Published originally by the Prison Journalism Project.
Just a few days after my article about the federal Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to provide me and other prisoners with addiction treatment ran in a local paper near U.S. Penitentiary McCreary (Kentucky) three beefy corrections officers darkened my cell door. The article, which was originally co-published by Washington, D.C.-based City Paper and Prison Journalism Project, was the second time I had written about mistreatment inside USP McCreary, the federal prison where I’d been serving time.
Without explanation, those guards ordered me to put my hands behind my back and escorted me to McCreary’s special housing unit, where we’re held in isolation and locked down for 23 hours a day.
I waited with two other prisoners in separate outside cages for our new assignments. Each cage is made of chain-link fencing and is about the size and shape of a big dog kennel.
Confused and frustrated, I asked an officer why I was about to be placed in solitary confinement. I hadn’t broken any rules or been contacted by the BOP’s Special Investigative Services, which investigates complaints and incidents inside its facilities. The officer said that I was, in fact, the focus of an ongoing SIS investigation. But I wasn’t provided any other details.I haven’t been involved in anything nefarious in decades, and my security points are so low that I qualify to stay in a lower security institution. Still, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that I was being targeted for my inside reporting. My suspicions were grounded in reality. BOP has a documented history of retaliating against prisoners and whistleblowers who speak out against injustices inside its facilities.
A dirty business
The housing and management of our country’s approximately 156,000 federal prisoners is a dirty business. Many housing units, overcrowded and poorly ventilated, carry the assaultive odors of stinky armpits, stale coffee breath and literal shit marinating in unflushed toilet bowls. (Toilets in the special housing unit are on timers, so you can only flush twice every 30 minutes. Feces often sits in the toilets for several minutes or more, making the entire tier smell like an outhouse.)
Those sent to solitary confinement inside USP McCreary also run the risk of contracting a number of medical problems, such as staph infection, nail fungi and hepatitis C, due to the unsanitary conditions.
When I entered the special housing unit, I was given a small paper bag containing one book (usually a Western or Victorian romance novel), two thumb-size packets of toilet tissue (approximately 32 squares per packet — I counted), seven clear packets of Meridian all-in-one shave-shower-shampoo, and seven packets of “maximum security” anticavity gel toothpaste.
Both tissue packets combined are barely enough for one visit to the commode, and those seven tiny packets of soap are supposed to last a full-grown person an entire week. That broke down to one packet per day, which meant I had to decide whether I was going to wash my hands after I used the bathroom, wash them prior to eating (many prisoners housed in the unit eat with their fingers because the flimsy paper spoons we’re provided are worthless), or wash my body. I didn’t have enough soap to do more than one of those things per day.
We don’t get any deodorant, lotion, hair grease or access to other basic hygiene items in the special housing unit. And people held in the unit at USP McCreary are not allowed access to the commissary, where we could otherwise purchase those items.
Prisoners in the unit are not allowed to possess or purchase the wind-up radios for sale at the commissary. The only way to break up the monotony and idleness of being locked down 23 hours a day is with a book, a crossword or sudoku. God help the man in the special housing unit who can’t read.
In other BOP facilities, prisoners in solitary confinement are allowed to purchase radios, hygiene products and commissary food items such as trail mix, peanuts, cookies, candy bars or Cheez-Its. But not at USP McCreary.
Meanwhile, the windows are frosted over with white paint, obscuring any view of green grass, blue sky, sun or moon. We live under artificial lights, which flick on at 5 a.m. and flick off at 10 p.m.
Transfer to Misery Mountain
After 72 hours in solitary confinement, I finally got some answers.
An investigative services agent came to speak with me and said the investigation was finished. He was surprised when I told him that no one from SIS had come to talk with me, which is unusual. Typically, an agent will interview prisoners, guards and anyone else potentially involved in an investigation. I told him that I believed I was being targeted for my writing. Still, the agent wouldn’t tell me why I had been investigated — only that I was being transferred out of McCreary.
The BOP declined to answer questions from a City Paper editor about the specifics of the investigation or my transfer. Generally, people in BOP custody are designated and redesignated to different institutions based on their needs and the needs of a particular prison.
