This story was published in partnership with Prison Journalism Project, a national nonprofit organization which trains incarcerated writers in journalism and publishes their work. Sign up for PJP’s newsletter, or follow them on Instagram and X.

I was never a party animal, and I didn’t need to use drugs to enhance my natural good vibes. It’s like the old heads used to say about getting high off of dope, “One time is too many, and too many is never enough.”

I had zero history of heroin or opioid use prior to my arrest in 2004. Many of my incarcerated peers have turned to Allah or Christ to sustain their mental and emotional health throughout our decades of incarceration. I, not being the most spiritually inclined brother, turned instead to drugs to numb the pain of my regrets stemming from my criminal activities. I did it to maintain my sanity.

Slipping into darkness, in a moment of stupidity, I started blowing joint (snorting heroin) in the DC Jail back in 2005. For a while, it worked miracles, silencing the shame and guilt I felt from the hurt I caused myself.

The drugs muzzled all the negative barking in my head: “You sold your family out for the streets. You’re a deadbeat dad. You’re an ignorant, stupid, worthless Black motherfucker. You ain’t never getting out of prison, and you deserve to die in jail.”

Fast forward several years. I was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to serve out my sentence, as are all people convicted of D.C. crimes. By then, those moments of euphoric escape transformed into a merciless stranglehold, a chemical and physical addiction. I still struggle to completely escape its grasp. Many of my fellow prisoners are struggling, too. And from where I’m now sitting, inside the 5A housing unit at USP McCreary in Pine Knot, Kentucky, it looks like the BOP doesn’t give a damn.

Over the past several years, there have been a slew of drug overdoses throughout BOP facilities. Too many have ended in death. Many could have been prevented.

A February report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general on deaths inside BOP facilities found that at least 70 people died of drug overdoses between fiscal years 2014 and 2021. That figure makes up about 20 percent of the 344 deaths in BOP facilities during that time. Drug overdose was the second leading cause of death; hanging was the first.

The inspector general also found “significant shortcomings” in the BOP’s responses to nearly half of all in-custody deaths the agency looked at. Problems included a lack of urgency, failure to bring the appropriate medical equipment, and issues or failure to use naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote.

The report identifies the most tragic outcomes for prisoners who are addicted to drugs, and reflects the fears of many people I know inside who struggle with opioid dependency. But the truth is that daily life for a drug-addled person in a BOP facility is much grimmer than a sterile report can convey.

***

“One of the most horrific and traumatizing things you can witness in prison is watching a close friend, someone you love and care about, trying to kick, cold turkey, a heroin addiction,” says Leonard Bishop, a former advisory neighborhood commissioner at the DC Jail, who is now incarcerated with me at McCreary. “It’s ugly seeing brothers going through the throes of detox. Watching many of my friends and generational peers fall victim to the addictive lust for heroin and ultimately transforming into somebody that neither of you recognize—it’s hard feeling helpless to make your buddies understand that they’re playing right into their own self-destruction.”

When a prisoner decides to try and kick his habit in the BOP, he is often met with barriers, delays, and flat-out denials. The first obstacle is getting approved for treatment.

Such lifesaving medical care is promised in the First Step Act, signed into law in 2018. I have asked how to get a prescription for medication assisted treatment, such as Suboxone. But in my experience at USP McCreary, the medical and psychology departments have provided conflicting answers to my fellow prisoners and me about which department is tasked with providing addiction treatment. Neither department can explain the criteria we must meet to be placed in a recovery program.

For example, I have been told that the program is only open to guys with 90 days left in their sentence.

Michael “Boogie Swan” Johnson, from Baltimore City and who served time in USP McCreary from 2023 to 2024, says he received a similar response.

“While I was in USP McCreary, I was denied medical treatment, and they told me they were only providing medication treatment for those 90 days to the door or less,” Johnson, who has been incarcerated since he was 18 years old, says via email. “That didn’t apply to me because I have 12 years with four to go.”

He says when he was transferred earlier this year to FCI Williamsburg, a lower security facility in South Carolina, he was immediately prescribed Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction, and he now takes one 8-milligram strip per day.

“What it does is it takes out the craving for opioids,” Johnson says via email. “So it helps me function on a day-to-day basis much better.”

BOP spokesperson Randilee Giamusso says an order to begin treatment in many BOP programs “is arranged according to projected release date, [but] services should not be withheld until someone is 90 days before release.” That wouldn’t even be enough time to complete the two residential treatment programs, which run for 12 months and 18 to 24 months, respectively, she acknowledges.

The type of medication-assisted treatment that Johnson is receiving at FCI Williamsburg should be available at any point during a person’s incarceration “depending on clinical need,” Giamusso says. 

Giamusso initially told City Paper that two kinds of residential addiction treatment programs should be available at McCreary. The Challenge Program, which runs from 18 to 24 months and is specific to high-security institutions, provides treatment for drug addiction and mental illness as well as violence intervention. At McCreary, the program currently has an enrollment of 46 people, according to the BOP, according to the BOP, with a waitlist of 94 people. In response to follow-up questions, the BOP clarifies that the separate Residential Drug Treatment Program, which typically runs for nine months, is not offered at McCreary. A non-residential treatment program here currently has 35 people enrolled, according to the BOP, with a 424-person waitlist. 

In light of questions regarding the denial of these programs and treatment, Giamusso says that the “FBOP will be sure to follow up and provide any necessary training or information to ensure treatment is compliant with policy at all locations, including USP McCreary.”

In 2022, the Marshall Project reported on deficiencies with the BOP’s compliance with the First Step Act’s drug treatment provisions. At the time, the outlet reported that only 10 percent of the estimated 15,000 people in BOP custody who needed opioid addiction treatment were receiving it.

By the end of October 2022, nearly four years after the First Step Act went into effect, 21 prisons offered no addiction medication, and 59 more were treating 10 or fewer people, TMP reported.

Guys who are close to release should absolutely be given treatment because of their higher chance of relapse and overdose when they’re out. But what about those of us who have been led to believe we don’t qualify for treatment? We fall deeper into the disease, made to feel as though our lives are less valuable, or worse, expendable.

***

Serving time at McCreary is chronically depressing. Intellectual and artistic stimuli are practically nonexistent. When we’re not locked down, we are allowed out of our cells at 6 a.m. Healthy, able-bodied men, who could be engaged in intensive rehabilitative and reentry programming, just sit around in an overcrowded day room. They play card games or other tabletop games; some play video games on their tablets.

In an attempt to break the monotony of this all-consuming idleness, some of us turn to drug use as a coping mechanism. The high provides momentary escape. But drug use and addiction in prison have ripple effects.

Some addicts are better than others at hiding their dependency. Insulated with a little cash and a degree of hustle, a prisoner with an opioid addiction can find the means to keep their fronts up by dressing neatly, shopping at commissary regularly, and paying their debts in a timely fashion, which allows them to maintain a prison work detail without a problem.

For prisoners struggling with opioid addiction who don’t have the capital to float their habit, life can be dangerous.

