I just did 10 straight years of this. No daylight is common if the facility is strapped for land to build outdoor areas, or is inside a city where looking in or out would be discouraged. The hand towels they give you for showering suck.

I tried suing over those, but even though there is a statute saying they must be bath towels, laws in the USA don't necessarily have to be followed. There are two types of laws, mandatory and directory. Directory laws are laws that are just "if you wanna" and don't carry any weight. A large majority of laws governing prisoner rights are these type of laws and there is no enforcement mechanism when they are broken. [ironically these laws specifically use the word "shall" in their wording, but in most jurisdictions "shall" is legally read as "may" in the USA]