The Toilet Paper Limit

I know Hutchinson, Kansas is not exactly the hotbed of daily news. The weather may often be the most important conversation of the day in the farm town, but what its CBS affiliate reported on Friday was just absurd. According to the channel’s website, the Hutchinson prison is cutting back on the amount of toilet paper each prisoner will receive. It has cut the total amount to four rolls per month.

Four Rolls per Month! That is inhumane. Someone needs to take this to court on the basis of cruel and unusual punishment.

The prisoners use the toilet paper for a variety of things including the usual, plus what the free would normally use paper towels for, so light cleaning of spills and picking up dust. The news station surmised that this decrease in toilet paper may force the prisoners to use the paper like cigarettes, as currency.

What would this look like? Will it matter if its double-ply as opposed to single-ply? What’s the exchange rate for toilet paper to cigarettes? More importantly, what would happen if a prisoner became broke, and no longer had any toilet paper?

This is actually a worry. How can a prison enforce this policy, unless the prison is willing to allow prisoners to go dirty until the end of the month? Let’s just hope that that is not the case, or else the prisoner would have an argument for cruel and unusual punishment. Plus, the Hutchinson station would have a reason to put the amount of toilet paper prisoners use as news.