Previous: First Amend This!: An IDOC Newsletter, Jan. 2020
WELCOME to the February issue of First Amend This!: An IDOC Newsletter that addresses Idaho Corrections concerns.
Brought to you by The Captive Perspective and made available by bookofirving82431.com.
This publication provides an insider’s look at issues affecting our Idaho Department of Correction’s community. If you wish to assist this effort, share the link, cut and paste, or print and send a copy to another.
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Our Mission: To better develop our current state of Corrections.
The Idaho Legislature shares our mission and welcomes your comments! Feel free to send them your thoughts, attached to a copy of this publication.
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FROM THE EDITOR
A lot happened in January. We had the Governor’s State of the State Address. Our Legislature started a new session. Some news coverage reminded people that we continue to live — but only as a reflection of modern society’s shortcomings (just kidding, it’s all our fault). And then there was the announcement of more out-of-state moves.
Did I mention the Office of Performance Evaluations’ report suggesting it’s cheaper already to hurry up and build a new prison?
With an estimated housing cost of $78-a-day per inmate, a new facility…wait…does that number only work when ALL the beds are filled? [Because then we need to include the real- and human-cost of pulling people off the street to fill those beds.]
When contrasted with the governor’s new plan to reduce our current prison population by preventing recidivism…hold on…did they really say it was curious how parole violations haven’t increased, yet revocations are rapidly inclining — during their pitch to build a new prison?
Really?
…After the Governor’s speech?
Huh.
Sentencing reform, good-time credits, more programming opportunities, AND feasible probation and parole pathways…how about that, instead?
It’s seems a bit more…sane.
I suppose with my immunity to rhetoric — built by intentions — it’s best I just focus responsibly on my usurped position, and freeball an issue that benefits these walls!
[You’ll find some useful information spread throughout this edition, and whatever other info I can verify will be provided when I get it.]
While I can’t offer shimmering hope to lure and catfish, I sure would appreciate it if you bought into this:
Should you note my disappearance or any disruption in my activities, know the universe favors both peaceful responses AND diligent inquiries: The best weapons are the questions that come with phonecalls. Unleash them in every direction if and when the time comes.
Now then, let’s First Amend This!
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Within the next four months, roughly 500 of us in Idaho facilities will join those from GEO Group’s Eagle Pass Correction Facility in being moved to CoreCivic’s Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colorado.
This means rumors from staff and inmates are now circling, some people are volunteering for transfer, others are frantically trying to anchor themselves to their families, and everything known is uncertain for sure.
While some of us, having been to kit Carson from 2012 to 2016, might be able to offer some insider knowledge, I recommend you do your best to avoid speculation.
That said, I feel compelled to share what I can as a fellow interstate transplant.
When selected for the move to Texas, we were all invited to express our transfer concerns directly to this contact:
Ammie Mabe
208-658-2234
amabe@Idoc.Idaho.gov
But when we were given her info and told we had up to two weeks to dispute our transfer, we were actually scheduled to be gone in one business day. Moral of the story: if you don’t want to leave the state, start making phonecalls now. (Ammie may or may not still be the contact.)
Monte Hansen and Tim Higgins are IDOC’s Contract Facility monitors — despite all their adverse reactions to logic, reason, and extensive documentation. If you can’t get ahold of them, try their boss, Pat Donaldson, Chief of Management Services.
Making an educated guess, using first initials and last names, their emails, respectively, are:
mhansen@idoc.idaho.gov
thiggins.idoc.idaho. gov
pdonaldson@idoc.Idaho.gov
Also, the Board’s phone number is 208-658-2000: When considered with Ammie’s, I imagine an unverified string of extensions in the 2000’s awaits your concerns.
If none of those folks are able to get back to you, I’d try Chief of Prisons Chad Page, and after that, Director Josh Tewalt.
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DID YOU KNOW
Audiences exist beyond the chain of command, and they can be helpful when attempting to seek resolution.
You don’t have to become a lawyer just to spend several years and $400 to have the court order a reluctant “I’m sorry” (although I’ll never dissuade you from doing so). There are other ways available to present any issue: I’ve got something I want you to see.
Disclaimer: I personally feel that apologies are overrated and long-term resolution requires useless Correctors to leave the profession, completely.
That’s why I raise public awareness by depositing their ridiculousness straight into the Public Trust: mating the observer effect with the laws of equilibrium.
Who knew science could be so sexy?
Establishing a pattern of negligence is handy, and it isn’t as hard as one might think.
Presenting issues through the chain of command allows you to document your concerns and their knowledge thereof. (As you never know what you may need to reference later, try to make a practice of logging everything.)
