Previous: First Amend This!: An IDOC Newsletter, Oct. ’22 (The Ad-Seg Issue)
Welcome to the November edition of First Amend This!
This publication provides an insider look at issues affecting the Idaho Department of Correction community. If you wish to assist this effort, share the link, copy and paste, or print and send this issue to another.
Loved ones are encouraged to join the Idaho Inmate Family Support Group (IIFSG) on Facebook or contact the group’s admins at idahoinmate@gmail.com.
Looking to help improve Idaho’s criminal justice system? We ask that you contact Erika Marshall with the Idaho Justice Project. The Idaho Justice Project works to bring the voices of people impacted by the criminal justice system to the legislative table to work on solutions.
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Thank you new subscribers (!) for committing to keeping tabs on Idaho’s prison news.
What you should know before we begin:
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- This being the November issue, its coverage is limited to events that took place throughout October.
- This newsletter functions as a both an information resource and an outlet for this editor to get creative with his therapy. Please take this into consideration as you surf through every issue.
- Without some level of encouragement and support from our correctional staff, I would find it much more difficult to provide the scope of service that I now do. It’s important to me that I provide the staff with the same support and encouragement.
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Let’s First Amend This!
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KEEFE STRIKES AGAIN!
The Keefe Group is at it again; pilfering prisoners pockets in the kind of criminal-minded manner that even those restricted from school zones are comfortable deeming unconscionable.
On October 21st, the Keefe Commissary Network announced that several previously discontinued fan favorites were set to return again, at up to three times their original rates. Including but not limited to: macaroni and cheese, black beans, flour tortillas, popcorn, saltine crackers, hot pickles, cookies, Moon Pies and peanuts.
Those already struggling to afford holiday phone calls can now purchase pre-cooked bacon for $82.77 per pound ($11.64 for a 2.25 oz package).
Sugar-free Werthers, the sole hard candy that remains unaffected by the ongoing prohibition, implemented by the Department in effort to combat alcoholism, is now running an even race with the per-pound price of chicken: $25.14.
Though the IDOC recognizes the need to prepare its residents for eventual reintegration back into the community, it seems that by continuing to approve of Keefe’s ridiculous pricing decisions, which do little more than leech from prisoners’ hard earned coffers, that the Department is increasingly comfortable with nickel-and-diming its clients out of the finances they need to embark on a successful reentry.
Find this article interesting? Learn more: The Commissary Pricelist for Idaho Prisoners and the Revenue Sharing Arrangement that Awards Setting the Highest Prices Possible.
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IDOC SERVINGS SIZED SMALLER FOR VAGINAS
Sunday is Starve Day in Idaho prisons. Lunch service consists of bland nutritional muffins, bagged up at breakfast to munch on at noon. The men who find them edible are offered two to eat, but the Department’s female clients are provided with just one.
And muffins aren’t the only food where women receive smaller portions. According to the IDOC’s female food service menus, they also receive reduced rations of the following: biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, French toast, Farina, pancakes, hash browns, breakfast hash, roast beef, bread, cornbread, vegan bread, hamburger buns, vegan buns, ketchup, peanut butter, potato chips, corn dogs, turkey, tuna salad, ham salad, margarine, rice, refried beans, 3-bean salad and baked fries.
When asked in December to speculate on the disparity found within the portion allotments, IMSI staff and residents were quick to point out that men are required to carry the massive weight of a penis and well-fed women face an uphill battle finding and keeping husbands. “And husbandless ladies’ chances of survivin’ ain’t all that good.” Especially for those, they say, who are released from captivity in Idaho, where minimal effort is given to prepare them for the workforce and felons face great difficulty finding decent housing.
Though this reporter strongly disagrees with their reasoning, he can do little but wonder: What other food service is capable of serving females half-portions and escaping the kind of scrutiny that changes a regime?
Sources: IDOC Food Service Menus 7.0: Male/Female, Mainline, Healthy Choice Ovo-lacto, Vegan
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WOMEN SOON TO RECEIVE (SOME OF) THE SAME JOB TRAINING AS MEN
The Idaho Workforce Development Council has awarded the IDOC with a $25,000 grant that will be used to provide residents of the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center (PWCC) with what the Department describes as “a rigorous, competency-based, industry-recognized program that will provide women at the facility with the foundational and construction skills to be competitive in an entry level vocational or construction-career field.”
IDOC Director Josh Tewalt describes the grant as an investment in public safety. “When people are equipped with job skills while incarcerated, they are more likely to succeed as law-abiding citizens and less likely to return to prison.”
Idaho’s incarcerated female population is recognized to suffer from higher rates of mental health and substance abuse issues, and also carry more childhood trauma than those in the general public.
