Updates

[Behold! I give you my testimonial, to bring light into your life and strengthen ongoing efforts in criminal justice reform!]

A great man once tapped with his thumbs on a frustratingly expensive prison messaging device, “When confronting a bureaucratically driven machine designed to further break down broken people, it helps to clog the cogs with compassion, support and perseverance.”

That’s why I’ve joined PrisonProfessors.org, a genius, nonprofit creation from the mind of Michael Santos that allows me to better evince the measures I’m taking to reconcile my sordid past.

PrisonProfessors.org is a free platform on which incarcerated individuals can publish book reports, biographies, journal entries and more. Those who sign up on this platform control the power to make this information publicly available to potential employers, landlords, parole officers, spouses, etc. — basically, anyone who might search their name to learn more about their involvement with the justice system. They also provide Santos and partners the data he requires to more effectively advocate for criminal justice reform.

How did I discover this resource from prison bunk, you ask? Through the Edovo app, which is free to use on my ViaPath tablet.

Edovo offers an extensive learning library that caters to your loved one’s interests. It also provides them the option to share a code that allows others to view their progress and engagement. (View my Edovo certifications and transcripts by visiting edovo.org/transcripts and entering: HN3-5WM-KTQ.)

By encouraging your loved ones to pull up the Edovo app and search “Prison Professors Profile Tutorial,” you can help them to discover how simple the profiles are to set up and manage through the mail or with the assistance of supporter who has internet access.

In addition to a free Prison Professors profile, Santos also offers the following courses at no cost, resources permitting:

Preparing for Success After Prison
Digital Economy Course
Incarcerated Life and The Law
Earning Freedom
Straight-A Guide: Begins with Attitude

He even has a course for juveniles . . .

As for the dude himself, he spent 26 years in a federal prison after being convicted for trafficking cocaine. But he attests to preparing for his release while still waiting to be sentenced. Since his release over a decade ago, he has authored several books, made many wise investment decisions, instructed at the university level and engineered significant carceral changes. He is a friend to all who are involved in the justice system, regardless their occupation, trial stage or sentence.

Click here to view my bio and first journal entry at PrisonProfessors.org.

Those who type in my name as a referral when setting up their profile will be identified by the site as part of my tribe.

by David J. Meister

Roughly an hour’s drive southeast of Phoenix, Arizona, in remote Pinal County, several sprawling complexes of concrete blocks and razor-wire-topped fences mar the desert landscape. One of them is the Saguaro Correctional Center (SCC) — a private prison facility operated by CoreCivic, the latest incarnation of the infamous Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

True to the notorious CCA brand, Saguaro is understaffed, under-regulated, and overfilled with inmates dislocated from multiple states. The facility houses hundreds of prisoners from Idaho, Hawaii, and Montana under interstate contracts.

Private-prison watchdogs have long documented violence, overcrowding, and preventable deaths at SCC — including murders, stabbings, and fatal overdoses in recent years. (ACLU Hawaii; Civil Beat; Montana Free Press)

My name is David Meister, and I’m an advocate for prison reform. I’m an Idaho prisoner recently transplanted to Arizona. Day One at Saguaro — fresh off the transport bus — I was housed in a cell where, just two weeks earlier, Idaho inmate Christopher Pendleton, 38, had been stabbed to death. Dried blood still freckled the walls.

According to official reports, Pendleton was found unresponsive with life-threatening injuries on August 20, 2025, and later pronounced dead. His death is being investigated as a homicide by the Eloy Police Department. (AZ Family; East Idaho News)

That incident was only one chapter in a larger saga at SCC. Over the following month I witnessed staff neglect, arbitrary collective punishment of inmates, and a dozen alarming events. None of it raised an eyebrow among staff or inmates — just business as usual.

Then on October 9, Idaho inmate Floyd Long died from heart complications induced by drug use. The next day, October 10, another Idaho inmate, Alfonso Leon Jr., would have met a similar fate if not for the quick thinking of his cellmate, Joshua “Crazyeyes” Lundquist (TT @crazyeyesinmatelife). Crazyeyes rolled Alfonso to his side and spooned vomit from his mouth to keep him from suffocating during a seizure. Instead of medical care when Alfonso regained consciousness, security staff assaulted him while he was already in restraints — and hauled him to segregation.

Just another day in the private-prison industry. Not even a blip on the public’s radar.

Now I understand why I was transferred here: to make noise. The Idaho Department of Correction needed a herald at Saguaro. I am meant to unearth what SCC’s administration would bury. I’m uniquely qualified — and eager for the mission IDOC has entrusted to me.

My long history of contesting poor conditions began in 2006-07. After months of harassment over grievances about lost and withheld mail at the Idaho Correctional Center (also a CCA-run facility), I was unfairly labeled a Security Threat Group (STG) member and subjected to punitive segregation and retaliatory transfers. I filed a lawsuit and spent 2007 learning how to litigate it.

