Any other Christmas, 19-year-old Garrett Taylor would be at his parents’ home in Columbus. On Christmas Eve, they would all exchange gifts of pajamas that they would sleep in that night and, just a few years ago, his younger brother, now 14, would have been waiting for Santa Claus.
But this year, Taylor will spend Christmas in the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center.
This holiday will be different for him and the roughly 230 other inmates.
Taylor, accused of marijuana possession and misdemeanor traffic violations in Lowndes County, has been held in the local jail for two months. He’s also being held for other charges he racked up in Florida.
“Some people try to be cheerful,” he said. “But you still ain’t with your family.”
Jail Administrator Rick Jones and his staff try to ensure the inmates get some holiday cheer. On Christmas and Thanksgiving, the inmates’ meal is changed up. Instead of the normal pasta and rice-based diet, they get turkey and dressing. Local churches also provide care packages and goodie bags for the inmates, some with Bibles and some with hygiene products like deodorant and soap. Others contain crackers and candy in paper bags decorated with hand-drawn snowmen or Christmas trees.
Trustees like Taylor — inmates with special responsibilities like cleaning or maintenance — participated in the sheriff’s Christmas party for the entire administrative staff earlier this week.
And with Christmas falling on a weekend this year, there’s no need for the jail to change the normal Saturday and Sunday visiting hours, Jones said. Families and other visitors can come to the jail on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day from 8-11 a.m. or 1-4 p.m.
Taylor’s parents will be here to see him this weekend, he said. Still, he and other inmates agreed, missing out on Christmas morning at home is rough — not just on them but on their families.
Bill Livingston, another trustee, said that’s the biggest problem with being in jail over the holidays.
“You realize how much more you’re hurting your family, more than yourself,” he said.
Trustee David Covington, who is missing out on Christmas with his four kids and a niece, said though spending the holiday in jail is “rough,” if he has to spend it in jail, he’d rather it be at the Lowndes Adult Detention Center than any another. He was arrested after getting hooked on methamphetamines a few years ago and is afraid he might have died if he hadn’t been arrested and gotten sober.
“There’s a lot of people here who believe in second chances,” he said. “My family’s going to have a good Christmas knowing I’m alive and I’m in a good spot.”
‘They matter to God’
Lowndes isn’t the only area jail that does something special for inmates around the holidays. Christmas and Thanksgiving are the only two days of the year that Clay County Jail administrators relax their strict “no outside packages” policy for inmates and allow families and friends to bring plates of food to the inmates, Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott said.
“It typically works out (well) because somebody there normally brings extra plates, extra food,” said Scott, who always wants to make sure every inmate gets special food.
Local ministers and their congregations put together a homemade meal for the trustees a few days before Christmas, full of the usual turkey, dressing and “more stuff than you can name,” Scott said.
“You know how it is,” he said. “When these older ladies get to cooking, they bring everything.”
Gene Bramlett is the pastor at Covenant United Methodist Church in Columbus, which has been bringing care packages for Lowndes County inmates for so long it’s become a church tradition, he said. Church members go out and buy crackers, peppermint and chocolate before having “fill the bag” parties where they put together individual care packages for the inmates. Bramlett said it’s a way for the congregation to express their faith through outreach and help provide the inmates with comfort over the Christmas season.
“They matter to God,” he said.
Making the best of it
Transportation supervisor Lt. Norma Brown has worked at the Lowndes County jail for about 18 years, and has spent many holidays watching over inmates and trustees.
“People get a little angry because they’re not home,” she said. “It causes more fights…depression. Obviously, they’d rather be home sitting with their families.”
But it’s not all doom and gloom around the holidays in jail, even without the extra food and goodie bags from local churches. One Christmas about 10 years ago, Brown noticed some of the women in jail gathered around something and went to see what was going on. When she reached them, she saw they had made a Christmas tree out of cardboard and decorated it and were now exchanging handmade ornaments and gifts.
“They were making gifts for each other,” Brown said.
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