My name is George. I'm a prisoner at State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. I'm very interested in the welfare of prisoners and in the decent operation of Pennsylvania's prisons. Like others, I've written a number of articles for this Web site. I've also offered it whatever other little assistance I could provide.
Sometime during the end of 1996 officials at SCI-Huntingdon discovered that this site exists. They really didn't like what it said. I mean, they really, really didn't like what it said!
For some reason they suspected that I was involved with the site. Perhaps one of their dozens of snitches told them. The officials started reading my mail. They discovered that I was contributing writings and other assistance to this site. They didn't like what I was saying.
In February of 1997 the officials threw me into the hole and wrote me up. They were very angry that I'd written unflattering things about the Department of Corrections and its employees. In particular, they were furious about the article "A Diet Of Prisoner." They accused me of writing the article and they claimed that it applied to a guard working at Huntingdon. The article itself doesn't identify the guard it's talking about. It doesn't identify the prison or even the state in which the incident may have occurred.
While I've written a number of items, I didn't happen to write "A Diet of Prisoner." It was actually written jointly by a civilian woman and an inmate from information supplied to them by a prisoner other than me. The article itself states that the writer doesn't know for certain, from firsthand information, that the guard has had illegal homosexual contact with prisoners. It's simply a humorous account of gay hanky-panky.
The article doesn't identify me as it's author. Like most of us, the authors used a pen name. For hundreds of years writers have relied on pen names to help to protect them from some of the retaliations of unjust governments. For myself, I use whatever name comes to my mind at the moment. Being a prisoner is dangerous enough without giving the vicious officials a name to focus upon.
Although neither I nor anyone on this Web site has ever identified the guard who was the subject of the "A Diet of Prisoner" article, the prison officials had no trouble identifying him. They had no qualm about putting his name in their write-up. Most of us writers make a practice of altering the names we use. That's true even for the guards we write about. Why make a thug famous?
The write-up charged me with "using abusive language to an employee," "harassment" and related violations. Since all the papers relating to this incident are now exhibits in a court case, they are part of the public record. Here is an electronic image of the three page write-up that a guard captain prepared against me. It's full of errors.
I can't vouch for the official's identification of the homosexual guard. I have no personal knowledge of what the guy may have done. I only know his reputation. I do notice, however, that the write-up doesn't say that the article is untrue. It just says that the officials didn't like the article being published.
As a matter of fact, at no time during the months since I was thrown into the hole, have the officials denied the factuality of the article. Officials have simply tried to cover it up. That's particularly troubling because it's a crime for a guard to have sexual relations with a prisoner. The officials are, in effect, covering up a crime if the story is true. Instead of investigating or punishing the guard, they punished me.
After all this trouble started, the state authorities were asked to investigate the allegations made in the article. The authorities were supplied with names of prison staff members who may have evidence supporting the allegations. In addition, the names of two prisoners who may have been the victims of the guard's sexual advances are available.
Whatever may have been discovered, it's been kept quiet.
I appealed my punishment. I claimed that the First Amendment gave me a right to free speech and that since this site is not available to anyone in prison, nothing that is published on this site could jeopardize prison security.
Prison officials habitually justify their abuses by pretending that there is a "security concern." That way they can get everyone, even the courts, to allow them to commit almost any atrocity. The only security that prison officials really care about is their job security. The rest is a cover-up to allow them to do harm. The kinds of people who work in "corrections" have very special and peculiar personalities.
I also filed a federal lawsuit. It cost me $150 to file it. In addition, I had the huge costs of making photocopies and doing mailings. I claimed that my Constitutional rights of speech, press and petition had been violated. I quoted the cases that are supposed to assure that a citizen gets "justice."