Addicted prisoners run up debts small and large—anywhere from $20 to $1,500 in cases that I’ve known about—that they are unable to pay. Avoiding those consequences is, in my estimation, the No. 1 cause of prisoners’ requesting placement into protective custody, which is typically an act of desperation intended to avoid violent retribution. The inspector general’s audit broadly confirms that drug addiction and debt in prison beget violence.

The more aggressive opioid addicts resort to strong-arm tactics to get their fix. Some use homemade knives and shanks to rob jailhouse dealers. I’ve been in housing units where two or three addicted prisoners mob up, walk into the cell of the prison dealer, hold him up at knifepoint, yank his pants and boxer briefs down to his ankles, and retrieve the narcotics hidden between his cheeks.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed other acts of desperation, too.

Prisoners will make shanks and sell them to anyone willing to pay—even to opposition groups—all to fuel an addiction. Making weapons for rival gangs is like treason on the inside. If he’s discovered, he could get beat, stabbed, or both.

Guys will tell all sorts of lies to their family and loved ones, goading them out of their money so they can pay for drugs inside.

Men and women have been known to sell their bodies in exchange for drugs or the money to buy drugs. This doesn’t change for incarcerated people, but it does become more dangerous. Men and women in prison don’t have condoms for protection against contracting or spreading sexually transmitted infections.

Suicide behind these walls has also been linked with drug use. The inspector general’s findings cite BOP-producted reports on two suicidal deaths that say the individuals who took their own lives “experienced hopelessness about the inability to repay their drug debt.” 

And even if a BOP prisoner is accepted into a recovery program, they risk punishment (loss of good-time credit and phone, email, and commissary privileges) if they backslide and end up with a dirty piss test. Relapse is a well-understood hallmark of addiction recovery.

I have no desire to return to my family or community addicted to heroin. I recently attempted detoxing, as I have before. Every waking second, I’m thinking about it, fighting the temptation. Guys like myself, who have jailhouse addictions, are seeking addiction medication, and since we’ve been denied at USP McCreary, some of us are spending our own money on medication that the prison should be supplying to us. I pay $25 for 1/16 of a strip of Suboxone when I can afford it. Technically, it’s considered contraband.

The BOP should provide this treatment to all who need it. No more lives need be lost for a problem that the federal prison system is capable of fixing.

Additional reporting by Mitch Ryals.

This article has been updated to clarify USP McCreary does not offer a residential drug treatment program.

Askia Afrika-Ber was born and raised in Southeast D.C. and Prince George’s County and is serving a 53-year sentence for felony murder in USP McCreary, a high-security prison in Kentucky. He published a book about life inside prison in 2024. Inside Voices is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

If you asked staff at the DC Jail about solitary confinement, they might tell you it does not exist in the correctional facility. That’s because it goes by many other names. I worked for about a year as a clinical case manager in the jail, where I saw an extreme overreliance on the use of the practice. At the Department of Corrections, it’s called the SHU, North 1, South 1, administrative segregation, the Special Management Unit, protective custody, and so-called “safe cells”—those were the worst.

I am still rattled by the sight of a woman, housed on a predominantly men’s medical unit, sitting on the floor of a safe cell with a sheer curtain as her only form of privacy. She wore an oversize smock, had bare feet, and had no sheets or pillows on the bed that was bolted to the middle of the floor. She was placed in that cell because she expressed suicidal ideation, I was told, as are all people locked in the DC Jail who express similar thoughts. She cycled in and out of the safe cell during her incarceration.

During my time as a social worker, which included in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex, I had never witnessed such a heinous response to a mental health crisis.

Rikers Island is where I began my career in social work. I was drawn there as part of my commitment to criminal justice reform. I witnessed the horrible effects that solitary confinement has on people. I also witnessed efforts to eliminate the practice in general, a citywide ban of the use of solitary confinement for people with medical conditions, and more therapeutic responses for people diagnosed with mental illness, including 24-hour monitoring. I worked on Rikers Island for more than two years as a mental health reentry coordinator before I accepted the position of clinical case manager at the DC Jail.

I thought our nation’s capital would be a leader in the progression toward a humane criminal justice system. But I quickly realized that D.C. is far behind. 

During my first week working for DOC, colleagues would ask me how I was settling into my new role. My response was always the same: “I can’t believe there is a place that makes Rikers Island look good.” 

I still recall my first time walking into North 1, one of the two solitary confinement units in the Central Detention Facility. It was dark, dirty, and loud. Incarcerated people shouted from their cells, officers showed no ability to manage the incarcerated people outside of their cells, and men exposed themselves to me through the slots in their doors as I walked to the case manager’s office.

I observed DOC’s frequent use of solitary confinement not just as a means to address serious infractions, but also as the default placement for people who expressed concern for their safety or who were experiencing a mental health crisis. People in solitary confinement in the DC Jail are typically held in a single cell for 23 hours a day; they are allowed one hour out of the cell for exercise and showers.

Individuals in DOC custody have been placed in isolation for nonviolent violations, such as substance use, often without the required internal hearing and attorney representation. Similar to the judicial process, if an incarcerated individual receives an institutional charge, they must have a hearing and be found guilty prior to receiving discipline. 

If an individual says they feel unsafe in general population, including for their sexual orientation or gender identity, that person is placed in “protective custody” and locked in a cell alone for 23 hours per day.

The DOC response to a mental health crisis is to send a person to a “safe cell,” where they are held until they are no longer determined to be a risk to themselves. Despite the different names, these practices all constitute solitary confinement and cause serious harm.

What I have observed to be DOC’s overreliance on isolation stands in stark contrast to its transparency around the practice. A recent report from the Council for Court Excellence highlights the difficulty the nonprofit had in getting even basic information about DOC’s use of solitary confinement. CCE requested data from fiscal years 2019 through 2021, for example, but DOC only released limited information from 2021.

According to the CCE report, despite years of negotiations, DOC would not provide demographic information, including the number of pregnant people, placed in solitary confinement; information on when and for how long restraints are used; the number of safe cells and how frequently they’re used; the number of people placed in solitary immediately after intake; and the number of people in solitary confinement who attempted or completed self-harm or suicide, among other details.

The limited details provided to CCE about DOC’s use of solitary confinement in 2021 include: 

• 98 people were held in safe cells for an average of 2.6 days

• 35 percent of residents with an active diagnosis of a serious mental illness were placed in administrative restrictive housing, disciplinary restrictive housing, prehearing detention, or protective custody.

• The average length of stay in restrictive housing for fiscal year 2021 was 49 days (“which includes the time when an entire housing unit was in COVID-19 quarantine,” according to the report). 

DOC’s use of solitary confinement fails to reduce violence and poses significant challenges to successful reentry into the community.

Solitary Watch says that jurisdictions that have limited their use of solitary confinement have experienced a decrease in prison violence and safer working conditions for staff. As part of North Dakota’s process of ending solitary confinement, the corrections system sought to train officers, improve working conditions, and create an environment where staff are engaged in the rehabilitative process.

There are alternatives that allow carceral institutions to maintain safety in a facility, as well as the mental and emotional health of people in their custody. 

