COMPLAINT FILED BY THE NATIONAL LAWYER’S GUILD ON BEHALF OF STRANDED PRISONERS

We attach as exhibits to this statement the written accounts of (5) U.S.P. Beaumont prisoners, and (1) U.S.P. Beaumont prisoner family member from the outside community, as indicative examples of the reports we are receiving regarding conditions at the facility in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. We draw your attention, in particular, to the following excerpts:

•       “On the 30th we were only served 2 meals and the noon meal was the last one. We were told when we complained that the extra peanut butter pack served as our evening meal. We were not told at the noon meal that we would not be given food for the remainder of the day.”

•       “On the 4th we discovered that our emails had been taken. There was a 5 email a month restriction placed on our emails without notice and it was retroactive. I was unable at this point to use my email until it was restored on 7th. At this time we still hadn't received and no access to the post office. I believe it was an attempt to quiet the protestations and complaints by the inmates.”

•       “Throughout this process hot meals and cold water was hand delivered to the officers which shows that they means to properly provide for us was available however the will was not.”

•       “Thee are a large number of voiceless inmates here who can't speak for themselves, due to their being locked down in 2 or 3 man cells with no water, no air conditioning, and no means of flushing their toilets. These inmates are further incapacitated by the incursions imposed upon their ability to communicate with their families, owing to their being denied usage of the telephone or e-mail.”

•       “Inmates here are totally dependent upon the administration for their safety, care, and well-being. Their responsibility towards inmates cannot be dismissed, or ignored, for the sake of convenience or expedience.”

•       “Electricity has been sporadic with total black-out conditions at times.”

•       “Here at the Low facility we were only given 2 bottles of water the first day that the water supply was cut off. This amount was grossly insufficient to prevent dehydration or to mitigate the possibility of heat exhaustion. We have no air conditioning in the building, and the sweltering heat within these buildings presents a real health risk and health hazard. With the entire city of Beaumont being without water, this has resulted in there being no water for drinking, bathing, or flushing toilets. Toilets at the Low facility are replete with feces that just sits in the commodes, because there is no water to flush the toilets.”

•       “The administration ordered Port-A-Potty units; however, failed to order a sufficient number of these units to accommodate the entire number of inmates at the Low facility. There are currently 1,812 inmates at the Low facility. There are 3 buildings at the Low facility, with each building having 4 individual units (e.g., SA, SB, TA, TB). Each individual unit houses approximately 100+ inmates, rendering 400+ inmates per building. There were 8 Port-A-Potty units provided to each building. Each Port-A-Potty unit can accommodate 10 usages, with anything ins excess of this number rendering the units unsanitary. Eight (8) Port-A-Potty units can accommodate a total of 80 inmates per building. With there being an excess of 400+ inmates per building, this number of Port-A-Potty units is grossly inadequate and disproportionately excludes a large number of inmates from its' usage.”

•       “inmates at the Low facility have not had laundry services for 2 weeks, nor commissary services for 2 weeks (to purchase things needed for their personal maintenance and upkeep), nor have they have a hot meal in 2 weeks”

•       “low water rations and living in our own defication”

•       “when i searched for answers about our such extreme conditions i only found harrassment in the form of profanity and passive aggressive threats concerning never getting out of the cell.”

•       “we were being treated as if we were punished and told we had to earn our way back to normal operations.”

•       “i felt i was going to die because the water was not enough to sustain a 6'2 235lb body . when i passed out the first time my celly called the officer to ask for help and we were met with aggression and ‘your just faking be a man and suck it up’”

•       “officers from other prisons as far as ‘el reno’ and ‘bastrop texas’ told us they thought they was ‘coming to help with an evacution’ but were surprised to find out they came all this way to pass out food and water.”

•       “we have been without water, air, hot food,ects. Instead of them evacuating us the kept us here under the harsh conditions .The water we are getting was in square little bags the wasn't even 4 ounces' of water to add up in two little bags”

•       “we've been without showers for 2 weeks”

•       “IT HAS BEEN TWO WEEKS OF BEING INSIDE OF THE CELL WITHOUT WORKING TOILET AND HOT WATER TO WASH UP WITH … I HAVE BEEN LOCK IN MY CELL FOR WEEKS WOTHOUT ANY TOILET AND BE EXPOSE TO MY WASTES , AND NOT BEING ABLE TO WASH MY CLOTHES THAT I WORK IN UNDER SATURDAY 09, 2017.ARE PRISONERS REQUIRED CLEAN CLOTHES AND LAUNDRY ?”

•       “I HAVE BEEN DENIED THE GRIEVANCE [FORM] BY COUNSEL[OR] ON Q-B.”

On Aug. 26, 2017, at 3 a.m., I awake to an officer screaming for everyone to get up and hurry to the second floor of our unit. Thunder crashes in the distance, and raindrops the size of quarters smack the window by my bunk.

Soon, I hear only the sound of 100 panicking women mumbling and shuffling to the latest disaster befalling us: Hurricane Harvey.

Now someone is saying there’s a flood outside. Duh. Given the way the Texas Department of Criminal Justice built this place, the sidewalks overflow during even the lightest rain, creating a constant slip-and-fall hazard for the predominantly disabled offender population here.

But this is no light rain. Outside the dorm, I see the water is falling way faster than the ground can absorb it. There is a big lake out there, as far as the eye can see.

To get to the main building, I must wade into it, knee-deep. That’s when I notice the ladies with wheelchairs, walkers and crutches are struggling. One woman is crying hysterically because she is afraid of water, and the dorm boss can’t get her to take one step forward.

An altruistic and able-bodied woman hefts the fearful one onto her back, and away they go. I get behind a lady in a wheelchair and give her a push.