The more diligent you document and the more rational you present, the better you can illustrate the collective effort spent to ignore you.
For those of you with a family assist, know that their phone calls are considered most powerful. But where those can be made while emoting unstable, anything on paper must look as reasonable as possible — like you’re divested emotionally, with a calm, psychotic detachment. [If you as the plaintiff look like an asshole while trying to frame the defendant as such, you automatically lose by default.]
If you have no luck navigating your way through the corrections department, know that you’re more than welcome to try all the others.
EXAMPLE
In Texas, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards oversees the state’s private prison contracts, meaning they hold authority over GEO Group and IDOC. [Other states may use their Department of Corrections, Board of Prison Inspectors, Jail Oversight Board, etc.] So when I had a problem with our inmate population’s inability to sanitize our dining utensils for five months, and lodging formal complaints with ACLU-ID, ACLU-TX, Eagle Pass Public Health Department, the Texas Department of State Health Services, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Inspector General of Health and Human Services didn’t work, I let the TCJS know, too. (All were presented copies of staff communications and my exhaustion of the grievance process.)
Guess what? I got the dish soap.
And then I alerted state and federal oversight of all the agencies that failed to act on our concerns, because…well, why not?
Wanting to continue utilizing the TCJS, I needed to know what standards they were holding IDOC and GEO to. That meant writing them to find out.
When they offered to charge me $40 to send their rulebook, my dad went ahead and downloaded it for free.
It was upon receiving their standards that I became aware of several additional noncompliance issues.
When the TCJS was formally presented with those concerns, a copy of that presentation was also sent to our IDOC Director — ensuring his awareness to GEO’s noncompliance (and eliminating plausible deniability for any potential future litigation).
By this time, GEO had identified the benefits of flying me back to Idaho.
So does it work? Yeah, but that’s only what I do. Feel free to take my thing and make it your own.
Here’s what you need to get started:
The Colorado Department of Corrections oversees private prison contracts in Colorado.
Colorado Department of Corrections
1250 Academy Park Loop
Colorado Springs, CO 80910
Constituent Services Coordinator — Lisa Wiley
Prison Operations Director — Travis Trani
Inspector General — Sherrie Daigle
719-226-4569
Please have ready offender’s DOC# or DOB, facility info, and contact info for return response to be expedited.
Kit Carson Correctional Center
49777 County Road V
Burlington, CO 80807
(Located 170 miles E of Denver)
CoreCivic
10 Burton Hills Blvd.
Nashville, TN 37215
Idaho Department of Correction
1299 N. Orchard St, Ste. 110
Boise, ID 83706
208-658-2000
Chief of Prisons — Chad Page
Director of IDOC — Josh Ewalt
Contract Monitors — tim higgins, monte hansen
Governor Brad Little
Office of the Governor
State Capitol Building
PO Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720
Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
Special Litigation Section
950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530
Eventually, the actual contract with CoreCivic should come available through IDOC’s website. I’ll share that link, too, and we’ll discuss it when it’s up.
Because while IDOC is publicly stating assurances have made been to see to some very specific accommodations, there were assurances in the GEO contract, too. But those required IDOC to hold GEO accountable, and to the best of my knowledge, IDOC never enforced the daily fines that the GEO contract stipulated for every assurance not being met. (I personally had a conversation with monte hansen encouraging her to exercise this option. She was uninterested.)
In fact, many aspects of that contract were ignored for months, despite us all being very vocal about them. And if you saw December’s issue of First Amend This!, then you have an idea that IDOC still doesn’t understand the requirements they said they were holding GEO to. (And for important stuff, too, like processing disciplinaries.)
That means it’s up to you, friend, don’t take any unnecessary shit.
Your criminal behavior is no excuse for theirs.
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ATTABOYS
These are the people whose efforts we appreciate this month:
The paralegal at Idaho Maximum Security Institution has been top notch, lately. Friendly, efficient, and complete with the service — the likes of which never before have seen! Your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. Thank you IMSI paralegal. We hope you stick around awhile.
Chief of Prisons Chad Page was seen in our Ad-Seg bubble last month. We don’t know why you came, but it was nice you see you making rounds. Get out of the office a little more, big guy, you deserve it!
Warden Yordy put a smiley-face emoji on the #BlackfootChallenge — to which I alerted him via concern form — making it hard to be mad that day. Yordy’s tender act of kindness will now be remembered. And for anyone who knows me, that’s money in the bank!
IDOC Director Josh Tewalt looked good in his Sunday morning Viewpoint interview. It was nice to hear him publicly acknowledge a new approach is needed for offender maintenance. Good job, Josh. Get us the hell out of your prisons!