In my experience, commissary restrictions, relocation, and conflict resolution are more effective at promoting prosocial behavior in response to institutional infractions. To avoid exacerbating mental health issues, the use of 24-hour suicide watch by an officer and peer support specialist has been successful in other facilities, including those on Rikers Island. 

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau’s ERASE Solitary Confinement Act, introduced with support from seven other lawmakers last fall, calls for the prohibition of solitary confinement for individuals in DOC custody. The legislation also mandates a minimum of eight hours of recreation time daily, imposes limits on the use of safe cells, and encourages better access to mental health and medical treatment. 

The bill also requires DOC to collect and publish data on the ongoing use of solitary practices, which would lead to increased accountability and oversight. That part is essential, too.

In order to successfully implement some of the bill’s provisions, DOC should hire more mental health care providers and more correctional officers. On any given day, two or three guards could be supervising a floor of 30 to 100 jail residents, making it difficult to carry out the bill’s goals. Higher pay and better benefits could help entice more people to apply to these hard-to-fill positions. For safer alternatives to succeed, staff must receive the necessary training, such as in crisis intervention, and support from leadership. 

Bills in Congress aimed at addressing the use of solitary in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (where many D.C. residents are serving sentences) and in immigration detention centers appear unlikely to move forward. Similarly, the ERASE Solitary Confinement Act has not been scheduled for an initial hearing in the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. Lawmakers have until the end of the two-year Council period in December to act before the bill expires. Its passage would be a positive step toward transforming D.C.’s correctional facilities into environments where safety, mental health, and rehabilitation take precedence, benefiting not only those within the walls of the jail but our entire community as well.

Brittany Vazquez is a Licensed Master of Social Work with an Advanced Certification in Forensic Social Work. Her experience includes working with court-involved youth, incarcerated individuals, and returning citizens in New York City, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. She has volunteered with the DC Justice Lab’s Unlock the Box Coalition, pushing for reform in D.C.’s criminal justice system.

Rob Barton was perhaps a perfect candidate for parole. During his nearly 29 years of incarceration, he’s served as a mentor in the D.C. Jail’s Young Men Emerging program, he’s taken classes through Georgetown University, and he’s co-founded an organization and blog called More Than Our Crimes that spotlights the lives and perspectives of those held in federal prisons.

(Full disclosure: I work with the organization’s co-founder, Pam Bailey, to produce some of City Paper’s Inside Voices columns.)

Most importantly, though, on his third shot at parole, Barton presented his case to the U.S. Parole Commission that included a grid score of zero (the best possible score) and recommendation from a hearing examiner for release to a halfway house by September.

But last week, the commission ignored the hearing examiner’s recommendation and rejected his parole application.

According to Barton’s reading of the “action sheet” that explains the USPC’s decision, commissioners acknowledged that his score had decreased from his previous parole hearing from one to zero, indicating he met all of the requirements for release. But in rejecting the hearing examiner’s recommendation, according to Barton, commissioners focused on his use of another prisoner’s allotted minutes to make phone calls, which is against U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons’ rules.

“I just don’t understand,” Barton says. “You got people that’s not from where we’re from making these decisions.”

Barton’s confusion and deep frustration stems from the lack of local control over parole for people who have violated D.C. laws. With the feds calling the shots on who gets paroled and who doesn’t, attorneys and advocates have long complained that the outcomes are overly punitive and contradictory.

Under the current system, which was set up in 1998, the U.S. Parole Commission decides whether people locked up for D.C. code offenses can be released on parole. The commission also has jurisdiction over federal prisoners whose offenses occurred before Nov. 1, 1987 (Congress eliminated federal parole in 1984; and D.C. transitioned to a system known as “supervised release” in August of 2000), but as of 2020, 90 percent of USPC’s caseload was made up of people convicted of D.C. crimes. And unlike what’s left of the federal parole system, prisoners under D.C. parole cannot appeal the USPC’s parole decisions.

The USPC’s decision in Barton’s case (and others) has revived outrage from local advocates and attorneys who have pushed for D.C. to regain control of its parole system from the federal government.

“They are their own judge and jury,” says Robert Davis, who was released on parole in 2015 and served on a local committee that studied how D.C. could regain control from the feds. “There’s no appeals, it is what it is, and [commissioners] are only appointed by the president. C’mon man, just give us a regular parole board that has checks and balances—somebody who I can give a call to.”

Federal officials have been in favor of abolishing the USPC since at least 1987 when Congress transitioned to a new federal sentencing system. And in 2019, the current chair of the commission, Patricia Cushwa, wrote a letter calling for such action.

“It is seemingly inappropriate to have a federal agency with a national focus exerting control over local Washington, DC cases,” Cushwa wrote in the letter, advocating for the D.C. Superior Court and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency to take over those responsibilities. She added that “this transfer should occur as soon as possible to leverage the USPC’s existing personnel who have an expertise in parole and supervised release.”

For a time, it looked as if D.C. might actually pull it off. But due to a combination of disinterest and disorganization from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration, those efforts died last year.

In an emailed statement, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah says Bowser “remains supportive of retaking control of the Parole Board; however, the efforts were paused and remain so due to parties not reaching a majority opinion on how to structure the Board or its authorities, roles, and responsibilities.”

“It is beyond time that D.C. take back local control of parole,” says Stacey Litner, parole program and advocacy lead at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee. “We should have people from the community making these decisions. Over the last few years, it’s been increasingly difficult for individuals from D.C. with parole eligible sentences to get into programming that the parole commission expects in order to be granted parole. The barriers are increasing, and it’s time for D.C. to take this back.”

Davis, for his part, is left feeling as though the hours upon hours of work he and others donated to studying the issue and providing recommendations to the Bowser administration are wasted.

“We did this with the hope that we would be bettering the city,” he says. “The mayor just said, ‘Hey guys I’m gonna go ahead and give the parole commission and extension. Thank you for all your help.’ All our hard work, for nothing.”

Nathan Welch, who like Barton grew up in D.C. and has been incarcerated for nearly 30 years, was also recently denied release despite a recommendation for release from a USPC hearing examiner. In a phone interview, Welch says his grid score indicated that he should be paroled, and the hearing examiner recommended as much, with a proposed release date in July 2024. But the commission denied the recommendation and set his next parole hearing for 36 months out.

“It’s like some mental cruelty,” Welch says. “You get your hopes up that you’ll finally make it home after doing all this time in this crazy institution. And then two weeks later you get denied.”

Davis has had his own difficulties with the parole commission. He was released on parole in 2015, and was released from supervision altogether a few years later. But due to miscommunication from USPC, as NPR has reported, no one bothered to tell Davis or his parole officer.

Davis has also been vocal about the fact that he has been released on parole, but one of his co-defendants, Angelo Daniels, remains locked up. He says the commission rejected his co-defendant’s application and set his next parole eligibility date five years out. But the reason for commission’s denial is what rubs Davis the wrong way.

“They said the nature of the crime is the reason why. But it’s for the same crime! And get this here: They guy they’re hitting [with more prison time], he’s an accomplice. I am the primary.”

