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A group of men lie in a tangle on the soiled floor of a cramped holding cell. Their bodies bend at odd angles as they fight to claim space. Sweat soaks their clothes and leaves an oily film on the tile.

More than 40 men fill three cells designed for 10. They have little room to move. Some sit beside toilets brimming with filth. The air-conditioning isn't working, and the fetid air smells of urine, unwashed feet and briny bodies.

These new arrivals, freshly arrested and booked, await a move to permanent quarters. They haven't budged in 12 hours. The overcrowded jail has nowhere to put them.

Luis Barrosso is a federal detainee awaiting deportation to Cuba. He is sandwiched between two men on a scarred wooden bench. Several more lie at his feet, arms draped over their eyes in a feeble attempt at sleep.

Barrosso stands. Half-moons of sweat ring his linen shirt. Grime smudges his shiny loafers.

"I am a federal prisoner," he hisses in heavily accented English. "I am supposed to be provided with my own bed and a proper cell. I should not be treated this way. This is a human rights violation."

A man on the floor rolls over, shakes his head and grins. "Man, you better get used to it. You in the Charleston County jail now."

ENTERING THE BEAST

"I am not drunk!" a Martha Stewart look-alike says to no one in particular. Beside her, a young woman slumps against a cinder block wall, dozing in a narcotic haze. Sobs rack Martha's body as mascara trails down her cheeks.

"Of course you're not," a detention officer replies.

Two men chuckle. Martha squirms and curses. A small fan struggles to move stale air through the corridor as "newbies" wait to join the jail's swollen population.

Martha shuffles to the counter as her name is called. Her eyes red and swollen, she places her thumb on a digital fingerprint reader. She slides back the sleeve of her black business suit and an officer straps a plastic identification bracelet on her wrist. He leads her to a holding cell bathed in sallow light.

She presses her face against the smudged glass and looks out on an adjoining room where other detainees huddle over a bank of pay phones. They dial number after number, trying to reach someone to post their bail. They have 15 minutes to make a connection.

One man comes up empty. He sags and runs a trembling hand through neatly twisted dreadlocks. "This is my first time."

Four floors up, in the gymnasium, inmates awaiting cell assignments lie in rows of plastic bunks that resemble small, grounded john boats. The inmates call them "coffins" because of their dark color and boxy contour. Sixty fill this cavernous room, refitted as a purgatory of sorts, a place to warehouse bodies until space opens.

One man curls in a fetal position, using two rolls of toilet paper as a pillow. Another, tall and muscular, stalks the floor railing about the injustices of the justice system. A group of men ignore his rant as they play cards in a corner.

A young Asian man watches from a safe distance. He fiddles with his glasses and pumps his left leg like a piston. He's a newbie. Fear sizzles from his body like the beads of perspiration that bubble on his brow. He lies in his bunk and twists. He stands and paces. He sits and pumps his leg some more.

Across the room, David Schick climbs to his feet and rubs his side. Thirty-five and homeless, he's been here 72 hours since his arrest on a trespassing charge. There's not much to do but sleep. But he can't bear to lie down. He has three broken ribs from a beating in North Charleston a week before.

"It hurts real bad, and I don't know when I'm gonna get out of here. This ain't right," he says.

In a hallway, four floors down, a dozen men line up against a wall and wait to finally be escorted to their cells. They place their hands above their heads as a detention officer calls out their names. "Here!" each barks in reply, stealing glances at friends they see in line.

They kick off shoes and the stench of oily feet fills the corridor. One man slides a battered sneaker forward with a roll of toilet paper stashed inside. The officer snags it and puts it aside. "They'll give you that on the other side," the officer says, and moves to the next man. "Make sure you take any food you have out of your pockets, too."

One man's eyes flit about. He's about 45 and doughy, with an ample paunch that drifts over his belt. His eyes wild, salt-and-pepper hair askew, he looks as if he just woke up in the midst of a bad dream.

"Excuse me, sir," he asks the officer. "Can you tell me if we are going to be getting out of here soon?"

Other inmates laugh. The jailer shrugs. "Don't know. But we are going to move you to a bunk where you will be more comfortable."

The man's face sags. A dull glaze settles over his eyes as the group slowly marches forward into the belly of the jail.

LOST FREEDOM, HUMILITY

A group of men filter into a cell and close the steel door behind them. A wiry young man unrolls a thin, plastic-covered mattress on the cement floor. He slides the bedroll beneath a steel desk, between two bunk beds. He is the last man assigned to the cell. That means he gets the floor. With seven men living in a room designed for four, he has nowhere else to go.

