Until I ended up there, I had no idea how much turnover there was in a jail. A steady stream of new people would come in just long enough to lose a job, miss a school pickup, fail a few classes, get evicted, get robbed, skip a car payment. Sometimes they’d only stay for a day before they made bail, or a week until the judge decided what to do about the latest probation violation. Nationally, the average jail stay is just a few weeks. For women who still had a life left to lose on the outside, the effects of even a short trip to jail could be disastrous.