Barton says after he got the news that he had been denied, the first thing he did was return to his cell and cry. Then he had to call his mother. After the recommendation from the hearing examiner, he has previously told her he thought he would be coming home later this year.

“My mother’s been my everything this whole time. She’s done this time with me,” Barton says. “Now I think it’s more strenuous and stressful. She sees my friends at home, and it’s right there. And for me to have to keep telling her, ‘no,’ that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.”

Last month, City Paper published an article describing inhumane living conditions and overly punitive policies at U.S. Penitentiary McCreary, a Bureau of Prisons facility in Pine Knot, Kentucky, where D.C. men are incarcerated.

The article by Askia Afrika–Ber, who was recently transferred to McCreary from another BOP facility, reported that restrictions on food and commissary access, as well as the warden’s collective punishment policy—where an entire housing unit would be punished for the actions of a few—was leaving men hungry and fostering violence in the facility.

As Afrika-Ber reported, one man was allegedly killed in his cell, but his body went unnoticed by guards until prison residents began complaining of the smell. The BOP has confirmed that a man died inside the facility at about the same time that Afrika-Ber reported, but the agency would not confirm the circumstances of the man’s death.

Less than a week after the article published, Afrika-Ber followed up with an update:

“We will be receiving three hot meals starting tomorrow, the plexiglass came down today,” he says, referring to the plexiglass dividers in the visiting room that were installed during the pandemic but had, until recently, remained in place, diminishing the value of visits from family and loved ones. Afrika-Ber also reports that he was told the collective punishment policy will no longer be enforced.

He says he’s hopeful that he and others held at McCreary will once again be allowed to receive books and reading material from family and outside book clubs (such as the local Free Minds Book Club)—another restriction he identified in his article. Afrika-Ber says the privilege to receive books was banned as part of the warden’s collective punishment policy.

Afrika-Ber says he is still waiting to see whether the changes will extend to the prison’s visitation policy. Currently, he says, friends and family are only allowed to visit on Saturdays and Sundays. Before the pandemic they were allowed to visit on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—a significant difference considering the approximately 575 miles between D.C. and Pine Knot.

“Thats not proper especially if your family is traveling 5, 8, 10 hours coming and going, plus the money being spent,” Afrika-Ber says. “They are only allowed to stay for one day. It’s not cool.”

In November, I was transferred from U.S. Penitentiary Big Sandy, a high-security prison in Inez, Kentucky, to yet another wretched facility that is far worse. About a three-hour drive from Big Sandy is a sleepy, creepy little town called Pine Knot, Kentucky, home to USP McCreary.

At this high-security pen, Warden John Gilley has created a house of horrors.

Prisoners are hungry. Violence is everywhere. And those things, I believe, are not unrelated. Gilley’s policy of collective punishment—where many are punished for the misbehavior of a few—has weaponized the prison’s cafeteria food and commissary privileges and created animosity among those of us who are incarcerated here at McCreary. Fights and assaults are regular occurrences, often over food. There is a ban on books sent into the facility, and plexiglass barriers left over from the pandemic diminish the value of contact visits.

Soon after my arrival, a man was killed in his cell, and his body went unnoticed by guards for 72 hours. We are supposed to stand for count twice a day, but officers only realized the man was dead after his neighbor complained of the smell.

The collective punishment policy hinges on the assumption that prisoners will hold each other accountable. But that policy, where an entire housing unit’s commissary privileges are taken away for any act of violence or found contraband (drugs, alcohol, weapons), is doomed to fail. 

Why? Here’s the situation: Prison gangs are like a secret society. Nonmembers are not privy to gang members’ plans. If a gang’s shot-caller decides to green-light a hit on a member who has fallen out of favor or a rival member who attempts to walk the same prison yard, a nonmember will not interfere. Meddling in prison politics can cause unnecessary beef.

Basically, what I am saying is that I jumped straight out of the frying pan and into the fire.

***

My ears were bombarded with rumors of the miserable and inhumane living conditions at USP McCreary (about 570 miles from my hometown D.C.) while I warily waited in the transit unit last year.

When I arrived on the yard at McCreary for the first time, the first thing to grab my attention was just how depressed and raggedy the men appeared. They reminded me of still images of starving POWs in Japanese internment camps and Nazi concentration camps, or more recent images of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Prisoners walked around the housing unit and rec yard looking stressed and undernourished. They wore old, dingy gray sweats and gym shorts and worn-out tennis shoes—some with the soles hanging off. A common theme reverberated through the conversations I had with men from various ethnicities and geographical locations: hunger. Every single man I talked to complained of being utterly and completely hungry.

Those living in the 5A housing unit where I have been assigned haven’t been allowed to purchase electronics, clothing, or food items (rice, beans, meat, fish, flour tortillas, spices, etc.) from the commissary since the start of 2023. The restriction was already in place when I arrived and is the result of the warden’s collective punishment policy.

If you happened to see a man on 5A eating a bag of Doritos, chances are he paid another man a hefty price tag—$16 or more is the going rate, depending on whether a bidding war had started over the nacho chips. In December, I overheard a young man announce that he was willing to pay $50 for a $3.50 bag of Keefe freeze-dried coffee.

In my view, Gilley’s excessive collective punishment policy has led prisoners to exploit each other’s hunger pangs for their own financial gains. The policy has created skyrocketing inflation in the prison’s black market economy as the price for food items and prison contraband has risen to astronomical heights.

Then there’s the matter of the bologna diet. The administration doesn’t allow us to eat dinner in the prison cafeteria. We’re told that this is to reduce the potential for prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in the dining area during the evening shift when there are fewer guards on duty to respond to distress calls. (The staffing shortage in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities is well-documented, as are the consequences, including horrible conditions, inhumane treatment, and violence.)

Instead, we are fed a low-calorie diet consisting of four pieces of bread, two slices of low-grade bologna, 1/4 cup of diced carrots or celery, and a single, one ounce bag of chips. On other days, we are fed a cold piece of roast beef, tuna, or peanut butter and jelly, with the same ole sides.

The men I’ve spoken to in the 5A housing unit, and throughout the prison, are losing weight because of this diet. Many have complained to me about their health problems, including hypertension, high cholesterol, acid reflux, gas, and constipation, which they believe are due to their current diets. Even the medical department here makes fun of the bologna diet.

Editor’s note: In response to questions about food service and collective punishment, a BOP spokesperson declined to comment on specific claims. Generally, the spokesperson says via email, wardens can “establish controls or implement temporary security measures to ensure the good order and security of their institution, as well as ensure the safety of the employees and individuals in our custody. In making any modifications, it is always the hope the security measure will be short-lived and returned to normal operations as quickly as possible.”

The spokesperson says “sanctions are not imposed in a capricious or retaliatory manner” and discipline “is administered based upon specific individual details of each incident and may vary from facility to facility.”

People held in the BOP have the opportunity to purchase food, clothing, and other items other than those provided, the spokesperson says via email, but the warden has discretion to limit or deny access to that privilege. BOP provides three meals per day, “two of which are hot,” the spokesperson says.

***

At least one man has died inside USP McCreary since I arrived in November, and several others have been seriously injured. 

