#ohio prisons

Bennett was kept waiting through what he considered “an unnecessary delay” before being led into the office of Warden Thomas. The warden

sat at a bulky, square oak desk that had large round, carved legs. The desk seemed as solid as the stones of the prison wall. Thomas checked my credentials, asked to be remembered to a congressman we both knew, and sent for a guide, who, I thought, was to take me around to the workshops. Later I learned he [the guide] was a former treasurer of the state who had put his hand in the till.” Thomas then ordered the guide to “show Mr. Bennett around and bring him right back here.

Upon Bennett’s return from his tour, he was welcomed back to the warden’s office to what he thought would be a productive dialogue about penology. The warden explained that he had “an extremely tough job, and he was not too impressed by ‘softies’ and ‘do-gooders,’” his shorthand for prison reformers. While the warden was a supporter, he said, of prison industrial work, he saw it as a fool’s errand at a time when “there was not enough of a market for prison product in the state agencies.” He reserved some of his rancor for the unions, commenting that “the laborskates” had too much influence. And “as for the prisoners, they were getting what they deserved.”

When Bennett’s time to speak came, he began by asking Thomas how prison officials were able to “maintain discipline and how they punished offenders.” Deciding it was easier to show than tell, the warden told Bennett, “Come with me…. I’ll show you.” The two men proceeded back across the prison square toward a small brick structure. The warden banged on the wooden door. It opened almost immediately and they strode into a “small, dark room with a huge bench at the far end.” He explained that this was his “‘courtroom,’ where he and his deputies sat in judgment upon prisoners who violated the rules.” Punishments could range from losing visiting and correspondence privileges to losing good  behavior credits and receiving a stint in “the hole.” It was then time to visit the hole, which was conveniently located in the same building. 

The warden ordered a guard to open up the room to show the young “do-gooder” some old-fashioned justice. They entered the room through “a barred, steel door” that had to be unlocked before they proceeded through a “steel boilerplate door.” They then entered “a narrow corridor lined with more steel doors, and Thomas motioned to a guard to open one. There stood a pathetic creature, his eyes staring vacantly, his hands handcuffed to a bar halfway up the wall.” Asked how long he had been there, the prisoner said five days. Apparently, the warden was not expecting this answer. Thomas told him, “I don’t believe you” and rushed Bennett back out through the corridor. One might have thought that Thomas had already revealed too much about his punitive regime, but he insisted on showing Bennett the cells reserved for laggards who refused to work. These men were forced to stand “for hours or for days in tiny scrap-iron cages, in which there was no room to sit down, until they agreed that washing pots and pans or shoveling coal was not such a bad fate.”

Bennett decided it would be foolhardy to ask any more questions or to argue with the warden about what he had just witnessed. He wrote that he “had seen enough, and I never wanted to get out of a place so badly in my life.” He thanked the warden “half-heartedly” for “taking the trouble to show me around and headed for the gate.” He then canceled the rest of his prison inspection itinerary.

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When .... Bennett visited the Ohio Penitentiary in the mid-1920s, as he crossed the prison’s interior courtyard he came across “a line of men moving across the square in a long, skating stride, each man with one arm on the shoulder of the man in front of him.” He was witnessing the iconic “lockstep” movement, in which inmates “moved rapidly without a sound other than the shuffle of their shoes on the walk, and their eyes [were] focused on the ground.” Bennett had occasion to observe “several groups of gray-clad men marching about silently” on his visit. The images stuck with him; he wrote in his autobiography decades later about “the large numbers inked on the backs of their rough, wrinkled shirts,” concluding, “It was a depressing introduction.” These large inked numbers would play a crucial role in identifying some of the victims of the penitentiary fire."

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When it came to the biggest of the big houses, idleness at the Ohio Penitentiary “was much more conspicuous [here] than in many prisons.” The Columbus penitentiary was home to an “idle room,” on the third floor of a manufacturing building, where “hundreds of men spend their days sitting on benches in absolute idleness, under the eyes of guards.” One contemporary account described the building as “almost ready to collapse.” Few of the convicts were constantly employed. Between fifteen hundred and two thousand inmates were idle at any given time, confined to the large raftered, barn-like room furnished with benches and tables. Here, convicts languished from morning until nighttime lockup. It was not uncommon for cocaine and morphine addicts to be housed in the idle house as well. One inmate noted, “You can spot them in the Idle House, sitting silent, staring into space with lack-luster eyes, their entire bodies twitching from time to time in that peculiar agony that comes upon the dope fiend when he hasn’t any drugs.”

