Month: March 2023

The segregation unit here at CCCF is still a big problem. We are sure it is at other facilities also. We have a lady here in her early 20s who has been here for years in segregation. Our heart goes out to her. She is not allowed anything in her cell and when she comes out for showers she is handcuffed, leg shackled and a leashed like a dog. Once she was getting in the shower and all of a sudden several officers tackled her. This is almost like several reported events in Virginia where officers tackled a man in a facility and killed him. In case here they claimed that she tried to head-but an officer. But none of the other officers said they saw her do that.

The segregation unit here is just a place where officers practice abuse of power and abuse prisoners. According to the Geneva Convention, solitary confinement with no stimuli is considered to be torture. If officers do not feel like bringing prisoners books, then they do not get any books. The same goes for cleaning supplies, meals and showers.

In the segregation unit here, if officers do not like a lady for some reason they conveniently “forget” about getting them anything. Once they decided not to allow one lady a shower she heard them saying they hoped the other ladies would beat her up for smelling bad. They will conveniently “forget” to give that lady meals as well. Also, officers have been known to give some ladies extra food if she has beaten up another lady who they do not like.

President Biden vowed to do away with segregation in prisons and we want it done away with too. Please write to the President at 600 Pennsylvania Av, Washington, DC. Please write also to

Adrian Wulff
Ombudsman to Gov. Tina Kotek
900 Court Street SE, Ste 254
Salem, OR 97301

You may think that segregation is for “trouble makers” and for people who do not follow the rules here, but that is not necessarily the case. If officers do not like a lady (and sometimes this is just because of race or color) they will try to throw that lady into segregation for almost anything. For example, ladies can be sent there for sharing food at meals. Most officers here practice favoritism and will send one lady to segregation for something small, and let another do the same thing with doing anything to her.

Consistency is a big part of ladies’ mental health while at CCCF and similar facilities. But each officer runs a given unit completely differently, so it can be very confusing to adjust to varying rules all the time. We are just trying to live our lives here as best we can. But when different officers come on a unit with different rules it interferes with our efforts to live our lives and also to try to fight the charges that brought us here.

We have many ladies here with wrongful convictions that are doing their best to research and navigate the legal system that brought us here. It is hard enough to do that, without having to deal with officers yelling at us and not being consistent about rules. All we want is a fair chance to live our lives here and to try to find ways to eventually be set free.

It has been proven that the lawyers who are supposed to help us do not really fight for us. They are lazy and even leave out important evidence from our case histories that may have led to wrongful convictions. Between that and corrections officers here seeming to always have it out for us, there seems to be no fairness or mercy!

One lady at CCCF remembers doing drugs with a correction officer on the outside before she came here. The officer was going to try to get her a job too. And then she was arrested. Correction officers only need good education to get jobs here. Training to become a corrections officer takes approximately 16 weeks. We think there should be more training to deal with things in prisons like mental illness, violence de-escalation and drug addiction. Nobody likes being told what to do by ignorant, uneducated individuals.

From the time we were children we are taught to share with our friends. At CCCF we are punished and sent to segregation for this. Is this punishment or torture.? In segregation the officers took one lady in for questioning while she was in segregation and left her chained to a wall for 2 hours because she would not talk to them. When she was put back into segregation none of the other ladies would talk to her because they said she was talking to the cops for two hours. They also move people from cell to cell, sometimes 3 or 4 times a day and laugh at them as they try to gather their belongings. At this point though, most of their belongings have previously already been taken away from them. Some of their belongings will never be returned to them, including things like TVs, headphones, makeup and radios.

They move people around a lot when they are not in segregation too. This takes a lot of effort, sometimes hours, for people to get their things packed for moves.. If they know that 2 people are friends, they will separate them into different units.

In segregation the officers will refuse people showers and then openly talking about hoping other prisoners will beat them up for smelling bad. When those ladies do beat them up for the amusement of the officers they will give them extra food at mealtimes. Others they don’t like will be forgotten about for meals, things to clean their cells with, and library books. We think that favoritism from ignorant uneducated correction officers is not something we should have to deal with. Is this place run by the Department of Corrections or is this just a place of abuse.