“The federal Bureau of Prisons is committed to ensuring the safety and security of the individuals in our custody, our employees, and the public,” BOP spokesperson Benjamin O’Cone said via email. “Allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated and appropriate action is taken if such allegations are proven true, including the possibility of referral for criminal prosecution when appropriate.”
I told the agent that I did not object to the transfer, but said I wanted to be sent to a low-security federal correctional institution, which has more opportunities for work and programming.
About a week later, I was woken up around 3:30 a.m., strip-searched, and placed in leg irons and handcuffs. Then I boarded a bus with about 40 other prisoners en route to an airport, where we were searched again before boarding the plane.
When we landed, I was strip-searched again, X-rayed and screened by medical and psychological professionals in Oklahoma City before being given a bedroll and assigned to a housing unit. Over the next 72 hours, we traveled by bus to the final destination, and it was only then that I learned I wasn’t being transferred to a FCI, as my security score would allow. I was instead headed to one of the most infamous and deadly facilities in the BOP: USP Hazelton in northeast West Virginia. The prison is known to the people who’ve lived here as “Misery Mountain,” a sinister nickname that the prison more than lives up to.
This is the second time in my 20 years of incarceration that I’ve been warehoused on Misery Mountain. In the 15 years since I left, the living conditions have deteriorated.
The facility is almost always in lockdown, meaning we are locked in our cells 23 hours per day, especially on the weekends and on federal holidays, due to staffing shortages. The issue is about to get much worse after President Donald Trump canceled retention bonuses for BOP staff (although the rumor is those will be restored) and the ability to bargain collectively was rescinded.
O’Cone, the BOP spokesperson, said wardens may put a facility on lockdown “to ensure good order and security.” Prisons typically remain in “modified operations” while officials investigate an incident, and the change is meant to be temporary, he said.
As a result of the near-constant lockdowns, visitation is often restricted to weekdays, when it’s harder for our families to travel and take off work.
I won’t stay silent
Many of these issues were identified in the D.C. Corrections Information Council’s most recent inspection report on USP Hazelton. The report, issued in October 2023, said staff physically and verbally abused people confined in the facility, including with racial slurs; 52 out of 90 people who responded to CIC’s survey said a guard made a racist remark toward them, and 20 reported being physically abused by staff. Many of them also said they were afraid guards would retaliate against them for speaking with CIC.
Recently, the prison administration has restricted our ability even in general population to control the lights in our cells. We’re told this measure is meant to stop the use of a light switch’s electrical components for powering electric ovens and makeshift grills some prisoners use to cook pizza, Hot Pockets and fried rice. Others use the electric current to distill a crisp and potent liquor that tastes like cider (we prisoners in the federal system call it “’shine” or “white lightning”).
But my concern is for safety. Imagine being locked in a pitch-black cell the size of a bathroom, and your cellmate has a stroke or seizure, or decides to try to harm himself. Without the ability to turn on the lights, it’s difficult to find his medication or assist him. Or if your cellmate has a history of mental health issues, and he has an episode late one night, you might want to leave the lights on for your own safety.
In my view, it’s only a matter of time before prisoners are either injured or meet their demise under the cloak of a dark cell here at USP Hazelton. According to a 2024 Department of Justice Inspector General report, 14 people died in USP Hazelton between fiscal years 2014 and 2021 — the second-highest number in the entire federal prison system.
The lights-out policy does nothing to advance rehabilitation or serve public safety and will harm prisoners’ mental and emotional health.
It wasn’t until I arrived at Hazelton that I was told why I had been transferred here. An SIS agent informed me that I had been accused of trying to incite violence against corrections officers. I told him the allegation is completely false, and repeated what I told the agent who spoke with me back at McCreary: No one interviewed me about this false accusation.
I also told the agent that I’ve had several jobs over the years — as a clerk in the commissary and a cook in the officers’ mess hall — positions that I would not be allowed to hold if I was involved in any kind of violence.
The transfer to this dangerous warehouse is, in my view, just another form of retaliation for reporting on the horrible conditions and mistreatment inside these federal facilities. But as I sit in this new cell, with familiar surroundings, I am only strengthened in my belief that I need to continue telling the truth.