According to one survey, idleness was “much more conspicuous here than in many prisons by the use of the ‘Idle room,’ in which hundreds of men spend their days sitting on benches in absolute idleness under the eyes of the guards.” Some would argue that the Idle House was still a more humane alternative than sitting locked up all day in cells or in dark, crowded dorms."

Unlike the dangerously overcrowded Ohio Penitentiary, holding close to 4,500 inmates, the dormitory at the Brick Plant was a “barn-like structure of wooden frame and corrugated iron covering, erected upon a ten foot brick foundation,” with accommodations for 275 prisoners “sleeping in two-tiered bunks arranged in pairs with narrow aisles between.” Including 13 trusties, who did not sleep in the dorm, there were a total of 288 men at the Plant.

Several inmates discovered the Brick Plant fire at midnight, but by the time the alarm resounded through the dimly lit dormitory room it was too late. The fire spread quickly along the building’s floor and framework, leaping “from bunk to bunk across narrow aisles, while convicts cursed and screamed as they struggled to open doors and windows.” Making matters even worse, the fire hydrant did not work. As in the Columbus blaze in 1930, the convicts were awakened in time to escape, but upon reaching the nearest exits found them locked and barred. According to guards and convicts, it was probable that “many of the dead were trampled to death in a ‘mad rush for the exits.’”

Convicts who had made it out into the fresh air remembered looking back through windows “into the flaming interior,” where they witnessed sights that they would never forget, seeing fellow prisoners “wreathed in flames, rushing to  and fro” before disappearing in the smoke and flames that enveloped them as they fell to the floor. The roof and walls soon collapsed, showering ring the onlookers and writhing victims with burning embers.

As in the Columbus fire, stories of convict heroism abounded. Among the heroes was a convict overcome by smoke and burned to death as he tried to rescue his friend. Another prisoner, who had been responsible for the prison commissary, ran inside to fight the flames but perished “on his job.” One inmate, Andy Kiebert, who made it out safely, ran back into the burning building to rescue the convict mascot, a terrier named Tiny King. The animal lover suffered burns but fought his way back out, emerging with the relatively unscathed dog under his coat.

News reports would describe the fifteen fire victims as “charred bodies, part of them only small piles of bones,” with “few or none … possible of identification.”  A dozen of the more seriously burned were taken to the hospital at the Ohio Pen for treatment. A cursory identification of the dead was attempted, but remained tentative, their identifications being based for the most part on the location of the body when found. Prisoners aided in the task “to some extent,” but not with any degree of certainty. In the early going, the only ones identified were two African American inmates. A prison dentist examined the victims’ teeth to aid in the identifications. The remains were buried in the New Lexington Cemetery, where markers were set up for those whose identities had been established. Twenty men were missing, three of whom, officials believed, had seized the opportunity to escape during the confusion that followed the fire’s discovery. Others, including many cons, insisted none had escaped. Despite the opportunity for a learning moment, few lessons had been learned at the Junction City fire."

Classifying stamps as contraband

Placing people in solitary confinement for five years consistently

Placing mentally ill and developmentally disabled people in solitary confinement

Blocking individuals placed in restrictive solitary confinement from filing official complaints i.e. grievances

Beating & stripping disabled people naked on camera

For these reasons among a multitude of others, a group of men at Toledo Correctional Facility initiated a hunger strike during the last week of March. Lead organizers include Mr. David Easley, Mark Hinkston (read more about these brothers organizing here) and Harris Jr. have been striking for well over a month by the posting of this exposition. After just one week of hunger striking, a riot sized can of mace was unloaded on Harris’ face on a dark Monday morning at 4:00a. Like Harris’ many imprisoned protesters have been separated from general population, isolated for indefinite periods with their most valuable belongings, including their tablet computers for documenting their experiences, being destroyed by staff in leadership at Toledo Correctional Facility in retaliation of their organizing efforts.

