Mandy's Civil Commitment Blog Part 4

Society loves to classify people and put them into groups. Everyone at some point is lumped into some type of group, either by race, age, sex, disability, or status. It seems if a person can fit into a neat little box, then society can deal with them.

All the men that are in Littlefield at the Texas Civil Commitment Center have been classified as sex offenders. They have been court-ordered to be civilly committed, and there is a belief that they might commit another crime sometime in their life. Therefore, they have been banished away for what could be a life sentence. And I know that there are people who see nothing wrong with locking these men up.

A few weeks at work went by quickly and fairly smoothly. The night shift was pretty easy; by the time my shift began, the residents were winding down and getting ready to call it a day. My duties consisted of head counts and cleaning during the late night, pill passes, and breakfast trays in the morning.

While stocking the med cart, I found the residents’ information on the computer one night. I could look up each man’s files on the computer in the med room and read their medical files and criminal cases. I remember a few officers said that it was best that we didn’t know what the guys were convicted of because it changed the way we treated them. I was fair and neutral to all of the men in the dorm, so I didn’t think much about their crimes. I was there to work, not judge them for their past.

Each night, I found myself finishing up my duties and going through the roster and reading the files. It was interesting to find out what happened to bring these men to this place. I mean, I had been told in class that these guys were monsters, but most of them were very kind to me.

Each man had a different story and different circumstances that had sent them to prison for 10, 20, 30 years. Then instead of getting out and going home, they were forced to come to this little town in the middle of nowhere. And honestly, I still didn’t understand the whole concept of civil commitment. Some of the cases I read were very upsetting and hard to imagine. Others seemed as if they were mistakes or unfortunate situations. The overall feeling I had after reading every night was just sadness all the way around.

And these monsters that I was working with didn’t look like monsters at all. They looked like any other man out there: our neighbors, our friends, our brothers, our fathers, our sons. What’s more, they acted like them too. I saw these men as people — HUMANS — and I treated them as such. I would learn over the years that even though they were placed in a group and labeled, they all didn’t fit in that little box.