RESPONSES TO TOILET PAPER , Florida, prison

Ex-DOC #235565

Suggestion:

If everyone who printed this E-mail to read were to send it to the prisoners then they would have more toilet paper than they would know what to do with. :-)

Mike West
Editor, Gulf1
http://www.gulf1.com
Pensacola, Florida
Fax & Phone (850)476-3126

Kay Lee,

One of the reasons they quit giving the inmates toilet tissue is: The jails and prisons have found that if they keep the facilities freezing cold, the inmates will stay huddled under the worn out ragged excuses for "blankets" and be sleepy, and stay under control!

Thus you see the guards and officers wearing jackets, or heavy coats, and many of them wear the safety vests! (wonder why?) The taxpayers pay the electric bills, so, they don't worry about conserving energy!

Now, back to the toilet paper issue.....the inmates found that if they dampened toilet tissue, and threw it at the air vents, they could clog up the air vents and reduce the amount of cold air that was freezing them, and causing so many to develop upper respiratory disease. The jails and prisons, then punish the inmates, by denying the toilet paper.

The bars of soap are like what they give in cheap motels, that are good for one bath, and the prisoners are supposed to make it last a week, or because it is so cold, they don't bathe, because the towels are so flimsy you can see through them and they are soaked before they dry the head, they have to wring them out to finish wiping the body, and are shivering and teeth chattering before they can get dirty clothes back on, they are smelly from the detergent they are washed in, when you get them.

It is bad enough that so many of our people are in theses places for petty issues that are not crimes! The suffering is unbelievable, these poor people are treated like they are nothings! they are caged up, feed "garbage" that would gag those of us on the outside, the guards do not eat the food supplied to the inmates! In fact the food that is supplied for the inmates, usually goes out the back door to the homes of the officials, while the inmates survive on peanut butter and jelly, spread thinly on stale bread, and bean soup!

Many prisoners actually pray to die, and would actually take their own lives, but this is not permitted, and the only thing left is to sleep, and withdraw into a safe place inside the mind, and dream of freedom, food, family, a human touch, fresh air, sunshine, and a bath perhaps in a mountain stream or pool of water, or a shower at least with a door! A bed that allows a body to wake refreshed, with out aching bones and pain! The floor is preferable to those so called metal cots!

I say we should take the elected( or those who stole the seats) legislators and judges, and court appointed attorneys, lock them up for a month, and let them see what it is like! Then and only then will we see change in the corrupt system! Down with the corporations that build and fill jails and prisons for profit! People are human beings, they are God's children, not rabid animals!

Perhaps if we made it mandatory for any one holding public office, to have to serve thirty days in the "slammer" as a condition to holding that position, we would see things change, shall we challenge them? And I don't mean the country clubs, set up just for the elite who have to serve time for crimes against the people.! I mean the slime ball prisons and jails! Where the toilets leak, the mattresses are nothing more that a dog pad, and the pillows are so flat you have to roll them to prop under your neck! A cold, stainless steel cage, where humans suffer day after day.

Animals at the pound live better, and eat better! They are also treated better, many can at least see the sky, and breath fresh air, and their cages are cleaned for them!

Prisoners clean their own cells, and this is the best day of the week for them!

I continue to fight for those inside, and I pray that the almighty God will show us the way to free his people, and save those who will see those cells, because as those inside die off, they will have to be replaced, so the "money" continues to flow.

Prisoners are in my prayers, and I thank God, there are people like you, that are out here trying to help. May you be blessed.

Sherree Lowe
Candidate for Florida Lt. Governor
Nancy Grant for Governor Campaign

Why don't we all get all the group members from all the groups to send in one roll of toilet paper to the governor's office and tell them to please give it to the prisoners at their prisons? I have my yellow envelope here waiting, an a roll of tp in my bathroom upstairs. I'm sure it would take about 2-3 stamps. I mail my yellow envelopes from home. We may be out a roll of toilet paper and a few stamps, but when the governor's office gets bombarded with toilet paper, someone will take notice.

