One lady in Washington County Jail had the SWAT team come to her house with an armored human transport vehicle when she wasn’t home . They plowed down two fences on her property that were holding livestock. Upon viewing the scene of the crime they said it was self defense, but when they realized she was going through a divorce, they changed the accusations. Her in-laws were trying to sue her and when she was found guilty, they used her conviction as grounds to sue her. She had no criminal history before this.
At CCCF, we had three different suicide attempts in one day. The roommate of one of the ladies was placed in isolation to be sure she didn’t have anything to do with it. They also took all of her things away from her including her radio.
Here in the kitchen, they won’t allow radios in the dish room because they say we will fight over what station to put it on. One lady was trying to learn something from a coordinator, but she refused to finish teaching her because she interrupted the coordinator by accident.
At Washington County Jail, when the forest fires during the summer of 2021 burned out of control, those of us in the jail had very poor air quality and we could smell it all the time, even in our cells. After awhile, we were coughing because of it as well. The yard was closed and we couldn’t go outside for over a month.
Now at CCCF, there is a farm next door to us that constantly burns what looks like brush fires. The smoke blows over to us and we can smell it in our cells as well. We are grateful it is not as bad as it was in Washington County Jail, but again health and safety is just not a concern for us as prisoners here.
Some of us are college-educated, yet we are still forced to work in the dish pit in the kitchen scrubbing pots and pans all day. The requirement here is to work for 6 months in the kitchen before moving onto another job, but apparently the kitchen staff has a hard time releasing people from kitchen duty. The majority of kitchen coordinators only have a GED education level.
One lady that works in the kitchen has a staph infection in her shoulder and it’s very painful for her to do all of the lifting and scrubbing. Her shoulder had been dislocated and she needs surgery. When she showed us, it was red and inflamed. The medical staff knows about this and they still force her to work.
Another lady working in the kitchen has an artificial back and plates in her face. Another one has severe spinal injuries and is one point away from having osteoporosis. There are not very many jobs these ladies can do that don’t require hard physical labor and yet the coordinators let the healthy young ladies have jobs as cooks, which are a lot less difficult. When ladies are done with work at night in the dish pit, we see many of them limping and hobbling. It is also the lowest paying job in the kitchen.