How I Shot My Way Into Jail
Six inmates (one is almost hidden on the right) in a crowded cell in the Boone County Jail, Columbia, Missouri. Photo © Mark Petty 1974
Text © Mark Petty 2024
It’s 1974. I’m on the loading dock of the old Boone County Jail in Columbia, Missouri. Two inmates are surrounded by several deputies. One inmate smokes a pipe and is clutching a large knife.
What the fuck is happening?
I’m a J-School student at the University of Missouri, the oldest in the country, and I’m working on my BJ in photojournalism. Retired department founder Clif Edom, the “Father of Photojournalism,” wrote the motto: “Show truth with a camera.”
I am taking a class from his successor, Angus McDougall. I have to find, write, photograph and layout photo stories for publication in the school’s daily city newspaper, The Columbia Missourian, staffed by professors and student photographers and writers.
I contact an attorney I met while covering the courthouse during a basic newspaper reporting class. He’s a public defender and he agrees to let me do a story on him. I shadow him, which includes frequent visits with his clients in the Boone County Jail. The first time he heads for the jail he tells me I will not be allowed to take photographs so I might as well stay behind. I ask if I can come anyway, promising to keep my cameras in my bag. We go there multiple times and as a result I am frequently seen by the jailers. I try to establish relationships with them by striking up conversations.
When the story on the public defender is published everyone in the jail sees it. It opens the door for me to keep coming back. I decide to do my next photo story on the living conditions in the Boone County jail. I’m learning that in certain situations being very visible and building trust at the beginning of a story can make it easier for me to blend in and become invisible to my subjects later.
The next thing I know I’m photographing the pipe-smoking inmate with a large knife in his hand. He’s dressing out a deer hit by a car on the highway outside of town.
It’s the practice of the Boone County Jail in 1974 to feed roadkill deer to the inmates after they are dressed out by the trustee inmates. I wonder if they still do that today?
All photos below © Mark Petty 1974
