By Richard Sharp
My name is Richard Sharp I am an inmate in Stateville Correctional Center, located in Joliet, Illinois. I am writing y’all my story/situation in order to make it known what is happening here. I came here last month in order to participate in the Bachelor’s Degree Program that Northwestern University has here. They told me that Stateville was now a “multi-security level” institution when I submitted my application for the program. I am minimum security. Statesville is behind a huge wall and has been only maximum security ever since it was built in the 1920’s. I believed what was on the memo and they accepted and transferred me here. Now ever since I’ve been here (since May 17), I have been through more of a culture shock and ill treatment than I’ve ever been in my entire 23 years of incarceration, which includes 4 other correctional centers.
My first night here, they claimed that they didn’t know we were coming (which is impossible due to the 2 day process to move from prison to prison) and didn’t have mattresses, sheets, towels, or anything for us. It was cold that night too and they had the windows open here. I had to lie on a cold hard metal bed frame until they brought me a blanket with a huge hole in the center of it and a plastic mattress with very little padding inside of it later that night. It was cold and humiliating. Now, let me rewind a bit. When we first got off the bus here, all the lieutenants and officers kept stressing to us to “not drink the water.” Come to find out, the water here is high in lead and other chemicals and people get really sick because of it. So we receive 3 bottles of water in the morning to do everything we 
need and if that’s not enough water for you, you have to buy water from commissary. Yet, our food is still cooked and cleaned with the same water and we shower in it too. This prison is falling apart and the cells are so nasty, unlivable. There are no shelves, tables, desks or nothing in most of them. They are super small too, yet they have me bunked up with a cellmate in General population (maximum security). I am one of maybe nine other people that are bunked up in these small uninhabitable cells, while everyone else had single man cells. And to add insult to injury, I have a low gallery/low bunk permit that was ordered by the doctor here over a month ago and they refuse to move me down. I have been housed up here on 8-gallery ever since I got here. I have fallen going up the stairs once and down the stairs once because of my bad knee, yet they refuse to move me. Outside of my back, hip, and shoulder hurting from sleeping on this steel, I’m forced to constantly transfer and risk falling every time I have to go up or down the stairs. This has to be some kind of deliberate indifference or cruel and unusual punishment.
Come to find out, I am a casualty in a war that is between the head of the Northwestern University program here and the warden of this facility. There are only 450 inmates in this facility which is meant to house over 3,000 inmates. That’s because all of the living units except for one (the building we are all housed in) are old, unlivable and have been condemned. They did patchwork on this building in an attempt to try to make it liveable and have failed miserably! Now the problem is Jennifer (head of the Northwestern program) had a good rapport with the last warden who was pro-inmate education like her and he gave her a part of the building to clean up, get up to par, and make livable (an environment for growth) for the 80 Northwestern students here. She placed desks and shelves in the cells, painted them, put tables, couches and big screen TVs over there. They are trying to install a high tech water fountain. The students come out of the cell 4 hours a day (like medium security prisons) and it will be 12 hours at some point. This new warden has a totally different vision for this prison (to keep it maximum security) and is not cooperating with Northwestern. Twenty of us from minimum and medium security prisons came here on the bus together for school on May 17. This facility placed us in Maximum security general population with all these people which either have life or de facto life sentences and they placed whoever they wanted to place over there in our spots (i.e. inmates with life or de facto life who aren’t even in school but have favor with the warden or placement officer here). We sit in maximum security, suffer, and get treated like maximum security prisoners. They took all of our hot pots and typewriters when we got here, saying “we can’t have them in a maximum security prison.” Well, I’m not supposed to be in a maximum security prison. I go home in 4 years and they have me surrounded with people with life or 35+ years left. I have been threatened by some already for talking to a lieutenant about when they will move me to E-house where I’m supposed to be. The inmates with all that time left don’t like short-timers. That’s the danger of this situation.
Jennifer has been pushing and pushing to get us to E-house but they keep striving against her and giving her a hard time. In the meantime, we are stuck over here in general population and me, personally, on 8-gallery too, constantly aching and in pain because they won’t move me. I shouldn’t have to lose everything and suffer just to be able to go to school. This place isn’t for me. My knee has gotten worse since I got here!
