By Jennifer Sullivan
The Seattle Times
SHELTON, Wash. — Each week, about 150 inmates arrive at the Washington Corrections Center for processing before they’re assigned a permanent home in the state prison system.
Most are destined to spend their first days in prison as “rugs,” the term used by inmates and corrections officers to describe offenders who have to sleep on the concrete floor of cells because of overcrowding. The newcomers bed down on thin rubber mats spread out between the cell’s toilet and sink — just feet from two occupied bunks.
Inmates don’t like having a third man squeezed into their cells; they complain about the heat generated by three people in a 6-foot-by-9-foot space.
“We don’t want any rugs in here. It’s crowded enough,” inmate William Rivers, a 34-year-old from Wenatchee, said recently from his cell at the Shelton prison.
Full story: Pressure building at jampacked state prisons