This is so cruel. Let me know what you decide. I may send mine anyway. Omg, can you see them thinking its a bunch of bombs and the news people there when they open them?

Pamela Jane

Thank You KayLee,
I believe this is true, My brother is in the other side of NR. He says they only get 1 roll a week. I doubt it would be used for only hinnies and noses, but everyone is entitled to have the sanitary conditions we all expect. Thats just unaccptable!!
Michele

NOW THATS BAD - NO TOILET PAPER, I DON'T THINK I'LL EVER VISIT FLORIDA

Mafiapar

Re: USE YOUR HANDS!

I went out with a muslim girl from toronto a couple years ago. she used to go on and on about how it was actually healthier not to use toilet paper. she said that the ink they used in tp was bad for the skin. its a cultural thing i guess.

vigilius haufniensis

From: "Bob" <recbo@nishanet.com>
Subject: Re: USE YOUR HANDS!

Maybe they have bidets in Quebec. Now we know why squirt bottles of water are so popular.

-Bob

Dear Kay Lee:

It is wonderful to see your emails on behalf of the prisoners in this country. Your disclosures are one of the few ways any of us could ever find out about the deplorably inhumane conditions these inmates must endure. I currently have three loving, family-oriented friends, interned at the Sacramento County Jail, where there has been at least seven suicides this year. The administration there is supposedly perplexed about why that could happen there. And yet, one of the defense attorneys visiting from a Central American country said it is worse than any third world jail he has ever seen.

My friends were held there for a year, without a trial, after being illegally entrapped by the IRS, charged with money laundering, and finally tried and convicted, by a corrupt prosecution, with a judge in the pocket of the IRS, who allowed these violations of justice, such as prohibiting motions for bail to prepare for their defense, threats to defense attorneys who tried to introduce motions questioning subject matter jurisdiction, and allowed perjury by prosecutor's witnesses. The prossecutors falsified evidence, influenced the jury with biased newspaper articles in the local press during their deliberation, and prevented or delayed visits from defendant's attorneys or friends.

On top of this, they are being held in a facility where they are held in a 6X10 ft cell (2 people) for 23 hours per day, while the "day room" remains vacant about 18 hours per day. There's about 300 inmates per floor and they're all cooped up most of the time.

They cannot eat in the day room, but have to eat their meals, and sleep, in the "bathroom", in that 6x10 cell. The food they get is barely edible, and most is thrown away, at least by my friends. Most there are young prisoners held for drug abuse, and low-life criminal types, who should never be mixed together, and my friends should not be there at all.

There is no mystery to anyone who is an inmate at the Sacramento County Jail, or to the friends and families of those who are victims of a corrupt system, involving corrupt judges and corrupt prosecutors, why the suicide rate is so high. These administrators should be tried for civil rights violations and international treaty violations regarding proper care of prisoners. S.J.

Hope none of 'em bite their nails!

On a serious note, I've heard of paper product shortages in CAC ladies rooms, mainly that one by Gordon's office. I've seen guys leave the restroom and not wash their hands, which is why I clean the door handle before I walk out.

But our tax money is supposed to be taking care of the prisons, guess not.

If inmates can order books and musical instruments, why can't they order additional paper products?

There's a reason they're called Correctional institutions, to rehabilitate and return to society.

My oldest sister's husband did a year for embezzlement and now he's doing well in the photography world. But it sounds like American prisons are becoming like overseas prisons.

KC

Well done...

Will we see you on the Caravan of Conscience in Orlando on Sunday [August 11th, 2002]?

--abe
Abraham J. Bonowitz

They are building a new visiting room, which is fine, but where do they get off drawing the line for things that are not luxury items but neccessities! What a sick world we live in.! I have been watching courttv about the VanDam /Westerfield case. Very interesting. Take special care of your self.

Re: USE YOUR HANDS!

