Bullock Prison, Alabama: Prisoners Consider Rebellion

Image by Emiliano Bar.

In early February, Bullock Prison warms up slightly, but the heat is still not working, and the temperature in the prison soon drops again. Furthermore, new problems with the building make the prison even colder and the problems even worse throughout mid to late February.

I interview “Derek” and many other prisoners in early February and throughout the month about the cold. In a previous interview, quoted in Part One of the series on the cold, Derek described a plan to try to get as many prisoners as possible to submit complaint forms about the heat not working.

Since then, “Yes, sir, we did that,” says Derek. “We filled out the request slips and put them in the box for them to check on the heat. And I can’t tell any difference, man. It’s freezing in here to me.”

Asked how many prisoners he estimates submitted complaints, “Oh lord, I can’t say for sure about that,” he answers. “We got a whole packet of request slips, which is maybe 100 to a pack. So, we passed them out, but I can’t say who filled them out and who didn’t. I just went around asking them to do that, because that was the only way we were going to be able to get anything done.”

***

I interview Derek again last week.

“Everything is just messed up in here, man. I’m telling you. Cruel and unusual punishment,” he says at the top of the interview.

“Everybody in here is sick,” he says, “especially the old men. They’re all coughing and hacking and stuff. It’s freezing in here.” He estimates that about half of the people in his dorm of 80 or so are sick.

Derek and all the other prisoners I’ve interviewed last week (more than are included in this story) report that, in addition to the heat not working in the prison, the hot water has stopped working as well.

“Our water is cold. Man, we can’t take a hot shower,” says Derek in late February. “I took a shower earlier. I was freezing to death. I’ve been cold for like three days, but I had to get in the shower earlier. There wasn’t a choice about it. I had to do it.”

That’s not the only new problem making the heat worse since we spoke the week before.

“Prisons are made out of concrete and steel,” Derek elaborates. “You know that. Up top, they have a ceiling area through where all the electric wire and all that stuff is running through, but it has a breeze going through it. Well, the maintenance people came in here the other day and they took a bunch of lights down in our dorm. Anyway, when they took those lights down and took the wires and stuff out of them, they left the holes open… And these holes are just flooding air through them. It’s like having a little air conditioner here right over your bed. We’re all cold.”

Further, “They’re starting fires in two dorms,” says Derek, and, “They’re talking about doing that in [this dorm]. See, that’s what I’m telling you. The prisoners are fixing to buck. I know. I’ve been through this… This is something that I’ve seen and witnessed with my own two eyes, being here and being amongst them. I’ve seen them buck, and they don’t want that. A lot of innocent people, bystanders, are going to get hurt over that.”

He continues, “If they decide to buck — and they say they are going to buck — if you don’t ride with them, then they’re going to consider you being police, and they’re going to fuck you up. So, if they do buck, everybody has got to ride.”

Prisoners in at least one other dorm have already started fires in the days leading up to this conversation, “especially since we’ve had this cold spell going through here,” and, “They’re getting ready to do it up here,” he reiterates.

Asked what the prisoners who are contemplating making torches or setting fires are hoping to accomplish, “They’re hoping to accomplish getting heat. It’s so damn cold that they’re setting fires to get heat,” he answers.

As I noted in Part One, one might think the guards would be more bothered by the cold, thus providing some added incentive for the administration to get the heat fixed, but the ADOC resources issued to deal with the cold are of course more robust for guards than for prisoners.

The guards “got on these thick toboggan caps with fur on them and shit. They’ve got coats with fur collars and stuff like that,” Derek explains.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it seems cruel to make people live in an environment in which employees have to be dressed for these cold temperatures in order to work.

“But this is the point I’m trying to get to,” Derek continues. “They’re fixing to start beating up the officers and taking their coats and shit from them. That’s what I heard this morning. That’s going to cause a lot of problems, a lot of friction.”

***

“Man, the heater is not working, and it’s cold in here. The water is cold. The heater ain’t blowing hot air. It’s just too much, man, and they don’t want us to have any sheets up to try to keep ourselves warm,” says “Nick” when I interview him again in late February.

