A few years ago, I spent a night in in Fulton County jail.

The purpose, in my opinion, was fairly ridiculous. I'll tell a reasonably brief version of the story.

I moved to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech for my masters. One late night, I was driving and took a right on a red light that had a "no right on red sign" accidentally.

Don't forget to check for no right on red signs.

No traffic was around and luckily no one was endangered, but I did receive a ticket (clearly the Atl police had set up a trap of sorts). Should have paid attention, but no big deal.

So the court date is approaching, and so is my first day of classes. In the rush of getting ready for the start of the semester, I forgot my court date.

Don't forget your court date.

The next day, in a panic, I call the courthouse to pay my ticket and any applicable late fees. I assumed that a late fee would cover the infraction and we'd all be on our way.

I paid the ticket. I paid the late fee. I forgot about the incident altogether.

Fast forward a few months, I was driving on campus on my way to class, early enough to get a coffee (yes!). I get pulled over for not having my seatbelt on.

Don't forget your seatbelt.

The officer took a few minutes and came back to ask me if I had anyone who could pick up my car. Of course I'm thinking, "Do I have a flat tire or something?", and he lets me know he's going to have to arrest me and take me to jail.

So I was put in handcuffs, on campus, and taken to Fulton County Jail, where I was fully booked into a holding cell. I could not call anyone to come post bail, because your "one call" was only allowed to be a local call, and you had to know the number by heart. I couldn't post the bail myself via card, of course. So, I spent 36 hours there. My parents even paid my bail, but somehow the bail didn't take effect (even though others arrested after me got out on bail).

Strangest 36 hours of my life, by far.

All of my clothes and belongings were taken, as is protocol. Not a single guard seemed to have any sense of regard for me (or any other person being held), uniformly ignoring simple requests like "can I have some water?" and "what time is it?". I was in a common holding room with about 10 others for most of the first day, until they did our physicals and booked us all into overnight cells. I was woken up to a yelling guard at 3AM to eat "breakfast." Everyone who had been arrested the day before was chained together (as in, chains around my waist) and taken to a prison court to see a judge via a camera mounted on a TV. The judge essentially looked at my case and released me, and a few hours later I was finally let out.

Turns out, when you forget a court date, your license gets suspended. For me, that meant I had to have someone take me to Alabama to have it unsuspended.

tl;dr; The crazy part of the justice system is, once the ball gets rolling and protocol is instantiated, your lost time is chalked up to collateral damage and "due process." Your sense of safety, clarity, and rights are removed, even in minuscule clerical cases like mine. I can't even begin to imagine the ridiculous feeling of being in jail and sexually assaulted for months, much less years, over something slightly more egregious than a suspended license.

P.S. My arrest was completely expunged from my record, but you can still find my mugshot online. My dad laughs at it every time he sees it.