April 4th, 2026
I pulled into the parking lot of the Community Reintegration Center. The center is a rather ugly brick structure. Its primary purpose is to keep some people inside and other people out. The housing area has translucent windows that allow light inside, but do not allow the occupants to look out. The building is surrounded by high fences with razor wire on the top. The place is no way welcoming, not on the outside and definitely not on the inside.
The Community Reintegration Center (CRC) is a jail. Period. I saw no evidence of anybody being reintegrated into the local community. The whole point of the facility is to keep the folks inside separated from the community. Those who are incarcerated within its walls are referred to as “residents” on the CRC website. Residents? Really? I guess in a strange way they chose to reside there, but they are prisoners, plain and simple. Why not just call them that?
I went to the CRC to pick up a young woman’s personal property. It’s not a major issue to pick up her stuff, but I don’t like doing it. This is not the first time that I have had to recovering her belongings, and it’s always a cause for anxiety and melancholy. The CRC has a visitor center, which is the first stop for anybody entering the building. At least they don’t call it a “welcome center”, because it’s not. The people working there are polite and professional, but the hall is a bit like an ER: nobody wants to be there. Nobody.
Since I was not there to actually visit the woman, I did not need to go through a security check. I did have to show my ID, twice, while I was there. After I told the guard who I was and why I was there, she called the lady in the property department to come on down, and then she told me to sit and wait.
The waiting area was strange. There was a total of nine chairs arranged in a square formation, three rows of three. The chairs were spaced well apart. The area seemed to be designed to isolate the visitors from each other. One guy who came into the center initially thought to sit in the row of seats that were closer to the entrance for the security check section. He decided to move back to where I was sitting when he realized that those seats upfront all had handcuffs dangling from them.
I sat and waited. It was kind of like going to the DMV, except more intimidating. Nobody is in a rush and there is no place else to go. I had time, so I gazed at the official bulletins posted all over the walls. Other people came inside. Two of them were obviously lawyers. The man and the woman might as well have worn uniforms. They both had that professional legal appearance: they wore suits and carried serious business paperwork in their hands. They had that look on their faces that said, “Let’s get this shit done and get out of here.” Actually, everyone had that look on their face, including me.
At last, the lady from property showed up. She was a tiny, older Black woman wearing a black surgical mask on her face. She carried a large plastic bag in one hand and some papers in the other.
She asked me for my ID. I fumbled for it. She told me to take my time. She asked me how I was. I told her that I had done this sort of thing before. She gave me a questioning look. I tried to clarify what I meant by saying,
“Not here, but for the same person.”
She nodded. Then she told me,
“When I was young, I made some bad decisions. Then I had time to think about what I had done, and I considered my options. Don’t give up on her.”
I replied, “I don’t. I can’t. My wife and I care for our grandson fulltime.”
Then lady asked me, “How old is he?”
“Five.”
She sighed and said, “Well, maybe he won’t remember any of this.”
I considered that. Maybe she is right. But this stint in jail isn’t the whole story. This is just the start of a long absence. The boy will remember something, even if it’s only a feeling of abandonment. He won’t forget, not entirely.
She had me sign the paperwork. I grabbed the bag. As I walked away, the woman called after me, “Don’t give up on her!”
As I tried to open the exit door, I called back to her,
“I won’t!”
Frank is Emptiness 