So i arrived at Thomson with a hopeful outlook because i had re-earned the to be at a low security prison after getting sent to a medium for three years during the covid scare. the units looked nothing like any of the other facilities a had been at and i found out this place was originally a built for a state prison. but it had sliding doors that i could open and shut which was a real blessing because the usual lows have open bay cubicles. most of the inmates in my unit i already knew from Pekin as we had been redesignated here instead of the low security prisons we had applied to go to. one range in my building was opened the day we got there so everything was up for grabs. i personally claimed a t.v. for my native brothers and started holding it down eveyday by sitting in front of it every chance i got until somemore natives came and took up the cause. some people might see that as a form of istitutionalization but i did it for the future inmates who would benifit of having a t.v. they could change the channel without asking for permission from another race or demographic group.
At my arrival and orientation meeting the warden told us this was going to be his pet project prison and said this was going to be the prisoners prison where we could do time without worry and have fun programming. he said that we had earned the right to be at the low and as such we deserved to be treated as low security inmates by being looked at as not threatening inmates and if any staff violated this agreement to us to report their actions directly to him through e-mail. unfortunately this didnt sit well with the officers who were currently working at the facility. they were members of a prison guard gang who called themselves BLACK SHIRT MAFIA.
So when the yard opened up and the inmates started exploring what this place had to offer like recreation we were immediately met with resistance to having a good time. one inmate applied for a job at rec. and the officer denied him because he was a sex offender and a transexual. not only that but he said things degrading to his life style and circumstances in prison. he did this to other inmates as well staing he didnt want no baby fuckers working for him. he was wrote up and fired. the other officers protested and supported him by wearing name tags bearing his name on their shirts. then other incendents started happening and i began to see the ugly underbelly of this place.
then a person had this place looked up from when it was a SMU program and learned the ugly truth. the officers here had been torturing and murdering inmates with no repercussions. they murdered five inmates and had been doing things to inmates that could be seen as cruel and unusual punishment. one inmates claims to have been four posted in a dry room for several days and left without food, water, or bathroom use. he had to mess himself and starve with out relief all because he wrote an officer up with a administrative remedy. the chaplain would deny the basic religious things to various religious groups if they were not Christian.
the officers would constantly go out of their way to aggravate us new inmates and when won questioned them they would surround him with four or five other guards and intimidate him as if he were a legitimate threat. they would search our rooms and not only trash them without reason or provocation but confiscate items we had brought form other prisonshat could not be replaced. when we started writingthem up and the warden started holding them accountable they vandalized his property on the outside of the prison. and then lobbied through the union to get rid of him. once they did so we recieved a new warden who was from a USP and things got worse for us inmates. the guards were off the leash. the persecution increased and many inmates were taken to the SHU for no reason.
then the gang members amongst the inmates made a stupid decision. after the guards got rid of the warden we had when we first got here we started to lose certain things we had taken advantage of such as a unti recreation pad connected to our unit. it was open from 5:30 am to 11:00 pm. but now with the warden gone we would not be able to use it after 3:30 pm nor would we have our usual late night day room which ran from 10:00 pm to 11:45 pm. this was only temporary and would resume when the institution recieved a new warden to approve it. but the gangs decided to hold a food strike in a vain attempt to get them back before they were even taken from us. to me that was the dumbest thing they could have decided on. being locked up in more structured prisons where the inmates are united this would have never happened the way it did.
first off i personally didnt know what the food strike was all about showing that the gang members made this decision independant of the rest of the population negating our show of unity. second, our units store day was the very next day as well as other units that had not gone to store to prepare for the insuing lockdown that follows a unified food strike. third, it was done on chicken patty day whichis one of the best meals of the week, usually food strikes are done on days when nobody would go to chow anyways like fish day. fourth, for those who did know what was going on when i asked five different people the reason i got five different answers. and fifth, nobody tried any administrative rememdies first.
we went on lockdown and got fed peanut butter and bologna sandwhiches for a week. some continued to refuse to eat but when i saw on the first day more than twenty people take a bag lunch i knew that this was not a food strike any one really believed in. when it was over we lost the rec pad completely, lost late night completely, the whole yard got put on commissary restriction for a month, and they started feeding us like crap in the chow hall. no only that but the cops started to harrass us for no reason. they did a institution shake down and took stuff from us we were allowed tohave forcing us to re purchase them on commissary. this place started to go down hill form there.
when we finally did get a new warden he came from the west coast from a California low security prison that was ran like a USP with high security attitude. he brought the same attitude to this place. the BLACK SHIRT MAFIA had free reign to pursecute us even more with no repercussions.
i was trying to ignore all this and continue programming utilizing the FSA assignements given to me. i never had to sign up for the programs offered and i was placed automatically in them by my counselor. Back in Pekin i had the fortunate oppertunity to see Micheal Santos in person give a speach about using the FSA programs not only to build a good paper trail for the case managers and couselors to see that i was doing the right things but also to benifit myself on a personal level of achievement. listening to him speak was as if i had finally found someone who believed as i did about useing what prison has to offer to make yourself a better person by using the programs that they offered. it might not seem like much at first but if you can look at the bigger picture about actively pursuing a higher education and deeper level of understaning in getting more skills to have a better chance to staying out of prison. i took it to heart that he could do it and so can i. i stayed in classes and have a plan to complete all of the ones they put me in not just to look good on paper or have agood record but to prove to myself that at least i believe these classes can help me in the long run.
all through this i was battling a drug addiction and really wanted to quit but some how i couldnt shake it until we got a the new warden we have now. one of the first things our new warden did was put us on a lockdown for a month with a fabricated story that there was a gun on the compound so that each unit could be shaken down without impunity. they called it a shake down strike team and they came through taking anything and everything even food we bought from commissary and tablets that had our name on them when you turned the screen on. they took a watch i had since 2009 as well as my art supplies and my cellmates kufis which he has for religious purposes. he recently got htem back but i have yet to recieve any of the things that were taken from me. but the whole month we were on lock down gave me a chance to detox and straighten my head out. after we came off the lockdown i started working out and doing tai chi to re-balance my life and soul. i lost a lot of weight as everyone else did because they were not feeding us any hot meals and even left some of the things out of the bag that we usually get at other prisons and out calorie count was way down.
for breakfast we were getting two packs of powdered milk and a small bag of oat bran cereal and a small apple. for lunch and dinner we recieved one slice of bologna, one pack of peanut butter with one small apple and four pieces of bread. this we were given for 30 days until the last week when they finally gave us one hot meal a day. so although we were nalnourished i took it with a grain of salt that i finally lost some extra weight. since then our meals at lunch have not improved much and they constantly run out of milk at breakfast during the lunch meal.
the real reason we were put on lockdown, rumor has it, was so the officers here could recieve a bonus paycheck for hazard pay. the warden tried to extend the lockdown but could not justify it to the regional directors. when this place turned into a low security prison the officers pay was decrease. they were very disgruntled about this and constantly did strikes by not showing up to work leaving this place without staff to properly run the institution. many of them have quit or moved on to work at other prisons that give bigger checks for being on lockdown constantly. this is the reason they treated us as they did when we first got here to try to aggravate us into striking back at them so we could get put on lockdown. but it never worked because most of us are completely compliant to the rules and regulations of the institution and only wish to program and go home with out any problems. the problems here stem from the officers own agenda to sabotage our good behavior. but i think now that they mostly have the staff here who remain are not trying to do that to us anymore. we still have a few bad ones that go out of their way to aggravate us but for the most part they leave us alone and let us go about our business as usual. we see how things go.