Hey Kaylee--

As before when something strikes me I will respond to you with my thoughts and feelings.

It has been a couple of years now since I personally experienced this but the sad thing is that the young man who wrote you was probably telling 100% truth. The officers that I was exposed to gave one roll of toilet paper to a man a week. If you were sick in any form requiring additional toilet paper you were out of luck. There were no paper towels to blow your nose on so toilet paper is the only option. Believe it or not toilet paper became a commodity.

Additionally, should someone be able to have some left over at the end of the week and have an "extra" partial roll -- the officers would take it away and throw it in the trash despite the fact that there is a "shortage" of toilet paper. As for the soap....I have been places where they cut a small bar in half and expected that to last a week.

Where is all the money from inmate welfare going? No sporting equipment is being bought to speak of and no library books or law books (they keep downgrading the law libraries) even the chaplain does not get any of the money. Clothes for men going home is usually donated by a church group or perhaps confiscated as in original reception centers.

True story I personally was involved with. I was at deSoto and a couple of men came to me and told me that the clothes for release was being bought from their hundred dollars release money and they would end up with about thirty dollars to go home with. I went to the Chaplain and made arrangements for a local church to donate the clothes to the men who had no family to send in the release clothes. The Lt. whose sister was the release classification officer came to me and told me that "I had pissed off his sister and she wanted me dead." He said that he had to transfer me out of there as soon as he could. I ended up at River Junction. Come to find out that the release classication officer was going to a thrift shop and buying the clothes and creating a receipt for the clothes and taking the rest of the money difference from the actual cost of the clothes and her created price.

DeSoto Correctional, at that time was a "release facility" and there were as many as eight to ten men a day leaving to go home. If she was getting twenty dollars per man (conservative estimate) her take was $160 to $200 per day!!! Having that tax-free money taken from her corrupt hands certainly was not a happy moment for her.

Oh yes, this also was the time that a classification officer freaked out while smoking crack cocaine in his office striped off all his clothes and went so berserk that he had to be restrained with a straight jacket to be taken to a local hospital. After the 28 day detox he returned to his job as if nothing ever happened.

There are many more true stories from the inner world of the DOC. As I remember them I will write you and tell you what I witnessed. The cost of the toilet paper cannot be too much as it is probably the lowest grade that you could buy. But then billy bob's second cousin or wife's brother maybe the vendor selling the toilet paper to the DOC and with kickbacks and payoffs involved maybe the cheapest quality paper is now the most expensive. As I have said all along Prison is big business!

Dear Kay:

I can't believe these people, they get nuttier everyday. Where do they come up with these horrors, I think the whole system, has gone feral! I would personally like to slap the you know what out of them, and subject them to inhumane treatment that they give our loved ones. The prisons in FL, are concentration camps, and the hired goons, are wannabe Gestapo.

I wonder if duh jeb, as I call him, realizes, that the Florida prisoners have families? You would think since this is an election year, it might occur to him or some of his staff that for the approximately 72,000 or so inmates in the hateful system here in FL, that each of them have parents, mates, siblings, children who are voters and tax payers. We could make or break the election for him, and he should be made aware of that very option. Only an idiot would not realize this possibility. Does he really think we as the families of prisoners would vote for him? If he does, he really needs to have someone sit him down and tell him the facts of life.

My husband, who is also a New River, said that so far the staff in his dorm, has not complied with this stupid rule, but he has been made aware of it by others in that mean place

Please keep me informed as to what I can do, to help.

Sincerely,
Sarah

Subject: USE YOUR HANDS!

The sad truth is that the only way real reform will occur involves firing everyone in the government. The money that should go to toilet paper and soap will always end up in the hands of the criminals that run the institutions. We need to empty out the prisons, keeping only violent offenders behind bars. You can get more information at the URL http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Democracy_denied/?yguid=107778489 .

Together we can stop all of the abuses of this criminal government - if we work together. Jerry Scovel.

