By the time Duane Waddy made a call from Victoria County Jail in Texas on Thursday night, it had been three days since he had access to running water.
The toilets in his sleeping place of 24 men were rancid. The showers were used as urinals. He said more than 11 hours had passed since he last received a bottle of water.
“They give us one bottle a day and say we should keep it,” Waddy, 35, told NBC News by telephone.
The massive winter storm that surrounded the South this week left thousands of Texans without power and running water. According to inmates, family members and lawyers, inmates within the walls of several prisons and prisons in Texas have faced horrific conditions.
Many facilities ran for long periods without heat, and prisoners trembled in their cells. A lack of running water has caused toilets to overflow and people go days without showers. Advocates say the unhygienic conditions, coupled with the threat of the coronavirus, have raised concerns about deadly outbreaks.
“We were able to prevent this escalating public health crisis by taking a smart approach to depopulating our prisons,” said Krish Gundu, executive director of the Texas Jail Project, a group for inmates. “But we chose not to do that. Now we have to pay the price. ”
The vast majority of people imprisoned in the country’s prisons are charged with crimes but have not yet had a chance to stand trial or fight the charges otherwise.
The situation is particularly acute in the overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the third largest in the state, where attorneys say prisoners were forced to sleep on cold floors near clogged toilets.
In the weeks before the storm hit, the sheriff himself warned of a possible health crisis as a backlog of criminal cases due to Covid-19 led to an ever-growing prison population.
In a January 12 court report related to a federal lawsuit over the Harris County cash bail system, lawyers for sheriff Ed Gonzalez pleaded for help alleviating the overcrowding.
“The prison is bursting at the seams,” his lawyers wrote in the documentation. “Something needs to be done to reduce the population.”
Advocates added that many of the prisoners should be subject to release, but releases are slow to come, if at all. ‘
Alec Karakatsanis, executive director of the Civil Rights Corps in Washington, said the current situation underscores the risk of keeping so many people in jail during a pandemic.
“The lack of running water, heat and food – they all get a completely different character in an overcrowded prison sentence,” said Karakatsanis, whose group was sued under Harris in 2016 because of its cash bail system.
A federal judge ruled in 2019 that the province’s bail system is unconstitutional, paving the way for defendants of misconduct to be released from detention more quickly, regardless of their financial condition.
But this past March, while the coronavirus was spreading across the country, the Texas government signed Greg Abbott, an executive order focusing on rural and municipal prisons that found the release of any accused or ever guilty of a violent crime that could not pay cash bail, prevented.
“We were concerned that the disaster could be a disaster if there is any other shock to the system,” Karakatsanis said. “That’s what we’re seeing now.”
Jason Spencer, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office in Harris County, said the prison had “experienced short periods without power and / or plumbing,” but temperatures never dropped below the 65-degree minimum.
The plant had full power and good water pressure from Friday afternoon, Spencer added, and there were enough beds for everyone.
Conditions were also bleak in several state prisons, housing people convicted of crimes.
The McConnell unit in Bee County sat without water for several days and the power flickered on and off, according to family of people housed there.
Roxanna McGee said her husband, Sherrod McGee, 43, had little to protect himself from the icy air in his cell until she called the facility earlier this week and they provided him with an extra jacket and blanket.
‘He’s from Saint Louis. He knows how cold the weather is, ”said McGee. “When he calls me, I hear in his voice that he’s cold.”
McGee said her husband told her that their meals consisted largely of cold sandwiches, the toilets overflowed and the inmates did not have the ability to wash or shower their hands.
“He says it’s disgusting. It’s rough, ”McGee said. “What my husband is going through is inhuman.”
According to the inmates’ relatives, the Clemens unit in Brazoria County ran without heat and running water for several days.
The wife of one prisoner said she thought her husband would have been in a horrible condition if it were not for his hot pot. The woman, who identified herself only by her first name, Nichole, because she was afraid of retaliation against her husband, said he warmed up the water he rationed, poured it into bottles and stuffed it in his socks at night. to warm his body.
“It’s the only way he can get some relief,” she said.
According to her, he said a thin piece of cardboard was used to stop the cold draw through his broken window.
“The animals in the zoo get better treatment than the inmates in our prison system,” Nichole said.
Jeremy Desel, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said it is used to dealing with extreme weather, but this storm presents a unique challenge. “The difference here is the nationwide extent of the emergency,” Desel said.
About a third of the state’s 102 prison facilities lost power earlier this week, Desel said, experiencing the same amount of interruptions in their water supply. Drinking water was made available at all the facilities, and those who lost power had backup generators. Desel could not say how many settings went without heat.
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By Friday morning, the power of all the facilities had been restored and only a handful were without running water.
The circumstances also took the toll of prison staff.
Jeff Ormsby, executive director of the Government Officers Union in Texas, said many officers were forced to work 18-hour days with minimal interruptions.
“The staff is doubly downed,” Ormsby said. “They’re freezing there, just like the prisoners are, and then they have to worry about their families.”
In Victoria County Jail, inmates like Waddy led them to fear a broader Covid-19 outbreak.
He said judge officers came with buckets of water once a day to flush the toilets. However, he did not shower for days and the inmates had no cleaners or hand cleaners, Waddy said.
“The smell is awful,” he said.
The sheriff of Victoria County did not respond to a request for comment.
Waddy, who was arrested on drug possession charges, said he tested positive for Covid-19 in late January, but he has largely recovered from his symptoms. He is now worried about others in the plant and is hopeful that running water will return soon.
Government officials told him Thursday they expect it to be back within 24 hours.
“I can do almost nothing about it,” Waddy said, “but stay strong and pray, hoping it will come to an end soon.”