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Traversing each section of the jail requires a radio and a ridiculously large key. Without one or the other you’re stuck. It’s the deputies’ primary defense in case of a riot.

As we approach each 200-pound door, it clicks open and we enter. We’re being watched on video by deputies in hidden control centers. But they’re not the only ones watching. Before the huge door can clang shut behind us and we enter the hallway of the men’s section of the main jail, a spotter has seen us and the other inmates already know we’re coming.

“They know this place as well if not better than we do,” Liebersbach says. “It’s their life. They study it.”

The men’s section of the main jail has 80 single cells and 40 double cells. There are 15 cells in each block, eight of which hold double-bunks. Each of these 15 cell blocks has one day room and one bathroom. On the whole, the men’s section was designed to hold 180 inmates. It currently houses 266.

As we approach their block, the inmates peer down from the small windows of their cells. Two inmates sit at a stainless steel table in the day room area enjoying the one hour a day they spend outside their seven-by-10-foot cell.

We approach an empty block and go in. Liebersbach says its inmates are up on the roof getting their exercise—they get three hours a week. In the day room of this block, a deputy is watching two of the trustworthy inmates from the rehab center perform some electrical work. We cross the concrete floor and walk into one of the empty cells. Another deputy is inside systematically searching a tiny, irregular shaped room for contraband.

It’s bad enough to spend 23 hours a day in a seven-by-10-foot room, but more than half of the inmates in this section have to share their 70 square feet with another man. Liebersbach tells me they double-bunk those inmates who’ve proven they can get along with others. Apparently, you’re better off not getting along with anyone.

The cell we’ve entered has only one bed and is profoundly depressing. Someone’s drawn an elaborate castle and a monthly calendar on the wall in pencil. Each day on the calendar has been painstakingly X-ed off. Beside that someone’s written, “This is the place of false hope—except in Christ Jesus.” Below that is a scrawled response: “Bollocks to Jesus.”

A clipping from a high school football game is taped above the bed. The young black man in the article’s photograph is smiling with the confidence and joy of a born winner. All the potential in the world crackles off of him. Next to the clipping are two more photos of the same young man—backstage during a high school drama production and grinning with a pretty young girl at the prom.

The deputy opens a paper bag and dumps the absent inmate’s stuff on the floor. Liebersbach says they have to combat against makeshift weapons. Later, Liebersbach will show me his painstakingly constructed exhibits of contraband: shanks, syringes, a hanger used in a failed escape plot, Old Spice deodorant containers melted down and sharpened into shanks, toothbrush razors, a Bic pen shank, a toilet bowl brush shank, weed pipes, a battery-operated tattoo kit, a club made from a bunkbed’s brace, even rock-hard balls made from compressed flakes of paint.

But Liebersbach’s immediate fears are reserved for hoarded food. Food is a primary concern here in jail and the inmates are constantly trying to stockpile it. Last year, inmate food hoarders were responsible for a terrible outbreak of salmonella. And ants—oh, the ants, he says. They’re unbearable. We leave the ex-high school football star’s jail cell and continue our tour around the circular hallway of the main jail.

At the hub of the men’s section of the main jail is the saddest part of the whole, crumbling institution. Initially designed to be a recreational center, complete with a small stage for jailhouse drama and talent shows, the high-ceilinged rec center now houses the disabled, the old, and the infirm. They lie about on scattered cots or sit in wheelchairs reading Bibles or coughing spasmodically. It looks like a makeshift shelter.

“This jail was designed by someone in Washington, DC who probably had no experience in practical corrections. They had no idea what they were doing,” Liebersbach says with a nod at the concrete stage. “We make do with what we have. We use the space.”