The death, I’m told, stemmed from a dispute between cellies over allegations of stolen property. The deceased man’s body remained in his bunk for 72 hours before guards noticed. (The BOP spokesperson confirms that a man was found unresponsive inside the prison in early November and was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The FBI was notified, according to BOP, and the death remains under investigation.)

Another man overdosed in the visiting room after he swallowed a balloon filled with drugs. I think it was fentanyl. Medical staff was able to revive him.

A third man was beaten so badly in the cafeteria that I’m told he went into a coma. There have been a number of fistfights, assaults with weapons, and officers assaulting prisoners over the smallest of incidents. The violence here is far worse than at Big Sandy.

Hell, on Dec. 10 in the 5A housing unit, a rival Mexican gang member was repeatedly shanked, and no less than 20 minutes after the biohazard detail crew cleaned the blood off the floor, another small brawl broke out in a different unit. The entire prison was locked down 24/7 for the next week and a half.

In my view, the only thing the warden has successfully accomplished with his growing list of deterrents is to create a famished, desperately aggressive, hostile, and unsafe environment. Any prisoner serious about rehabilitating himself faces long odds.

Editor’s note: The most recent report on USP McCreary from the D.C. Corrections Information Council, which draws on survey answers and interviews with D.C. men incarcerated in the facility, corroborates many of these details. According to the report, every resident interviewed said the whole unit is punished when one person does something wrong. “Residents state that this is unfair and causes more violence in the facility,” the report says.

The report also says corrections officers in the special housing unit (or SHU) “try to provoke residents to engage in fights,” and 25 survey respondents say the staff makes racist remarks. Another 25 respondents say staff behavior at McCreary is worse than other penitentiaries. 

One unnamed resident said he was assaulted by a correctional officer after he told the officer a light was busted out. “The officer slapped him and put him in the SHU because he would not say that he broke it,” according to the report. “He also said he has marks from restraints, and that officers use pepper spray.”

Another resident said he was “slammed to the floor while in handcuffs. My head hit the floor, also I was wrote up for assaulting an officer. I’ve been placed in restraints so tight where they cut into my skin. Also my circulation was being cut off. I was in chains twice: once for 16 hours—the other over 13 hours. The lieutenant came in every 2 hours and roughed me up. I still have wounds to show.”

***

Warden Gilley’s collective punishment extends to his efforts to keep contraband out of the prison. He has banned prisoners’ family and friends from ordering books and having them sent to us—but not everyone is trying to smuggle illegal items into the prison.

I believe another motivation may be at play.

The majority of men who are locked up inside USP McCreary are African American, and most of the reading material coming through the mail room is progressive, Black cultural literature. I believe Warden Gilley is fearful that certain books could arouse motivations to organize against his collective punishment’s sanctions.

Editor’s note: A BOP spokesperson says via email that “agency guidance is clear that we do not implement blanket restrictions on book ordering.” Rejection of any publication is made on an individual basis and that “the specific publication at issue was detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution, or might facilitate criminal activity.”

The warden has also maintained the plexiglass partitions that were erected inside of the contact visiting room during the start of the pandemic. The partitions were meant to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But even after the pandemic has ended, and in-person visits have resumed, the plexiglass remains, creating a physical barrier between us and our visitors.

The warden intends to keep the plexiglass dividers as another way to prevent contraband from getting in, but the barriers defeat the whole purpose of contact visits—to maintain human contact and healthy family ties. You cannot feel the same connection from behind plexiglass.

I, along with every other Washington, D.C., prisoner at USP McCreary, humbly request that a delegation of D.C. representatives, including Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, joins with the Corrections Information Council to visit with us and check on our repressive and inhumane living conditions here at USP McCreary.

Askia Afrika-Ber was born and raised in Southeast D.C. and Prince George’s County and is serving a 53-year sentence for felony murder in USP McCreary, a high-security prison in Kentucky. You can read more about him here. This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

Joe Houston Jr. arrived at the D.C. Jail after 1 a.m. He passed rows and rows of cell doors until he reached his own. At 16, this was his first real taste of incarceration. As he walked to his assigned cell, other juveniles taunted, fueling the aggression that landed him there in the first place. When he stepped inside and the door slammed shut, Houston noticed that there was no mattress, but that didn’t bother him. Rather than go to sleep, Houston started doing push-ups.

“I was preparing to fight and defend myself,” he tells three other men sitting with him around a table in the basement of a row house in Northeast. Each of them replies with knowing nods.

Michael Dickerson-El, Charles Hopkins, and Dietrich Trent are with Houston at a house on Massachusetts Avenue NE, the headquarters for the nonprofit Voices for a Second Chance. Collectively, they’ve spent about 100 years behind bars.

On this September evening, they’re sitting behind microphones and sharing pieces of themselves that they hope will create understanding among those who haven’t been locked up and solutions for those who have. When they’re done, Jim Watkins, a retired general manager for WHUR-FM, will turn the recording into an episode of the podcast Solutions from the Yard, a new project produced by VSC. Dickerson-El, Hopkins, and Trent take turns hosting the show.

They’ve invited Houston as their guest this week to talk about entrepreneurship and rebuilding a life after incarceration. They each take turns asking him questions about his upbringing, his life, and his business.

Houston says he was 14 when his mother died from health complications after struggling with drug addiction and mental health issues. His father wasn’t in the picture, so his sister gained custody of him when he was about 6 or 7 years old. He says he was involved in gun violence from a young age, and that’s what landed him in the D.C. Jail at 16.

Houston served five years in prison (where he met Dickerson-El) and was released at age 21. He says he carried that youthful aggression with him in prison until he ran into a guy he calls “Mousey” (real name John Beale), who helped change his way of thinking and introduced him to books such as The New Jim Crow and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Hopkins asks about the role that Mousey has played in Houston’s life, alluding to the importance of uncles, grandfathers, and “Big Homies” as role models.

“He didn’t ask anything from me,” Houston says. “I can’t explain why, but I was able to just open my mind up to him.”

When he was released, Houston spent some time as a sales agent, a guide, and a bus driver giving tours of D.C. before he earned his certification as a personal trainer. Mousey encouraged him to pursue that credential. 

When the pandemic hit, and gyms closed down, Houston was laid off. He recalls riding around Southeast D.C., where he grew up, and trying to think of what he could do to help. He was aware of the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on his community and knew preexisting health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease contributed to the high death rate among his neighbors.

That’s how WeFitDC was born.

Houston enlisted Mousey and three other friends—all returning citizens who were also into physical fitness—to start offering free outdoor fitness classes. He recalls the first meeting where the group came up with the idea: They met near the basketball courts in the Benning Terrace community. As they were talking, a shoot-out erupted a short distance away.

The men stayed and finished their meeting, Houston says on the podcast. “One of us was like, ‘See, this is why we gotta do the work,’” he recalls.

Since that meeting in 2020, Houston has grown the business and just cut the ribbon on his new gym at Sycamore & Oak in Ward 8. He also started a nonprofit that provides health and wellness programming for kids and sponsors youth sports teams. He’s hoping to get his own football team together by the spring.

