The incident referred to this grievance occurred in the visiting room at the Smithfield prison in Huntingdon County in Central Pennsylvania. It's noteworthy because both the visitor and the inmate submitted grievances. The prison Superintendent, Ben Varner, responded to be visitor's complaint by apologizing and writing "It is not the policy of the Department of Corrections to deny visitors the opportunity to speak to other inmates and their families." In sharp contrast the guard lieutenant, Tom Riskus, who brushed off the inmate's grievance rubber-stamped the guards misconduct and wrote that such conversations "we cannot allow." Our point is that the Inmate Grievance System is a complete phony! Text Of The Grievance During a visit with my wife on the morning of Thursday, 11 July, a friend of my wife's1 approached us to say hello. While the elderly woman exchanged brief cordialities with my wife and me, the guard, David Crone,2 summoned me to the desk. He ordered me to tell the elderly woman that she could not talk to us because she was not my visitor. 1. There exists no rule barring one visitor from talking to another in a civil and cordial way.3 Indeed, it would seem to be useful and therapeutic especially for prisoners to practice their social and socialization skills.4 2. During the same afternoon, I witnessed, as I have during most visits, various visitors and prisoners greeting and briefly chatting with one another. Mr. Crone chose not to embarrass, reprimand or intrude upon any of them; only upon my wife and me.5 If a guard wants to tell a visitor something, he should do it himself. Mr. Crone should not be using me to enforce his whims. I didn't approach the woman, she approached us. It's not uncommon for a visitor or a prisoner to speak to someone else. In fact, we've had the Deputy, the Major, the Captain, the Administrative Assistant and other members of the staff do the same thing. None of them were my visitor. It was inappropriate for Mr. Crone to needlessly impose himself into our brief exchange. It was inappropriate for Mr. Crone to make an object of ridicule of me. It was inappropriate for Mr. Crone to order me to tell a visitor what she should do. That's his job. Footnotes 1 The friend was a visitor, the elderly mother of another prisoner who'd traveled 500 miles from West Virginia to see her son who, himself, is now in his fifties. 2 The guard is a ponderous man in his late forties with an formidable paunch and the habit of gnawing on his fingers while staring at visitors. The personal information we've discovered about him is enlightening. We hope to publish it in a future article. 3 The "official" visiting rules, "Directive 812," are meaningless. The overbearing visiting room guards intrude into visits and invent their own rules and standards. Their goal often appears to be to ruin visits and discourage visitors from returning. The one who is the subject of this grievance has a virtual obsession about fingers. 4 The prison system actually offers absurd "classes" which pretend to teach socialization skills after the prison system has spent years destroying them. 5 While the guard obviously harbors a personal antipathy for the prisoner, probably because of his association with this website, his inordinate attention to the visitor has other overtones.