According to a 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Idaho incarcerates women at a rate higher than any other state within the US.
In 2020, 110 per 100,000 women in Idaho found themselves locked behind bars; a rate more than double the national average.
Earlier this year, Idaho set aside $112 million to construct a new 848-bed women’s prison, but only $2.5 million to create the pre-prosecution diversion strategies recommended by the state’s Opioid Task Force and Behavioral Health Council.
Programs similar to the one scheduled for PWCC are already available at the following men’s facilities: Idaho State Correctional Center, Idaho State Correctional Institution, North Idaho Correctional Institution, Idaho Correctional Institution-Orofino.
Sources: Pocatello Women’s Prison to Offer Job Training to Residents This Fall,” Idoc.idaho.gov. Rachel Cohen, “Idaho Has the Highest Female Incarceration Rate In the Country,” Boise State Public Radio News. “Idaho Department of Correction JFAC Presentation (1-18-22)”
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JUDGE AWARDS ROUGHLY $2.5M IN LEGAL FEES TO FORMER PRISONER’S LEGAL TEAM
A federal judge has awarded roughly $2.5 million in fees to the legal team that represented Adree Edmo in a case of deliberate indifference.
Diagnosed in 2012 with severe gender dysphoria, a condition described as one in which the dissonance between a person’s gender identity and assigned sex at birth causes severe emotional distress and dangerous impairment of life functions, Edmo filed suit in 2017, seeking to be treated with gender confirmation surgery.
In 2018, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in Edmo’s favor; Idaho appealed, drawing out the legal battle and delaying the surgery longer.
Though the surgery itself was covered by insurance, by October 2020, the State of Idaho, at Governor Brad Little’s direction, had already spent a minimum of $456,738 in legal fees.
Fortunately for the state, its former prison healthcare provider, Corizon Health, Inc., has agreed to pay the entire $2.5 million award.
After receiving her gender confirmation surgery in 2020, Edmo was transferred to a women’s prison, from where she was later released in 2021.
Sources: Rebecca Boone, “Transgender Inmate Who Sued Idaho to Get $2.5M in Legal Fees,” Associated Press. Mark Wilson, “Idaho Provides Nation’s Second Gender Confirmation Surgery for Transgender Prisoner,” Prison Legal News. Betsy Russell, “US Supreme Court Rejects Idaho’s Appeal In Transgender Inmate Surgery Case,” Idaho Press.
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NEW TRAUMA TREATMENT PROGRAM SHOWS PROGRESS IN CORRECTIONS
“Correctional staff experience high levels of stress, burnout and other mental-health related consequences. They also experience higher rates of PTSD and suicide compared to those of the general working-age population. Stress and trauma can impact all aspects of one’s life, including relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and various hobbies and obligations.” — Idaho Department of Correction
The IDOC has launched phase one of a new pilot program that aims to provide trauma treatment and intervention services to correctional staff and their clients.
The Department is now looking to distribute a total of $500,000 in grants to providers capable of delivering holistic treatment options to staff suffering from stress, fatigue and trauma.
Residents will participate in the program’s later phases, which are expected to offer the following, and more:
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- mental health interventions
- one-on-one incident response
- trauma-informed yoga
- cognitive processing therapies
- mindfulness techniques
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR)
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Should all phases of the program unfold as expected, the treatments offered to residents will be seen as light years ahead of those they received for approximately the last twenty years. Once billed to the public as Therapeutic Communities (TCs), the shame-based treatment approaches deployed until 2015 did more to compound residents’ problems than they did to address root causes.
Within a lawsuit brought against the IDOC in 2013, several men filed declarations with the Court describing how, in order to maintain their place in the TC program–which the state required be completed prior to receiving parole–they were forced to participate in the following practices, dished out as punishments and referred to as “image breakers”: close-contact twerk-offs, pretending to lick a popsicle, dragging one’s buttocks across the floor like a dog that has worms, pretending to eat a burrito with the contents falling out (which participants say was designed by other prisoners to have one mimic fellatio), and playing piggly-wiggly (shaking one’s buttocks on all fours while snorting like a pig).
In a 2016 judgement, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill commented on the efficacy of the Department’s TC programs: “After reading the numerous inmate affidavits detailing the indignities inmates suffered under the guise of ‘treatment,’ the Court is not surprised by the increased recidivism rate.”
Professionals interested in applying to participate in the new trauma treatment programs are asked to send their questions to grants@idoc.idaho.gov.
Sources: Idoc.idaho.gov. Cynthia Sewell, “Kempf Ushers In New Era for Idaho Department of Correction“, Idaho Statesman. Case 1:13-cv-00332-BLW, Custodio v. Idaho State Board of Correction.