I was mentored by inveterate inmate legal-eagles who had achieved real reform in Idaho’s prisons. I followed their lead — devouring legal treatises and case law. In 2008, I graduated from a 900-hour paralegal correspondence course, and in 2011 earned an advanced certificate in criminal law and procedure.

I applied my new skills by assisting other inmates with their cases. Then in 2014, I published Battling the Administration: An Inmate’s Guide to a Successful Lawsuit — a manual designed to walk prisoners through the barriers they face in court and how to protect their rights. (Prison Legal News review)

Coincidentally, that same year, I had to use my own teachings when officials at the Idaho State Correctional Institution (ISCI, formerly ICC) enacted policies favoring certain religious groups over others. I filed suit and negotiated a more equitable distribution of Chapel resources and policy changes. (Prison Legal News coverage, “Iowa Settles Religious Discrimination Suit Brought by Incarcerated Odinist”)*

Also in 2014, the State of Idaho stonewalled my Public Records Request. I filed a Petition to Compel Disclosure of Public Records and won at summary judgment. (Meister v. Kempf, CV-OC-1517118 (Idaho 4th Dist. 2014))

In 2017, I was appointed as one of five class-action inmate representatives in the historic Balla v. Idaho Board of Corrections case — a 35-year-old litigation enforcing constitutional conditions at ISCI. I documented inadequate medical care and reported it to federal monitors until the case closed in 2021.

By 2022, at public demand, I released an updated edition of my law manual, rebranded as the MEISTER MANUAL for Prisoners’ Lawsuits. Without Balla oversight, prison conditions at ISCI rapidly declined. Behind the scenes I raised awareness while avoiding retaliation — until 2025, when conditions worsened enough that I took the struggle public and launched MeisterArchive.com to expose program cuts, dehumanizing policies, and systemic neglect at Idaho’s flagship facility.

Apparently, IDOC appreciated my work — because I was abruptly shipped to Arizona.

They removed my transfer hold with surprising urgency. The message was clear: there was a situation at Saguaro, and they needed it contained or exposed. I can attest — their fears were justified.

I won’t let you down, IDOC.
I’ll expose the corruption.
I’ll bring the truth to light.

*PLN stated that Iowa settled the religious suit. I reached out to them about making the correction to Idaho.

I enjoy watching the antics of the birds and rabbits that arrive for the feast.

By James Mancuso

[This article was originally published at the Prison Journalism Project and appears here with author’s permission]

Every morning, I toss a large handful of dry oatmeal flakes onto the prison’s recreation yard to feed the animals.

Some mornings I see starlings catching butterflies or fighting each other. On others, I see barn sparrows ignoring the starling’s aggressive antics, chirping with excitement and occasionally pecking at the ground. Or I might see a family of rusty tan rabbits munching on grass.

The rabbits normally wait for me to toss the oatmeal. I’ve walked within 3 feet of them before, but some bound away from me if I get close. Others wait, staying totally still, like I can’t see them.

Many people live such fast-paced and focused lives that they don’t pay attention to much beyond their immediate concerns. It’s the same for a lot of us in prison. We have jobs, rehabilitation programs, educational classes and our recreation time. It can be easy to miss the wildlife if you are in classrooms and working all day. But I’ve found that I can slow down and enjoy the nature that surrounds me, just by throwing out a handful of cheap oatmeal each day.

This summer, a few barn sparrows arrived at our prison with their babies. The chicks often flutter their feathers, begging their parents to feed them food they are literally standing on. Each time, a parent picks up the oat flakes and places the food in the waiting mouth of their chick.

My old cellmate, David Harmon, once saw this and laughed.

“That’s a classic case of failure to launch,” he joked.

Black starlings also show up. Each morning, they bicker with each other while establishing a pecking order. Once the hierarchy is settled, the dominant starlings pick up as many pieces of oatmeal as they can before they are challenged again. Then they flutter away indignantly, causing sparrows to dance out of the way or up to the safety of a prison fence.

Every once in a while, a seagull will glide down to get a piece of the feeding frenzy. The sparrows, starlings and small bunnies quickly move away from the large white bird as it swaggers up to the oats. The momma rabbit, however, never seems intimidated. She keeps her head down while she munches on her breakfast.

The seagull’s beady eyes take in the pieces of oatmeal. Then it makes a cacophonous screech that sounds like a cry of disgust before flying away.

Once the seagull is gone, the bunnies meander back, the starlings bicker again to reestablish a pecking order, and the sparrows bounce on their delicate legs to the remaining oatmeal.

