Oregon prisoners report ‘inhumane’ conditions following fire evacuations, transfers – By Jayati Ramakrishnan (The Oregonian/OregonLive) / Sept 13 2020
When Chris Biondello heard his girlfriend’s voice on the phone, it sounded raspy. She said she had a bloody nose, and she hadn’t eaten in several hours.
She, along with 1,300 inmates, had recently been moved from their Wilsonville prison, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, to the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras. In the past week, inmates from four different Oregon prisons have been evacuated and shuttled to other facilities to escape wildfires that were threatening their buildings.
Since then, dozens of prisoners and their family members have reported evacuees have been subjected to a range of unlivable conditions — from not receiving medications and being placed in facilities with even worse air quality than the ones they evacuated, to going up to 24 hours without food. The conditions led some to protest overnight Friday at Deer Ridge.
Biondello said his girlfriend told him on a brief phone call that they are still not receiving meals or anything to drink on a regular schedule, and that conditions are even smokier there than in the building they evacuated.
Continue to article: https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/09/oregon-prisoners-report-inhumane-conditions-following-fire-evacuations-transfers.html
