We Deserve the Same Clean Prison Water Dogs Get

MarQui Clardy explains how prison water is often overlooked in conversations about incarceration, yet its contamination and poor quality pose serious health risks to the people forced to drink it every day.

Clean water is perhaps the most fundamental thing to which all living beings should be entitled. Prison changed that. Prison has completely wiped from my mind the notion of a fundamental entitlement to anything clean. This environment is nasty. Almost every surface is covered in germs. There’s always mold in a crevice somewhere. It’s not uncommon to see ants in your cell, flies buzzing around in the chow hall, or the occasional rodent sneaking around at night. One prison I was housed in was infested with bedbugs. The water is usually very poor quality and sometimes brown. Some prisons are so old that if it rains hard enough, water drips in through the ceiling or floods into the cells on the bottom tier. That’s why MRSA, staph, and fungal infections are more prevalent in penal institutions than in any other environment.

The Dehumanizing Normalization of Filth

In time, we all learn to ignore these conditions and just live with them. That’s the dehumanizing aspect of prison: WAe literally become desensitized to this depravity and go about our days like it’s normal.

I could have continued pretending not to be bothered by this. Knowing the staff eat different food—and use different utensils—than the prisoners; that they always put on latex gloves before entering the unit (lest they touch something and catch “jailpox”); and that they only drink bottled water and wouldn’t dare drink from the prison tap. I could have continued ignoring what this all implies: None of these things are good enough for the staff, but they’re good enough for me.

That would be one thing. But last week, puppies were brought to the prison for our new Fetch! dog training program. The dog handlers were given Brita water filters for the pups, because the administration feels the tap water isn’t safe enough for them.

A Long History of Unsafe Prison Water

Unsafe water and prisons go back like pimps and jheri curls. The first prison I was sent to more than a decade ago was notorious for it. Warning signs were posted around the county that read: “DO NOT DRINK THE TAP WATER.” Everybody described it as “hard water” because of all the impurities in it and what it does to your skin. Bumps and rashes were common. Nobody else complained about it, so neither did I.

As I bounced around other prisons over the years, I noticed that most of them also had “hard water.” I never let it bother me, but I often wondered why that was. What is it about prisons that most of them have this tainted water? Is it rusty pipes? Is there bacteria in it? Do the people who live near the prison experience this same issue?

When the story about Flint, Michigan’s doo-doo brown water broke the news a few years ago, I thought, “Aha! So it’s NOT safe. I knew it!”

The prison I’m at now is the state’s first “community model” facility. Millions of dollars are being spent on renovations, fish farms, salad bars in the chow halls, pavilions in the rec yards with new workout equipment, dayroom TVs, etc. It’s being turned into a state-of-the-art prison—with the same nasty, brown water coming out of from the faucets. None of that money has gone toward fixing this issue. Staff members walk around sipping on bottles of Dasani spring water, all while assuring us that there’s nothing wrong with the tap water.

Before these puppies were brought to the prison, I hadn’t seen a water filter since before I was locked up. That was 17 years ago. The pup in my housing unit—an adorable little black lab—is as innocent and carefree as they come. But every time I see him scurrying around the pod, so much resentment comes over me, I feel like I deserve the Hater of the Year award. Like the staff, the tap water isn’t good enough for him, but it’s good enough for me. I can take being given second-class treatment behind other people. But to be given third-class treatment behind a dog?

Equal Access to Clean Water Is a Human Right

Should pups be allowed to drink clean, filtered water? Yes, they should. But so should I, and everybody else behind bars, because we are living beings as well. Of all the things we have to worry about in prison, clean water shouldn’t be one of them. I shouldn’t have to worry about what harm the water is possibly causing to my body—harm from which these puppies are being protected as they run about, blissfully unaware of their higher station. The clean water they receive is emblematic of one thing that separates them from us: They are free.

Want to read more? Check out The Gross Things Prisoners Do When The Water Is Shut Off

The post We Deserve the Same Clean Prison Water Dogs Get first appeared on Prison Writers.