Eventually most of the oatmeal is eaten. The rabbits leave first, hopping over to a grassy area a few feet away. Sometimes you’ll see the momma rabbit sprawled out, napping on the grass, but with her eyes barely open. She still has four or five of her babies nearby.

Some of these young rabbits seem to play a game. They stand face to face a foot or so away from each other until one flinches forward, causing the other one to hop straight up in the air. Sometimes the rabbit that flinches will run underneath the hopping rabbit.

Once the rabbits have left the oatmeal, the starlings take off in their group. But the sparrows linger, sifting through the dirt to grab any remaining crumbs.

The intrigue and joy I get from seeing the antics of wildlife is worth the money I spend on oatmeal. This ritual has even attracted conversation with people I’d probably never speak with otherwise. People ask me questions, make comments about something they see, or offer me their uneaten dinner rolls to feed the birds.

This happened over the summer with a man named Emmanuel Granados, who turned out to be an amateur botanist. Granados asked me one day if I fed the birds oatmeal. When I told him I did, he got excited.

“The bunnies like that too,” he said. “I saw them eating.”

While some animals migrate away from Idaho during the winter, the sparrows will stay. When the cold weather arrives, I plan to mix crushed peanuts with the oatmeal to give the sparrows some fat and protein. I want to help them stay warm.

Paid subscription service to free platform/app provides more buffering than content.

By Dale Shackelford

[This article was originally published at https://idahoprisonblog.quora.com and appears here with author’s permission]

On 9/15/25, prisoners at the Idaho State Correctional Center (ISCC) were issued new tablets with content provided by ICS/ViaPath (formerly GTL or GlobalTel Link). Since then, it has come to light that the platform is serious lacking in apps/programs that are really needed in the prison environment, and the paid subscriptions which are available aren’t living up to their hype.

One of the most significant (and easily remedied) issues was that prisoners were promised the availability of a [paid] subscription service to Pluto TV – a service which is free to the public but costs prisoners $15 per month. Many prisoners were overjoyed of the prospect of decent programming as the television cable system at the prison facilities south of Boise has been terrible in both content and signal strength since the contract was taken over by A+ Satellite in Meridian, Idaho.

Once the Pluto TV subscription app became available on the tablets, it looked fantastic, but once purchased and opened, it immediately became clear that something was wrong. While the number and variety of channels listings were impressive, it soon became clear that many of these channels are not available. It is unclear where the problem lies in that the channels aren’t really controversial, nor do they contain any prohibited or objectional content (unless someone is concerned that prisoners are watching reruns of Ancient Aliens or Judge Judy).

Certainly the signal strength isn’t the problem, because we can see the commercials [ads] on those channels, but not the programming. The app “locks up” every couple hours and requires prisoners to do a hard shutdown and restart of the tablet before they can continue watching any program.

In preparation for writing this article, I had a friend on the outside log onto Pluto TV on his computer. While on the phone with him, we compared channel availability. While he could watch the content of [for example] channel 1530 (Unexplained Zone) where people were ‘In Search of Bigfoot’, I could not see it. When ads appeared for my friend on that channel, I was able to see the very same ads. On some other channels, I WAS able to see the same content he was able to see.

I was told (by another prisoner who spent time in another state) that this channel-specific unavailability is due to ICS/ViaPath engaging lockouts (probably parental controls) on those channels. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, why would Gomer Pyle, USMC present such a concern? Why would all the news channels be unavailable, or Miss Marple on Britbox Mysteries (Pluto TV Channel 1090) be an issue? It’s beyond me.

In either case, despite TERMS OF SERVICE indicating that providers reserve the right to remove channels, prisoners weren’t informed prior to purchasing the subscription that these channels – nearly half of the listings – HAVE been made unavailable. Further, the buffering on the channels we do receive is constant and makes programs almost unwatchable. Whether this issue is due to a lack of available bandwidth or just the nature of the beast is unclear, but with the many other issues with these new (though seriously outdated) tablets, something needs to be done to rectify at least some of the problems.

Let’s start with the Pluto TV app.

The time has finally come. The IDOC has delivered notice that all JPay services will be terminated in Idaho prisons Oct. 20.

Here’s where I’d normally detail the agency’s history with JPay and the company’s infuriating behaviors. Unfortunately, the IDOC’s new GettingOut messaging service limits me to 1500 characters per message. And that’s just not enough runway for my diligent indignation to take flight. Especially when the timing corresponds to an explosive six-part series by InvestigateWest that dives into claims of sexual abuse in Idaho prisons.

[Asking my dad and publisher to provide links to the series here.]

Roughly 700 characters left . . .

Fellow Prison Journalism Project contributor Dennis “Abbadunamis” Mintun published the findings from his months-long inquiry into a prison fund filled through prisoner purchases and intended to enrich the lives of prisoners. (Spoiler: the agency refused his public records request for related financial records.) He has since been moved from his comfortable single-man cell to the chaotic, open dorm illustrated here.

