To Protest Conditions
Sullivan Jail Prisoners Go On ‘Hunger Strike’
Twenty prisoners at the Sullivan County Jail at Blountville apparently not appeased by the county’s promise to appoint a non-partisan committee to keep an impartial watch over the jail, have started a hunger strike.
Sheriff Bill Wright said 20 of the jail’s 64 prisoners have not accepted food since Monday.
“We slip their trays to them, and they just push them back,” he said.
Wright said, however, that jailer George Love noted that “a few biscuits were gone” when he picked up the refused trays.
The prisoners action was the culmination of a series of complaints over the past year.
“A bunch of them stomped out a lot of plumbing about a month ago, so some of their privileges were taken away,” said Wright.
The prisoners Were protesting the loss of television sets and radios, with some saying the sheriff’s department even had refused to allow their families to bring them Easter dinners over the weekend.
The cutoff of the Easter food evidently gave the prisoners the idea of going on the hunger strike.
“The ringleaders of this thing are guys who have nothing to lose. Convicted felons who are awaiting the results of their legal appeals,” said Wright. “They’re having a ball up there — whooping, hollering, and singing.”
Several of the prisoners recently wrote to County Judge Lon Boyd and Criminal Court Judge John Byers, asking for public airings of their complaints.
The judges denied the request for such hearings.
The hearing request included this appeal: “We ask that the public bear in mind that a majority of the inmates here are convicted of no crime, but are only waiting for the courts to act. These men are being ‘punished’ for the crime of being too poor to post bail. We sincerely believe that most of the restrictions placed upon us by the sheriff’s department amount to nothing more than harassment and persecution for the audacity of pleading not guilty or perhaps refusing to show respect to a few persons who do not act respectable. Some of the staff (sheriff’s department workers) would like to give fair and humane treatment but have been threatened with suspension from their job.”
Wright denied the allegation that his men have been threatened with suspension for treating the prisoners with kindness.
“There are some of them (prisoners) that just can’t be handled with kid gloves, though,” he said.
The letter, signed by 25 prisoners. also said they were the subject of a major “shakedown” after their grievances became publicly known. ‘The inmates contended deputies had confiscated all their reading material, food, playing cards, watches, belts. billfolds, toilet articles and even paper bags and boxes used for storing clothing.
“One man was put in the ‘hole’ for the infamous crime of possessing a transistor radio, said the prisoners. “He had a broken leg at the time which had not been treated. Another guv was put in the hole for some unexplained reason. These men were among a group which have the effrontery to ask for enough decent food to live on.”
Late last week county officials had agreed to ask Sullivan County Court to appoint an impartial Jail Commission, to be composed of three persons who would visit the jail regularly and file written reports about the condition of the jail and its inmates.
State law permits the formation of such a commission.
Judge Boyd, Attorney General Carl Kirkpatrick, and Sheriff Wright will select the three persons to serve on such a commission, subject to approval by the magistrates.
But this is a time-consuming procedure, the inmates have indicated, and they want action now.
