time because i was so comfortable being where i was at. it just became an everyday routine. but now i m willing to take that challenge. wiggins, who works as an inmate food server, has spent so much time at bergen county, he has seen staff come and go and go up the ranks. there s lieutenants, captains, wardens, they were all officers when i first came in. l.t. what s up? 25 years ago paul was a rookie here. now a lieutenant he is one of the jail s highest ranking officers. he s known wiggins his entire career. he says the younger wiggins was a handful. everything was a fight. and, you know, we wouldn t be standing like this with each other those years. we would be fighting, rolling around on the ground.
and it took him a while but i do believe that everybody should be given an opportunity and he told me he said never had an opportunity. so he s getting one now and i think that if he walks the walk because he s talking the talk he ll make it. yeah, i do. coming up why are you picking these programs? the program has a lot to offer me. paul abdul wiggins pleads his case to a skeptical staff person. i promise you i will not help you at all. then officers get to the boiman of paul dixon s breakdown. music
watch your step. watch your step. the same age as paul abdul wiggins when he first came to jail on an armed robbery charge. that was 31 years ago. and wiggins has been in and out of jail 40 times since then. but he says now he s finally ready to take advantage of the opportunity afforded him to do better. though she had some concerns about his muslim faith being a good fit, inmate advocate dawn bryden was able to place wiggins in a christian-based halfway house where he will receive drug counseling, job training and life skills programs. today the lieutenant called me down and informed me that i was going into the program and i should be leaving sometime next week. so i m just hoping the program is right for me and it ll do me some good because this ain t doing me nothing. this is your first program. all the years you ve been going through us and coming through
the original bergen county jail completed in 1912 looked more like an ominous castle compared to its modern replacement which opened next door in 2000. paul abdul wiggins is one of the few inmates whose long record of coming in and out of jail spans most facilities. i m a man of my word. i got to keep my word. that s all i got. wiggins has had more than 40 stays at the jail and a litany of drug, theft and robbery convictions that he says all stemmed from addiction. i used to sniff heroin and coke. it was something that i allowed myself to like when i should have been hating it at all times. now a 49-year-old grandfather, wiggins says he wants to change. i asked my creator to erase this taste from my mouth, take this taste away from me. i believe i m strong enough now to fight that demon that s
advocate. part of her job is matching inmates with community resources. but breeden has a problem with wiggins request. he s islamic and he wants to go into a christian program. th s a problem. i know from my past experience if someone who is of a different religion goes into a christian program, they usually have a problem following the spiritual guidance there. so that s why i want to find him someplace that will be more amenable to his faith. if you look at stop looking at half of the picture. i m looking at the whole picture. no you re not. yes, a many. you re not seeing like i m seeing. that s the whole problem. you ain t been seeing it right