Prison Overcrowding: Living With Broken Toilets, Bad Heat, and No Space

The following narrative is simply a factual study of real conditions as they exist here today. No blame is implied or spoken. Readers can draw their own opinions about that.

I live in a building that was designed and built to house 32 people per block: 16 cells on the upper tier and 16 cells on the lower tier. The cells are called “dry” cells because there is no sink or toilet in the cells.

On each tier, upstairs and downstairs, there are four toilets, two on each side. There are also four sinks, as well as two showers. Like the toilets, they are split between the two sides. At one time, there were four mirrors also split, two on each side. There is only one functioning mirror on the lower tier now.

Right now, this block houses 42 offenders, as we are now called officially. In order to put 10 extra inmates in here, the NC DOP removed three tables from each block.

So now, instead of five tables for 32 inmates, we have two tables for 42. One table has four seats. The other has six.

It’s a good thing most cells have a plastic chair, since one of the tables is a running game of some sort from 5 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. If you need to write anything important, the folks with cells can sit in their cells and write in their laps, as I’m doing now.

One of the two lower-tier trash cans has been claimed as the personal table for one bunk-bed guy. With the bunks also came five double wall lockers, which further take up floor space. With six walkers and two wheelchairs, it is a show going in or out of the block.

Why Men Lose Their Cells

Most, but not all, of the bunks are taken up by inmates who have been caught “twanking out.” That is the slang term for those so high they freeze up or go tripping out.

Here, if you get caught high too many times, you lose your room. Several of the drugs used here can cause these seizure or “twanking” episodes.

This camp is not as bad as others I’ve been to. I will leave it for others to elaborate more about what drugs are being used and how they are consumed. I only know what I witness, often daily.

Broken Toilets, Stopped-Up Sinks

As I write this, two of our four toilets don’t work. One has been broken for days. The other has been broken for months now.

One of our four sinks has been stopped up for days. Our lower-tier water fountain has a mop bucket under it because, like the one sink, the drain is stopped up.

The toilets all face into the dayroom. So in order to poop, we have a plastic curtain that is clear at the top and bottom but solid in the middle. Our two remaining curtains are hanging up by string on one side and strips off a bedsheet on the other.

Myself, a 6-foot-3 guy, I’ve never seen or sat on a toilet so low. My knees are above my belly button while sitting.

These will never be called a throne, lol.

Doors That Barely Work

At night, when we are locked in our cells, most of us have a plastic urinal to pee in. That’s in case we push our door button to get out and no one is home in the booth.

The doors here are all in various states of worn out. The strikers, hinges, plates, and latches are barely functional. My door, like many here, opens all the way when unlatched from the control booth in the hall.

So, in spite of the fact that I am hassled almost daily to “secure” my door, on many occasions the staff here has opened my door while I’m asleep.

To break it down Barney-style: to keep my door from laying all the way open, as far open as it can go, I have to wedge a piece of cardboard between the frame and the door.

Staff seems incapable of understanding the fact that my door requires a wedge if it’s unlatched from the booth.

The sound of a loud metallic click, click, click — click, click — comes as the booth officer cycles the worn-out switches and locks.

As I am writing this, an inmate on the upper tier yells to an inmate by the door. The inmate by the door waves his arms to get the attention of the booth. As the inmate pulls tension on his door, 11-up, the inmate down by the block door holds up both his index fingers while pointing up, indicating 11-up.

As the clicks begin, the door will usually open. Sometimes it won’t, and an officer will have to come with keys, sometimes tools.

Heat, Blankets, and Air Filters

At the moment, the heat works.

In November and December, when we had not been given a second blanket, my cell was somewhere in the 50-degree range. When I spent many nights shivering with one sheet and one blanket, fully dressed, I begged staff to put a thermometer in my cell.

They couldn’t care less that I spent hours on end shivering in my cell. Everyone with a cell had to block off the room vent to stop the cold fan-only air blowing into our cells.

In our block, we started writing the date on the air filters when they changed them. In December, our filter was so black and stopped up that some inmates took it upon themselves to take a plastic spork and remove the filter material until there was a basketball-sized glob of it on the floor.

FYI here: the filters go in blue.

When the boiler died, we were told it had to be sent all the way to Texas. I guess nobody closer wanted the supposed million-dollar repair job.

Currently, there is a “mobile” H2O heater in the parking lot. On March 5, well before winter’s end, they came around collecting our second blanket.

Go figure.

They did not get mine. Tonight it will be 32 outside.

Leaks, Peeling Paint, and Another Fight

As the bad weather moved through here yesterday, the multitude of leaks in windows, doors, and the roof became obvious again. One cell in my block had my plastic trash can and his catching the leaks. On the way to eat, multiple leaks were obvious along the hall.

Paint almost everywhere is in poor shape. In many places, dissimilar types of paint have been painted over others, causing both to peel.

To this camp’s credit, this unit is far cleaner than others I’ve been to. But the state of reality is that the system as a whole just seems unable to keep maintenance on a level that would pass for acceptable in the private sector.

Windows are broken at every facility I’ve been to. In certain areas, there are rodent and bug problems also at each unit I’ve been to.

Whenever there is an inspection coming, the days of hustling around are comical.

Funny, I was sitting here trying to wrap up my description of the state of this place when another fight over money and drugs broke out right beside me.

But that is the subject for another day.

Peace be with y’all.