Fredrick, a Cook County Jail inmate for 13 years, discusses the conditions of the jail, the violation of rights of inmates, and how the system is stacked against them. Shortly after this interview, Fred was found guilty on the charges of attempted murder
My name Fredrick. I’ve been locked up 13 years now. 12 of them have been in Cook County. As far as conditions, this place always been fucked up. There’s always big ass roaches, rats, mice. We got all type of pests in here. The food they giving us here is nowhere near enough, let alone nutritious. We only get half the food we are supposed to. Other divisions will get things like fruit cups, apples, oranges, Division 9 gets none of that. I don’t drink the food here because it made me sick. All I eat is bread and from commissary, I eat oatmeal. We supposed to have people, cooks, coming in to cook our food, not other inmates. One, they don’t even have the proper products to sanitize the things they using to cook. We only get two bars of soap, no shampoo or conditioner, nothing to take care of our hair. Everything when it comes to our hygiene is null and void when it comes to Cook County. They might have it in Division 11 or 5, but Division 9 doesn’t get it.
They have been giving people a little more time out because people have been killing themselves. But they typically lock us up in the cells. When you have cells like that, we are supposed to have call buttons on the cells so we can always call and officer or medical staff and let them know what’s going on, if we are having a problem or something is going wrong. Even if our cellie is beating us or finna kill us. We don’t have call buttons in Division 9, and that type shit happens.
A lot of people turn a blind eye to how to officers treat us. They don’t know or understand a lot of people in here are doing this psych shit. Hanging themselves, trying to overdose, cutting themselves because the officers be playing mind games with motherfuckers. For instance, I just lost my grandma. It’s very hard to figure out how your going to set up funeral arrangements to see your people. It’s very hard to even get a visit. The way they doing it they be treating us like we have been found guilty already. Our people have to give up their names, ID’s, emails, they want the smallest details of our families so if something goes wrong, we won’t ever be able to see our family again. Like every time they sign up for a visit they’ll deny you or say something wrong. They playing with our mail, they taking it for no reason. If they suspect something, they take it, and a lot of times they won’t even tell you. This lady sent me a letter I haven’t received it in months, she sent me books I never received. I haven’t gotten a yellow form saying they sent it back to Amazon or why they sent it back. They been doing this since I went pro-se and representing myself for awhile in 2020. They just taking my mail. I don’t know if it’s because of what going on around the jail or targeting me personally. But they do it to a lot of people.
The things people are donating to the jail like decks of cards, oatmeal shampoo, they are selling at the commissary. Things at Stateville they be giving out for free, like a small shampoo packet, they are making us pay 80 cents. This place crazy man. There’s no way for us to do anything because our grievance process also have to go through them. And once our grievances reach a certain higher up, they’ll say “we’ll look into it.” The no reply. We appeal it, they write back saying response sent. So their is nothing we can do with the process on the inside. We need people on the outside to start raising complaints.
I’m probably one of the last ones here that’s been going for this long fighting my case. Mostly other people have been in here 4 or 5 years, some 7 years, that haven’t been to trial. It takes years for them to go to trial. They don’t follow the protocols where your discovery is supposed to be closed within 12 to 18 months. And then they supposed to have a certain amount of time before they take you to trial. They really violating everyone’s speedy trial rights. And when it comes to you speaking up for yourself, they really try to deter you. They got all power over us and can’t be violated for the things they do to us. They don’t be held responsible for violating our rights, they constantly violating us. It’s going to take a lot of people standing together and do something about it.
The SAEFTY Act is supposed to be something to keep these people out of the situation I’m in. You being incarcerated for over the amount of time you’re supposed to be in jail or held without bond, and no cash bail anymore so it’s supposed to alleviate that and give people room to come home and fight their case from the world and be active. It was suppose to make people who haven’t been found guilty able to live their life. It depends on the severity of your case, the evidence against you, and the safety of the people around you. They have 90 days to figure this out or they are supposed to release you with stipulations because you’re innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until innocent. Therefore them just denying you SAFETY Act is saying we just denied you bonding out with cash. So everyone they say “we don’t feel like you are a proper member of society, we just gonna hold you. You just got to sit here and wait.” You just stuck in jail now. You wasting away. Now all it takes is for someone who’s not trying go home to do something to you, and you do something to them, and catch a case.
I’ve been in jail all this time and still haven’t been found guilty. I haven’t caught any new cases. They find some stipulations to not put me on house arrest. I’ve applied for three SAFETY Acts, all been denied. I got some fighting tickets but people be getting killed or jumped on, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid defending yourself in this place. Either you’re going to be prey or you’re going to defend yourself. The way they’re forcing people to live in here, you don’t have no choice. This system is making people lose themselves and lose they mind. They even taking away the little things like playing chess and checkers. They not even letting people get books.
Cracks At Hotel California is a newsletter that exposes the daily reality of torture, murder, and mistreatment inside of the Cook County jail. We believe that the people who can best tell the truth about what’s happening are the people on the inside and their loved ones on the outside. This newsletter is produced by Dare to Struggle, an organization committed to standing with the people subjected to the horrors of the American nightmare. Send us your story…
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