It's not so bad, he says, better than the low bunk beside the toilet, where errant urine splatters and soaks your pillow.

The cell has no privacy. Just four bunks and an open toilet in full view of cell mates. Some men hang a towel or sheet over the commode to offer a modicum of privacy. But the smells smother the room like a sour blanket, stoking tensions.

Alexander Hamm finds himself locked up again, this time on check fraud charges. He swears this go-around will be his last. At 53, he's getting too old for this stuff. Too hard on the body and mind.

Other inmates see the balding, bespectacled Hamm as a father figure of sorts. He understands the regimented rhythms of the place. He knows when to sleep, when to eat, when to disappear inside his head to make the hours pass. "There's no room for negativity in jail. It don't help you, it hardens you. It compounds your problems."

A 19-year-old from Mount Pleasant is still learning these lessons. He had a clean record until a cocaine arrest four months earlier. Now, his once-tan skin is pasty and his hair is falling out. He looks like a dog with mange.

He tries to stay close to a few friends. They bunk together and watch each other's back.

"You have to stay tough, but not so tough as to piss someone off," he says. "You have to be mentally ready to fight if you have to, and hope it doesn't happen."

Maurice Jenkins is also trying to adjust. He can't get used to the noise. The banging and clanging. The young kids singing rap songs through the night. Jenkins can go days without sleeping.

Jenkins is housed in Southside, one of the oldest sections of the jail. It looks like a cell block from a B-movie: rusting iron bars, air ducts dripping mold, flies buzzing about as large fans rattle and spin dank, fetid air. Southside was supposed to close down when the newer wings opened in 1994. That didn't happen because of the ever-pressing need for more cell space.

An inmate holds a soiled towel across his midsection and weaves past cellmates in a communal cell block known as 'the bullpen,' where 52 men occupy a space built for 30. He steps into a shower stall and closes the mildewed curtain. Rust blisters the ceiling above him.

Another man sits on a toilet near the stall, a few feet from where a third inmate tries to sleep. Mattresses jam corners or are pushed under the beds of others. Wet briefs and socks hang to dry across the air vents, adding a tang to the air as they dry. Outside recreation time comes just a few days each week.

Tahir Suhail Williams sleeps beside two men on the cement floor, about two feet from a leaking toilet and shower stall. He awakes each morning stiff from the cold, a damp pain in his lungs. He's 31 and charged with assault. "It's worse than the dungeons in here. It's inhumane in every regard."

Some men leave. Others quickly take their place. Friends. Enemies. Strangers. Rarely is another human being not within arm's reach. "You have to get along,"' one man says. "There's no choice."

An inmate grimaces as he strains to reach a television set beyond the bars. With two sandals wedged together in his hand, he adds six inches to his reach and tags the channel changer. That was the easy part. The real challenge: getting 52 men to agree on a program.

The men shout opinions until the dial rests on a movie: 'The Blues Brothers.' The men laugh as Elwood and Jake lead the police on a car chase through Chicago.

KEEPING THE PEACE

A detention officer scans the long rows of cells lining both floors of the housing unit. Faces press against door windows. Watching. Waiting.
"You ready for them?" the officer asks a colleague.

"Sure," the other replies. He flips a switch and leans into a microphone. "All right. Come out for rec. Move along. Pull your pants out of your socks. And no running."

Inmates explode from the rooms where they are confined 19 hours a day. Accused murderers, rapists, robbers. They bob and weave, jockeying for position as they flood the common area and head for telephones, shower stalls, seats in front of the television.

The two officers are suddenly surrounded. They have little protection. They carry no weapons. They are outnumbered 64 to one.

The officers shrug it off and go about their business. They offer direction, hand out forms, remind inmates of the rules. It's just another day on the block.

Even when the jail is at full staff, inmates grossly outnumber their keepers. But dozens of positions are vacant. That means more work, longer shifts, mandatory overtime. Stress soars. Morale suffers.

Officer T. Ballou spends more time at the jail than he does with his wife these days. He's had food trays, punches and excrement thrown at him. But he has no thoughts of quitting.

"If I can see one person here make a change in their life, then it makes my day," he says. "Tomorrow's future is in this jail, and in every prison in this state."

Two floors down, Officer S.R. Levinson confronts that future as she searches a cell in Southside for contraband. Inmates crowd the bars of adjoining cells to watch. They hoot, holler and tease.

Levinson ignores the jibes as she flips a mattress and runs her hand along the bed frame. Hash marks scrawled on a bunk track an inmate's workout schedule. Each slash denotes a series of pushups or curls. A handwritten sign above the door reads: "No pain, no gain."

