To who it may concern,

I am a inmate at Durham County Detention Center and I have a list of complaints against this facility.

#1 Medical here is a joke. I went to medical about a lump on my left side under my rib cage and this was causing me a lot of pain, but the so-called Doctor told me that this lump was nothing and that it would not cause me any pain. He did not take any x-rays or anything. He just looked at it and told me more or less that I did not know what I was talking about. I had this same trouble with this lump before and I went to a specialist and he put me in the hospital and did a biopsy from inside of my stomach, and put me on two different kinds of pills to try and correct what they found, what was causing the pain. And it worked for a while, about 10 years, but I guess a so-called Doctor here at the jail knows more than a specialist. 

#2 The mail here is a joke, too. My lawyer sent me a legal mail from the fourth floor and I was on the third floor and it took me 10 days to get it. I sent a letter out to a friend of mine two miles up the street. It has been 24 days ago and he still has not got the letter, why you ask, so do I. I talked to one of the jailers in here and he told me he put a letter in inhouse mail from the third floor to the fifth floor and it took eight days to get there.

#3 I have been here for about three and a half weeks and I have lost at least 10 lbs because they feed you so little a one year old baby could eat and would still be crying for more. It is a shame how little they feed a grown-ass man.

#4 I would like to know why they keep us locked down 20 hrs a day. We are in a cell (block) with about sixty people in it and they let 30 people out for 4 hrs a day to take a shower, use the phone, order canteen and watch t.v. which you cannot even hear. How do they expect 30 people to do all that in 4 hours.

#5 They have it so cold in here that you are about to freeze all the time and they give you a blanket that when you fold it in half you can still read a book through it. My mattress is as thin as a sheet of paper and they have better ones, I have seen them and I have asked for one, but they will not give you one. It’s like they are trying to make your stay here a living hell and most of them talk to you like you are a dog or something.

So something needs to be done about the conditions in here. There is no need to live like this. Nobody deserves that.                                                                            B. L.

Your brother in “Christ”