Seven more police officers are going to trial for murder in Virginia It is not as big a news story as they Tyree Nichols situation though. Probably because they do not want any more protests or riots. We want police to stop unnecessary violence., both on the streets and in our prisons.

One lady here at CCCF is applying for a compassionate release because her husband has a terminal illness. Another lady here has both parents with terminal illnesses and she is the only one they have that could take care of them. Yet, she is not permitted to apply for a compassionate release. Where is the fairness in this? Our loved ones suffer right along with us here and everyone should have an equal chance at compassionate release.

We have a lady at CCCF who was charged with unlawful use of a weapon because they found a knife with no fingerprints. The only statement her “victim” made was “I thought she loved me”. They charged her because she had previous domestic violence situations.

Another lady here was charged with unlawful use of a firearm, but she never used it. It was found on her person and so she was charged.

Another lady here was charged with unlawful use of a firearm, but she never had a firearm, and they never produced it at trial. She is trying to find comparable cases for her direct appeal, but has not found any yet in the State of Oregon. She is at a loss about what to do about this.

We have lots of ladies at CCCF who were forced or bullied into taking plea deals for crimes they did not commit. They can’t afford the cost of post-conviction appeal, but we do not want to give them up. It is wrong to charge people for crimes they did not commit.

We have heard that Paris Hilton is speaking out against abuse in prison facilities and that some may be shut down. We think prisons that are abusing people should be shut down.

We have a lady here at CCCF who paid a lawyer $10,000 to do her post-conviction brief. After she gave him the money he said he lost her paperwork twice and did not even remember whether or not he filed for her. We are tired of not getting proper representation that is our constitutional right, whether we are in prison or not.

We still have ladies here at CCCF who are suffering from the H Pylori stomach bacteria, and they have not given anyone antibiotics to take care of it. Some ladies are afraid to eat the food they serve from the kitchen. There is an officer standing at the food line today, threatening to take people’s food away, on top of everything else! We deserve to be served food that is safe to eat and not be harassed at meal time!

Here at CCCF we get threatened in the law library when we are trying to make copies of our cases. One lady was told they could not make copies for her appeal because they did not have toner cartridges.

We have also been told that they cannot give us antibiotics for the infection because it is too expensive. They do give some ladies antacid but it does not seem to work. We have gotten this infection from eating the food here and we need treatment. We also need to be served food that is safe to eat.

Many ladies at CCCF are still being forced to work in the kitchen, even after they passed Bill 112, which is supposed to do away with slave labor. They did give people a very small raise, but they also significantly raised canteen prices. Ladies who refuse to go to work there are sent to the Segregation Unit. It is still very unsanitary in the kitchen, and ladies are getting the H Pylori virus from eating the food here. This causes really painful heartburn, and some ladies even get nauseous from it. They are not doing much to help them here.

We are now seeing, after the Alex Murdoch trial, that lawyers are not always the people we should be giving the benefit of the doubt to. Throughout the course of his career he convicted several people, resulting in death penalty verdicts. Here at CCCF we have a lady who went bankrupt paying for a lawyer who had an excellent reputation. He was no match for the State though. They actually broke into her lawyer’s office to steal her records. There were also so many instances of the authorities lying that she did not stand a chance at trial.

Another lady here actually had her lawyer try to bully her into a confession of a crime she did not commit. The same lawyer tried to coerce her out of her vehicle when the authorities took it from her without a warrant. Several of this ladies friends would only talk to her lawyer and not to her. This same lawyer told her not to talk to anyone at the jail. As it turned out this was the worst advice ever, as isolation in prison and jail is a very big problem, especially to someone who has not even committed the crime she was accused of.

We need the general public to see that just because lawyers make a lot of money does not mean we should always trust them or that they are always right. We also has a lady here whose criminal psychologist threatened alongside her lawyer as her lawyer was trying to bully her into a confession of a crime she did not commit. These people are supposed to be professionals! We are seeing that the people who work in the justice system are often really part of the problem