November 28, 2014
Here in the cell isolation unit, getting on the kiosk to download our emails can be extremely difficult for some of us. We're only allowed one hour out of our cell each day to clean our cell, take a shower and plug our tablets into the kiosk to upload and download emails and music. Sometimes an inmate has a video visit scheduled during that time which automatically takes up half of our one hour's opportunity for the rest of us. The guards let around twenty inmates out of the cell at a time, each of us have scheduled hours because there's entirely too many of us to be let out all at once. With twenty inmates out in the dayroom at a time, even this can be very difficult, twenty of us have one hour to get in and out of only five showers to choose from, spending half the time waiting in line for the shower and the other half hoping to get a chance on the kiosk which is proving to be more and more difficult. With twenty inmates and only one kiosk and one hour, it's hard to believe I can get on the kiosk at all. Some of the younger inmates run to the kiosk to get on it first, then they spend their entire twenty minutes the kiosk allows them to be on it listening to music without any consideration for the people waiting to use the machine as well. Often these younger inmates let their buddies jump in line behind them, knowing that most of us aren't going to jeopardize going to the hole over fighting some young, ignorant kid. If every inmate spent their entire allotted twenty minutes on the kiosk that would only enable a total of 3 out of twenty inmates to use the machine, so you can see how easy it is to get frustrated. Yesterday being Thanks Giving, I had about fifteen emails to send out, wishing happy holidays to friends and family, but I was unable to do so. Hopefully I get a chance to send them out today, better late than not at all. No matter how frustrating such a thing can be, the most I do is write about such frustrations because no individual or situation is worth acting out of character or suffering consequences, for childish, irrational acts made out of anger.
Steven Dybvad
