Eric Ruin (Just Seeds Artists' Cooperative - Critical Resistance)

And I absolutely hate, hate, hate it. I am visiting a young person who is still being detained at Cook County Jail after 30 days. Like the vast majority of detainees at Cook, the young person is there on a drug violation.

Everything about the experience of being at Cook County makes me sick. It begins a couple of days before I know I will need to go there and it extends to a few days after I leave. If this sounds like I am complaining, this would be correct. I have a difficult time controlling my rage when I hear some people refer to jails as “country clubs.” Frankly, this type of statement gives the person away. You can be assured that the person who utters such nonsense has never actually set foot inside an actual jail.

Some months ago, I wrote about a young friend Jamal’s experience of being locked up at Cook County Jail:

All of a sudden, in 2007, I didn’t see or hear from Jamal for a month. That was unusual. I asked some of his friends in the neighborhood where he was and what had happened to him. There was a wall of silence. Finally one evening in October, I got a phone call from Jamal. He was at Cook County Jail and he needed my help. “What can I do,” I asked. “Do you need a private lawyer, I have friends who could help? Money for items from the commissary…” I was going on and on and he finally stopped me when he could get a word in. “Ms. K he said, please tell them to send me to prison now…just get me out of here.”

Jamal’s plea that I ask that the judge send him to prison to get out of Cook County Jail is the norm. The jail is a true hell hole. In 2008, a federal investigation castigated the jail for its conditions. The investigation “uncovered serious sanitation and medical care problems as well as violence directed against prisoners who clashed with guards or failed to follow commands.” Other key parts of the investigation included reports of physical abuse and dilapidated infrastructure:

Many inmates report that those who are old, mentally ill or do not understand English are struck by officers for undressing or dressing too slowly,” the report said. One prisoner who had trouble complying with orders from guards complained that they used his head as “a bongo drum.”

Inadequate staffing and supervision sometimes forced the jail to keep prisoners in their cells for long periods, the report said.

“Moreover, deficient maintenance in many cells (no lighting, plumbing failures, etc.) resulted in inhumane conditions for an extended lockdown,” the report said. It said that overcrowding at the jail has resulted in “hot bunking,” in which prisoners use beds in eight-hour shifts.

The report said that while each inmate uses his or her own bedding, the practice could still cause “sanitation and infection control problems.” It said skin infections have not been adequately controlled.

Fitzgerald told reporters that the jail has only one dentist for 9,800 prisoners and that 25 percent of tooth extractions result in infection.

Three years later, I believe that conditions have really not improved at the jail. In some instances, things may in fact be worse. So now tomorrrow, I have to go there again and I am dreading it. Spending one hour there feels unbearable to me, I just cannot fathom spending the 35 days that the young person who I am visiting has spent there. This is inhumane and it must change.