I had no idea how prisoner transport worked. The article below is from 2016:
“
The Horrible Things I Saw Driving a Van Packed with Prisoners”
Low pay, minimal breaks, and prisoners defecating on themselves are just part of the job in the extradition industry.
“From 2013 to 2014, Fernando Colon worked as an ‘extradition agent’ tasked with driving prisoner transport vans across America. He was employed by USG7 and later US Corrections, two private extradition companies hired by local law enforcement agencies that need a suspect, fugitive, or other prisoner picked up or dropped off in another state.
[SBM]
Colon's job was grim, by his telling. He was paid barely more than minimum wage, and after getting just two days of training, he hauled a rickety, poorly ventilated van filled with sometimes dangerous prisoners for days at a time. Paid per inmate, by the mile, his company had every incentive to send Colon out on the road for long stretches, to make as many pickups and drop-offs as possible. He rarely stopped for food, showers, or sleep.
[SBM]
Here's how it worked: I'd show up at headquarters as early as 12:30 AM on a Monday morning, and they'd give me a van.
Then they'd hand me a manifest—a list of the prisoners to be picked up and delivered around the country. This usually had only the most basic information about the human beings I would soon have in my vehicle: their destinations, the charges they were facing, and maybe the medications they took. Then I'd hit the road.
When I'd get to the first jail, there would be one or two prisoners to put in my vehicle. I'd search them, pat them down, put on their belly chains, their ankle shackles, meet with the nurse there for maybe a few minutes, and load them on.
Then I was back behind the wheel: Pick up, drop-off, pick up, drop-off, maybe a bathroom break or McDonald's, pick up, drop-off, sunrise, sunset, three days on the road, seven days on the road, 15 prisoners on the van by this point, always on the road. I considered it a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week job—and that's all the time there is, by the way.
[SBM]
Meanwhile my company wouldn't pay for anything—it was profit, profit, profit. I got paid $8.50 an hour, and my food was all out of pocket. For the prisoners, they let us put their meals on a company credit card—but only $4 a day per inmate. Four dollars a day for food. I would have to feed them on that.
That could only be the dollar menu at McDonald's. For breakfast, a sausage biscuit; for lunch, a McChicken; for dinner, a McChicken, then run it back the next day and the next day, and the next. And my company only allowed us to give prisoners the courtesy kid's cup of water that comes with the meal—that way we wouldn't need to pull over for them to go to the bathroom as often, and we could just keep driving and driving and make it to the next jail.
[SBM]
They told us at first that the trips should not last more than four days, but often it stretched out to 10 or 11 days. On the road that long, you'd fall asleep at the wheel. But in a prisoner transport van, because of that metal cage behind you, the front seats do not recline at all. You have to sleep straight up, for a whole week in a row. Your body is just exhausted, and it's all you can do not to crash.
[SBM]
They used to let us pull over at rest stops for a break and the bathroom, but then a guy escaped, and after that we could only stop at a secure jail or maybe a local police department. Southern jails mostly allowed us to stop in, but on the East Coast, like in New Jersey and New York, the jail staff always said, ‘No, you can't stop here.’
It was hard to find a jail willing to take on the liability of accepting prisoners who didn't belong to them—they were more wary of taking on prisoners with possible medical problems than we were. A lot of them would just laugh at us and say, ‘We're not opening our doors, keep driving.’ My bosses, they would say, in so many words, ‘You figure it out—we got to make this happen.’ They knew we would keep driving. They knew we would make the deadline.
[SBM]” (BBM)
The Horrible Things I Saw Driving a Van Packed with Prisoners - VICE
ETA: After reading the article, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often.