My friend and cafeteria companion, James Mancuso, (also a PJP contributor), published an article this month about the connections he’s made with the critters outside of our housing unit.

And that leaves the industrious David  Shackelford and his quest for accountability–be sure to check out his Idaho Prison Blog here!

[Sent to IDOC residents over JPay Sept. 10, 2025.]

Tablet Funding:

1. This information will also be available during deployment. Please remember that Friends and Family cannot fund the tablet activities through ViaPath or GettingOut. Currently the two options for depositing funds are the Trust account or the IC Solutions Debit Account.

2. The monthly transfer limit is being increased from $80 per month to $150 per month. The request was submitted today and IC Solutions is working to update the system.

Videograms:

Securus (JPay) is working on a fix that will allow Videograms to be viewed on the JPay tablet without Wi-Fi. The solution will be deployed to Saguaro first, and if it works, it will be deployed to all kiosks!

Once the fix is deployed, you can download the Videograms that you would like to keep on your JPay tablet, and they will play when the JPay Wi-Fi is terminated.

Tablet Deployment Schedule:

The IC Solutions deployment teams are currently working at Idaho State Correction Center (ISCC) and Idaho State Correctional Institute (ISCI). Both facilities will have the new ViaPath tablets by Friday September 19th.

Then there will be a slight pause to allow for support of any issues or questions from the facilities with the new tablets.

Work at the remaining facilities is expected to begin as follows:

SBWCC — Wednesday October 1
TV CRC — Wednesday October 1
IMSI — Friday October 3
SICI — Monday October 6
MVTC — Monday October 13

Everyone should have a new ViaPath tablet by Wednesday October 15th!

Reminder:

After your facility transitions to ViaPath, the JPay tablets will no longer be on Wi-Fi. However, the Kiosks will remain connected to JPay services for a while longer. We do not have an official cut-off date for JPay services yet. The date of the cut-off of JPay services will also be communicated once we know.

If you have any other questions or worries that have not been addressed, you can fill out a Concern Form and send it to Central Office — Contracts.

When I was seven years old, I remember my mom driving my family to the foodbank in Sandpoint, Idaho. We were very poor and my mom is a woman who doesn’t like to ask for help.

All five of us kids waited in the back of the truck as my mom went in through the big glass door that opened into the foodbank. She came out with a cardboard box brimming with food.

When we got back to our deep-woods house, my mom took that food and combined it with the sparse basic ingredients we had. She made an amazingly tasty meal and fed a family of six with the help of those donations.

That is why I donated. It is my way of saying thank you and helping someone in need.

— James Mancuso (donated $20 and a box of prison commissary food items with recipe instructions)

***

I feel incredibly blessed to have been born and raised in Boise.

But back when covid struck, I was battling the demons of addiction while working as a contractor. I remember the world shutting down, the weather creeping in, and the food in my family’s cabinets rapidly dwindling until I was desperate to feed my wife and child.

My wife and I sat down together and searched for community resources.

I remember feeling defeated, hungry and desperate while walking into the food pantry with my wife, and how quickly those feelings turned when we were welcomed with huge warm smiles.

One woman took us aisle by aisle to help us load a basket. When she found out that we had a bunny, she threw in extra, fresh vegetables to feed it.

She then walked us out to parking lot and helped us load the vehicle that once spoke to my success.

Not once did she pass judgement.

It was nothing short of a life-changing experience

— Jeff Lacy (donated $20 from his monthly kitchen pay — equivalent to 50 hours of work)

***

1) I’ve relied on the charity of food pantries several times over the years.
2) It always makes me feel good to buy a meal for someone else.

— Patrick Irving (donated $20 and is encouraging you to do the same)

Visit Idahofoodbank.org to instill a stranger with a valuable memory.

[This message delivered over JPay to the Idaho Department of Correction resident population Aug. 29, 2025.]

There is a shortage of long-acting insulin (like Lantus and Semglee) across the country.

Because of this, you will be switched to a different type of insulin and follow a new schedule. The new insulin is called NPH. It needs to be taken twice a day. Unlike your current insulin, which works for 24 hours, NPH only works for about 12 to 18 hours. It also has a peak effect at 4 to 8 hours after you take it, which is different from your current insulin.

At first, your blood sugar might be a little higher. We will start you on a lower dose that can be increased if needed to help control your blood sugar better.

We do not expect your blood sugar to go too low, but because NPH can cause a peak effect, you might have mild symptoms like feeling shaky or sweaty. Please keep a snack nearby just in case.

If your symptoms last or happen a lot, seek medical attention and tell your doctor so they can change your dose.

This shortage is expected to last until the end of the year or into January.