I SAID, NO ONE IN THE BUILDING. I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHERE YOU SHIT! - MATTERS OF PISS AND DEFECATION - Government - http://maxpages.com/darkevilworld/No_One_In_the

Until about 1994, the Cummins Unit Recreation Yard was, except during severely inclement weather, open throughout most of the day. The Yard was accessible to inmates who had worked the night shifts beginning about 8:00 a.m., and all through the day to the rest of the population, until about 6:00 p.m. Essentially, the men were free to come and go from the Yard into the building for lunch, or to proceed to the Library or to more official calls or lay-ins, as well as to the restrooms in the Gymnasium.

Not only did free access to recreation afford the inmates a chance to spend the pent-up energies and frustrations accumulated through each day and thereby curbed much of the violence that would otherwise result, but for most of them exercise in the fresh air constituted a kind of therapy through which to develop positive attributes like discipline, self-discipline, good sportsmanship, healthy competition, and positive self images.

By late 1994, in part because of a sudden surge of federal and other monies poured into the ADC as a result of clinton being elected to the Presidency, the effort to have the Cummins Unit "accredited" in order to make it eligible for still more federal funds, the buildings around the periphery of the four to five acre Yard were fenced off with cyclone fencing. Policy was changed to the effect that once prisoners proceeded to "Yard Call" they would not be permitted to return to the main building until Yard Call was terminated. Also, since separate barracks were to be scheduled for Gym Call and Yard Call, respectively, no one in the Gym would be permitted to proceed to the Yard, and no one in the Yard would be permitted go to the Gym.

After two years of constant grievances from the prisoners because there was no water available for them in the Yard, despite the obvious and absolute necessity for it, the Administration finally conceded to permitting the Cummins Jaycees to erect a brick water fountain. Several inmates had collapsed from heat exhaustion or other heat and dehydration problems before it was done. The problem was compounded in part because prisoners were not allowed to wear shorts or recreation clothing in the Yard, purportedly because it would offend the female tower guards, although female officers routinely sit outside all the barracks and can, and do, freely watch all the prisoners taking showers or using the toilets and urinals. Remember also, that we're talking about Arkansas where the summers are routinely brutally hot and humid.

However, there is also no restroom facility in the Yard, and when the men often have to use the toilet because of metabolisms pumped up by strenuous exercise and the intake of water, they are forbidden to return inside the building, or even to proceed inside the Gymnasium because of alleged security concerns. Therefore, they have to piss on the telephone poles or into the grasses where hundreds of other prisoners lay and relax, or engage in various activities; and they have to squat next to the fences or other protuberances to take a crap. No toilet paper is available, so they had better use their hands, a clump of grass or hope that their feces is dry. Many have soiled their pants and still would not be permitted inside the building to clean up or change until Yard Call was ended.

Because of this barbaric and what I believe to be an unconstitutional abrogation of the agreements made in the Finney Consent Decree and in federal court rulings on recreation spanning 50 years, I filed suit against various ADC officials and the Recreation Department (for which I was later made to pay dearly), asserting most emphatically the unconstitutionality of compelling us to urinate and defecate like savages against poles and into the weeds, and treating some prisoners in an inexcusably shameful and degrading manner. Through the typical misapplication of federal precedents, by denigration of the factual evidence adduced in court, and by the foredrawn resolving of "credibility" disputes in favor of lying officials even though there is little doubt in the minds of anyone in court that officials were lying, the suit was eventually dismissed. (Official documents proving violations of the agreements of the Consent Decree are also never admissible in court because the attorneys in Finney secretly agreed to allow the compliance records to be placed under court seal specifically so that they could not be used as evidence of non-compliance in the future. This was a federal court tactic all around the country when the "movement" began to withdraw from all unconstitutional state prison oversight.)

Once again, as had been the case with the effort to shame the good ol' boys into building a restroom for our families and friends who were required to go into the fields and squat to relieve themselves while awaiting weekend visitation well into 1987, I again drafted an official proposal in the Cummins Jaycees to pay for the materials for the construction of some basic bathroom facilities in the Yard. Scores of grievances and complaints have been filed by other prisoners across the past several years, all of which have fallen on deaf ears. However, this time the inmate Board of Directors of the Jaycees refused to allocate the money, partially out of anger over the fact that the administration had for years been raping the Jaycee accounts by forcing them to spend money on good ol' boy enterprises.

After two more years of enduring the degradation, a new proposal was approved by the Jaycees, but the Administration repeatedly rejected it under the profession that a restroom would soon be built from accreditation funds, or from the racketeered and extorted monies from the Inmate Telephone System implemented by MCI.

It is now at the end of the summer of 1999, and still we shit and piss into whatever recesses the good ol' boys leave to us. Maybe before the end of the coming Millennium we can have a single toilet and urinal in which to deposit excrement. In the meantime...

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

Sign Guestbook

View Guestbook

LINDA TANT MILLER

WASHINGTON

USA

tantsy1@msn.com

Visitors: 02107

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