areas of support include client relations, events, marketing and all things administrative. In her spare time, she enjoys riding her horse and hiking with her Jack Russell terrier.
Global Tel says
Arrest for DUI is common, but can be prevented. Don’t drink and drive is one of the simplest law that everybody tends to forget.