June 12th, 2008

In case you didn't know, the city jail is officially a bad place to be. Home to minor offenders doing their time as well as the newly arrested awaiting a bail or a hearing, the facility has a history of chronic overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and needless deaths:

The Richmond Sheriff's Department doesn't think the heat is to blame for the death of an inmate at the City Jail. 47-year-old Linwood Jones died at the jail on Tuesday.

Jones is the fifth inmate to die at the City Jail this year. The previous four all died from illnesses they contracted before coming to the jail.

Right; in any case, the message here is that life is cheap, and the jail just serves as a drain into which the police state washes all that human material falling short of its exacting legal standards. Check out Keith Preston's essay at AttackTheSystem.com, which ties the jail's conditions to the growing police state in this country:

How are prisoners’ treated at the Richmond City Jail? What goes on behind the walls on Seventeenth Street? The jail is always filled way beyond capacity, sometimes containing nearly twice as many inmates as space was originally allocated for. Inmates frequently sleep on the floor, often in unsanitary conditions. An epidemic of skin infections occurred among inmates during the fall of 1999 because of such conditions. Most of the jail lacks air conditioning or even proper ventilation so that inmates sometimes find themselves locked into attic-like conditions during the summer months. Proper medical care is often denied to inmates with serious medical conditions. A fifty-three year old man who was arrested for murder after killing someone in self defense suffered paralysis after being denied access to his necessary kidney dialysis. Heroin addicts and alcoholics are forced to undergo withdrawal without any medical supervision whatsoever. Inmates suspected of having suicidal inclinations are stripped naked and locked into solitary cells without blankets or sheets.

State politics built these jails and filled them with prisoners; only direct action will bring freedom and justice!