The Makings of a Prison Riot
There have been tons of news reports chronicling the recent uprising, prison riot and destruction that occurred at Willacy County Correctional Facility in Raymondville, Texas. The facility was a privately run institution contracted by the Bureau of Prison (BOP) to hold illegal entry offenders. We’ve heard reports that the prisoners wanted better medical attention, that they set fire to their housing units and that they stormed the recreation yard with weapons, mostly pipes. The term CARs, which stands for Criminal Alien Requirement prison’s has been bandied about the media, as if it means something. But in reality it’s just another acronym concocted by the feds to categorize how they lock people up. In incarceration nation it takes all types. But why did the inmates really riot?
From the images of the prison shown in newscasts I can tell you exactly why the inmates at the Willacy County Correctional Facility rioted. They were living in fucking tents. It’s just that simple. I did 21 years in federal prison, participated in the 1995 crack riots and was never forced to do my time in a tent. I heard about these immigration prisons or deportation spots during my last couple of years in the feds and it wasn’t nice. Basically the BOP thought they could stick all these Mexicans and South Americans in a tent, give them a soccer ball to kick around in a dirt field, and make them do years on end for their illegal reentry offenses. With no basic amenities, services, educational pursuits or anything that resembled rehabilitation.
Imagine living in a semi-permanent Kevlar tent with a concrete floor, rows of rows of bunk beds right next to each other, and toilets and showers at one end of the housing quarters. The living conditions at Willacy were atrocious, even for prisoners. “They are overcrowded, with over 200 bunks in each tent, and they are packed only a few feet apart from each other,” Carl Takei, Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s National Prison Project tells Don Diva. “One person said if you lay down on your bunk and you reach your leg over you can touch your foot to the nearest bunk to you. They said there were insects that would crawl in through the walls and bite them at night. Many people also described overflowing toilets. There were constantly problems with the toilets backing up and flooding sewage water inside the housing area and the smell of the sewage would permeate the tent.”
No one in prison expects ideal living conditions, but it seems the situation at Willacy and other CAR prisons is deplorable. Everybody knows prison isn’t the Holiday Inn, but when you are incarcerated for multiple years of your life you should at least be able to live adequately. “If the feds are going to lock you up then they need to make damn sure you are living right,” Judge, a prison doing time in the BOP tells us. “The Mexicans hate when they get transferred to those deportation centers. They would rather stay in the regular fed prisons, because those immigration centers are some bullshit.”
Luxury is definitely out of the question, I mean it is prison after all, but when was decency thrown out of the window? I thought we were a civilized country. The BOP knows if they tried this with American citizens there would be problems. Just look at Attica, the prison riot of all prison riots and the recent riots in the South Carolina prison system. “They know we would jump it off if they tried that bullshit,” Judge says. “Living in tents? I don’t blame the amigos. Burn that shit down.” The feds seems to think that just because they are locking up a bunch of foreign nationals they can get away with it. Kind of like Guantanamo Bay and we know the atrocities that went on there, well they are happening in other prisons too.
“The whole reason why the Bureau of Prisons has been sending non-citizens to the CAR prisons is because they assume all non-citizens are going to be deported and don’t need rehabilitation, education or services,” says Carl. It is more cost effective for the BOP to contract out these non-citizen inmates to private prisons, where the goal is to make money, not to rehabilitate. So much for being a progressive society, the prison industrial complex is all about the dollar.
I remember when I was in FCI Loretto, a low security prison in Pennsylvania, in 2008. There were a bunch of Dominican and Jamaican Nationals serving time there. But all of a sudden they started getting shipped out by the busloads to Mo Shannon Valley, a CAR private prison that opened up downstate in Pennsylvania to house BOP prisoners. They wrote back and said how it sucked compared to Loretto. The food was awful, even by prison standards, there were no programs and basically nothing to do. But that leads us to the question what exactly is a CAR prison and when and why did they come about?
