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The United States, as one of the world leaders in social welfare innovation, has made great
strides in eliminating homelessness by offering free, unlimited food and housing to millions
of people.
All you have to do is say this extra-special cheat-code and then you’re in.
Now, the accommodation in these prisons might be less than stellar, but its not polite to
complain when indulging in the hospitality of others.
The other thing the US is good at is being thicc.
This place is far from that place and that place is far from this place—that’s how
distance works.
What that means is that, if someone does the murder there and then hops over to here but
then gets arrested they have to get back to there to get tried.
Other large countries, such as Russia and China, eliminate this inefficiency by just
getting rid of that burdensome, “trial,” phase altogether, but the US has another solution.
Now, as much as a cross-country criminal road-trip sounds like a great movie premise, what makes
for an even better movie premise is an airline specifically and solely dedicated to transporting
prisoners.
Wait, I think I might have something here.
We could have it where the prisoners start a riot and take over the plane and force it
to land and… yeah, this is good, this is good.
Let me call my agent…oh, wait…
damn it Nicholas Cage!
Yeah, so, unfortunately, for many reasons, this movie exists and so does the premise
behind it.
It’s called the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System or JPATS.
The core of this transportation system, which moves over 700 prisoners per day, is a few
737-400’s.
These aircraft supposedly fly on a regular schedule.
I mean, their website literally says so, although, the investigative reporting division of Half
as Interesting spent literally minutes pouring through flight logs and could only sort of
find a regular schedule.
Like, for example, they have this rotation where they fly from Oklahoma City to St Louis
to Terre Haut to Detroit and back to Oklahoma City leaving at roughly 8:00 to 9:30 am which
they often fly on the first and third Monday of the month but then sometimes they just…don’t.
Or sometimes they’ll fly this an extra random time per month or sometimes they’ll just
skip a city or rearrange the order or whatever.
It’s like they have a schedule and then put a very minimal government employee level
of effort into following it.
But anyways, a passenger’s journey on America’s second worst airline goes a little like this.
Let’s say our prisoner, jailed for revealing the government’s printer codes, is housed
in the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana and needs to testify at
a trial in Chicago.
Usually, inmates are told nothing in advance about their transfer in order to deter chances
of escape.
Step one is likely getting woken up at an ungodly hour of the morning to get searched
and then plopped on a bus.
At this point, an inmate would know they’re getting transferred but they would have no
idea where they’ll end up at the end of the day—it’s sort of like connecting through
Newark airport.
Said bus would then drive 70 miles or 110 kilometers south-west to Lake Charles Regional
Airport where the inmates would be thoroughly searched and then loaded up onto one of the
JPATS planes.
Now, these planes are pretty much normal passenger planes aside from being an absolutely ancient
26 years old.
Onboard, the inmates are handcuffed, fitted with chains around their ankles, and are accompanied
by some of the grumpiest flight attendants in the industry—US Marshalls.
These Marshalls apparently carry guns loaded with hollow-point bullets.
These reduce the chance of a bullet piercing the aircraft hull if fired.
JPATS carefully schedules the inmates to reduce the chance of an airborne prison riot—if
two members of rivals gangs need transport, for example, they’ll almost certainly be
assigned different flights.
Now, back to our itinerary, from Lake Charles, the aircraft typically flies to Midland, Texas
to drop off and pick up more inmates before flying back to its base in Oklahoma City.
Upon landing, the aircraft does not taxi to the passenger terminal but rather it bypasses
that and arrives here.
This special little solitary jet bridge connects to the aircraft and then our prisoner would
walk down this long hallway into the Federal Transfer Center which bears an uncanny resemblance
to the undoubtably even less pleasant Charles de Gaulle Airport Terminal 1.
The Federal Transfer Center is essentially the prisoner’s layover hotel at Oklahoma
City Airport.
They wait here for an undetermined number of days until the next flight to their final
destination.
In the recent schedule, the wait between the flight from Lake Charles for the next flight
to Chicago has been about 11 days.
Once the day of their next flight arrives, the prisoner would walk back down that long
hallway, board the plane, and fly to their next accommodation to await their appointment
at trial.
This is what happens every weekday as these white, nondescript 737’s shuffle prisoners
across America’s skies.
Now, if you’re trying to decide whether to fly this airline, you should hear the review
from one of its former passengers—Piper Kerman.
She’s the author of Orange Is the New Black, the book that the show is based on, which
itself is based on her own experience in prison and it includes a section on when she was
transferred using JPATS.
I know most people can’t find time to sit down and read books, so rather, you can listen
to this book when you’re driving, doing dishes, at work, going for a run, or whenever
through Audible.
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With that, you can listen to Orange is the New Black or pretty much any audiobook you
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