Untitled-323 Jay Goodman

I wonder sometimes what it’s going to take for someone to step inside the federal prison system and make changes. As I
look at the dysfunctional way it’s run, it amazes me that no one has done anything to put it on a different course.
The odd thing is, I am assuming the people in administration, especially the wardens, have some type of education. The
federal government has to be hiring the wardens for each of the one hundred twenty-two federal prisons in the United
States, I would imagine these men and women are not only well educated, but are well trained on a how a prison is to
be operated. I am also sure there are specific guidelines on how prisoners are supposed to be treated. I know for a
fact that the federal government would never allow someone to work at a prison and just do whatever they wanted, just
like prisoners have rules and regulations to follow, so do all of the employees that work for each institution.

I have been at the Hazelton Federal Prison close to two years now, and it’s been surprising to see how dysfunctional
it runs. I know better than anyone that prisoners can be a difficult crowd to deal with, but even with that said, the
staff and administration are way out of line with how they deal with almost every situation that comes along. It is
June 4, 2022 and we have been locked in our cells for twenty-four hours now for something another prisoner did in a
completely different part of the institution. Yesterday morning about thirty minutes or so after they let us out for
breakfast, we were told to go back to our cells, at first, we thought we were getting locked back down because of fog,
but later on that morning, when we didn’t get back out, we were told that something had happened in another building.
Later we received a memo from our dorm counselor, at the top of this memo, in big red letters it said Lock Down
Status, the acting warden said, “This serves as notification to the Hazelton inmate population, this prison will
remain on lockdown status until further notice. This is a result of an incident which occurred June 3, 2022 that
involved a staff member. Understand, these types of incidents will not be tolerated and will result in the loss of
privileges as well as increased safety and security measures, the only means of returning to modified operations is
through inmates’ strict adherence to the rules, regulations and orders put forth by staff. Any and all refusals to
cooperate will be met with disciplinary actions including extended lock down periods. Your cooperation is not only
appreciated, but expected. Acting Warden Brown.�? While I am a firm believer in doing the right thing in my life these
days, I am also a big believer in not being punished for another man’s actions, especially when I have been a model
prisoner for almost two decades.

For one, nothing even happened in the cell block where I live, no one even knows why we are being locked down, but
let’s take a look at what the Acting Warden said, “We will be on lockdown until further notice because of an incident
that occurred on June 3 that involved a staff member.�? Again, nothing at all happened in the cell block in which I
live, so how can the warden punish an entire prison, because of the actions of prisoners that don’t even live in this
cell block? Why would an educated, logical thinking person, punish over a thousand inmates for the actions of one
idiot? Whoever did something wrong went to isolation, this is why every prison has isolations, to put prisoners in
that violate the institutions rules. Since whoever did something wrong is in isolation, what’s the purpose of locking
down the entire prison? The warden also went on to say, “These types of incidents will not be tolerated and will
result in the loss of privileges as well as increased safety and security measures.�? Does this even seem like a
logical thinking person? A thousand plus prisoners lose all of their privileges because one man did something wrong.
We cannot talk with our family, we can’t email our family, visitation is closed, we eat out of brown paper bags and we
have been three days without a shower. Sometimes I wonder how the wardens can be so stupid.

Let’s look at this another way, what about all of the things guards do or ranking officers, what about the guards who
come to work every day who don’t do their job? They come in and go inside their office to sleep, or the ranking
officers who threaten prisoners? What about the guards and ranking officers that have assaulted prisoners? When
something like this happens, what of the federal government punished all of the employees who work at the prison by
docking everyone a month’s pay? I mean why not, if you’re going to set an example, you would want to give the same
punishment for both sides wouldn’t you? Now if a staff member was to kill a prisoner, how about docking all of the
employees for the next six months? None of this would make any sense to any employee who works for the federal prison
system. No one in Washington would want to do something like this because anyone who has some common sense would know
this isn’t right.

Now let’s look at the last statement, “The only means of returning to modified operations is through inmates’ strict
adherence to the rules, regulations and orders put forth by staff. Any and all refusals to cooperate will be met with
disciplinary action and result in extended lock down periods.�? I have to wonder is this warden lost in a fantasy
world, because the way he talks one would think that every single prisoner was causing trouble. The cell block I am
housed in was in strict adherence to the rules, regulations and orders put forth by staff. The prisoners in this cell
block are only being punished because someone else violated a rule. If a prisoner was to have escaped or something bad
were to happen, like a riot, I would understand being locked down until they figured out what happened, but to punish
the entire prison system because of one or even a few bad apples, makes no sense whatsoever. I am positive that there
is no policy in the Federal Bureau of Prisons handbook that requires an entire prison to be locked down because of
someone violating a rule.

I believe a lot of the trouble with these types of wardens, is there is no accountability for their actions. They have
been given too broad of discretion on being able to shut down the prisons which they operate. In most cases they abuse
this position to lockdown the entire prison so they don’t have to do any work. If the prison is on lockdown, they
don’t have to deal with feeding us in the chow hall, letting us go out to rec, school, work, or anything of that
nature. All of them can go to their offices and do whatever they want, from what I see this is why we get locked down
most of the time. Like I said before, it would make no sense to take whole months pay from every employee because of
the actions of one guard, so why do it to us? Yes, we are in prison, but if we are in here doing what’s right why
would we be treated like we’ve done something wrong? Right is right, wrong is wrong, we should be treated according to
our actions. If you treat the prisoners who do what’s right unjustly because someone in the prison broke a rule or
regulation, you are only creating a bigger problem, eventually no one will care about trying to do good.