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TEXAS DEATH ROW HOTEL
RESIDENTS :463 Men, 7 women [Jan 99,]
DEPARTURE RATE [FOR THE NEXT WORLD] :37 men during 1997.
RULES: Residents must be over 15 years old, and it helps to be poor, mentally ill or a member of a minority group. Blacks make up 12% of the US population, but 80% of Death Row prisoners are black.
COST Accounts are payable only as you leave. Regardless of length of stay, the price is the same - death by lethal injection.
Welcome to Texas Death Row Hotel. Your
room will be exactly like mine - a
1.6 x 2.4m. cell made of concrete,
wire mesh and steel. You might be next-door to me. You have a toilet, a
sink, a metal bunk with one pillow and a mattress so thin that it gives
you back problems.
Every time you leave your cell you'll
be strip searched, sometimes by a female guard. There's a colour TV mounted
on the wall outside your cell. Its about 3 metres away and you watch
it through the wire mesh. You're allowed to watch from 7a.m. to
10:30p.m.
You have 2 hours recreation every weekday. At weekends unless you have a visitor, you stay in your cage all day except for going for a 7 minute shower. There is fungus and muck all over the floor and walls of the shower.
Visitors are permitted once a week for 2 hours. You'll be handcuffed and walked to the visiting area, and then put in a cage of wire glass and steel. Guards often harass and threaten your visitors, giving them no respect.
Your cell temperature in winter will be anywhere from 2 - 19 degrees. During summer, if the temperature is 38 degrees outside, it will be 42 - 45 in the cell. You're allowed a small fan which blows the hot air around. Last year by mid July ten people had died from the heat.
You can buy snacks, soap, writing materials etc. from the Commissary once a week if your family or friends send money to your account. If not, you stick it out.
Room Service brings your breakfast at 2.30 a.m. and you must be up with the light on, or the guards will refuse to give it to you. It is served through a slot in your door. Lunch is at 9.30 a.m. and dinner at 3.30 p.m. The menu varies, but meals are always served cold - often with spoiled meat or rotten potatoes. There may be a garnish of rat or roach droppings or human hair.
You may receive letters from family and friends, and these are slid under your door. If you become sick you must send a request to the hospital explaining what your illness is. You will be seen within a week.
Staff members are allowed to come into your cell, cuff you, pull you out of the cell and lock you in the showers while they go through your property. They can take anything they think you shouldn't have. If they feel like it they destroy family pictures and property, and leave your cell in chaos.
You have no rights while you're in this hotel. If you break the rules, or even if the staff say you did, you are always guilty and will be punished - no recreation, no Commissary, confiscation of property, removal of your fan; or if the guards feel like it they'll place you in solitary for 15 days.
I've been here for 4 years, 8 months,
6 days. Others for 10 to 22 years.
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