SCI Chester: An Alternate Reality

I am writing once again to personally thank you for the contributions you make for self aware prisoners everywhere. Through my anti-imperialist discussion groups I feel I’m helping these brothers open their eyes. The study material you send me helps immensely. As a ranking member of The Insane Crip Gang I preach the Communist movement to all my lil’ homies. I give my assistance to any who I can help with grievance process, litigation, or anything involving violation of rights. It’s a terrible time with their hate fueled mass murders and it doesn’t help that more and more police brutality keeps happening and pigs keep violating our rights constantly.

Currently we at SCI: Chester D-pod have a tyrannical unit manager named Ms. Bourne who is obsessed with her power and does anything to try to break us. She shows open racism and only does her job when it involves one of her “pets” (inmates who kiss her ass and provide her with info). She is currently trying to enforce her own rules not part of DOC policy and treats D-pod as its own entity separate from the rest of the jail. She puts up bulletins constantly changing rules like “must remain seated in the exact same spot through the entire rec period or will be punished” which isn’t sanctioned by the D.O.C. She also she took away the chairs at the phones so as to make the brothers uncomfortable when speaking to families. She steals the grievances from the box so she can remove ones she doesn’t approve of before they are picked up by the grievance coordinator. She openly calls caucasian brethren crackers and honkies, and refuses to provide any assistance to them.

90% of the pigs here are women. SCI: Chester was part of a program called Welfare to Work which gave jobs at the prison to female welfare recipients in the area who are not qualified even for this glorified babysitter position. They are blatantly disrespectful, abusive, racist, and several of them have known drug addictions themselves.

After 11 years in prison and being incarcerated at 7 others prisons, this place is another world. It’s a complete joke. It is close to impossible to get a grievance form and they don’t even carry grievance appeal forms. Requests to staff go unanswered. And maintenance issues are rarely resolved - the ventilation for half of D-pod has been completely broken for months in cells with no ability to open the windows. This causes inhumane conditions (extreme heat and extreme cold). Stale air causes sore throats and illness in prisoners. Roughly 50% of cells’ cable outlets are out of order and if you pay for cable services and are moved to one of these cells it takes months to be repaired and they refuse to refund the money taken from brothers’ accounts. The pigs blatantly lie to give misconducts to prisoners they dislike and are known to discard mail being delivered to these disliked prisoners.

Prisoners who “hustle” by making handmade candy out of mixing assortments of Jolly Ranchers, taffy, sourballs, jellybeans and other candy from commissary and forming it into different shapes are being given drug related misconducts as the security team is claiming the candy tests positive for opioids, because when the candy is placed in the NiK test it changes the color of the water purple. Here’s a fact: all Jolly Ranchers contain some combination of colored food dyes most containing purple or a combination that can create purple. The pigs’ stupidity is either worse than I thought or they are just finding new ways to be openly vindictive.

And finally the newest issue here at SCI: Chester. At the beginning of the month of November the D.O.C.’s budget cut shut down over 1,000 halfway center beds and rescinded parole from all those who were already paroled to those beds forcing them to stay in prison at SCI: Chester for an undetermined amount of time until the D.O.C. can find places to send them. So even though these brothers completed their prescribed programming, stayed misconduct free and did everything else they needed to do in the eyes of the D.O.C. and were granted parole by the Parole Board and received their green sheets (release papers) they are now subjected to wrongful imprisonment here at good ol’ Chester. I ask you brothers at ULK what else could go wrong here? It’s so bad brothers are talking about using violence and catching new charges just to get a negative based transfer to ANY other facility possible.

I’m running my communist based anti-imperialist groups here, but what else can I do? I feel helpless and I can’t stand seeing my brothers and myself treated like this any longer. I’m asking for any support or answers ULK and any brothers reading this can offer me. The struggle is real.