my young friend is incarcerated in oregon state prison at the moment. while he was in county waiting for trial i went to vist him. i signed up and then returned at my visit time. when i returned there was a sign saying that all visitations for the day had been cancelled. i heard from other visitors that a sewage line inside had broken and so that all visits were being cancelled for the day.

when i saw my friend the next week he told me that when this occurred he was in isolation, not general population. he said the sewage was drippng through the ceiling and onto him and into his cell. he asked to be moved and asked to be allowed to shower but was denied for several hours. he spoke to his court appointed attorney but was told he would only handle the charges against him. Raw sewage is very very dangerous and exposes one to all sorts of contagious conditions. what kind of action could he take. is it too late to do anything now? is it something we need to wait for his release to do? would it be safer to wait for release to avoid repercussions to his standing in prison now? Any advice?

tiamotzz,

Because of the PLRA that Clinton signed into law your friend must exhaust all internal methods of recourse. As for a civil suit once out he must show he has suffered some damage, & he also must have exhausted all institutional appeals. This new law has really hand cuffed prisoners ability to sue their institutions. Yes creating waves while locked up has in some cases resulted in retaliation, so if he goes down that road it should be over something he really believes in & is willing to put up with alot of crap over, no pun intended.-----Ken

i would call the warden of the prison, tia. and you may want to call the health department in the county that the prison is located in as well! that's a major health risk, not to mention gross! good luck!

you know the health department idea is really interesting too, now that you have brought it up. this happened while he was in county jail before sentencing, he is upstate now. but when i asked about the health department he told me something interesting. he said everyday before the health department arrived there would be a huge and concerted effort at really cleaning up all the corners and double checking all the standards on everything. (i work for a preschool and understand these inspections, in preschool at least they are quite thorough.) a whirlwind of activity would ensue to cover all the details. then, the next day everyone would be in lock down till the inspection was over. now i don't know about the lock-down, maybe that is standard operating procedure during an inspection for safety reasons, but health department inspections are suppossed to be unannounced. no one is supposed to know when they will occur so that the inspector can see the actual state of things. interesting huh, that they seemed to have a heads-up 24 hours prior to the inspection.

Here when the grand jury meets, one of their duties is to inspect the jail and related facilities (kitchen, etc.) and they can hand down recomendations for the facilities. Just a thought - they threatened to shut the jail down earlier this year if improvements weren't made. The county came off the money pronto to fix what needed done.

you know i thought of that, because i am aware of the grand jury convening once a year in regards to count jail. but since it seems to be an inside job (obviously the health department is giving county a heads up i'm not sure whose attention to bring it to. county commissioner. the jail will probably deny all allegations. the health department did visit the day after the sewage leak also. don't think they had a choice on that one. it's the insider heads up that bothers me.

that is sick.. i am not sure what can be done at this point but it is worth looking into at least...:(

Check this out. This is an everyday problem and they have a new jail. http://www.annistonstar.com/as-index.htm

you know the whole concept of overcrowding in county jails is an interesting one. for instance the one we have here has a 195 prisoner cap. so frequently they publicize that they are doing a large release of prisoners in order to stay in compliance. fine. during the 3 months that my friend spent in county before sentencing i would stand in long lines of folks waiting to see friends and relatives. then one of these releases came and lots of prisoners were released. the line at the jail dwindled to nothing. then the very next week end there was a HUGE line of new people. they had apparently incarcerated a huge number of people over the week. i thought this was interesting. why if the jail is so overcrowded do so many new arrests occur right after the big release. it made me start thinking...i don't believe officials release prisoners to keep the jail at requirement. they have to of course, but they also are using it to make arrests to create revenue! this had never occurred to me before, but after seeing it with my own eyes i did. i'm quite sure that during crowded conditions a large amount of these arrests would never have taken place, there would have been a lot more warnings and tickets. just another example of doc abusing it's power.:confused: these kind of self-perpetuating systems happen all the time in anything government.

I DON'T DOUBT THEM DOING ANYTHING TO INCREASE REVENUE-MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND (UNFORTUNATELY)