While I am writing this article I sit in the Restrictive Housing Unit known as the Hole. I am looking out the window at a long row of cages that inmates are locked into one at a time. DOC calls it the Hole Yard, but in reality, they look like dog kennels. I had a rotten night's sleep upon a mat that felt paper thin and closely resembled something found in a vacant lot in an inner city ghetto that is littered with trash and old abandoned tires.

For some reason that eludes me, Prison administration keeps the lights on 24 hours a day, although they do become dimmer around 10:00 p.m., it still makes it difficult to sleep. Must be a security issue. Anything which psyhologically tortures the inmates usually has a security sticker on it somewhere.

My cell-mate Brian Cameron found case law in the library which states that having the cell light on 24 hours a day is by law unconstitutional. Again DOC must put somekind of security sticker on it that allows them to ignore this federal law.

      Lemaire v Mass 745 F. Supp 623 states: Practice of placing inmate in cells in which lights were on 24 hours a day, with resultant physical and psychological harm, constituted cruel and unusual punishment; though prison officials claimed that staff needed to see into cells, they offered no reason why cells could not have switches outside so staff could see into them only when necessary.

On July 14th, I was rushed out of SCI-Forest and sent to SCI-Mahanoy after filing several grievances, mostly concerning Native American Sacred Circle religious rights issues. I had been denied participation in these services for over four months. (See my articles Sister Three Hats part I and II). When I arrived here, it was right back to business as usual and the retaliatory tactics resumed.

DOC administration knowing I do not cell with black inmates (no, I am not a racist!) blatantly lied to me by stating they only had one cell open and that I would be housed in it for just two days. I would then be moved to another housing unit. SCI-Mahanoy administration stuck me in a cell with a fanatical Nation of Islam racist who believes that the white man is the blue-eyed devil and the cause of all the black man's ills. This man had more rules and regulations for being in that cell than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has for its entire inmate population.

I knew then and there that the administration had purposely and maliciously placed me in a set-up situation in hopes I would act out in a disruptive manner. Instead I filed a grievance. That grievance was denied on the first and second levels. They actually moved me 17 days after I entered that cell - a far cry from the two days they promised.

"Study without a liking for it, spoils the memory.
The mind retains nothing it takes in"
Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1500

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