Terrell Unit - Foodstrike

The New Daily Schedule

Time	Activity
3:00 a.m.	Breakfast is served
5:00 a.m.	Breakfast trays and outgoing mail are picked up.
6:00 a.m.	Shift change. Guards turn on all lights and wake everybody up, asking for names and numbers.
7:00 a.m.	Recreation for one hour, starting anywhere from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.
10:00 a.m.	Lunch
11:00 a.m.	Lunch trays are picked up.
12 Noon	Showers. You might be in there for 20 minutes to an hour.
1:30 p.m	Guards come around, turn on all the lights and check names and numbers to make sure no one has checked out on their shift.
2:00 p.m.	Shift change. Guards come around and check names and numbers.
4:00 p.m.	Dinner is served.
5:30 p.m.	Dinner trays are picked up.
7:00 p.m.	Guards make rounds with porters, sweeping and mopping the run ways
8:30 p.m.	Guards pass out the daily inbound mail.
9:30 p.m.	Guards come around, turn on all the lights and check names and numbers to make sure no one has checked out on their shift.
10:00 p.m.	Shift change. Guards turn on all lights and wake everybody up, asking for names and numbers.
11:30 p.m.	Guards make rounds with porters, sweeping run ways and checking to see if you need any I-60s sick cell request, visiting change list, etc.
Midnight	Between midnight and 1:30 a.m. guards come around and change out underclothes, boxers and socks.
3:00 a.m.	Breakfast is served. A new day begins…

Visiting Hours

Monday	8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Tuesday	8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Wednesday	8 a.m. until Noon
Thursday	8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Friday	8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Saturday	5:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m.
Sunday	No Visitation

Mental Notes

1. If you recreate during the day time, you have to shower and put the same wet, sweaty, dirty underclothes back on after you shower unless you have your own personal underclothes, purchased from the unit commissary.
2. If you become ill, or have a heart attack, you might as well lay down and hope like hell you do not kick the bucket before the officers make another round because it doesn’t matter how loud you yell or scream. They are not going to answer you. They act like they cannot hear a word you are saying.
3. Every three days they change out your jumper suit.
4. Friday mornings, between midnight and 2 a.m., they come around with clean sheets, pillow case and face towels and one roll of toilet paper, three small hotel bar size state lye soap and some bippy. This will last for one week or you are out of luck. You will not get anymore!!!!
5. The meals are awful. They are dried out and mostly cold when served. Also, the portions seem more appropriate for a five year old child.
6. If you get a tray at meal time, you will have to wait around until they come unlock the food slot so you can give it back to them because there is no opening in your cell where you can just slide it out.
7. There is no human contact. There are no TVs. You spend your recreation time ALONE.
8. Any major case you get, they will take you from Level 1 and put you on Level 2 or 3.
9. Any time you leave you cell, you have to be strip searched. Then you have to bend down and back up and put your arms out the good slot backwards with your palms facing out, thumbs up, and they handcuff you like this. When you walk out of your cell there will be a guard standing on each side of you, holding the back of your arms, walking every step with you, and everywhere you go.
I know this sounds like it is demeaning, frustrating, stressful and depressing. IT IS. It appears to be set up to push the inmates to their mental and physical limits. It was a program designed for violent, non-conforming criminals that refuse to follow a program. Most of the men here do not fit that profile. In is a travesty to put them into this sensory deprivation type environment. The guards are rude, abrupt and outwardly disrespectful.
If you ask the inmates how was the move, they will not list a lack of TV as their number one complaint as recently reported in the news. They will describe this move as jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Please pray for these men and their families. Pray that someone will recognize the injustice and correct it before it is too late for some of them. As proven in Illinois, there could be innocent men sitting there, enduring these abuses. Even if they are admittedly guilty, this is not a humane way to treat a dog, much less a man.