While being isolated in restrictive solitary confinement, protesters have been blocked from filing complaints in the form of grievances. Due to the passage of the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act, people in prison are ineligible for filing suit against their abusers during their incarceration. Knowing the daily abuses that go unaddressed in prisons like Toledo’s Correctional Facility (TCF), this is what the 3rd Demand of the National Prison Strike pleads with legislator’s to overturn. With the way that conditions are set, the cycle of abuse that people in prison endure have no sufficient pathway for resolution. This is a main reason why prison is disabling for every single person forced to experience it. No one leaves prison without trauma in at least one area of their physical or mental health. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse extend to exponentially unmanageable proportions when there is no record of the actions taken by either party. TCF makes sure there are no records of the abuses afflicted onto those in solitary. TCF does this in their own mandating that official grievances must be filed through an online channel that is only available via an app called jpay on an inmate’s tablet computer. No paper forms are accepted so when a person in prison is moved to restrictive solitary confinement, stripped of the right to have their tablet computer, then they are effectively also stripped of channels for communicating any abuses they endure while in solitary. With grievance complains having strict filing deadlines (often 7 – 14 days post the initial incident) extended periods spent in solitary are a recipe for ongoing unaddressed abuses like that of Easley, Hinkston and Harris Jr. whose only hope for reconciliation depends on surveilled handwritten letters to the outside world. Some don’t make it out, thankfully this one did, but even more devastatingly some responses never make it back in past corrupt mailroom staff to the intended recipient.

Prison is disabling because the following actions happening for months and even years at a time have an extremely destructive effect on one’s psyche, physical health and overall wellbeing:

Not being able to afford stamps, emails, phone calls to contact loved ones

Confined in an unnaturally lit cage for 23hrs each day

Caged while grieving the death of loved one: parents, siblings, children, etc.

Consuming inedible or nutrient deficient, high sodium food products every day

No access to art supplies or digital technology for therapeutic reflection or entertainment

No access to educational courses

No access to rehabilitative programs

No one to forward grievances to for reconciliation

Noisy, chaotic living environment with constant threats of violence

Constant threat of staff retaliation

The head prison official responsible for all of these conditions at TCF is Harold May and people in prison at TCF want him out and plan to continue their hunger strike until he’s gone.

In protest of prison staff negligence, inside organizers have attempted to engage the general population in larger boycotts and work stoppages. Unfortunately, with protesters’ inability to communicate freely with others captive at their facility make it difficult for separated protesters to engage inside networks effectively. In addition to this outside networks are limited in their ability to communicate with those placed in solitary who are stripped of their belongings and restricted to heavily monitored handwritten communication. This is an obstacle that we saw prisoners surmount during the 2018 National Prison Strike with ongoing outside coordination and incoming tech resources. Many of these lead protesters at TCF have been in isolation units since the 2018 National demonstration and don’t have same organizing capacity as they did before.

The disabling conditions of TCF continue without foreseeable recourse. As recent as this past weekend, lead organizer, Easley, was maced in the eyes, punched in the face and stripped naked on camera (location: D-3-south unit). Without any other pathway for recourse Easley, along with others at TCF and similarly situated penitentiaries, are pleading for public recourse. As taxpaying contributors to our state criminal legal systems we are responsible to the conditions that citizens suffer behind the wall. For those willing to take on that responsibility, contact the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee via phone at (614)466-6649. Make reference to the Department of rehabilitation & Correction’s (DrC) policy 53-CLS-04 Sec. V reads, “An individual diagnosed with a serious mental illness (C1 level) or his diagnosed Intellectually/Developmentally Disables (IDD) shall not be subjected to Restrictive Housing conditions for more than 29 continuous calendar days”. Easley has been held in solitary for 120 days (and counting) along with many others who didn’t have the stamp to send.”

Prison of Oz: Staying sane in an Ohio prison

Prison of Oz: Staying sane in an Ohio prison

On a prison stage, inmates work hard, gain some pride and dream of, somewhere, a home.