IN THE EARLY morning hours last Friday, Nick climbed out of his bunk at Mountain View Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, and stepped into a pool of water.

As Hurricane Helene unleashed a torrential downpour over Western North Carolina, Nick, whose story was relayed by a relative and who requested to go by his first name for fear of retribution, realized his single-occupancy cell in the state prison had begun to flood. Then he realized that his toilet no longer flushed.

For the next five days, more than 550 men incarcerated at Mountain View suffered in cells without lights or running water, according to conversations with the family members of four men serving sentences at the facility, as well as one currently incarcerated man. Until they were transferred to different facilities, the prisoners lost all contact with the outside world.

As nearby residents sought refuge from the storm, the men were stuck in prison — by definition, without the freedom to leave — in close quarters with their own excrement for nearly a week from September 27 until October 2.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “550 men”

    That’s beyond a fuckup. That’s intentional cruelty.

    Ironically, someone SHOULD go to jail for this.

  • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    I did some time over a decade ago.

    One of my biggest fears was some disaster or event would leave us locked in a 4x8 cell to die.

    I hated every second of it.

    I still can’t sleep with my bedroom door closed.

    Prison fucks you up in so many ways.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    USA has always been based on torture, encagement, and murder. It’s no surprise when a natural disaster further unmasks this reality. It’s nothing for the system to convert some arbitrary cage sentence into a death sentence. This is considered a virtue by most politicians.

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    Could have been worse. Could have been stuck with someone else’s feces.

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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      1 month ago

      You seem to think that massive flood waters just stay in one place and don’t flow everywhere, mixing feces and storm debris.

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        I was making a shitty joke by focusing on a relatively minor aspect of the headline and ignoring the larger problem.

        Pun intended.