There are over thousands local jails across the United States. They are all different in ways, and similar in ways. This week we got the opportunity to explore these similarities and differences. Last week we had taken a couple field trips to these different jails. We toured the Miami County jail, and the Wabash county jail. They differentiate in size, technology, and rules, and staff. The Miami County Jail seems to have the advantage in a lot of these categories. The first at most noticeable difference I could found was the size of the two jails. The Miami county jail seemed to be much, much bigger. The very first thing that catches your eye is the size of the main room or lobby when you walk in. Miami County obviously had the bigger one. …show more content…
The Miami County jail was built in 2009, while the Wabash County jail was built in 1979. That’s a 30 years difference. The first thing that caught my eye and basically gave me an impression on how this tour was going to go was the doors. The doors were automatic in the Miami County Jail, but not the Wabash County. The biggest difference I saw in the technology was the visitation system. In Wabash County Jail, you are put into a room with a little glass window to talk to an inmate, but in Miami County jail, there is a corner of the lobby where you can go and essentially skype with your inmate. For those that don’t know what skype is, it is basically video chatting. You can stay in the lobby while the inmate would stay in their cell block. This, as you can see, is much more advanced than the Wabash County jail would be. The last difference in technology that I saw was the pod system. Miami County Jail used this system called a pod system. In the pod system you can sit at the top and are able to survey all of the cells. In the Wabash Jail, they use a linear system. In the linear system, you have to walk around to survey the inmates. This would make it a lot harder for the Wabash County