Re: "USE YOUR HANDS"

Check out the line "trying to keep the inmates safe" Right, I believe that. Not. Inmates are on their own, don't we know that. My husband has been in the system for 32 years....no correctional officer every "kept him safe"....while he was being stabbed repeatedly AND shot by CDC in San Quentin. Hello. They set him up and he was NOT ever in jail for a crime against women or children which is neither here nor there as to all these cock roach correctional officers, all inmates are trash.

And years ago, I had c/o s frisk me EVERYWHERE, both male and female and that was just for a visit! Tell me about correctional officers!

Shari

Re: "USE YOUR HANDS"

Amen to that - but most of society is brainwashed into believing they walk the toughest beat (yeah-right!!) - the only difference between a cockroach & a prisoner is the prisoner got caught which isn't likely to happen with the cockroach (at least in California) because nepotism is so rampant!!

You have knocked on the wrong door....My husband is a correctional officer and i dont think toilet paper would help him or one of his co-workers one bit, when they are plastered with feces and urine as they walk by the cells, trying to keep the inmates safe.....

Got a tip for ya....tell the prisoners to act like human beings and they will be treated like human beings....when you act like an animal, you will be treated like one.... in society, as well as, in prison.

Re: USE YOUR HANDS!

The situation is the same in Illinois max security prisons. They are allowed 1 shower a week and 1 roll of toilet paper. If they run out, that's on them. If you speak out, that comes back on them too. I want to speak out and make a difference to help but have found from experience that it always comes back on my husband. He handles situations through greivances, which are never responded to. It's really an unfair and sad situation.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush
The Capitol
Tallahassee, FL 32399
U.S.A.

Dear Governor Bush:

News tell of several companies distributed manipulated reports, and all about.

Commendable refer to ask for all that useless paper US people get in order to supply Florida poor prisons so prison staff must not tell the prisoners to wip with their hands. Let them use criminal US managers' paper of no use anymore.

Just one proposal in a urgent matter. Will read The Rational Manager by Kepner-Tregoe again, and go on thinking about if need be for your support.

Overseas call for overseas aid is given in a honorary capacity, welcome any time.

Respectfully Yours,
FRANZ KURZ
BERGSTRASSE 35
74392 FREUDENTAL
GERMANY
https://digitaledienste.web.de/Club/formular/?mc=021106

The FDOC has decided that they can make conditions of confinement for Florida's prisoners worse by refusing to issue toilet paper. Citizens from around the country and abroad are joining in to address this problem by sending Gov. Jeb Bushes office one roll of toilet paper with a note directing the governor to give the toilet paper to prisoners in the FDOC. This campaign has been dubbed "Operation Wipe Out".

Attached is more detailed information about this campaign that has already begun and will continue until corrective measures are taken to end this inhumane policy by Michael Moore and his crime family. Even if you do not join this campaign it is appreciated if you would share this story with others.

                                                          Thank you,

                                                         Mr. L. Amir-Sharif
                                                         Southwest Institute Of Criminal Justice & Democratic Rights

P.S. " If a prisoner is wrong, stand up to him; If he is right, stand up for him, and never allow him to be treated in any manner you wouldn't allow yourself or a loved one to be treated"

Re: USE YOUR HANDS!

Kay may I post this in the forums?? I put it up yesterday and you would not believe the things that is going on.. none have said that they will send any as yet but they do think its worth discussing

Debi in Oregon

Hey,
Thought you would like to hear about this one. I just left the (Union CII) prison and we were talking about the tp issue, and I was told that when the inmates are working on the new construction site that there is only one roll of tp for 70 inmates and the inmates have to show there id to even get the tp to go to the bathroom. and if an inmate already has the tp in the bathroom the other inmates are just SOL. So my question is what is a man suppose to do if they have to take a dump? and why in the world do they have to show there id badge to even get to use the tp? This is so wild. Patty

Speaking of the toilet paper they had one guard, A woman that if they only give her one roll of paper it wouldn't last her one day.( grin). Know what I mean? There are just so many things wrong with the system and it just seems so hopeless. I feel sometimes that we are fighting a losing battle. We write letters and all we get in return is some one in one of their offices " hired help" answering our letters and nothing is gained by them.

