In Pennsylvania's 25 prisons there are hundreds of published rules¹ and perhaps thousands of unpublished rules² invented by almost every member of the self-important prison staff. There are essentially no benefits or rewards. The function of prison in Pennsylvania is to harm the prisoners, not to help the society. The object is to make men worse when they are released.

When a prisoner violates any of this maze of rules, as he is bound to do, he is, of course, punished. Pennsylvania likes to punish its citizens. In writing, the procedures³ for dealing with misconducts sound rational, but let me use an actual case as an example of the real workings of the system.

Two buffoons from the prison search squads⁴ burst into the tiny cell⁵ occupied by two young black prisoners.⁶ The guards started off by questioning the prisoners. The guards demanded to know if there was any "contraband"⁷ in their cell. Of course, a guard can, and often does, call anything he wants "contraband" and the young prisoners were too trusting. They failed to remain silent.⁸ One of them told their questioner that there was none in the cell. That was mistake number one.

The guards then dumped the few personal possessions in the cell treasured by the prisoners. One guard found the prisoner's broken "Walkman" tape player. The prisoner explained that he had a new tape player on the way. He knew that he would have to forfeit, that is turn in to the prison administration, the Walkman that he already owned. He didn't want the administration to use his old tape player to payoff a snitch.⁹ For that reason, he had destroyed his own property.

Gleefully happy, the guards wrote-up the man, that is, they accused him of misconduct. Well, to be accurate, in this actual case, the prisoner was charged with 4 misconducts:

Since all these charges were piled into a single report, the man faced only 90 days in the hole. Individually, the charges carried: 60 days in the hole (for "contraband"), 30 days in the hole (for breaking his Walkman), 15 days in the hole (for "lying") and another 15 days in the hole (for not confessing); aggregating up to 120 days in the hole for a broken Walkman!

This is a real case of which I have personal knowledge. It is far from unusual. For breaking his own tape player, the prisoner faced three months in the hole and the loss of his parole because the Parole Board won't release a man who's committed a misconduct.

Here is how the system is supposed to operate after the guard issues the misconduct report. In reality this is a typical bureaucratic rubber-stamp procedure, that it's interesting, all the same. Supposedly the misconduct report, the "write-up," is supposed to be specific, making an exact charge on exact facts. Such legal niceties are seldom observed.

Take another real-life case, a man charged with possession of "contraband" because he possessed one of those little plastic adapters which allows rabbit-ears to be plugged into the cable jack on the expensive little television sets that prisoners are allowed to buy. It was decided that the adapter didn't fit into the above definitions of "Contraband." Not to worry, the prisoner was found guilty all the same because the adapter had been "altered!"

After he gets his copy of the misconduct report, the prisoner has 24 hours to prepare a defense, as if it mattered. Sometimes he's allowed to designate some other prisoner to help him at his "hearing." The prisoner is allowed to ask for up to 3 defense witnesses. Generally speaking, however, if he asks for other prisoners as witnesses, they are disallowed. It's all window dressing anyhow.

Then there's the "hearing." The Department of Corrections ("DOC") employs a pool of bureaucrats to "hear" and rule on misconduct charges. In other agencies these employees are usually educated, tested, reasonable and fairly knowledgeable. In those agencies they are called administrative law judges.

A DOC hearing examiner ("HE") bears no resemblance to an administrative law judge!

Lets use a purely fictitious example. We'll call this imaginary HE "Chunky Mitchell." Lets pretend that, like most of the HEs, skunky Chunky was a prison guard before slithering into this much better paying job. Pretend that he was a guard at SCI-Camp Hill¹² during the time of the "riot." Pretend further that he'd been such a bastard of a guard that the prisoners used the excuse of the "riot" to attack Chunky and repeatedly violate his rectum with an assortment of articles from penis to a carpenter's router running on high.

Like almost all hearing examiners, Chunky was a guard and hates prisoners. His duty will be to impartially hear the charges made by a guard against the prisoner and to fairly render a decision. Yeah, right!

The prisoner appears for his "hearing." He's handcuffed, belted or chained and sometimes shackled. HEs are terrified that after they screw some prisoner, the man might be a tad miffed and elect to remodel the hearing examiner's smug mug.

