Video: Behind The Scenes At Central Booking

At 2:45 a.m., prisoner 07017945 asks whether he’ll get on “American Idol” after I take his arrest photo. “This is my photo opportunity,” he jokes.

I tell him to stand up straight and look at the camera.

Click. … And that’s another mug shot taken during my night shift as photographer at the Orient Road Jail: The young man, 27, was arrested and charged with driving under the influence.

Police pulled him over, he says, on Howard Avenue after he left a restaurant in south Tampa. “It was stupid,” he says.

I give him a peak at my computer screen to preview his photo.

“That’s not bad,” he says and asks why a reporter would ever voluntarily work all night in a jail taking mug shots.

Get arrested for anything in Hillsborough County and this is where you end up: in a cramped, undecorated photo “studio” looking at a digital camera and a paper sign that says:

MIRA AQUI

LOOK HERE

In minutes, your photo appears on the Internet with your charge, home address, height and weight - just like any arsonist, kidnapper or wayward politician.

For many people, facing that camera lens is a humbling and shocking moment. Many people scowl. Some smile. You’re allowed to smile. But many cry.

Jail Tip No. 1: If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of staring at a mug shot camera, look at the camera lens, not the “LOOK HERE” sign about 18 inches below. Looking downward makes you appear dejected, guilty. The sign isn’t placed low on purpose. It’s just the only flat surface nearby.

The Orient Road Jail doesn’t look like jails in the movies - no barred cages with scary biker guys scowling as prisoners cry out, “Guard, gimmie my phone call.”

Rather, the booking room resembles a modern bus station in layout, decoration and odor. I’ll describe the aroma as an aggressive mixture of “locker room,” “sweat,” and “hand sanitizer” with persistent undertones of “feet.”

The layout is open. Men and women amble together. No bars or doors separate mingling prisoners from deputies - or me. This is a new law enforcement philosophy that treats prisoners more politely - a little. It tends to work. Wandering prisoners behave more like bored passengers at the airport than Hannibal Lecter.

To start my night, a deputy trains me on jailhouse photography, and at 10:35, my first mug shot of the night walks up. Prisoner 07017883, a tall, balding man arrested for “trespassing,” a term police seem to define rather broadly as people going somewhere they shouldn’t.

The photo equipment is decidedly modern. Unlike the movies, there is no flash, and I don’t get to yell, “Turn to the RIGHT!” Instead, I look at a large Dell flat-panel monitor that’s connected to a computer and Canon digital camera on a motorized mount. I adjust the camera remotely to center people’s image on my screen and hit the “Enter” button.

Simple.

In seconds, the image of prisoner 07017883 in orange jailhouse pajamas is transmitted online. Some prisoners awaiting their portrait session still wear their personal clothes, but most take a forced stroll to “the showers” to change into orange pajamas.

Jail Tip No. 2: At some point, all prisoners go to “the showers,” where a clerk behind a metal screen hands out orange pajamas, brown slippers and white underwear. Then prisoners walk into a 15-by-15-foot gray tile shower room to change clothes. (You don’t have to shower, but you can.) Guards separate men and women, but it’s not private by any means.

Parade Of Despair

As prisoners flow through my photo “studio,” the whole process strikes me as a slow parade of anger, fear and despair. People end up here after things go wrong. They’re a spectrum of society: male, female, white, black, Hispanic, old, young, professional, homeless, jobless, pregnant, bruised and bleeding.

Prisoner 07017889, a young brunette woman charged with burglary, smiles at me while fluffing her hair for the photo. I ask what happened. “It’s a long story,” she sighs, declining to elaborate.

Another alarmingly thin woman walks up for her photo holding her belly and groaning, “Oh, God, I can’t stand up! I can’t stand up!” She sways, but stands still for a second, and I snap her picture.

Next, a middle-aged man with a corporate logo sweatshirt fights back tears as I take his photo. He’s on the sex-offender registry and was charged with possession of child pornography.

It’s a relatively straightforward job, if occasionally violent. Deputies work 12-hour shifts and earn a starting salary of $36,931, plus medical benefits, tuition reimbursement and a pension. There’s plenty of multitasking. Photo deputies also fingerprint prisoners, walk them to the showers and tackle anyone who turns violent.

At 11:44, a woman kicks a deputy in the crotch.

Guards wrestle her to the floor in a grunting dog pile. She swears loudly as guards strap her to a wheeled restraining chair and roll her into a holding cell to calm down.

Jail Tip No. 3: Cooperate politely with guards. Once you’re handcuffed in the world outside, you’re going to jail. Cooperating won’t set you free, but it speeds the process and may get you bailed out sooner.

First Scowl

At about 2 a.m., a nurse checks on the woman in the restraining chair to make sure she’s alert. Oh, yes, she’s alert. Enough to scream and curse at me through the glass. “Please! Let me out of this thing! It hurts!”

Police say she punched her grandmother right in front of them. Her father was arrested tonight, too, and he looks at her through the glass, crying.

The next two hours pass without much action as packs of prisoners line up for photos. I check their names, then say, “Stand up straight. Look at the camera.” Click. “Next.”

Finally, at 4:30 a.m., a prisoner gives me the first high-quality scowl of the night - with gold teeth, too.

A few minutes later, a professional-looking woman breaks down crying as I try to take her picture. She had to give up her Treo PDA phone hours ago. She shakes with held-back sobs, and I give her a minute to calm down. She looks up at the camera, and I hit “Enter.”

She can’t find a phone book so I pull one down from a shelf and help her find the number for the hotel where her friends are.

Jail Tip No. 4: The booking room has no real guides or counselors, so first-timers seem bewildered about what to do next, how to find bail money or where to get food. So ask every question you need. Deputies are helpful if asked politely. Cooperative prisoners get baloney sandwiches and milk every four hours.

My shift ends at 6:30 a.m., and my last photo is prisoner 0701970, a woman with tear-streaked mascara running down her cheeks, arrested at 3:13 a.m. 1.9 miles from her home in Rocky Point and charged with DUI.

A deputy unlocks the central booking room door for me, and I realize the only thing distinguishing me from all the prisoners is the plastic “Visitor” badge clipped to my shirt.

As I walk out, the pale blue predawn light is just coming up, and I can drive away a free man. No one took my photo.

PRISON CLASSICS

“Letter From the Birmingham Jail,” by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a seminal work of the civil rights movement smuggled from jail on scraps of paper

“The House of the Dead,” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, recalling his years in a Siberian prison

“The Prince,” by Niccolo Machiavelli, written in prison to his patron

Letters of St. Paul, written by the Christian apostle in prison; they now form key parts of the Bible

“Behind Bars,” by Jeffrey Ian Ross and Stephen C. Richards, a how-to guide for surviving incarceration

BY THE NUMBERS

202 - Prisoners processed in an average 24-hour period

(813) 247-8300 - Phone number for information about prisoners in the Orient Road Jail

74,804 - Prisoners processed during 2006, a 3.9 percent increase from 2005

10 - Percentage of total arrests for driving under the influence

$36,931 - Starting salary for deputies at Orient Road (does not include $1,924 meal allowance in cash)

82 - Number of mug shots I took during my Saturday night shift

Source: Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office; Tribune research

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.

Get Weekly Deals | Write a letter to the editor | Subscribe and get two weeks free | Place an Ad