“We’ve Got to do Something to Try to Survive in Here”

“I’ve been sick damn near two weeks. I’ve got a bad cold. I probably have pneumonia, man,” says “Jordan” when I interview him again in late February. The heat and hot water have not been working, and many prisoners are sick.

“This place is so cold, man, ain’t no heat down here in this building, man. And it’s messed up. I’ve been sick, man. That’s probably why I sound so funny today. They ain’t got no heat down here in this damn prison, man, and no hot water. Nothing, man. It gets down to 19, 20 degrees, man,” he says.

He’s “been laying under the blanket for about two, three weeks,” he says, adding, “Man, I’m thinking about building me a fire inside the prison camp. I know I might get wrote up, man. Ever since I got stabbed, man, it’s felt like everything has just been going down hill ever since then. Things have been bad in this prison. This is a messed up prison down here in Union Springs. And then when you go to the chow hall and sit down to eat your food, man, it’s so cold in this prison, you can’t even eat, man. It’s probably 19 degrees in the kitchen, man. It’s freezing around here in Bullock. I’m trembling talking to you, man. I’ve been in the cold all day, man. I went to the doctor. The doctor told me I might have a trace of pneumonia.”

Jordan knows five or six other people with pneumonia in his dorm.

Asked if he’s submitted complaints about the heat, “Man, we all told the warden. I told the head warden. I told the deputy warden. I told the damn lieutenant. I told the captain. I told the sergeant. I told the COs. I told everybody,” he answers, adding that he and other prisoners even asked loved ones in the free world to call about the prison to complain.

Jordan tells me that, years ago, when the heat broke down in Bullock, prisoners were once transferred temporarily to a private prison in Perry County. Much like the plumbing issues and many other problems in the prison and throughout Alabama’s prisons, the problems with the heating system in Bullock are longstanding.

An article in AL.com in 2010 describes the incident Jordan was referring to in that year:

Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said 100 of the inmates were transferred to the Montgomery County Jail, and 450 to a private prison in Perry County… The move became necessary after two boilers at the prison broke down over the weekend and a bitter cold wave swept into the state. The sister of one of the prison’s inmates said Monday her brother had told the family that the facility had been lacking heat and hot water for a week, and that heat and hot water had been sporadic for about a month.

A brief report in The News Courier out of Limestone County at the time summed up the cost:

It has cost the Alabama Department of Corrections $132,000 to house inmates elsewhere after boilers at their prison broke down during the state’s cold snap… About 650 inmates are back in the Bullock County Correctional Facility after a boiler breakdown and bitter cold forced the state to move them to two other locations… The Birmingham News reports […] that $108,000 was for housing 450 inmates for eight days in the Perry County Correctional Center… The privately run prison in the Black Belt charged $30 per inmate per day. Two hundred Bullock prisoners were housed for eight days in the Montgomery County Jail at a total cost of $24,000, based on a daily charge of $15 per inmate… There were more than 1,300 inmates at the prison when the boilers broke down, stopping most heat and hot water.

Jordan was one of the prisoners transferred to Perry County Correctional in 2010.

Asked if he believes there is currently any risk of riots in Bullock due to the poor living conditions, lack of heat and hot water, spread of illness and other issues, “There’s a big risk, man. There’s been the fires in [another] dorm. There’s a big risk of riots around here. It might be any day, might break out today, man. They’ve been hyped around here, man, for the last two weeks, man,” he says.

“Them people got fires lit inside of their dorm, man. The drawer where you put your clothes and your stuff in the drawer, on your bunk, them tin, steel boxes, they’re putting fires in there, man. They’re setting fires so smokey that the dorm is about to smoke itself out of here,” he says.

“So, people have already started fires?” I ask.

“Yeah, they’re already doing it,” says Jordan. “They’ve got to stay warm, man. They’ve got to stay warm somehow.”

“In the dorm you’re in?” I ask.

“No, down the hallway,” he says. “They’re talking about doing it in here though. They’re talking about doing it today in here, but the other guys said, ‘Man, don’t do that. When they did that last time, they nearly killed themselves,’ and they wasn’t lying, man. Said, ‘Please don’t do that, man,’ and because they’d open the doors [to get smoke out] and we like to keep to our own damn self.”

He also adds that, “They don’t even call no yard call for us,” reiterating what other prisoners have been telling me over the months. “It’s sad, man. This is a messed up prison. They need to shut this prison down and condemn the kitchen, man. When you go to the chow hall, it smells like a septic tank… There’s a septic tank right up under the kitchen. Man, it stinks so bad around here, and when you eat, when you go to the chow hall, you can taste that smell. That ain’t right, man.”

Previously, prisoners have described how guards are no longer letting them bring bowls of food back to their dorms from the chow hall. Jordan elaborates on that:

“People were taking their bowls to the chow hall and bringing their food back to the dorm, because it smelled so bad down there by that kitchen, but now they’ll start crushing our bowls up… Now we’re taking our garbage bags and tearing the plastic, and putting it in the plastic, and try to stick it down by your privates and try and sneak it out the kitchen, but they’re still catching us doing that, but we’ve got to do something to try to survive in here.”

I believe Jordan has been in Bullock the second longest of any of my sources in that prison.

“Whatever them guys be telling you about this place is true, man,” he says. “It’s for real. Everything is for real, what they’re telling you, man. It’s a messed up place in Alabama. They told us a long time ago, ‘Don’t go to Alabama.’ When they tell you, ‘Don’t go to Alabama,’ don’t come to Alabama. Don’t go to Alabama prison. Please don’t.”

This piece first appeared on Hard Times Reviewer.