With the lawsuit as a bit of protection and leverage, the Department of Corrections, under the influence of their counsel, an experienced and able Deputy Attorney General named Francis Filipi, decided to reverse my misconduct convictions. After I'd spent 98 days in the horrible hole at Huntingdon, I was released back into the prison population. Central Office of the DOC decided that I have a few First Amendment rights. They exonerated me of all but one of the charges against me. They ruled that I broke the rules by "actively engaging in a business." I had tried to recruit some support for this site in behalf of the site's manager.
Actually, the site is not a "Business." It's a nonprofit corporation. Up to this time all the work on the site has been done by voluntaries. No one has gotten any form of material benefit or payment. The substantial operating expenses of the site have been contributed by interested persons.
Even though no "business" was really involved, DOC figured I was responsible for the creation and operation of the site. I can't claim credit of this site. That belongs to others. I do claim a bit of credit for trying to help.
Prison officials allow me to help organizations which aren't critical of them. I'm allowed to contribute help to the Jaycees, the Salvation Army and other groups. I'm just not supposed to help groups which dare to be critical of the prison system or the very special kinds of people who become prison guards.
Since most of my misconduct convictions were reversed and because the lawsuit was pending, Huntingdon prison officials felt compelled to undo some of the injury that they had caused me. I was given back my custody status. I was also returned to the so-called "honor block" where I'd been housed. The officials weren't happy about it, but they restored most of the trivial "advantages" that I'd enjoyed before the bogus write-up.
Now, remember, the guard who was supposedly the subject of the "A Diet of Prisoner" article, works at SCI-Huntingdon, or at least the officials say he does. For the sake of reference, I'll call this guy "S." Actually, most prisoners refer to him as "Mom." To me he's always seemed to be efficient for a bureaucrat, but catty. He seems to be very high-strung and chain smokes while drumming with a pencil on the desk and downing amazing quantities of coffee. He has a group of inmates who hang around him. They seem to be his pets and get special privileges. I've noticed that he appears to show special interest in the younger, more physical men, especially Hispanics.
As it happens, I was assigned to the cell block where "S" was the sergeant in charge. He was not happy that I was there. I've never had angry words with "S" that I can recall. I certainly have nothing personal against him. He's just a guard and would not warrant any particular notice had he not escalated the matter.
I obeyed all the rules and endured all the abuses, but after I'd been on the cell block for a couple of months I was subjected to a new round of punishments. In the meantime, my lawsuit had gone up before a very old federal judge. The poor old fellow didn't seem to understand exactly what the suit was about. He may not have been able to grasp the issues or the law. No doubt, it would have been wiser for him to have retired while he still possessed his mental faculties.
The judge seems to have understood that I was a prisoner and that I was challenging the prison. That can't be good! He ruled against me. Much of his "reasoning" is charmingly arcane. His ignorance of the facts is a legal marvel. Obviously, I had to appeal. That cost another $105.
I'm a prisoner who's paid about $15 a month. Begging the courts to enforce my right of free speech cost me a year and a half of my "wages" every penny I earned in a year and a half! That's called "justice" by the system. I call it exploitation.
"S" works under the supervision of a bureaucrat called a "unit manager." During the past ten years or so, the prison bureaucracy has exploded. Hundreds of new jobs have been invented. The Department has become progressively more swollen and top-heavy. Millions of dollars in salaries are being paid to people who are not needed and who are of no real benefit to the public or even to the system. Prisons have become a "make-work" project pouring tax money from the cities into rural areas as a kind of welfare for people who can't make it without exploiting an under-class.
One of those useless, invented jobs is "unit manager." These people are grossly over-paid middle management. They don't do much. What they do do, used to be done for half the price by sergeants and guards. These are the petty executives who are ambitious and hope to move up the command chain to ever bigger tax-supported pay checks. They lust for the great power and arrogance of prison bosses.
The unit manager that "S" works for is nothing special. He may have a little fouler mouth than some others. He might degrade and ridicule the prisoners a little more than some others do, but, by and large, he's just a guy trying to increase his power, prestige and pay (the three P's of corrections).
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