About a month after the podcast recording, Houston finalized the incorporation for another business, Ida Sight Media, where he hopes to explore photography and short films. The company is named after his mother, Ida.

He says he never imagined that he would open his own gym, and learning to run a business took time and tough decisions. Given his success, Hopkins asks what advice he has for kids growing up in a situation similar to Houston’s childhood.

“Surround yourself with positive people,” he says. He acknowledges that’s easier said than done, which is why he tries to be that positive presence for the kids he works with.

***

VSC has existed since 1969, when it was called Visitors’ Services Center and helped incarcerated people stay connected with their family and friends who waited in the visitors’ line at the D.C. Jail. Over the years, the organization’s mission has expanded to helping people start to rebuild their lives when they’re released from jail and prisons. The name changed to Voices for a Second Chance in 2015.

In 2021 and 2022, the organization, led by executive director Paula Thompson, served more than 1,100 individuals who came from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, D.C. Department of Corrections, halfway houses located in Baltimore and Delaware, and D.C.’s Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, according to VCS’s annual report. They started releasing episodes of the podcast in January.

Dickerson-El, Hopkins, and Trent are all graduates of VCS’s Train Our Voices program, a 33-week course that teaches individuals how to be advocates for themselves and others leaving carceral facilities, especially in light of D.C.’s unique criminal justice system. Each man takes turns hosting and scheduling guests. The episodes have touched on reentry, prison food, homelessness and juvenile delinquency, discrimination, and the 13th Amendment.

“People need to understand what incarceration is and what it does,” Thompson says. “It’s important that these men lead this project because lots of people speak for them and don’t get it right.”

Throughout the episodes they’ve released so far, the men peel back the curtain on life inside prison and lay bare the traumatic impacts it’s had on them individually and as members of larger communities. In one particularly powerful episode, the men open up about that trauma, how it shows up, and how they each deal with it.

For Trent, the incident was particularly fresh: Just last night, he says, he was startled awake by his fiancee, but struggled to get back to sleep in his bed, he tells his co-hosts. After sleeping in a prison cell for 25 years, Trent says he didn’t realize how much trauma he was still carrying.

To get back to sleep, Trent said he laid down in the corner of his basement by a closet—the coldest place in his house. It reminds him of the conditions in a prison cell.

“It’s hard for me to explain to people,” he says on the podcast. “Don’t touch me when I’m asleep. I experienced it last night, and it was ugly. It was real ugly. And I wasn’t happy until I went to go sleep in that corner, wrapped up with no blanket, no mattress, no pillow. But I was in a safe space over there, to me.”

Dickerson-El thanks him for sharing, and offers some of his own experience: The first time he saw a murder was in prison. A group of prisoners stabbed a man 65 times. Dickerson-El says he watched as the guards stood by and did nothing.

“That really leaves a deep stain in your mind,” he says. “It’s survival of the fittest.”

Then he nudges Trent to elaborate. Trent recalls that as a child, he could never remember seeing his mother cry.

“Now as I’m educated and older, [I realize] she was desensitizing herself,” he says. “I was only being taught from my mother how to desensitize myself … I didn’t know the effect of it until I got home.

“These are things I’m still learning,” he adds.

Hopkins, who spent nearly 50 years in prison, including time in a supermax facility, explains that he has come to recognize that his trauma at times warps his perceptions of interactions with people on the outside. And he offers a solution. 

“When I got out of prison, that’s the first thing I did was get help with mental health,” he says. “I recognized I had a problem with processing traumatic events.”

Hopkins recalls on the podcast that he had bad experiences with dental care while he was incarcerated, where his pain often went ignored. Those memories leaked into his experience going to the dentist outside of prison.

“So trauma for me is, at times, my inability to understand situations on an emotional level,” he says on the podcast. “And by the grace of God I don’t react. I try to process.” Hopkins hopes that others in his situation will hear his story and start to recognize how trauma shows up in their own lives.

For Trent, hosting the podcast gives him an outlet to talk about the barriers and successes he has found since he was released from prison. He finds some healing in creating a record of his experience. He hopes others will find some comfort in hearing about his struggles, and that he has found solutions.

“It gives us a voice and allows us to be advocates for the people who can’t speak,” Trent says in an interview. “We’re speaking for the brothers and sisters still behind those bars who don’t have a voice. And we try to find solutions for some of the issues that brothers and sisters still face.” 

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

Correction: This article initially reported that Dietrich Trent works for VSC. He is one of the hosts of the podcast, but not a VSC employee. This version has been corrected.

During a brief stint in the D.C. Jail, Ivory Haight remembers one woman in particular—not by name, but for her relentless requests for food.

“This one lady always wanted your food,” says Haight, 40, who cycled in and out of local lockups beginning when she was 16.

At meal times, when the woman would come by begging for what little food Haight had on her own tray, she admits that she was tempted to use violence to put a stop to it. Tensions are already high in the jail, Haight says, and it doesn’t take much to set someone off. The poor quality and small amount of food only worsens the situation, she says.

“It never came to that because she saw my attitude, and real recognize real,” Haight says. “So she didn’t come my way with that drama anymore. Thank god for that.” 

Haight eventually learned that the woman was only living off of the meals provided by the Department of Corrections and couldn’t afford to purchase extra food at the commissary like others often did. After that, she softened a bit and befriended the woman, Haight says, adding that eating from the commissary is a necessity for survival inside the D.C. Jail.

“Every day they fought over food. Everyone’s mad because there’s nothing to eat,” she says. “We’re already irritated because we’re waking up to garbage, and you got people hovering over you, begging for your food. ‘Are you gonna eat that?’ ‘Can I have that?’ Every day you’re begging for something. People were fighting in there constantly.”

Haight says she hasn’t seen the inside of a jail cell in more than a decade. Now she’s working on opening a transition home for women returning home from prison. She just secured a business license and a so-called “clean hands certificate” indicating that she doesn’t have any outstanding debts with the D.C. government. She’s now looking for a building and grant funding.

In the meantime, she’s lending her voice to advocate for better food service inside the D.C. Jail in light of a bill currently before the D.C. Council.

Earlier this year, Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto introduced the Food Regulation Ensures Safety Hospitality Special Training Aids Reentry Transition and Success Act of 2023, or FRESH STARTS Act. If signed into law, the bill would set nutritional standards for meals served in the jail and require the Department of Corrections to adopt the Good Food Purchasing Policy, a national campaign that prioritizes local economies, environmental sustainability, workers’ rights, animal welfare, and nutrition.

The bill also establishes a “Fresh Foods Fund” to supplement the DOC’s existing contract for food services in the purchase of “nutrient-dense foods.” The fund can also be used to provide grants to incarcerated people who cannot afford to purchase food from the commissary.

Pinto held an initial committee hearing on the bill in July, where former Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Leonard Bishop testified in support alongside several other witnesses. Bishop, who was elected to represent people incarcerated in the D.C. Jail, is waiting for a judge to rule on his claim of innocence. Less than a week after his testimony, he was transferred to a federal prison without explanation. (People serving D.C. sentences are held in U.S. Bureau of Prisons facilities throughout the country because the District does not have its own prison or control of most of its criminal justice system.)

