I am a lifelong liberal but I did work for a year as a correction officer on Riker's Island (a decade ago, at ARDC which is the jail discussed). The "box" was

I am a lifelong liberal but I did work for a year as a correction officer on Riker's Island (a decade ago, at ARDC which is the jail discussed). The "box" was referred to by everyone as the "bing". This isn't an AMA, but I will say that many like much of law enforcement, there is a discretionary aspect. That is, though inmates can be thrown in the bing for minor offences, almost all were there because of an accumulation of violent activities. In other words, they really were "bad guys" (once again a lot could have changed in a decade). I would say a bigger problem were the "schools" that the inmates went to in the jail - they were among the most violent places on earth. The teachers obviously could not control the classes and there weren't enough COs to help enough either. But for the most part things things self-leveled. Inmates had an assigned classification which tended to bunch them together. Kids who honestly were good kids, would usually wind up in a camp-like environments called the "sprungs". And bad kids would wind up with other bad kids, and wind up doing bad things. Another thing about that jail, was it was about 50% adolescents and 50% adults. The adults were usually sentenced but waiting for a bed available in a state facility.