Levinson pulls out crumpled potato chip bags, honey bun wrappers and copies of Jet magazine. She's found worse: shanks made from sharpened forks and spoons and blackjacks fashioned from deodorant sticks stuffed in a sock.

Levinson jams the trash in a bag and moves on. She's all business. She and many other officers go by their surnames and won't reveal what the initials on name tags stand for. First names are closely guarded. It's one more thing an inmate can use against you.

Show inmates respect, and many will do the same to you. But never show weakness. Never let your guard down.

And never forget: Inmates are not your friends.

Officer Matt Laqua unlocks a steel door and steps into the maximum-security disciplinary unit. He flips down a metal plate on a cell door and slides a tray of food through to an inmate.

Inmates pound their fists on their cell doors, greeting Laqua with screams, obscenities and racial epithets. Laqua ignores the din. The noise grows louder.

Inmates who behave and contribute earn what few perks the jail offers: an occasional movie night, a special dessert of milk and cookies. The ones who can't follow rules end up here, in the discipline wing. Get caught with a shank, mouth off, punch an officer - you're going behind the wall.

Inmates here remain locked-down 23 hours a day. Three men to a one-man cell. No rec. No canteen. No television. Nothing but four walls and three meals a day. They even shower in a locked stall.

The pounding increases as Laqua turns to leave. He shuts the door behind him. Screams fade behind hardened steel.

FACING THE DAY

A chorus of flushing toilets fills the silence as inmates wake for breakfast. At 6:31 a.m., the darkness dissipates when the fluorescent lights in the dayroom buzz to life and flicker on. Two women emerge from their cells to clean.

Like clockwork, at 6:35 a.m., the breakfast trays arrive. Officer Davida Breschers calls for the bottom floor inmates to eat first. Most rush to the line with bundles of soiled linen tucked under their arms. Today is laundry day.

The women line up single-file and wait for Breschers to check their color-coded ID bracelets. Inmates charged with lesser offenses wear green wristbands. Blue is for moderate offenses. Red is reserved for serious crimes.

In line, Tyisha Townsend sucks her thumb and plays with her long braids. At 17, she is the youngest of the bunch. Everyone knows it. Her wristband is red.

The inmates receive scratched trays that smell like sour milk.

Townsend grabs her tray and plops on a plastic chair at a nearby table. An inmate grimaces at her food, and Townsend asks if she can have her eggs. Townsend mixes the yellow globs with her grits and spreads some on a bread slice.

Such fare is not to be wasted. Breakfast, bland as it is, often is the tastiest meal of the day.

The table buzzes with gossip.

Did you hear about the roach someone found in her food a few days ago?

And what about the newbie who spread tuberculosis in the unit?

One inmate jokes about two women who brawled the night before. One got socked in the mouth and walked away spitting blood.

Officer M. Bryant, known as 'Miss B,' paces down the center aisle, eyeballing the crowd.
She tells them to wrap it up.

The women shove down the rest of their food and return to their cells. The top floor is released.

They eat three times a day: 6:30, 11:30 and 4:30. They savor the time more than the food itself. As soon as mealtime is over, it's back to the rooms. Back to killing time.

CANTEEN

Carts stacked with rubber tubs rattle and bang as they're wheeled through the narrow corridors in the Northside cell block.

Inmates line up, faces pressed against the bars as they wait for their names to be called.

This is canteen day, the high point of an inmate's week.

Inmates can order up to $100 worth of snacks, radios, toiletries, reading materials and other comforts from some 300 pre-approved items, but not cigarettes.

They depend on family and friends to put money in their accounts for the purchases.

"If you don't have family on the outside, it's like a stage of being dead," one inmate grouses.

The snack offerings are a cornucopia of junk food high in sugar and salt. Doritos. Pork rinds. Honey buns. Chocolate cookies. Candy bars. Pretzels. Peanuts.

Some use snacks to flavor meals; others to avoid eating the jailhouse food. Recipes are perfected and passed on.

Alana Niesen, a pudgy, motherly figure, is known for canteen creations like the 'taquito.' Sitting Indian-style on a floor mat, she crushes corn chips with a plastic bottle to form the shell. She then creates a filling from mashed bacon, cheddar cheese crackers, hot sausages, Cheetos and beef sticks. She mixes the ingredients on a plastic bag in her cell. "We don't have the accommodations of a kitchen," she giggles.

It's more than just munchies. This is hard currency behind bars. Canteen items are traded for haircuts, used to settle debts, or swapped for an extra tray of food at dinner. It's serious business, and fights can break out when inmates get jacked on sugar rushes or don't ante up on items they owe.

