Don’t Drink The Water

This is the George Allen Jail (a/k/a the Government Center). This is where I wrote the article about the unhealthy water prisoners must drink that cause sores and blisters to form in the mouth.

Pre - Trial detainees and prisoners being held at the Dallas County Jail’s George Allen Government Center Facility are learning an ugly secret about the drinking water that many familiar with the county jail say that jail brass and county officials have known about for years; That if drank regularly, the water is likely to cause cancerous type blisters and sores inside your mouth.

Until the water and the pipes it flows through are tested, it is difficult to speculate what’s causing this problem and what other health related dangers this drinking water poses to human beings at the facility.

It took a while to figure out, but myself and other detainees learned about the dangers of the drinking water during the early months of 2005. In April 2005, at least 9 of the 16 people in our cell- block had experienced the same type of blisters and sores in their mouth.

The water at the jail’s facility tastes funny and leaves a film in your mouth. There are no water coolers nor water fountains to drink from. The only two sources of drinking water are from the toilet - sink combos in your cell or from the wash basin where the dirty mops and mop buckets are dumped and cleaned out.

Unlike the guards who either bring bottled water to work or purchase it from the jail’s vending machines, detainees and prisoners must drink the only water made available to them. Most complaints to the medical staff went unanswered while some nurses said gargle with warm salt “water”.

Ask almost any guard who works at that facility why they don’t drink the water and the answer they give will shock you.

Water is of major importance to all living things. Up to 60 percent of the human body is water, the brain is composed of 70 percent water, and the lungs are nearly 90 percent water. About 83 percent of our blood is water, which helps digest our food, transport waste, and control body temperature. Each day humans must replace 2.4 litres of water, some through drinking and the rest taken by the body from the foods eaten.

The importance of clean, untainted drinking water can not be down played by the sheriff’s office. The county officials responsible commission for Jail Standards may not have listed the drinking water as an identified problem when it issued it’s scathing report earlier this year about the jails deplorable conditions. 

Addressing this issue is critical and shouldn’t be put off or swept under the rug any longer. According to the United States Constitutions, detainees and prisoners alike have a right to clean, healthy drinking water.

Lakeith Amir Sharif

2ND TIME AROUND