Humes describes the old building of Central lockup as desolation among urbanity; the one billboard inmates can see showing the King of Beepers:

his product is especially popular with the hundreds of drug dealers, gangbangers, and assorted other criminals who pass by his shrewdly placed advertisement in shackles each day, for whom beepers are both status symbols and necessary tools of the trade in this information age (12).

He shows readers the parking lot where people hurry to their cars at night when new inmates arrive at Central. Humes describes the smells—urine and sickly sweet disinfectant—as well as the constant electric buzzing and alarm sounds. He describes the intake process, wherein interviews are conducted as briefly as possible. He reiterates the officers’ beliefs that the people who are coming through are changing—rich teens, a woman—although the crimes stay the same. Murder is becoming usual crime, although Geri Vance—charged with the murder of his motel-robbing accomplice who was killed by a motel employee during the robbery—is unusual.

Geri is confused at the charges leveled against him, arguing that he was forced to take part in the robbery: “There is an earnestness in Geri’s manner and words that even the jaded Intake Officer can see” (14).