Governor Little appears to be proactive in taking steps to make sure Josh has funding to work with for keeping our free-world offenders free and away from prison. I’m starting to feel a real team atmosphere.
Keep up the good work, everybody!
NUMBERS
IDOC Inmates:
9,450 — Total
7,342 — In IDOC facilities
892 — In county jails
651 — In Texas
???? — Someone should look into the rest
1,488 — Beds in the Kit Carson Facility.
1,200 — Number of inmates needed there for $4 savings (per head, per day).
Up to 200 — Close Custody beds in Colorado.
$22,000 — IDOC’s average yearly housing cost per inmate.
207% — Prison budget increase over last 25 years. (I think that’s right.)
94% and 34% — Lower and higher education budget increases in the same timeframe (respectively).
17,000+ On felony supervision
3/4 of new-term commitments failed on probation or retained jurisdiction.
$6,000,000 budgeted for connection stations to ease high-risk case management.
$277,000,000 — IDOC’s 2020 budget.
$311,000,000 — IDOC’s request for 2021
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THIS JUST IN
Following up on last month’s discussion of much-needed programs in Ad-Seg, we’ve just been informed they don’t know when they’re going to start or what they’re going to look like.
A grievance has been filed over the nonexistent Long-Term Housing Policy.
Solution Requested: “Release a memo acknowledging this issue and provide in it suggestions as to how to address policy concerns for a policy that doesn’t yet exist. Also, create the policy and make it available.”
CoreCivic was the only prison contractor willing to negotiate with Idaho for an out-of-state facility.
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IN OTHER NEWS
Director Josh Tewalt says:
— He’s been tasked to lead the National Committee on Recidivism.
— Failures of the community are a precursor to crime.
— Re-entry center to be built in Twin Falls.
— IDOC has learned from past decisions: needs to build infrastructure, reduce incarceration demand, and invest in programming and rehab.
— Inmates being moved to Colorado will be prioritized based on proximity to release, medical needs, behavior, medium-custody levels.
— He has a high degree of confidence in contract assurances that IDOC will receive what they want from CoreCivic.
— Kit Carson will provide: meaningful opportunities for employment, education, programming treatment, computer and horticulture classes.
— Not all 1,200 inmates need to be from Idaho to redeem contract discount.
— Eagle Pass inmates will be last to move to Kit Carson.
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THANK YOUs
Let’s recognize some folks that responded to February’s issue.
Letters received from Idaho’s Senator Grant Burgoyne, Representative Melissa Wintrow, and our local ACLU were sincerely appreciated.
We thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to thoughtfully reflect on our efforts. Every bit of feedback helps.
Also, thank you, Mom — for seeing a few issues from your printer out the door. We appreciate the assist.
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SPONSORS
This week’s Arts and Entertainment section is brought to you by Shipwreck Presents.
Shipwreck Presents: Just the same old Shippy you’ve always known.
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ENTERTAINMENT
Now Showing At West Wing Theaters:
| Consent With a Firearm | 5:15 PM |
| The Tolerant Jew | 7:25 PM |
| Benjamin’s Button | 9:30 PM |
| Predator Vs. Chris Hansen | 9:30 PM |
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ARTiSTiC RENDiTiON
“Encounters”
I know you didn’t realize it, but that was my fabric softener:
The least I could do was make a push for your affection.
Your tidal eyes rolled with the waves of my Charmin’,
Caught in the line of an Albertsons, State.
Me: Small stain, dottin’ my cotton.
She: Never should have been in 20 Items or Less.
If: I wasn’t off duty, I’d’ve put her away.
Social problems: Sadist. Spastic bowel. Libra.
Jealousy. Incompetence. Impotence. Rage.
i blew you a kiss
to tender the moment.
your pretty smile
couldn’t get enough.
she caught the beef
the jury found her guilty.
you catchin’ my drift?
no harm, no foul.
I couldn’t help but notice, her invading your space.
If it wasn’t for your halo, I’d’ve tasered her taint.
She got the spray
you secondaried
that’s called
collateral.
I blame that on him — and his mysterious ways.
An aged biddy’s expense
the cost of your crush.
However did this catch
slip through your hands?
I didn’t shit myself…but I could’ve if I wanted to.
We should Zack and Cody: Let me give you the sweet life.
Wouldn’t it be funny
If I saw you in traffic
And we were destined by fate
For me to tail you again?
Also
the uniform
not currently active
I was
let go
for tasering taints
Life’s kind of an asshole. Let’s touch ours together.
Myspace.com/CHILLAXIN!!!,
The One That Got Away
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Well, that marks another poop break with 82431.
We should stop meeting like this.
Share us with another and I’ll see you next month!
I can dig this 👌