In Smithfield Township, Pennsylvania, toilet paper was a relatively recent development. Local folk didn't know if it should be trusted. In the prison it was viewed with serious suspicion. If a prisoner felt that he absolutely must have a roll of the luxury, he must first turn-in the core from his expended roll. Otherwise he might end up with 2 rolls!

The troll was mightily miffed when I thought he was joking. He assured me that when SCI-Huntingdon had been searched earlier the same week, at an expense of about $2,000,000.00 the CERTs had ferreted out no fewer than 100 rolls of unauthorized toilet paper with a value in exess of $70.

This exemplifies a bit about the difference between the two prisons. Even though they are within sight of one another, SCI-Huntingdon is a factor of crime. SCI-Smithfield is a tutorial of crime. At Smithfield the prisoners educate one another, broadening their criminal abilities and knowledge. At Huntingdon, crime is actually instilled.

SCI-Huntingdon was built in stages starting about 1889. It was designed as punishment for children who dared to be poor, immigrant, black or nonconformist. Even in those days, Pennsylvania was a racist, extremist place. In the 1950s men were put into the prison and it now houses over 2000 prisoners and about 500 staff.

When I was rushed out of the prison in 1998, it was comprised of a maze of helter-skelter buildings thrown up over a hundred and ten years. Besides the seven cellblocks in which the men were housed, there were a variety of other buildings, sweatshops, offices and so-forth. Most of the buildings interconnected.

One of the shops make a kind of old-fashioned soap and scouring powder. Another of the shops printed up license-plate stickers and booklets for the likes of the state cops. So-called "Correctional Industries" ("CI") used 19th century technology to manufacture prisoner uniforms.

That was the coveted job in SCI-H because it paid up to 41¢ an hour plus a "bonus!" Other prisoners (such as me) were paid 19¢ an hour for cleaning-type jobs. In a month's time I might make $15!

The products manufactured at SCI-H are insignificant compared to its real outputs: hatred, resentment, hostility, and crime. Freddy's clowns work to instill in each prisoner a deep, violent resentment and anger at the society. The man who leaves Huntingdon goes out a far, far worse person than when he went in. Huntingdon has given him a cause: he craves to take revenge on the citizens who did it to him.

When a citizen is wronged, say I swipe your Buick, the citizen wants revenge. He wants me punished. If I'm guilty (and about 6 out of 7 men are actually guilty), I likely feel that I deserve some punishment. If I go to Smithfield or another joint like that, I share my criminal skills and thoughts with the other prisoners. We school one another.

If, on the other hand, I go to SCI-Huntingdon, I do a lot more than school my fellow prisoners. I react to the cruelty of the place. When I come out, I'm not just a smarter, more able criminal, I'm also so full of hatred that my desire is not just to help myself, but to hurt the society.

SCI-Huntingdon with its comedy team of Frank and Myers, et al., actually manufacture cirme. They package it into the souls of each of their victims. When the ex-con gets out, he strikes out at the society which victimized him.

When I left SCI-H, a staff member called a "kitchen steward" was forcing his sexual attentions on an older prisoner in a grungy supply room. It wasn't unusual, but it instilled resentment especially with us "straight" men who can't even hold our wives.

There was a lot of Payton Place about Freddy's private dungeon. Mostly, it involved the rustics on the staff. One old broad seems to have given-out to virtually every guard on the force - more power to her! What was disturbing was the homosexual obsessions and games of many of the male guards. Certainly, their sexuality is their private privilege, but many of them brought the goosing, catcalling and chiding to the job. It was common for one guard to be another's "bitch" or "honey."

A guard named Blooms bitterly criticzed me because I'd been convicted of seducing my 14 year-old student. But with my own eyes, I watched him tickle a prisoner's rump and call him "my whore!" A female named Owen treated me even worse, but I witnessed her come into the visiting room and pet and rub on the guard on duty.

I don't begrudge the guards their little pleasures; Blooms is ridiculous and Owen is so long past her prime that not even the make-up helps much. Let them get what they can get. What I resent is that they are part of the Huntingdon system which made me hate the whole society. And these two shouldn't really be singled out. There are dozens more.

The staff is heavy with criminals and drunks, shoplifters, wife-beaters and social misfits. In another piece I must write about a guard lieutenant named Raymond Krider. He started out in the federal prison at Lewisburg where he was called "Shithouse Shorty" becuase of his foundness for toilets. At Huntingdon he deteriorated into a hilarious example of the Napoleon-Complex. His is a cute story and he's played a significant role in investing Huntingdon men with hatred and resentment.

THe prison itself contributed to the negative effect on the prisoners. The cells were tiny and cramped. The whole prison was ghetto filthy, old crumbling and dank; something from a bad 1930s movie.

The majority of the men were penned inside the brick walls. Cellblocks A, B, C and D radiated like tentacles from "The Center." As the state tossed more and more of its citizens into prison other cellblocks had to be built. Passages were cut through the walls and two so-called "honor" blocks, E and F, were erected in a fenced area. Then, in the early 1990s a new hole, "G-Block," was erected outside the other end of the prison.

Of course, there is no privacy any place in the prison. In E and F blocks, the cells face one another. Each man has the occupants of the 15 cells opposite him looking at his toilet. It's unnecessary and it makes a man resentful.

My purpose in this series has been to expose something about the nature of SCI-Huntingdon. It should be closed. More than that, I wanted to explain how prison officials such as Frederick Frank, Clinton Myers and their minions retaliate against priosners (in this case, me) for exercising legitimate constitutional rights.

Even a prisoner is allowed to petition the government and the courts to redress evils being done to him. There was a time when the federal courts actually cared about constitutional rights, but no more. There was a time when the Commonwealth Court, the supposed watchdog of the state government cared about rights and laws, but no more. Pennsylvania is sinking into a police state and SCI-Huntingdon is the camp where men are being honed for hatred.

End Of The Series