Confirming what other sources have said in late February, “They took the old light fixtures down, and they have holes in the ceiling, and the cold air is coming through the ceiling. Even the heater vents are blowing cold air,” says Nick.

Nick also confirms the outbreak of illness in the prison that week. The night prior to this interview, “There were so many people in here coughing and coughing and coughing last night, it was unreal,” he says, “and the hot water boiler is not working. The water been cold for at least five or six days now, and it’s too cold to get in a cold ass shower. And you’ve got to stay cold all day. We went to the chow hall last Sunday. Man, it was so cold in that chow hall, our hands and toes was numb when we got back in here. So, that can’t be right, man. They’ve got us locked up, and we’re living in this shit cold all the time, bathing in cold water. That ain’t right, man.”

Asked if there were fires being set anywhere in the prison, “Not that I know of right now, but we were talking about doing it this morning,” Nick answers, “but our dorm rep told us that it ain’t going to be a good thing to do.”1 However, “I heard they did it over in [another] dorm a while back, and they had so much smoke in the dorm, it started making people cough and stuff, and they had to open all the windows and let the air out,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s too cold in here,” he adds. “I’ve been telling my family about it, man.”

Asked if he feels there is any risk of a riot, “Eeeehhhh, there don’t seem to be right now, but there probably will be if they don’t get something fixed around here,” Nick answers.

Asked how he gets through the days dealing with the cold, “Believe it or not,” he says, “I take my coat, and I put it on top of my blanket at night, and I take a T-shirt, and I’ll put it at the end of the bed and tuck it in to keep my feet warm. But, the blankets, man, the blankets are so thin, you can see through them. You can cover your head up with the blankets, and you can still see daylight. You know that if you can see daylight, air got to be coming through them.”

He adds, “You got some guys in here that ain’t even got any blankets. A lot of guys sell their blankets.”

Nick also confirms what others have said about how the officers deal with the cold.

“Most of them got on their big old coat with fur around the neck of it, and they’re dressed for the cold,” he says, adding, “They can get extra clothes. We can’t get extra clothes. Then they’ll tell you to take your hat off. Man, we’ll go walking down the hall, 30 degrees in the hallway, and they’ll tell you to take your hat off, but they’ve got their hats on.”

Asked why prisoners are not allowed to wear their hats in the cold, “I don’t know what’s the reason, but they always keep their hats on,” he answers. “See, a lot of them wear skull caps and a lot of them wear baseball hats. They’ll tell us to take our hats off, but they still got theirs on. Like we don’t get cold.”

Further, Nick warns me that he’s “about 15 feet from the main door” to his dorm, and that “when that door opens, I might have to get off the phone because there’s too much air coming in.”

After a pause, he adds, “Man, there’s got to be something done about this Alabama prison system.”

***

“Right now, we’re freezing in here, man. We don’t have any heat, hot water, nothing, man,” says “Oliver” when I interview him again in late February.

“I don’t know what’s going on with that. They said they’re working on it right now. But, man, we’ve been freezing,” he says.

“I hope I can get blessed one day and live how I want to live,” he adds.

Further, confirming what many other sources told me in the last week, “Man, they’ve got holes,” says Oliver. “They came in here and took some of the lights down [from the ceiling], and they left the holes, where they were running the wires through the holes, probably 12 or 13 holes that they left wide open. It’s cold in here, man. It really is. It’s so cold in here, man, you don’t even want to go to the chow hall and eat.”

Asked if he’s heard of anybody starting fires in the prison, “I heard that some people in another dorm did, because it’s so cold. That’s the only way they can stay warm. They’ve got to make a fire in their dorm. We haven’t made one in here yet. We were talking about it, but we don’t want to do something to bring problems to us. I don’t want to do anything that’s going to make me get in trouble and all that. But, one thing about it is, if the whole dorm stands up, then they can’t write up everybody. So, we really were talking about it this morning, making us a fire in the dorm. Man, it’s just that cold in here. So, hopefully they get working on it. Hopefully it’ll get better, man. That’s all I can say,” he answers.

This piece first appeared at Hard Times Reviewer.

The post Bullock Prison, Alabama: Prisoners Consider Rebellion appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Vernon Whalan.

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