The human rights violations here are unbelievable. And while the place has begun to clean up its act since the local media coverage, it has not done enough and it’s obviously only trying to cover its ass until the heat dies down.
In November, I was assaulted by two staff members due to my classification here (I am charged with a sex offense). I was verbally and physically assaulted and tossed in the special housing unit. Only after the fact was I given a fake report, claiming that I had assaulted a staff member who has a history of claiming inmates assaulted HIM. Fortunately, due to pressure from outside sources, I was allowed back onto the yard.
I’m not the first inmate here to be assaulted by staff in a shady way. We’ve had inmates in the SHU sat for six to nine months without charges because the staff just wasn’t doing their jobs correctly. And ironically, right after the local media coverage, they began to close dozens of open investigations and let people out of the SHU who should have been released in the summer of last year. That only goes to show that the staff here were using a full SHU as an excuse to keep the yard locked down so they could keep us locked in our cells for all but three hours a week, bring us small-portioned meals and keep us from using the phones and computers as much as possible while they go out of their way to create events that lead to the SHU being filled up with inmates.
I know of an inmate who was supposed to go to the SHU, but because it was full, he was placed back in the unit where he had suffered a mental breakdown while on drugs and attacked his celly. He was then housed with an inmate who not only wasn’t in the same car as him, but was not on disciplinary hold and thus was forced to be on 24/7 lockdown. Placing a SHU inmate in a cell with someone from general population is the same as placing a low-security inmate in the same cell as a maximum-security inmate. So, what happened next was sort of predictable. The inmate waiting to go to the SHU was also a sex offender known for hearing voices and talking to himself. He then attacked his general-population cells.
The result: The inmate who he attacked was given a shot for fighting, sent to the SHU for a month, forced to lose two months of good time and given extra points. All because the staff at this prison broke BOP protocol and housed two inmates together who should never have been cellmates at all. The actions of this place are going to lead to the death of an inmate one day.
After sending out mail about my plans to contact legal counsel about what’s been happening here, I was questioned by staff.
I’ve also had two letters I tried to mail to my people go suspiciously undelivered. My legal mail has been opened as well; I only received photo copies, which is against BOP policy. And for the last three weeks, staff has been reviewing emails and phone calls way more actively to find out who is in contact with people outside of the compound. We’ve even been politely warned about adding or contacting your email about this stuff. They also have been calling people down to the lieutenant’s office regularly to question the “usual suspects” who are known for their “social justice views.”