They complain bitterly about the prices they are charged. Then they place another order. It's the only game in town.

MAKING DO AND KILLING TIME

Time is the enemy on the inside. It can eat an inmate up, play with his mind, roil his emotions. To survive, he must adapt, find ways to fill hours.

"It's not the place that stresses you out, it's missing family," Lennie Mickey, a 31-year-old accused of murder, says. "The time doesn't kill you. It's not being in control. If a man can't control his own destiny, he falls into it."

Edwin Wilson slides a worn writing tablet from his bunk. The pages crinkle as he runs an ebony finger along the neatly printed words.

"Life would be easy if we never did anything we regretted. But that doesn't happen," one passage reads. "I know I'm not where I wanted to be at this stage of my life. I must stay strong to better myself."

Day after day, Wilson commits his thoughts to paper. Poems. Plans. Words this 37-year-old truck driver would share with his girlfriend if he weren't locked up on a probation violation. This keeps him centered as the hours march slowly by.

The newer wings were designed to give inmates more freedom to move, with common areas and rec yards. Overcrowding nixed that plan. Most days, inmates spend all but about six hours confined to their cramped rooms.

"Being in jail, is like being on Ritalin," says Antonio Lasane, of North Charleston. "Your body just slows down".

"All around you is concrete and steel. Concrete and steel drain your energy."

Some sleep away the days. Others read, draw on walls or exercise if they can. Pushups keep the pecs in shape. Dips off the bunks are good for upper arms. Or work on biceps by curling six packs of water bottles wrapped in a bedroll.

They're all part of the tricks inmates learn. Like using a rolled up magazine cover as a megaphone to help amplify a small radio. Or cooling sodas in the toilet. Or using rolls of toilet paper as makeshift curtains to block out the light of day. Little tricks to make do, to make the time bearable.

CHANGING COURSE

Edward Gadsden takes in the room, his hard, brown eyes drift from one inmate to the next. As he strokes his salt-and-pepper beard, his brow furrows beneath the knit scull cap that covers his head.

"I've spent my share of time in the back of a police car," he says, eyes narrowing. "They say ‘Once an addict, always an addict. Once a thief, always a thief.' Well, I'm here to prove to you that is a lie."

The inmates sit in rows as Gadsden and another former addict preach messages of change, of hope for a new life. It's a common theme here. This wing is devoted to inmates struggling to overcome addictions of one type or another. The jail is full of such people.

Daniel Dickson became an alcoholic during a 27-year prison stay where he guzzled homemade wine known as 'buck.' He returned to the streets this year. He lasted just 105 days before he was jailed on a carjacking charge.

"It's all because of the alcohol," he says. "The people in here opened my eyes to my disease. It's a whole new world to me."

The people who run the jail are trying to break these cycles. A new program teaches inmates welding and classes help them earn high school equivalency diplomas. The theory is simple: Help them improve and maybe they'll stop coming back.

Inmate Frank Smith is serving seven months on a probation violation. The judge told him to get clean and enroll in a GED program. He didn't have anything else to do in jail, so he signed up.

"It does give you something to look forward to. This might be the first time I leave jail and feel like I accomplished something."

FILLING UP ON BLOW UP

The inmate stares at her dinner: two slices of bread, a piece of something resembling meat, some form of vegetable, two cookies and a chunky orangey-brown substance reminiscent of candied yams.

The verdict comes quick. "This is crap."

The food is produced with assembly-line efficiency in an industrial-sized kitchen staffed by inmates. Five thousand meals a day. The results are universally panned. The jail's budget allows the kitchen to spend just 72 cents per inmate for each meal. That means cut-rate ingredients, no meat and little fruit.

A starchy, soy-based powder serves as a staple. It meets minimum nutritional guidelines and lands heavy in the gut. The inmates call this gloop 'blow up' because it expands in the stomach.

Creativity rises to the surface. When the main course is a lumpy white stew, some take neatly folded bags from their shirt pockets. They reach inside and remove a fine orange dust, the remnants of nacho and barbecue chips.

This they sprinkle on the food to add a bit of flavor, a hint of spice to their bland meals.

A bright red stain on the floor marks a fruit punch spill. It's the inmates' dinner drink. They call it 'Jim Jones,' after the cult leader who served toxic punch at the infamous Guyana mass suicide.

One man shakes his head and spits. "If the Jim Jones can do that to the floor, imagine what it does to your insides."