Eventually we all make it the 75 yards to the hospital building at Carole Young Medical Unit. Most of us live in one-story dorms just north of the hospital, and our only way to the larger, safer hospital building is along a narrow strip of sidewalk outside.

As I enter the air-conditioned building, my skin quickly senses another danger: wet clothes, cold air and the weakened immune systems of women already facing life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, kidney failure and post-surgical wound sites.

“What’s going on, boss?” I ask an officer. “Are we in danger? How long will we be up here? Will we be leaving the prison?”

Others fire off similar questions at him, but instead of saying ‘I don’t know’ and acknowledging that no protocols exist for such a disaster, he simply ignores us.

Within a couple hours, everyone is given dry clothes that don’t fit, and the 300 women from the ground-level dorms plus 150 more from the hospitalized population are crowded into the second-floor hallways, therapy rooms and groups of cells. The officers and nursing staff haven’t been allowed to leave either, a captain informs us.

Apparently, the flooding has made it impossible to get to and from the prison.

Warden Larson comes through, soaked to the bone, makeup smeared and saying something about her car having been swept away.

Meanwhile our unit boss still has not left, slept, or been able to take a break and go out to her car and call her family.

She has to pee, but there’s no other staff to relieve her, so she can’t go to the officers’ restroom in the building next door.

“Just use our toilets,” I urge. “I’ll look out for you in case another officer comes in.”

This isn’t allowed because it leaves the officer compromised should an inmate try to pull something. But it isn’t the policy violation that makes her hold it in.

“No way! That’s nasty!” she says.

“Suit yourself,” I say, and return to my new bed to get some much-needed rest.

Rain continues to fall for the next two days, and the same officers remain, showering upstairs and sleeping in shifts on an empty pod. We’re confined to our cubicles, unable to watch the news and worried about our families; for every meal, we get “Johnny sacks” (brown-bag lunches).

I’m assigned to constantly mopping up the water coming in.

When the rain finally stops, a lieutenant and a posse of officers enter our dorm screaming at us to pack up all of our property in bags or tie it in a sheet because we are leaving in a hurry.

Huh? Where are we going? Why are they taking precautions now? Did they get the memo late?

I begin hearing people complain about not being able to carry all their stuff. I look around and realize that few people will have the strength to carry their loads.

After all, Carole Young’s ground-level dorms house about a hundred pregnant women and a hundred other inmates who are either disabled or on dialysis, chemotherapy or radiation.

The dorm boss calls the lieutenant on the radio and informs him of their clearly overlooked dilemma. Shortly thereafter, he returns with instructions to place our property on our beds so it won’t get wet if we can’t carry it.

The lieutenant tells us to pack just one small bag, with only hygiene products, writing materials, and underwear.

I conceal my coffee, pictures of my family, and a couple of ramen noodles packets inside a pair of panties, stuff it in my bag, and head out the door.

Later, I suddenly begin to hear pieces of information being communicated to the officers and staff on their radios: “Possible breach of reservoir…. Corps of Engineers.…”

“Everyone get in line at the elevators with your bags right now!” the lieutenant hollers again and again.

A woman asks if she can take her pictures of her kids, because it is all she has to remember them by.

“What the fuck don’t you understand about ‘hygiene, writing materials and underwear?’ Gimme that shit.” The lieutenant takes her bag and throws it aside, and tells her to get in line.

I can see in his eyes that he, too, is scared.

Suddenly the pace changes again. Senior Warden Bosco has appeared out of nowhere and begins assigning us places to sit. We aren’t going anywhere. I find a spot on the floor and listen to everyone complain.

A few hours later, an officer who’d been at home makes it to work and gives us the scoop that we’ve all been desperate to hear. Apparently, he says, the rain has filled up the reservoir (close to 4 billion gallons of water) that sits about 60 yards from our prison, and the Army Corps of Engineers thinks it might be about to breach. 

But the buses aren’t coming to get us.

And if they can’t get here, neither can any of our supply trucks. Our food supply is quickly diminishing, and I lose count of how many of our meals end up being bowls of Frosted Flakes.

Fear overcomes me. I keep looking out the window, envisioning a precarious lake rushing at us, washing me away. What if it does? What if the Harvey waters sweep me over the fence and out of prison? Will I be charged with escape for my accidental freedom?

Silly rumors are going around about some high-ranking official, with the authority to make such an order, deciding to let us go. Opening the gates and allowing us to take the risk and save ourselves, if they don’t have the resources to do it themselves.

What would that look like? Four hundred and fifty offenders, many of them disabled, hurrying out the gates and down the highway to evacuate Dickinson, Texas — which is a mandatory order for all the other residents of the town.

But that never happens, of course. Dickinson is a ghost town; ours are the only lives left.

I envy the three nearby men’s prisons that have been evacuated, those inmates safely tucked away on a mat in a crowded gym somewhere far away from Harvey. None of them are worrying about dying any minute.

Later, a woman goes into labor, and the medical staff calls 911. But 911 says they can’t come.

“You’re a medical facility,” the dispatcher says. “Deliver the baby.”

A few hours pass, then the short wails of a newborn are heard down the hall — something many of us have not heard in a long time, and may never again. For incarcerated women, it is among the most sentimental of sounds. While the uncertainty of our own lives hangs in the balance, this Hurricane Harvey baby intensifies our sense of how precious life is.

What Happened When a Hurricane Flooded My Prison

A deluge, terror and a miracle.

By DEIDRE MCDONALD 

Deidre McDonald, 34, is incarcerated at the Carole Young Complex in Dickinson, Texas, where she is serving a maximum sentence of 30 years for forgery offenses stemming from a drug addiction.

FROM THE MARSHAL PROJECT

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/08/02/what-happened-when-a-hurricane-flooded-my-prison

ORIGINALLY FILED Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 10:00 p.m. ET 

This article was published in collaboration with Vice.