FLORIDA PRISONS
JULY 19, 2017 7:05 PMFlorida prisons have toilet paper, but they’re not supplying it to some inmates
TALLAHASSEE
The four wings of Florida’s Tomoka Correctional Institution’s E cell block are home to some of the prison’s most menacing inmates. They have arrived there because of administrative and disciplinary problems but, in addition to restricting them to confined, two-man cells, the prison also deprives them of society’s most basic necessities.
Toilet paper.
In prison after prison over seven months, Rep. David Richardson, D-Miami Beach, reported that toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste, pillows, sheets, shirts and soap were often withheld from inmates, especially those in confinement.
Richardson, who has been on a one-man mission to hold the state’s troubled prison agency accountable, first observed the toilet paper troubles during a Jan. 19 visit to Baker Correctional Institution in northern Florida. After finding dozens of inmates without toilet paper, toothbrushes and other supplies, he asked the prison warden to open the storage unit just feet away from the inmate dorms, and deliver hygiene products with him to more than 50 inmates.
“It is behavior that is intended to dehumanize them — treating them like an animal,” Richardson said.
The warden at Baker Correctional “was embarrassed,” he said, as they walked from cell to cell delivering the tissue paper rolls. He complained to headquarters and “they were apologetic and put out an all-points bulletin that this was wrong.”
But the problem continued. During his fourth visit on to Tomoka Correctional near Daytona Beach on Saturday, Richardson said the situation was “deplorable.”
“E1-219 no toilet paper, no pillow. Out of TP since 8am Friday,’’ he wrote in notes he sent to state prison officials Saturday, which he forwarded to the Miami Herald. “E1-218, out of TP since last night … E1-210, no pillow case; roaches and rats a big problem in the cell block … E1-214, no pillow, no soap.”
His notes detailed his findings of 37 cells. He found one inmate so sick he was throwing up and his roommate had been deprived of his inhaler for more than a month. Another inmate had an “open, weeping wound” and for days had no treatment. Windows in many of the dorms that have no air conditioning wouldn’t crank open for proper ventilation. Several inmates wore shirts and pants that were threadbare, torn or barely hanging on.
He ordered immediate medical treatment for the wounded and nauseous inmates and emailed his notes to the legislative affairs director at the Florida Department of Corrections.
“This was the worst situation I have witnessed since that infamous Friday night at Baker many months ago,” Richardson wrote. “Apparently, your staff still do not understand it is inhumane to deny inmates with basic personal hygiene products, especially toilet paper.”
Richardson discovered the agency has a policy of one roll of toilet paper every 10 days — compared to two rolls per week at the private prisons — and, “despite months of complaints to headquarters, they haven’t changed their behavior,” he said. “We haven’t seen improvement.”
The inmates find substitutes when their supply to toilet paper runs out, Richardson said. They dampen notebook paper and newspapers. They rip bedsheets and socks, and even wash and reuse them. Richardson knows because he has asked them, “How do you handle this situation?”
“The department does not withhold hygiene products from inmates and works continually to ensure all health, safety and hygiene standards are being met within our 149 facilities,” said Michelle Glady, agency spokesperson in an email.
The agency welcomes the feedback of Richardson and other legislators “as we work together to ensure our facilities are operating transparently and the safety of our staff and inmates,” she said.
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FDC contracts with a pest-control service for the rats and roaches, Glady said. And in response to a question about the hygiene habits, she said, “There have been no bacterial outbreaks at Baker or Tomoka.”
“It’s really a sad state of affairs that, as a legislator, I have to run around the state and check to see if inmates have toilet paper,” he said.
For the past two years, Richardson has used a provision in state law that allows legislators to inspect Florida’s prisons. As the Miami Herald has documented widespread abuse in Florida’s prisons, mismanagement of vendor contracts and failing public and private facilities, few other legislators have taken advantage of the law, and change has been slow.
Richardson said he has not gone public about his findings about the hygiene products, hoping his reports and complaints to the FDC would change behavior.
“I’m not seeking publicity for myself. I’m seeking change,” he said Wednesday. “I wanted to work with them and see if they could get their problem under control and change behavior without being publicly shamed.”
Richardson usually arrives at a prison unannounced but, sometimes, word gets out ahead of him. More than once he has arrived to find unopened toothbrushes and toothpaste rolls in prisons cells, freshly distributed in anticipation of his arrival.
On Saturday, Tomoka had a one-hour notice of his arrival. He discovered the prison staff had distributed toothbrushes and toothpaste just before he arrived but, he noted: “If toilet paper had been available, this last-minute distribution would have been accomplished as well.”
He knows inmates lie to him but, he has learned “if there’s a small number of people, it’s more likely the people are lying. But when you see a problem widespread like it was a Tomoka — when 20 to 50 people say they are missing something — not all of them are lying and the department knows that.”
He also knows that extra toilet paper is considered contraband. “If a disruptive inmate can jam toilet paper in the toilet and cause a flood, it can disrupt a cell block,” he said.
Inmates can roll up toilet paper and make a wick out of it, and toothpaste tubes can be used as a weight, with string pulled from bedsheets, to allow inmates to fish things between one another in cells.
The solution, Richardson said, is to “modify their access to the toilet paper and other supplies based on their behavior” but, he warns, “cumulative little things” can lead to explosive problems in a prison.
“Even if somebody has committed a crime and is sent to state prison, they are still human beings. They are entitled to basic human rights.”
Rep. David Richardson, D-Miami Beach, has repeatedly found that prison staff was withholding toothpaste and toothbrushes from inmates, especially those in confinement, during visits to several state-run prisons in the last few months. Courtesy of Rep. David Richardson
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