LIGHTS OUT

A female detention officer flips open a rusted door along the wall in Northside and grabs hold of a large iron hand crank. As she wrestles the circular crank through one revolution after another, the barred cell doors slowly slide shut with a grinding squeal. It is 11:30 p.m.

An inmate lies behind bars on the floor outside his cell, a pillow bunched under his head. The floor is hard, but he prefers the extra space away from his cellmates.

"I just want to stay out here," he says to a passing officer. "Is that cool?"

"Suit yourself."

"Lights out," someone shouts. The overhead lights flicker off. Conversations continue in the darkness. Someone tells a dirty joke. Laughter and cursing echo off the walls.

In the women's wing, Officer A.M. Conner announces on the intercom system recreational time is over. The TVs are turned off, and the inmates clear the dayroom.
One inmate crouches behind a phone pod so the officers can't see her and hurries her conversation.

The inmate clean-up crew vacuums, picks up trash and props the plastic chairs on the tables. They flip the phones upside down to show that they were cleaned.
The unit quiets down but only for a brief moment.

A raspy voice hollers through the receiver at the officers' station. The inmate can't stand her roommate anymore. She wants out.

"This is what happens," Officer G.L. King says and walks to the room.

Inmate Sarah Brown waits at the door. "I don't have to look at her like that with her legs cocked wide open," Brown grumbles. "Her stinkin' butt."

Her roommate sits up from the top bunk. "I wish you would get rid of her," the portly woman tiffs. "We've had nothing but trouble since she moved in here."
King tells them both to quiet down and sends Brown up to the front desk.

Brown threatens her roommate and marches off. "I'll never get out of here looking at that," she gripes along the way. The lights go out.

Toilets flush.

SWEET RELEASE

Sunlight seeps through in a slit in the wall of Denise Holman's cell as she opens her Bible and prays. When the call comes, it takes her by surprise. You are free to go, the detention officer tells her.

"I am? Oh…snap!" Holman gasps.

Holman bounces around the cell where she has spent four months. She hugs her cellmates. Says goodbye. Her hands tremble.

She gathers her belongings, leaving behind deodorant sticks and a few canteen items for her roommates. An officer sprays disinfectant on the stained mat where she has slept. Holman wipes it clean for the next occupant.

"Bye Nisi!" someone yells. Three more women cheer for Holman from their cells.

Holman waves as she is escorted through the unit's heavy steel doors and into the jail's main artery. An officer helps her retrieve the clothes she was wearing on the day she was arrested.

She exchanges her gray uniform for a wrinkled, periwinkle polo shirt and faded, knee-length shorts. Dingy white tube socks poke out from her ripped sandals.

As she tossed her trash, another inmate spots a beef stick at the bottom of Holman's rubber bin. "Can I have that?" the inmate asks. Holman hands it over.

Holman sits, her belongings in her lap. She can't stop smiling. She signs lots of papers and learns that she is released on a personal recognizance bond. About 20 minutes later Holman walks out the front door of the county jail.

"Ah man, fresh air," she whispers. Her nose is running.

She hesitates, not sure what to do next. "What to do? I can't believe I'm out here."

Holman walks down Leeds Avenue toward Dorchester Road. She has been locked up more than 10 times. She swears this is her last.

---

How we did it

These stories could not have been produced without the cooperation and assistance of the Charleston County Sheriff's Office and its staff at the Leeds Avenue detention center.

Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon and Chief Deputy Mitch Lucas, the jail's administrator, agreed to provide The Post and Courier with full access to the facility, its inmates and staff. Such an arrangement was unprecedented in the Lowcountry.

Lucas wanted the public to see how severe overcrowding has impacted the jail, his officers and the inmates. His detention officers labor largely outside the public eye, short-staffed and working long hours under difficult conditions.

Inmates - many with substance abuse and mental health issues - were jammed in cells, sleeping almost on top of one another, 19 hours a day for months on end. Eighty percent have not yet been convicted of the crime for which they were arrested.

'If a foreign country was holding this many American citizens in the same conditions we do, there would be a tremendous outcry for the U.S. government to go in and rescue them,' Lucas said.

Three reporters a photographer and videographer for The Post and Courier were required to undergo brief security training. They were then provided with identification badges that allowed them to travel freely throughout the jail.

Working alone and in teams, the group made more than two dozen visits to the jail between April and November. The newspaper team chronicled life in the jail at all hours of the day, visiting every corner of the detention center and speaking with scores of inmates and staff.

The main story is a composite of several visits, designed to take readers through a typical day at the jail, from booking to release. The newspaper agreed to abide by jail policy and identify only those inmates who provided consent.