IN THE BUSHES, MA'M, IN THE BUSHES - MATTERS OF PISS AND DEFECATION - Government - http://maxpages.com/darkevilworld/In_the

For the many years that inmates of the Cummins Unit have been permitted to receive visitation from family and friends only because it is required by state and federal law, they have proceeded to the Cummins Unit every weekend with a faith and urgency only someone who has a loved one confined can know. The fear and dread these families and friends feel all through the week is a natural by-product of the concern for the well-being and safety of their loved one confined, and although most visitors know that visitation does not even begin until 11:30, some moms and dads, or wives and girlfriends often arrive at the prison shortly after 7:00 or 8:00 a.m., needing most desperately to be the first in line, the first into the building, and the first to embrace their loved one again in order to reassure themselves that he is still ok after the eternity that has passed since the visit last week.

At the extreme west end of the prison compound and at the end of the two mile access road that leads from Highway 65 to the Cummins Unit, weekend visitors to the unit were and are required to await visitation call by lining their cars and other vehicles on the right side of the roadway beginning at a four-way Stop sign on the corner there. They park in a seemingly endless row, bumper to bumper. Sometimes the line stretches a half mile or more up the road. How often have I looked out the window of my cell to watch them - sometimes with a smile over the string of brightly colored autos and trucks that looks like a jeweled necklace laced against the diseased and rotting countryside; and sometimes with a solemn heart seeing the unmistakable "huddle" of the cars as if the people inside drew together instinctively in order to feel safer through their common bond against some unspoken horror lurking and threatening unseen. How tangible these impressions sometimes are.

As soon as the weekend visitors begin their vigil to 11:30, prisoners from all over the unit sometimes risk disciplinary reports for being in unassigned areas just hoping for a chance to see the particular car that they know contains someone they also have desperately waited to see again after the week that seemed like an eternity - sometimes waving or sending a touch through the plexiglass even though it too great a distance for their visitors to have any hope of seeing them.

As the cars park bumper to bumper one by one, and as the visitors' dry mouths gets even more dry from the churning emotions they are feeling in the hours-long wait, the morning's coffee or juice or breakfast inevitably wends it way to where Nature calls. Perhaps aging persons and children are sometimes even pestered by the need to relieve themselves simply because of worn out or immature bowels and bladders. But no matter the cause, Nature calls as she will and when she will. And, in the case of our visitors, Nature not only called, but received a shameful answer to the often asked question as well. "In the bushes, ma'am. In the bushes." Our loved ones had to go into fields nearby to relieve themselves because no restroom facility was provided by the good ol' boys of the ADC and Arkansas.

I wish it were possible for me to MAKE you watch an 80 year old grandmother being escorted to a nearby bush or tuft of grass and made to relieve herself there, so feeble with age that she couldn't even do it unassisted; or to see the unmistakable fear of a child being made to walk into the "jungle" of weeks where snakes or spiders or endless horrid creatures could be lurking, just to use the toilet. I wish it were possible, but it is not, so I am limited to the faltering image to be painted only with words. Damn you, people of Arkansas for letting this be.

It was made necessary for our families and friends to squat and piss and defecate into the barren bushes and nearby fields, often without even the cover of shrubbery, because the Arkansas Department of Correction, and the good ol' boy Director, A.L. Lockhart and Warden Willis H. Sargent were too sorry to build a restroom facility near the corner where our visitors parked, or too sorry to allow visitors entry to the readily available restrooms in the Visitation Center or elsewhere throughout the Administrative office behind the PBX. And, the reader needs to know that this was not only the case in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, or 70s, but it was still so in 1987.

However, this disgusting state of affairs in a state that calls itself civilized but which readily condemns all prisoners as being barbarians and nothing but animals, is also an indictment of the United States Justice Department and the Arkansas Attorney General's Office, as well as the governorships of zipperman bill clinton, and every other good ol' boy agency that allowed this to continue for more than three decades. It is a good example of how much these creeps really care about "The People", and how the families and friends of prisoners are themselves seen as little more than criminals and the friends and loved ones of nothing more than vermin, to be treated accordingly. After all, it wasn't we criminals who were parked in those cars, or required to squat in the fields, or to feel the shame that was felt by tens of thousands of persons. It was you, John Q. Public. You and your neighbors. And that in a state where tourism is the #1 enterprise.

But, in making this accusation against those I named (and I should name many more) I want to say at least some little about why it is so:

In 1981 and 1982 the U.S. Justice Department, the Arkansas Attorney General's Office, the Governor's Office and a myriad of other agencies were constantly present at the Cummins Unit because the lawsuit of Holt v. Sarver was in the process of being settled out.
Read Holt v. Sarver

The Holt case had declared the entire Arkansas Department of Correction to be unconstitutional and characterized it in the official written opinion of a federal judge as "a dark and evil world."

