In many prisons, especially the newer ones such as SCI-Houtzdale and SCI-Smithfield, the prison executives are as vindictive as the guards. In most prisons, the captains and deputies and superintendents rely on torment and harassment to retaliate against prisoners. 

One popular ploy is the urine testing gambit.

Urine testing for the use of illegal drugs is a mania in some prisons. The urine is collected by ordinary guards, not by trained and certified technicians as required by state law. In practice, it is VERY easy for a guard (either on his own or at the direction of some superior like a vindictive security captain) to tamper with the specimen to insure that it comes back "hot." A positive urine test results in months in the prison hole and then a protracted series or repeat tests. 

Drug use is very common among the guards, almost as common as alcoholism. Many guards have immediate access to almost any form of drug-of-abuse. They simply add some to a urine specimen and send it on its way. In at least one case, the guard who tampered with the urine was not too bright. He dumped enough dope into the specimen that when it was tested the laboratory realized the sample was bogus because the supposed user would have been long dead! 

It's easy for a prison official to arrange for a pattern of urine tests purely as harassment to stress a prisoner. It's an effective form of torment especially for older prisoners and/or those who are close to seeking parole. I was subjected to a series of retaliatory urine tests simply because my wife joined a guard lieutenant to a suit. 

Even better than urine tests are cell/property searches. Prisoners have very little. What they do have, they value and protect. In addition, especially for the growing army of old prisoners, prison is a dangerous and stressful place. They retreat into their cells as a kind of bleak haven. 

Of course, prisons and prisoners are searched all the time. It's an acceptable prison routine. In Pennsylvania, on average, a prisoner might be subjected to a random search of his cell and property twice a year. It's very disruptive and invasive, but if it occurs only every 5 or 6 months, it's tolerable. 

Where searches are used as a punishment they are rape-like and they are used the way a rapist uses his crime to abuse and debase his victim. 

In some cases, prison officials will subject a prisoner to searches every week or even more often. The intrusion of the team of guards (they always work in two or threes) is designed to destroy any sense of security or haven that a prisoner may have in his "hut." The guards strip the man naked and humiliate him in a way that a rapist might do. 

The guards then ravage the man's pathetic, but prized personal property. They force the man to watch as they ransack and pillage, trashing his cell and heaping his property into a tangled heap with the belongings of his cell-partner. 

No sooner does the victim recover and get his possessions back into order (the cells are tiny and order is essential to sanity and survival) than there are the guards again; ripping and wrecking. A few months of that kind of harassment and the stress is overwhelming -- an "acceptable" form of torment! 

Imagine for yourself, how would you react to a team of cops raiding your bedroom and "dumping" it every few days? More to the point, what is the mentality of the officials who resort to these torments? You pay them to do it. Why?