Excerpted from a story by
By Mike Ward
American-Statesman Capitol Staff
Friday, October 22, 1999

In a show called "Pros & Cons," the cable network Court TV on Thursday evening aired allegations by ex-convict Viktoria Robertson that guards locked women in the portable detention cells for hours at a time in summer heat with no water and without allowing them to use the bathroom.

"You're in a cage, out in the wilderness like an animal," Robertson was quoted as saying in a press release publicizing the show.

It labeled the use of the cells "brutal and scandalous."

[A Texas prison official] said the "detention trailers," as the cells are officially known, have been used since the late 1980s at prisons across Texas to detain convicts who misbehave or refuse to work on so-called hoe squads -- convict crews that work in prison agricultural fields.

Roughly 4 feet by 4 feet by 10 feet in size, the cells look like large boxes of steel mesh mounted on a small trailer that usually is towed into the fields behind a tractor and parked near where the crew is working.

Most of the detention trailers are designed to hold two or three convicts, [the prison official] said.

While the mobile cells have been the subject of occasional convict complaints, he said their use is strictly regulated. Water and bathroom breaks must be given to the convicts held there, he said.

"We believe the detention trailer is an effective, efficient and humane method for handling of unruly inmates who become disruptive and fail to follow direction and thereby cause a disciplinary problem," he said.

The press release about the Court TV show portrays another scenario:

"When women are unable to keep up with the fast pace of the regimen, or simply drop from the heat, they are thrown into the cages, often remaining handcuffed in the heat for hours, with little or no water . . . In fear of more time in the cages, many women submit sexually to their oppressors and are raped, molested and forced to perform sodomy on their captors."