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IDJC AWARDS GRANTS TO BUILD TROUBLED YOUTH ASSESSMENT CENTERS
Using funds set aside in Idaho’s 2022 legislative session, the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections (IDJC) has awarded eight grants to be used for the construction of troubled youth assessment centers throughout the seven judicial districts within the State of Idaho.
KHQ Local News reports that the centers will used to screen and assess youth referred by law enforcement. After screening, the youth will be assigned to community provider services, where they will receive a case manager who will implement the (likely algorithmic) recommended level of care.
The National Assessment Center Association (NACA) is working closely with the state and the IDJC to establish the guidelines by which the centers will operate, and also to provide ongoing technical assistance.
According to Boise’s KTVB news anchor Morgan Romero, who reported on the center soon to open in Ada County, “NACA’s best practices show these centers save law enforcement time, improve coordination between agencies working with kids and get kids and their families help faster before either hit a crisis point.”
All eight centers are expected to become operational by June 30, 2023, but it is yet to be reported how they plan to stay funded and how families will be charged for the level of care received.
Earlier this year, during a sit-down with Boise State Public Radio host George Prentice, Idaho Justice Project Director Erika Marshall, along with Kendra Knighten, an associate with the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy and Idaho Voices for Children, discussed how families entangled in Idaho’s juvenile justice system are critically impacted by the system’s many fees.
Citing info available at the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy website, Prentice shared how one family that was forced to pay for public defender representation, mental health assessments, collection fees, cost of confinement and more, reported a crippling negative balance of $27,950, including added-on collection fees of up to 33 percent.
In 2021, more than 5,600 families of young men and women were assessed “cost of care” fees while the youth were in custody of the IDJC.
In the same year, Idaho identified roughly 198,000 cases of outstanding cost-of-care fees.
To learn more of the impacts these fees have on Idaho families, please visit: https://idahofiscal.org/removing-barriers-to-yourth-and-family-success-the-role-of-state-juvenile-cost-of-care-fees/
Sources: Morgan Romero, “New Youth Assessment Center Coming to Ada County,” KTVB.com. Noah Corrin, “Idaho to Create Assessment Centers to Divert Kids from Criminal Justice and Child Welfare Systems,” KHQ Local News. George Prentice, “As Thousands of Idaho Juvenile Offenders Remain in the Same System, Families are Shackled to Cost,” Boise State Pubic Radio.
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FIRST AMEND THIS! INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN PRISON NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES
On March 24, 1800, “Forlorn Hope” became the first American newspaper to be published by an incarcerated person. Since then, over 500 periodicals have been published by U.S. prisoners, providing the public with a look at what goes on behind our nation’s prison walls.
Thanks to an amazing collaboration facilitated by Reveal Digital, many of these publications can now be accessed through the academic database JSTOR. The database implements a free digital library that provides access to over 12 million academic journal articles, books, images, contributed collections and primary sources.
The collection was made fully open-access in July, 2021, and is fittingly titled “American Prison Newspapers 1800 – 2020: Voices from the Inside.”
First Amend This! is proud to announce that this publication is now licensed under the CC-BY license, which will allow it to be repurposed and added to the collection.
As JSTOR provides an offline version of its database to prisons and jails across the nation, it is expected that our own newsletter archive will soon be accessible in facilities using the database.
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COVID NEWS
Since the start of COVID-19, the IDOC has administered over 80,256 tests to its in-state clients. More than 6,954 are reported as positive.
Visitation remains disrupted at one or more facilities. Please view the Department’s website for the most current updates:
Those who have received their initial COVID vaccination are encouraged by the Department to follow up with booster shots.
Multiple residents report requesting covid boosters and flu shots, but have yet to receive word as to when they can be expected.
Residents experiencing issues related to COVID are invited to forward exhausted grievances to:
ACLU Idaho
PO Box 1897
Boise, ID 83701
View IDOC’s COVID report here.
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AN IDOC ANNOUNCEMENT: THANKSGIVING MENU 2022
As you may have heard, the US is currently experiencing one of the worst bird flu epidemics on record. Nearly 50 million birds have already died from the disease, with 8 million of those being turkeys. The outbreak has greatly affected the supply of eggs and poultry. Although we’ve tried to avoid/delay menu changes as much as possible, our first meal to take a ‘hit’ will be Thanksgiving. Despite attempting to order turkeys early to be at the front of the line, our orders were denied by poultry producers. There simply isn’t enough to go around, and the retail (grocery store) markets get first priority.