Although Bishop and Haight’s time in the D.C. Jail is separated by more than a decade, their descriptions of the food are consistent. In conversations with City Paper, both have described the food as cold, stale, overcooked (and in some cases undercooked), at times spoiled, and lacking in nutrients.

“The hot dogs are like pink and brown,” Haight says. “It’s slop. They have this stuff called shit on a shingle. It’s sausage and gravy. It causes constipation, and it was disgusting.”

Although the nutritional requirements would be a welcome upgrade, Haight believes that improving the overall quality of food served in the jail could cut down on violence within the facility, too.

She says she’s watched correctional officers withhold food as punishment or to show favoritism. She also says she’s watched people trade sex for food.

“I’ve seen it happen,” she says. “People exchange sexual favors for food or anything else they might need.”

Supporters of the bill, and of improving food served in carceral facilities in general, point to the Maine Department of Corrections as a model. In the state prison system, DOC residents tend to organic crops planted throughout about 25 acres across eight facilities, according to Maine DOC Commissioner Randall Liberty. The gardens produce fruits and vegetables that are then served in Maine DOC cafeterias. “The program gives us the opportunity to provide endless salad bars for residents,” Liberty says, adding that the residents also learn to bake their own breads using local, discounted grains. 

Liberty says the program (which has helped certify 75 DOC residents as master gardeners through the University of Maine) is part of the DOC’s non-adversarial approach to corrections. He credits the overall model of generally treating people with dignity and respect, with a significant reduction in assaults on staff: from 87 in 2017 to just seven assaults in 2022.

But while Liberty has found success in a state prison system, he acknowledges that the program isn’t entirely transferable to a jail, where the population is much less stable. People are cycling in and out, some may be intoxicated, and most don’t stay long enough to stabilize and settle in.

Still, he mentions one facility in particular, where on a recent visit he saw that some of the residents had just baked three big raspberry pies using the berries grown at the facility.

“Imagine how normative that is. People who haven’t tasted a raspberry in 20 years, to create that food for each other,” he says. “When we treat people that way, they act responsibly and are respectful and they engage in treatment and programming rather than worrying about conflict.”

DOC has a $6.9 million contract with Aramark to provide the majority of its food service. That comes to about $2.66 per meal, though the calculation fluctuates with the population of the jail.

A typical day of meals, according to Aramark’s menu, includes 2,800 calories.

Breakfast includes juice (4 ounces), corn grits (one and a half cups), hard cooked egg (one), hash browns (three-fourths of a cup), streusel coffeecake, whipped margarine (half an ounce), milk (half pint), and coffee (one cup with one sugar packet)

Lunch includes “T. ham,” (two ounces), cheese (one ounce), mustard (two packets), enriched bread (four slices), potato salad (half of a cup), fresh baked sugar cookie bar, and a fruit drink with vitamin C (one cup).

Dinner includes “T. Hot Dogs (two each), pinto beans (one cup), coleslaw vinaigrette (half of a cup), enriched bread (two slices), mustard (two packets), cinnamon cake, and sweetened iced tea (one cup).

The FRESH STARTS Act is currently sitting in Pinto’s judiciary and public safety committee. The next step is moving the bill for consideration by the full D.C. Council, which just returned this week from summer recess. On Monday, Pinto introduced a slew of new bills aimed at addressing rising crime rates. In an accompanying press release, she indicated her intention to move the bill forward.

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

Antonio Oesby felt powerless. After spending about two decades in high- and medium-security federal prisons, he was transferred to a low-security institution in 2020, where he had fewer restrictions and more access to educational programs.

But from the moment he arrived at FCI Danbury in Connecticut, Oesby says, he was punished without justification and was made to follow extra restrictive rules that other people incarcerated at the facility were not subject to—all due to his life sentence. 

“One officer came to me and said, ‘I’m gonna be honest with you, you have a lot of staff here who are scared of you. It’s not just one life sentence, it’s multiple,’” Oesby says. “From what they’ve heard of people serving life sentences … they’re loud and uncontained, and so they put me in that box. So I’m like, ‘No, how are you gonna lock me up like this? I didn’t do anything.’”

Oesby says he worked hard for more than 20 years to transform himself from a young man who dealt with anger issues and depression to reduce his “security level” to the point where he qualified for a transfer to a low-security institution. With the help of a prison counselor, for example, Oesby developed the Mentality Adjustment Now program while at FCI Hazelton, a medium-security prison in West Virginia. The program “focuses on developing a healthy and cohesive sense of self by encouraging inmates to share personal stories to increase their own awareness of emotions and thoughts,” according to a 2016 report from the Bureau of Prisons.

Still, employees and guards at Danbury saw him only as a lifer (he says he is innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted) and, as he explains it, worked to have him transferred back to a medium-security institution after he was denied parole in 2021. He had no confidence in the BOP’s grievance system, so Oesby resorted to what he saw as the only available option to draw attention to this unfair treatment: hunger strikes.

Oesby completed two hunger strikes lasting 24 days and 34 days, respectively—the second he started two weeks after he left the hospital for the first strike. Even though he’s now dealing with what could be permanent damage to his body, he says he doesn’t regret anything.

“I did what I did because I felt it needed to be done to gain attention to what was happening to me,” he says. “Even if it cost me my life, I was willing to sacrifice that because it’s so unfair. I sometimes feel like … I probably would have been alright if that hunger strike did kill me.”

I recently spoke with Oesby over the course of several phone calls (calls from federal prisons are disconnected after just 15 minutes). In a raspy voice that registers just above a whisper, a side effect of his hunger strikes, he told me his story:

Oesby arrived at FCI Danbury in 2020. He had finally reduced his “security level” enough to qualify for transfer to a low-security institution. But as soon as he arrived, he says, he was sent to the hole (formally known as the special housing unit, or SHU—another name for solitary confinement). But it wasn’t due to any misbehavior. He says some guards and staff were frightened of him due to his life sentence. They weren’t used to working with lifers.

Eventually, though, Oesby was released from the hole and allowed to live in the normal housing unit. While he was there, Oesby says the captain made a big deal of the fact that he was serving a life sentence.

He was given a yellow card to carry around that said “high accountability” and was required to check in every 30 minutes to an hour with a staff member.

“I have never had to do that,” he says. “Not in the pen, or in the medium. Now I come to a low, and they told me the only way I can be on that compound was to do that—or else go back to the hole. It was a humiliating experience. I’m the only person there subjected to that because I’m serving life.”

Then, in July 2021, after Oesby was denied parole, he found out that his security level had been raised, and he was scheduled to return to Hazelton, a particularly violent medium-security institution where two officers were charged just this year with assaulting a person in their custody.

He says his attempts to speak with the warden went nowhere, and with little faith in the grievance process, Oesby decided to start his first hunger strike in July 2021.

For the first 12 days he only drank water, but then stopped consuming fluids altogether. On day 20, Oesby says, he was taken to an outside hospital. He officially ended the strike after 24 days. He spent a week in the hospital and was released back to Danbury.

