by El Be
Correctional Industial Facility (CIF), located in Pendleton, Indiana is a prisoncrat’s dream camp. Just by the “Industrial’ part in its name should be indicative its part in the Prison Industrial Complex. Indeed, this facility is more concerned w/ industry (profit) from its prisoner population of 1450 than it is in their rehabilitation.
The camp’s industrial strong hold is the BRAKE SHOP which just won another multi-million dollar contract for Pen Products. Prisoners hired there are paid less than minimum wage & have to sign a waiver of liability not to sue if they are effected by the toxic fumes & dust that come from repairing old brake parts. Because many prisoners are poor & families are unable to afford to send them money to spend on commissary food, GTL phone & tablet credits, they take health risk of working in such a shop under slave labor.
Other industrial staples are the Wheel chair & Funiture Factories; & the Dog Training program. But the rest of the jobs are to keep the camp operating. Like the kitchen, plumbing, yard & cell house clean up, clothing, & laundry. All prisoners must work at one of the above stations or be subjected disciplinary action (loss of credit time &/or placed in restrictive units).
The rehabilitative & time cut programming are PLUS, RWI, Buisness Tech, DOL, GED. But there is always a shortage of space for these programs. Therefore, most prisoners are forced to work in the kitchen for pennies an hour.
Other inhumane aspects of CIF is its unsanitary living & eating conditions. There are no toilets or sinks in none of the two man cells in general population. Prisoners have to urinate & defacate in bottles or plastic bags if guards don’t let them out of the cell during lock down time (10pm-5am). Animals are treated better than this.
In addition, CIF’s dish washing machine in the kitchen is old & insufficient. Often food trays & drinking cups are never properly cleaned. Yet are served to prisoners anyway. Which is nasty.
Correctional Industrial Facility