As such, IDOC has purchased fresh pork loin roasts for the upcoming holiday meals. The Thanksgiving menu will include this freshly roasted pork, along with the usual trimmings (mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables, pie).
If you’re a die-hard turkey fan, I apologize that we aren’t able to provide it at this time. Some things are simply out of our control. It is still the goal of food service staff, however, to ensure a nice holiday meal, and I’m confident that although the Thanksgiving meal will look a little different this year, it will still be tasty and filling!
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LIEUTENANT GREG HEUN IN THE CLEARWATER TRIBUNE
ICI-O Lieutenant Greg Heun has taken his talent for writing to the Clearwater Tribune, where he proudly presents kudos to his coworkers and provides the general public with a look behind the scenes.
Linked below are a few of Lieutenant Heun’s articles that we strongly encourage you take the time read.
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RENICK ON THE RADIO
With five years of episodes available for streaming, Mark Renick hosts Victory Over Sin on Boise’s KBXL 94.1FM, Saturdays at 12:30 pm. The program, funded by an advocacy arm of St. Vincent de Paul, shares what it’s like to live incarcerated in Idaho and then come out of incarceration to live on parole.
Last month, Mark welcomed to the show Gigi Crist with the Rock Harbor Church in Meridian. Since April, Gigi’s church has been running the Regeneration Program, which is described as a Christian 12-step discipleship and recovery program that encourages self-examination. The two discussed the program’s setting and how to get involved.
Mark also featured Shawn Rucker on the show. As a 59-year-old returning citizen turned advocate, Shawn relayed the importance of preparing for reentry the day one enters prison. His experience exemplifies how one’s willingness to change must outweigh their pride before they’re able to fully utilize all available resources.
Visit svdpid.org for reentry resources and programs available in Southern Idaho.
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RESIDENT AUDITING 101
A public records request for all Pre-Prosecution Diversion Program grant applications and awards was returned in October with “no records found.”
A request has been submitted for all Keefe sales volume reports and revenue payments made from April to present, as well as all notes, minutes and documents from commissary review committee meetings that took place in the same period.
A request has been submitted for the log of public records requested in October.
A grievance has been filed in an attempt to expedite April’s requests for:
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- Keefe sales volume reports for the weeks of 7-15-21 and 1-21-22
- Notes, minutes and documents from the two commissary review committee meetings prior to 4-19-22, as well as all written requests submitted to the contract manager prior to these meetings
- Revenue payments made from Keefe to IDOC from March ’21 to March ’22
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CORRECTION!
Where it was implied in the August issue that CentuyLink is currently contracted to provide the IDOC with communication services, it has since been brought to our attention that company’s contract has expired. A public records request for current arrangements between the IDOC and its communication service providers has been submitted.
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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES FOR INCARCERATED PERSONS
Thanks go out to Charlotte West with the College Inside newsletter for introducing us to “The Sentences That Create Us.” This book, which features the work of more than fifty writers, is filled with advice, inspiration and prison writer resources.
PEN America is now distributing 75,000 free copies to incarcerated individuals, prison libraries, and higher education/creative writing programs that are currently working with justice-involved comunities.
A copy can be requested online at https://t.co/ST7zHTQawK, or by writing to:
Prison Writing Program
c/o PEN America
588 Broadway, Ste. 303
New York, NY 10012
College Inside, a newsletter about prison education, is produced by Open Campus, a national nonprofit newsroom that covers college-in-prison programs, Pell Grants for incarcerated students, career and technical education, and education in juvenile justice facilities.
Sign up at https://www.opencampusmedia.org/college-inside/
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INMATE SERVICES AT WORK
The Carden [Consulting] Group
P.O. Box 693
Jefferson City, MO 65102
10.13.22
Dear Carden Group,
To help better morale and perception in the case of the IDOC, I suggest you work with the Department to promote its current strategic goals to those of its clients it’s keeping in-custody. Though parts of their plan periodically shine through, the only means by which most of us have to come apprised in full is by submitting and sorting through public records requests. With nothing less than the morale of tens of thousands at stake–including extended networks through which our gripes all filter–I believe it would pay to share all goals through prison unit message boards, where they might not only be appreciated, but also help inspire.
Thank you for considering.
In friendship and incarceration,
Patrick Irving 82431
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SUGGESTION BOX
I suggest that Centurion Health pick up the pace with boosters and flu shots. And while they’re at it, maybe also try returning once in a while to read our tuberculosis test results. With tuberculosis classified as a deadly, infectious disease, the company is continuing to place our staff and residents at risk.
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Bam! Thanks to everyone who joined us for yet another monthly session.
Shout out to Mason, Yukari and the entire PJP family!