Sunday, May 5, and Monday, May 6th
By planning ahead, we can sign up for Sunday mornings in the library, arriving at 7:30 am and staying till 1, skipping the 9:30-11 count. My first time and a great way to have peace and quiet and get stuff done! Worked on the PC on my cellmates Enbanc appeal legal research for awhile, and Derek and I worked on the book as well.
Hit outside after for a workout and there was another band playing, this one not so good. But that’s alright, weather was nice, but windy, and fresh air felt good! Today was actually a day where things went to schedule and no drama, wow!
Monday was more of the same. Worked in unit till 9, outside for an hour. Library 12:30-3. This time more on the appeal of my cellie, and an hour spanish lesson. We switched teachers, much better! After dinner, outside for 90 minutes, had a great workout.
Interesting to see legal newsletters and how inmates react to them. There are several one can get weekly, all explain new rules on First Step or sentencing etc. One this week spoke about how BOP doesn’t follow the law on granting halfway/home confinement under the Second Chance Act in combination with the First Step Act. Second chance, passed in 2007 under President Bush, awards everyone one year home confinement/halfway house during last year of sentence, and BOP should start planning with 18 months left where to allocate a prisoner. First Step Act does an additional 2 years if the inmate earns the days-15/days /month while they are a good inmate. So technically that’s 3 years , or last 3 years of one’s sentence should not be in a cell. But due to BOP management issues, calculating issues, and shortage of half way house resources, inmates get stuck in prison generally until last 6 months. Hopefully that doesn’t happen to me! Well the guys misread the newsletter thinking it was 2 years off the sentence as opposed to more halfway/home confinement, and you should have seen that spread everywhere:) Since they see me writing all the time, they must think I know about this stuff, so one of them printed the newsletter and asked me to read it and explain, which of course I did. Oh well, we can only hope:)
Afterwards, finished another book, this one by James Patterson and Bill Clinton, called Presidents Missing. I’ve really come to like Patterson’s style of books, and fortunately, he has a lot of them:) I saw he has 375 million books in circulation on the cover- that’s crazy….. Fortunately, I found another Baldacci in the library, so looking forward to that one!
Tuesday, May 7th
Well, it’s been 35+ days since the head of Medical got my doctor’s letter and no response. That’s after I sent 3 cop-outs (like an email but in paper) requesting a meeting. So meeting with my counselor today to get his help, plus I’m starting an administrative escalation process and having my attorney write a letter requesting treatment per the BOP policy on medical. Nothing is easy that’s for sure. It’s interesting to me given all the press and investigations about poor medical treatment by BOP, how it just continues on and on. I’ve met our Warden, and I can tell he’s a competent guy, it must be all the people below who have no follow-through or accountability. I’ll be blogging about that someday, the accountability on a day-to-day basis is absolutely nonexistent.Zero, Nada:)
On most days now, my cellmate goes out to workout 8-9, and I do 9-10. At 8, the guard closes the cell door, and goes around doing a census, why I’m not sure? Can’t accomplish much as my cellie is out side and they don’t know where he is, but they know me. How does that help anything? Anyways my point is it gives me 30 -40 minutes of peace and quiet, so I use it to read Purpose Driven Life and my Bible. Really is peaceful and a nice time to read, pray and have quiet time.
Productive morning on email/writing and library after till 2 to come back and meet with my counselor on my medical. Well, that was a bust as he canceled office hours-uggh guess will try again Thursday. Hurry up and wait as they say in prison…
I’ve been stuck in a low/medium facility all because my sentence was one year too long to go directly to a camp. But my attorney emailed me today they will try and get a waiver based on both my medical needs as well as my low-risk score(zero:)) It is really ironic how the BOP works- on the one hand they are very short staffed which is their rationale for their issues like no response on my treatment and on the other hand they work so hard not to release people or lower their level of incarceration to free up staff time with less inmates. I just don’t get it.
Wednesday, May 8th
We have a week of 70-degree weather coming, and hopefully less wind. So trying to stick to my schedule of email/writing till 9, outside 9-10, shower/lunch, library 12:30-3, lockdown/dinner and outside 6-7:30. Library will be mainly helping my cellmate on his enbanc research. Derek is pursuing a legal tactic to get moved to the camp next door and is helping me with it as well. I’m trying everything possible to accomplish that!
Thursday, May 9th
Hoping to have my counselor session finally at 2, so doing library 7:30-10, and workout 12-2, so switching things up a bit.
Before I had my counselor session at 2 pm, I was called down to the lieutenants office at 8 am from the library where I was. They had been monitoring my email and felt I had violated the BOP email policy. If this ends up being true, then I could lose privileges like email and commissary plus risk going to solitary. Nice way to start the day.
Meeting with counselor went well. He recommended I start the administrative process for my medical letter as that’s the way things get done. Plus he offered to go to Medical and have them ship my hearing aids to the factory since they sat on everything so long.
To end the day the Lieutenant’s office called me at 6 pm to come down for a drug test. Kind of feel like going to the principals office each time, but with much harsher potential consequences:) Not to be paranoid, but I’m wondering if this one Lieutenant has it in for me. Guess time will tell.
Friday, May 10th
Started working on my response to the incident report, treating it like a formal response in case I need to appeal which I would for something so small and not in any policy statement(asking a family member to share an email with another family member). It’s so hard to not be angry right now, have to admit. Would love to ask the head of BOP, Colette Peter’s how such an allegation is even a thing, let alone consistent with the BOP mission and values she espouses. Guess I’ll find out how far down her mission/values have filtered by now next week! I could go on venting but probably not helpful.
Saturday, May 11th
Started off with normal expectations, cleaned up my statement for the incident report for Derek to review and had morning lockdown. Was looking forward to a good afternoon as weather was great, but remembered I had signed up for Kairos, a Christian ministry that was here for 2 hours prepping for our 3 day event Memorial Day weekend. About 100 guys signed up for 34 slots, I was lucky to sign up early and get in. Basically music, small groups, fellowship and so forth. Kairos had 7 guys volunteering from Santa Barbara for the most part.
Then the hammer went down. Our 3:30 normal pre dinner lockdown became permanent and we ate in our cell and spent the rest of the evening in there. Lovely…. If I only knew what’s coming!