The HE reads the misconduct report and asks if the prisoner has anything to say before he's thrown into the hole. The prisoner is allowed to say a few words to try to explain or reason out of the charge. In those relatively rare situations where a witness has been allowed, the HE calls him and questions him. Of course, he leads the witness toward saying what he wants to hear. Most often, one or more guards or members of the staff are called in to "testi-lie¹³ as a means of strengthening especially flimsy accusations.

Nothing about any part of this procedure could be called "fair."

After this charade the hearing examiner imposes sentence. There is not even a provision for a prisoner to be found "not guilty." In extremely rare situations a charge may be "dismissed." The prisoner is still a guilty piece of shit, but the HE as has just kindly decided to let him off.

More often, when the misconduct report is so badly written up that not even the HE can use it as the bases for throwing the victim into the hole, the hearing examiner will "dismiss without prejudice." That means that the guard who made the charge gets another shot at doing it right.

Generally, for the sentence, a prisoner is tossed into the hole for 30 or 60 days. It can be 90 days and even more. Ben Porta was sentenced to something over 1200 days! A black man got only 30 days for saying "fuck." An older prisoner got 60 days for betting on a football game. You get the idea.

In addition to their stints in the bleak prison hole, convicted prisoners lose their prison jobs, lose the "programs" they need to be paroled, lose their prison pay of about 76 cents a day.

Besides time in the hole, prisoners are sometimes sentenced to "restrictions." That means they aren't allowed out of their cell. One can also be sentenced to loss of meals, visits, telephone "privilege" and so forth. 

Where prison authorities try to blacken prisoners by condemning them for their in-prison conduct, you should realize what's really going on. Should parole hinge on a broken Walkman, the word "fuck," or a bet on a foot ball game?

¹ Years ago Federal Judge Lord ordered that to be binding, prison rules had to be published and a copy given to each man individually. Sometimes the Department of Corrections ("DOC") actually obeys that order. More often DOC belies that it's above the law. 
²Under Pennsylvania law, 45 PaCS 501, et sq., ALL agency rules are supposed to be published and they may be promulgated only by the secretary of the department. The rules must be submitted to the legislature and to a non-partisan committee. DOC doesn't bother with any of that. 
³The procedures for prison misconducts are contained in DOC's Administrative Directive 801. Typically, the prison bends the rules to suit its own aims. If DOC ignores the law, why should it obey its own rules? By contrast, prisoners are required to adhere to all the rules and to many others which are changed on the whim of any guard. 
⁴The search teams comprise eight highly-paid guards who do nothing else all day long but ransack prisoners' tiny cells trying to ruin personal property and make the men miserable. 
⁵The cells are so small that each of the two men who share a cage has only about 13.5 square feet of unencumbered space. To put that into perspective, 13.5 square feet is a square area that's three feet, eight inches on a side, like the smallest closet in your home. The men must spend over 18 hours a day in that minuscule space and try to store all their personal and legal possessions in it 
⁶About 7 out of 10 prisoners are minorities, its the new slavery. 
⁷Under Pennsylvania state law, "contraband" means weapons, intoxicants, drugs and escape paraphernalia. However that's not the definition used by the DOC. To prison officials "contraband" is a VERY broad term. It's applied to everything  from an empty cracker box to a watch with an exhausted battery. On at least one occasion a prisoner's testicles were labeled contraband. While there's no actual definition of "contraband" in any DOC rule (they really make it us as they go), one rule refers to "any item not authorized for retention or receipt by an inmate." 
⁸In theory, a prisoner may remain silent, but if, as often happens, a guard orders him to answer, he will be punished for his silence. One of the many rules is 60 days in the hole for "refusing to obey an order." There is no requirement that the order be lawful, rational or direct. 
⁹Typically, the property, especially food, cigarettes and electronics, that guards seize from prisoners is used as bribes or payoffs. The snitch tells the guard that you have an "extra" radio. The guard seizes it. It is then given to the snitch to pay him off. 
¹⁰One would think that this sweeping rule could apply to drugs which the prisoner "possessed" in his blood stream such as insulin injected each morning into diabetics. 
¹¹It's amazing that a broken Walkman can be fit into even this broad list, but guards make such leaps everyday. 
¹²The State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill is just a short drive across the Susquehanna from Harrisburg. It's a huge sprawling concentration camp popularly called "Camp Hell." Adjacent to the prison are the executive offices for the DOC.
¹³Lying while testifying (or "testi-lying") is standard procedure among cops and guards. Most (but not all) will say whatever is required in order to get someone convicted.