Opinion: Tying water access to labor in overcrowded prisons is wrong
For five years, I got up at 2 every morning and labored in the San Quentin State Prison kitchen, stirring kettles, scraping grills and scrubbing countertops and floors — covering myself in kitchen slime — just to get a five-minute shower. I learned to keep a job if I wanted a daily shower. But hundreds of prisoners who live near me are unable to shower daily, despite the fact that outbreaks of diseases such as COVID-19 and norovirus and infestations of bedbugs and scabies are common. The use of water as a weapon over prisoners by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation violates basic human decency and endangers health — especially during a deadly pandemic.
-Written by Steve Brooks, a staff writer for the San Quentin News, a publication written and produced by the incarcerated, and an inside fellow of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.