“The first CAR solicitation that the BOP put out was in 1999,” Carl tells Don Diva. “The number kept expanding since then and now there are 13 across the country. It’s all people who aren’t US citizens. The people who are in the CAR prisons, there are basically two main offenses- there are a lot of people there who there for drug offenses, just like the rest of the federal system. But also, there’s a very large population of people who are there for illegal reentry, which is the felony of reentering the United States after you were previously deported. That is something that wasn’t very heavily prosecuted until a about a decade ago when the feds operations streamlined and federal policies started prioritizing these prosecutions. The majority of all federal criminal prosecutions in 2013 were for illegally or reentering the country.”
Being in prison for basically just being in the country and working plus bad living conditions, nothing to do but kick a soccer ball around in the dirt and no educational or rehabilitative programs equals a prison riot. It has been proved time and time again in the feds. When Cuban Nationals were housed in USP Atlanta in the late 80s and weren’t provided anything to do and kept on lockdown for most of the day they rioted and burnt the prison down. “If they tried to put me in a fucking tent I would raise hell as would most other Americans.” Judge says. “I know we are in prison, but damn, a fucking tent?” Other incidents have occurred at CAR facilities in Texas in 2008 and Mississippi in 2012. It seems these prisons are a disaster waiting to happen. The worst crime a lot of those housed at Willacy were convicted of was reentry so that they could see their families and loved ones.
“The problem is that, if you talk to many of the people in these CAR prisons, they will tell you that the reason that they come back is, despite the threat of more prison time, is that their families are here,” Carl says. “There is no way to stop somebody from coming back to visit his wife, his son or his daughter.” And from all my years in the feds and dealing with Mexican Nationals I know this is true. I had plenty of Mexicans who were getting deported tell me that they were coming back. When I asked them why, they told me, “Because my family is here.”
During my time in the BOP there were known deportation centers like FCI Oakdale in Louisiana and FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey. These are the prisons that the feds would send the foreign nationals to right before they were deported, mainly due to location and the plane rides that took these illegal aliens home. But the CARs are a new thing. They aren’t deportation centers. The foreign nationals are doing their time there.
“Usually if you are a non-citizen and you get low custody then you are probably going to end up at a CAR prison.” Carl tells Don Diva. “A lot of it is just educating the public because people are getting warehoused in these private prisons. Three different companies operate these prisons- Corrections Corporations of America, GEO Group and MTC, all for profit companies.” Basically the BOP is transferring all the non-citizens out of BOP institutions and into private prisons. The private prisons then get a fee to house the prisoners and since they are a company set up to make money they skimp on whatever they can to make a profit. No wonder they are having prison riots at these facilities.
“I know a lot of Amigos that will get a dirty urine or get caught with a shank so that there level doesn’t drop, because they aren’t trying to go to an immigration center,” Judge says. “They know those joints are some bullshit. They know its hard time there. They know what the deal is and they don’t want to go there and are willing to get in trouble so that they stay in a higher level facility.”
Don Diva contacted the Bureau of Prisons for an interview concerning this situation and we received this reply, “We are not making staff available for interviews regarding this matter. However, I can tell you we have been informed by the Management and Training Corporation (MTC), the operator of the Willacy County Correctional Center, that the inmates are no compliant. MTC staff are continuing to communicate with the inmate population in an effort to regain complete control of the facility, which is now uninhabitable due to damage caused by the inmate population. MTC has requested our assistance in moving all BOP inmates out of the facility. We are making plans to move as many as 2800 inmates to BOP institutions or other contract institutions, if needed. BOP staff are at the facility and additional staff are being deployed to provide assistance. No contract or BOP staff sustained any significant injuries during this disturbance.”
It seems like the BOP has already closed the door on the real problem and are in damage control mode. Like most government bureaucracies they are reactive and not proactive. But the makings of another prison riot are already in place. If the BOP doesn’t seriously look at these CAR institutions and put different practices in place these type of riots will continue to occur. You can’t just treat people like dirt or sub-humans and expect them to take it lying down. During my time in prison I participated in several food strikes, work stoppages and even reverse strikes, but that is another story for another day. If the BOP doesn’t enact policies to bring these private prisons into line with the rest of their institutions Willacy is just the start I am sorry to say. The BOP recently terminated their contract with Willacy also, living Raymondville with an empty prison. But other CARs remain and the same thing is going on. Its only a matter of time before another one erupts.
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