Slammer? It’s door as they escape
Relief washed over Geiger Corrections Center on Friday when the human remains unearthed by Division Street construction workers were determined to be from a graveyard dating back to early Spokane settlers.
Administrators had been worried that the corpse might have been yet another escapee from their minimum-to-no-security prison west of Spokane.
“It seemed pretty far-fetched the more we thought about it,” conceded an unnamed corrections source. “Like, why would anybody go to the trouble of digging out of Geiger when you can pretty much walk out the front door?”
Geiger getaways have reached such epidemic proportions that:
•Inmates may now request meals in “to-go” boxes.
•”Geiger Defections Center” T-shirts have replaced shaving kits as the top selling item in the prison commissary.
•Northern Quest now offers free casino shuttle service from the Geiger parking lot.
•The prison just held its first Geiger Escapees Reunion (class of last March).
No one seems more dazed by the turnover than Geiger director Leon Long.
“They want to see their boyfriends or they want drugs and all of a sudden bam, bam, bam, people are taking off on us,” said Long in a Saturday Spokesman-Review story.
Under normal circumstances, a prison director will only utter the words “bam, bam, bam,” to mimic the happy sound of guard gunfire.
At Geiger, however, the words “bam, bam, bam” mean only one thing:
The slamming of an exit door.
If the escapes continue, I’m afraid insensitive inmates will brand poor Leon with one of those hurtful nicknames.
Geiger isn’t a prison – it’s a bed and breakfast.
Geiger logs more departures than the STA Plaza.
Geiger has become such a disgrace that it’s beginning to take a belly-laugh lead over Spokane Mayor Jim West’s Internet indiscretions.
Two women – Jaymie C. Fowler and Amanda George – were the most recent inmates to say goodbye to Geiger.
They went over a fence last Wednesday in an area Long called a “weak spot” although the director could have been referring to his authority.
Although George was caught quickly, Fowler as of Saturday afternoon was still – as the great Merle Haggard once sang – “on the run, the highway is my home.”
In lieu of racking up high overtime hours looking for her, Geiger officials have offered Fowler free HBO and cell-service happy hour if she’ll “please, pretty please” come back.
I’ve always had grudging regard for the prison escapes you see in the movies.
I love it when a clever con sculpts a lifelike dummy out of papier-mâché and then leaves it in his bed to fool the screws.
How can you not respect the inmate who can turn a bar of soap and some shoe polish into a perfect handgun replica?
Then there are the cagey jailbirds who find their way out of the slammer by hiding in a sack of dirty prison laundry or worming their way through stinky subterranean sewage pipes.
But leaving Geiger? That’s about as complicated as calling a travel agent.
Geiger needs to plug the holes. But how?
I offer a simple 3-Step Penal Plan:
1. No more pole vault privileges in the prison yard.
2. Take bus schedules out of the weight room.
3. Stop hanging “Escapee of the Week” photos in the cafeteria as a morale builder.
“We’re trying to get some respect from the public at Geiger, and this doesn’t help us at all,” Long observed to a reporter after another Geiger inmate fled while in custody at the public defender’s office.
You can certainly see why this man gets the big bucks. If he can’t keep his prisoners from taking so many powders, I think I know what that nickname will be.
“Long Gone Leon!”