Notes from the Field
Interview Room Four, Martinez Detention Facility, Martinez
By Morgan Janssen
Highway 4 carves through the northern portion of Contra Costa County. In the late summer the hills are burnished in gold grasses, and the warmth on the drive out from Oakland is a welcome change from the perpetual coolness of the coast. Downtown Martinez is tucked into the shadow of the Shell refinery and seems to have adopted an aggressively quaint identity in response to that. The windows of the many antique shops announce a year-round rotation of old-fashioned attractions: jazz nights, a shrimp festival, a crafts fair, a jamboree. On Thursdays during the summer, the street in front of the courthouse is blocked off for a well-attended farmer’s market.
A block over and a block up from the market is the Martinez Detention Facility, or MDF. For those who have reason to visit MDF on a weekly or daily basis, the security is perfunctory: we are all familiar faces. As an attorney, I try to make my visits on Fridays, because Fridays are lockdown days, and coming to talk to me is likely to be the only time a guy gets out of his cell all day.
To enter into the functioning portion of the jail, I pass through two doors, which are controlled by a member of the staff who sits in a nearby room full of monitors. Sometimes I have to wait for a minute or more to be noticed. Sometimes the heavy locking mechanism thwacks open when I am two strides from the door. One scenario is mildly annoying; the other can be pretty unnerving.
Sierra Vista Hospital, Sacramento
By Michael Clark
The wildest place I’ve ever been in Northern California is Sierra Vista Hospital, a mental health facility located south of downtown Sacramento, adjacent to a Kaiser Permanente. I was admitted earlier this year and spent four days in the hospital’s crisis and recovery unit. It was a safe place to detox from heroin abuse and benzodiazepine dependence. About ten years ago I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (though I prefer the term “manic depression”), and I chose Sierra Vista because it specializes in multidisciplinary interventions for patients with dual diagnoses, like substance abuse and mental illness.
Sierra Vista is a private hospital that has been around since the 1990s. The patients in treatment there reflect the diversity of South Sacramento. The only common factors seemed to be income level and drug abuse. Nine out of ten of us came from poor to lower-middle-class neighborhoods, and we were all either addicts or welfare hustlers. My generation (I was born in 1980) seemed underrepresented; whether my peers are in denial or working so hard they have no time to pay attention to mental illnesses or addiction, I cannot say.
The above are excerpts of Issue 4’s Notes from the Field