L

Hi All,

I'm just a little bit "amused" by all of this..... toilet paper is more important than food or clothing? Interesting concept................ just thinking out loud!

Deb Mc

I myself am as concerned over the TP issue as the clothing and food issue from a basic human rights perspective. Cherylyn

THE FOLLOWING LETTER WAS SENT IN OCTOBER OF 2001 -
THIS IS NOT A NEW DEVELOPMENT!

"What I'm about to tell you will blow your mind.

As we know, there are many cutbacks coming our way for our loved ones in prison. The latest is mind boggling to say the least. They are implementing a new rule at several East Coast Florida prisons as we speak, that will allow inmates only ONE ROLL OF TOILET PAPER A WEEK. Not one roll at a time---one roll a week PERIOD. This is not rumor or fiction---it is VERY REAL. The "old" toilet paper rule" ( if you can even imagine having such a thing ) was one roll per inmate at a time. When your roll ran out, you took your empty roll & got another. The rolls were 1000 sheets--two-ply. This was bad, but they could live with that. I mean really, if you ran out & were too sorry to get more then you deserved a dirty butt. Ya know??

BUT under the new rule---the rolls are 500 sheets---one-ply, & if you run out before the week ends, you are just left unclean. YOU CANNOT GET ANOTHER ROLL UNTIL THE NEXT WEEK. So you either buy it from another inmate--which is highly unlikely that there will be any to buy as everyone will now be hording toilet paper, or you "make deals" to get it---which leads to owing someone ----which leads to fights & lock up.

Now I have to ask---if we limited Michael Moore to one roll of toilet paper a week, would he be clean?? Or would he be just a tad funky by weeks' end?? There HAS GOT TO BE something that can be done about this. But one person alone or even a few here & there, isn't going to cut it. I would like to suggest that that people that run this group---get together with other group owners, create a petition about these issues & pass it around for ALL of us to sign, & then let our united voices be heard.

It's a truly sad & pathetic day when people are at the mercy of such ignorance & degradation just because the "powers that be" say it is so. "The powers that be" need a big wake up call, before our loved ones end up fighting over something as basically necessary as toilet paper.

~Cynthia~"

To me this is a staple.. in my house it doesn't have to be put on the list... it just shouldn't be put into the cut list.. can you see what the TP will be going for if they do this.. it will cut into their money to buy other things from the canteen like food.. I don't know but the more they cut out the more they make the familys pay... I know I don't pay taxes there in your state but I pay taxes here and if they do this in one part of the country they are going to do it here soon too.. and I don't know about anyone else but to me no one has done anything bad enought to warrent not being able to clean themselves after using the bathroom..

Another Deb

My brother is at Hamilton Annex and they issued jackets yesterday and there were not enough to go around. He did not get one. I can't believe all I am hearing about the DOC. I have been working with them since 1993 and gets worse by the day. The last straw is when they cannot furnish toilet paper!
A.C

I know it seems sad and trivial to some, but while visiting at Tomoka C.I. I was told "oh yeah, we're down to just one roll of toilet paper per week here. Thats ok, unless of course you get the runs or sick from the food".

Then he went on to say "oh and this one man who's mildly retarded sells his roll of paper every week because he has no family to help him financially. Mom, Toilet Papers a big item in our dorm."

Oh well...Let the DOC games continue... 'nuff said

Betty

"USE YOUR HANDS"
PUBLIC RESPONDS TO TOILET PAPER CRISIS	FDOC 'RESPONDS' TO TOILET PAPER CRISIS
OPERATION WIPE-OUT
RESPONSES TO OPERATION WIPE-OUT	Space reserved for DOC Solution