Because of the staggering magnitude of abuses that had gone on here (and that, despite many Supreme Court rulings, are still going on here), the feds and courts had compelled the ADC officials to create certain bodies comprised of prisoners under proper supervision to act as the voices of masses of their fellow inmates who otherwise could not be heard. The main such inmate forums were to be an inmate publication called "The Long Line Writer" (of which I am currently, although I'm sure now, because of these web sites temporary, editor), and an Inmate Council comprised of inmate-elected representatives from each barracks on the Unit. Along an administrative line, an Inmate Grievance procedure was also finally implemented.

By these vehicles the prisoners themselves were to air their stories and complaints over the abuses they had suffered across decades of time and to assist with the identification of problem areas that needed to be addressed by the remedial orders to be implemented by the Consent Decree in the Hutto case (which by 1980 had transmuted to a case titled Finney v. Hutto).
Read Finney v. Hutto

The Long Line Writer was to be kept uncensored (except to how the law legitimately allows censorship in the context of the legitimate needs for security and order within the institutions), and it and the Minutes generated by the Inmate Council were to become official records of the state and an official part of the huge volumes of compliance reports issued every month and quarter.

After having championed a few prisoners' rights beginning shortly after my arrival at Cummins Unit in June of 1981, I was elected to the Inmate Council. The men felt that I would represent them fairly because I had demonstrated that I was willing and able to stand up to the good ol' boy prison keepers, (like current Director, Larry Norris, then Assistant Warden of Security at Cummins, who was actually the first ADC official to try to intimidate me with threats by slapping a blackjack in the palm of his hand and telling me that they knew how to deal with trouble-making prisoners like me, and whose role in the beatings of hundreds of prisoners at the Tucker Maximum Security Unit between 1983 and 1984 is now a matter of public record.)

One of the very first things that I proposed for our Council to address as a suggestion to the Administration was the fact that our visitors were made to squat in the nearby fields to relieve themselves rather than being allowed into the compound to use the restrooms. By this time, of course, many state officials, as well as the Justice Department Investigators, had already received scores of complaints from inmates' families over this unconscionable state of affairs, but nothing had been done.

As part of the proposal, I suggested that the Cummins Unit Jaycees be asked to pay for the building of a small restroom facility for our visitors and perhaps a few picnic tables to allow them to sit in the open and fresh air while waiting for the visits to begin. The Jaycees had for years been generating well over $100,000 a year largely as a result of concession sales to our visitors at the Visitation Center, but as can be expected of the good ol' boys, they made damn sure that the inmates in charge of any money-making enterprise were the kind who would not resist - and who would even assist with, stealing, diverting, and misappropriating the Jaycee money for good ol' boy enterprises. Both the Council and the Jaycees immediately agreed to make the proposal and to pay for the suggested restroom for our loved ones.

Across the next five years, despite hundreds of complaints to everyone from the Governor's Office and the Justice Department on down, STILL no restroom facilities were constructed for our visitors despite the fact they, in essence would pay for the facility themselves from the profits made by the Jaycees of the money they spent on the Visitation Center Concession.

At some point in 1986, after a particularly steady stream of complaints, the state hauled in two or three Porta-Toilets to stick on the side of the road where the cars parked, but within a few weeks those things became so filthy from never being cleaned or emptied that even to leave them sitting there as a sham was more shameful and disgusting than squatting in the fields had been. Thankfully, our families were not as willing to jeopardize their very health and well-being in unsanitary and filthy Porta-Toilets for the privilege to visit us, as they had been willing to endure the shame and degradation of going to squat in the fields.

By 1985, I had also assisted with drafting legal petitions for some visitors that were being abused this way. All to no avail.

Finally, after several hundred more complaints to government officials, after several letters to local media (which they chose never to print), and after being endlessly embarrassed, the good ol' boys finally "moved" themselves to build a small restroom facility near the corner of the Stop sign there at the access road, and trustee inmates working Front Lawn were given the supplies to keep the place relatively clean.

Today, the facility is still in use and is kept up well, but visitors may also now proceed into the Visitation Center much earlier and enjoy some refreshments and use the facilities there while waiting to greet their loved ones.

However, this only the free world visitors' part of the disgusting treatment by the good ol' boys. For the prisoners themselves, it is a long way from being over, because to this very day, and most probably well into the New Millennium, we still have to squat in the grass or alongside buildings or telephone poles to relieve ourselves.

Tell the Governor of Arkansas what you think

Explore Arkansas' River of Blood

Read stories of everyday life at the Cummins Unit

Meet Rolf Kaestel, read his Executive Clemency appeal and raise your voice to free him from the ADC

View the artistic works of men and women incarcerated in the Dark and Evil World

View text of Miscellaneous Lawsuits and Court Decisions

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LINDA TANT MILLER

WASHINGTON

USA

tantsy1@msn.com

Visitors: 03960

Page Updated Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:54am EST