The toilets here have no seats or covers to mask odors. Most are a stainless steel sink-toilet combo, meaning we clean ourselves near them. The State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon building where I’m detained opened in the 1890s and is the oldest of Pennsylvania’s 24 currently operational state prisons. All of the cells on each of its six cellblocks, A through F, are fronted by a wall of bars that allow the unrestricted flow of air in and out. Think jail cells of the Old West. Because of toilet lockouts, residents are inundated day and night by the stench of their cellmates’ and neighbors’ bowels. 

We plead to the foulest offenders: “Put some water on that shit!”

Here’s what I mean by toilet lockouts. At SCI Huntingdon, every time someone flushes the toilet twice within five minutes, it can’t be flushed again for an entire hour. The lockout mechanism is designed in part to prevent overflushing. 

Try as one might, toilets are periodically and unintentionally flushed twice within the five-minute window. Some folks are really bad judges of time. In a single-occupancy cell, this isn’t much of a problem. I suppose a person can stew in their own stink all they want. But when there are two people in that tiny space, things can get uncivilized. And to be forced to eat in a cell where a toilet is locked up with someone else’s bodily waste is simply inhumane.

Long gone are the days of a “courtesy flush,” when, after dropping a deuce, a person flushed the toilet during that initial release of gas. The best you can do now is put something in the air, like a homemade incense. I’m partial to a surgical mask with a touch of Icy Hot smeared on it for its wintergreen scent.

As previously reported by Jeffery Shockley for Prison Journalism Project, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said this measure is about saving money and conserving water. That may be true, but not without other consequences. For the incarcerated, the toilet lockout system has resulted in an all-day funk factory and health hazard.

When the DOC issued its COVID-19 protocols in May 2020, every prison in the state went on complete 24/7 lockdown. From then on, all three meals were brought to the blocks and we ate in our cells. This remained the practice even after every other pandemic-related restriction was lifted. Only in January did we start eating breakfast in the chow hall again. We still eat lunch and dinner in our cells.

I know I’m good for catching a case of food poisoning a time or three during the course of a year from the meals served here. The same can be said for many of my fellow prisoners. Chances are, if you and your cellie ate the same meal that made one of you sick, the other won’t be far behind in a race for the toilet.

During such a spewfest, especially when it’s coming out of both ends, one misjudged five-minute increment could be catastrophic. If you have to poop or vomit on top of someone else’s poop or vomit, how safe are you? 

An incarcerated person has no alternative to using the toilet in the cell he is housed in, and the staff surely won’t allow the use of their facilities. Now, there are community toilets in other parts of this facility for prisoner use that have unlimited flushing. There’s one each in the learning center, medical department and kitchen, and in each of the workshops. But they aren’t available to residents who aren’t authorized to be in those areas.

E and F blocks also don’t have locks on their toilets. (The E Block mentioned here is the same one that participated in Ashleigh Banfield’s popular NewsNation interview back in December 2024, when Luigi Mangione was here.) These two cellblocks are generally where prisoners get housed when they are “close to the door” — that is, about to go home. Apparently, unlimited flushes are another “privilege” on the only blocks with radiators in the cells their occupants can control in the winter, and windows they can open and close year-round.

Unfortunately, that’s simply not an option for everyone.

I can already hear a variation on the oft-heard quip: If a toilet with a five-minute lockout on it is so unfair, you shouldn’t have to go to prison. Which is no less than I’d expect from someone more interested in punishment — particularly the cruel and unusual kind — than rehabilitation. The fact that it isn’t in use in housing units of privilege is proof of this.

I understand completely the need to conserve water or to cut costs where possible, but there are more humane and sanitary ways to do either. One could be to consider a water conservation contest that rewards the blocks that use the least amount of water each month or quarter. Another could be to lower the volume of water per flush. Or better yet, simply incarcerate fewer people.