When he returned, he started filing administrative grievances. But, he says, prison officials never considered the merits of his complaints and dismissed his grievances because, they claimed, he had missed strict filing deadlines.

So two weeks after he was released from the hospital, he started his second hunger strike. This one also involved a trip to the hospital and lasted for 34 days. But before that, Oesby says, a group of officers at Danbury tried to force fluids into him.

He describes it like this:

I was laying on my stomach and they came into the room and roughed me up—the team that they had was wearing riot gear. They had a team come in, and they jump on me, pull me to the ground. I wasn’t struggling or anything, but they were being all rough and trying to handcuff me behind my back. I only had on a pair of boxers, and they were dragging me as I was in pain from the cuffs and being in the position I was in. I asked why they’re doing this.

Then they put me in a wheelchair and took me around the corner because nobody was there. They moved me to a chair, strapped me in, and grabbed my head and pushed my neck down and strapped me down so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. Finally the lieutenant gave the order to let up off my neck.

They were putting the saline and stuff in the fluid bottle … but I was able to grab hold of the chord and bend it to stop it. They grabbed my hand and made me let go. One of the guards came behind me and grabbed my thumb and bent it so far back. I still deal with problems with it. I thought it was broke. 

Throughout his strike, Oesby says the guy in the cell next to him called to him every day, and pleaded with him to end it.

“When I would come back, and the police would leave, he would say to me, ‘Antonio, man, I don’t like seeing you like this. Go ahead and eat something, man. Just trust God,’” Oesby says.

And so on the 34th day, Oesby ended his second strike.

He was quickly transferred back to Hazelton in October 2021, he says. By December, fluid had built up in his body and his heart was enlarged, Oesby says. He prison’s medical staff initially cleared him, until, after several days of visiting the medical unit, doctors took an X-ray of his chest that showed fluid in his lungs. 

He was rushed to the hospital and spent 10 days there, he says. Doctors got the fluid to come down, prescribed him medication, and sent him back to prison but recommended a transfer to a medical facility. Oesby says the BOP’s regional medical director denied the transfer and instead prescribed physical therapy.

“The physical therapy doctor said much of my muscles will not grow back because my body started to attack itself,” Oesby says, adding that he gets winded doing simple personal tasks like showering and brushing his teeth. Finally, his transfer to Rochester FMC was approved, and that’s where he remains today.

“I’m still in a wheelchair, unable to stand up and walk,” Oesby says. “I’m dealing with neuropathy issues. My left leg can’t extend all the way out because of nerve damage, and if I try to [extend it], the pain is excruciating.”

He says fluid is still building up in his body, especially his legs and feet, and he’s developed blood clots in his lungs and legs. Nurses have to help him put on compression socks.

He continues to receive medical care in Rochester, but he says the overall treatment from the staff is vastly different from the other institutions where he’s been incarcerated. In penitentiaries, he says, the only thing you can see is the sky. “You don’t see anything that resembles life or humanity on the outside,” he says.

“On the compound, we have so many pretty trees, flowers, squirrels, rabbits. You’ll see some. It doesn’t look like a prison, to be honest. It looks like a college campus or something like that. It looks like something in society,” he says. “For me it’s helpful. It helps me to feel alive, normal, human.”

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

This article has been updated.

The following is a personal essay from Harold Cunningham, who was a lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit that revealed the Bureau of Prisons’ illegal practice of confining mentally ill people in solitary confinement and denying them treatment. A postscript, based on an interview with Cunningham, follows. —Mitch Ryals

As a young man suffering from mental illness, growing up surrounded by violence in D.C. only fed my mental illness. 

When kids my age cried about seeing a make-believe monster under their bed, I had to cry in silence so as to not awaken the real monster inside my head. How does a child explain something like this to his parents? At 8 years old, most kids were running for a football pass or on a fast break looking to score a bucket. I was running from the fear of a disease that was taking over me. I could not escape. I wanted to die.

I started to live for the thrill of death. I got into trouble and put myself in life-and-death situations. I used PCP and other drugs by the age of 10. I never thought I would live to be 15. I told my mother if I die, it would be by the hands of the police. That was the first time I saw her cry. The second time was when she came to visit me in Washington Hospital Center after I was shot seven times by the police. I was 23, trying to commit suicide by cop. The last time I saw my mother cry was after the judge sentenced me to life without the possibility of parole.

Neither the court, nor the media mentioned that I suffered from mental illness as a child, that I had an IQ of 68, and that I had been committed to a mental health hospital, St. Elizabeths. I was 16 and had attempted to kill myself.

Why wasn’t this information mentioned during my trial? Why didn’t the media mention it in the articles written about me and my crime? I can only guess that my mental illness didn’t fit into the narrative of my crime: that I was a monster who needed to be locked away.

Days after I was sentenced to spend the rest of my life in prison, I was taken into federal custody and placed into long-term solitary confinement because I had attempted to stab a witness during my trial.

Even though the Bureau of Prisons’ policies state that people with serious mental illnesses should not be assigned to the ADX-Florence Control Unit, I was hidden away in one of America’s most dangerous units. Those policies reflect the BOP’s recognition that extended confinement in isolation poses substantial risk to a prisoner’s mental health and can be particularly harmful for men who had mental health problems before their incarceration.

In 1998, a year and a half after my initial trial, I was taken back to court for the stabbing charge. All charges were dismissed after evidence of my mental illness was presented, but instead of sending me to a mental health facility for treatment, I was thrown back into solitary confinement.

I spent the next 17 years in solitary confinement, abused and tortured, while I was denied mental health treatment as my mental condition worsened over time.

I had over 100 assaults and stabbings of officers. My motto was, “kill me or fear me.” I wanted to die. And I tried. But no matter how hard I tried, for some reason, God had other plans for me.

Starting in 2010, the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs received letters from prisoners housed in the same ADX Control Unit describing what was going on. Soon after that, in 2012, 17 mentally ill prisoners held in solitary confinement filed a civil class action lawsuit that highlighted the denial of mental health treatment, abuse, and torture.

We moaned and screamed. Some men banged on the walls of their cells with their fists, and sometimes with their heads until the walls were bloody red. Some mutilated their bodies with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, writing utensils, or whatever else they could get their hands on.

Officers assaulted us. We were handcuffed and shackled to our beds for weeks and not fed. We suffered. A number of us swallowed razor blades, nail clippers, and other dangerous objects. Others covered their bodies with feces and spread it all over the walls to make it a health hazard for themselves and others.

Some carried on conversations with voices in their heads—oblivious to reality and the danger that such behavior might pose to their mental health. Some wrote letters as best they could or filed administrative remedies begging for help, for treatment, only to be denied. 

Many took their cells hostage and forced teams of officers in riot gear to use gas and physical force. Suicide attempts were common. Many were successful. There was no mental health treatment.

My name is Harold Cunningham, and I was the lead plaintiff in the class action case against the BOP. I was one of the 17 mentally ill people held in the most dangerous maximum-security control unit in the country. We were mentally and physically abused and tortured for years. 

I had no fear of dying, but now that I have received mental health treatment, I’m thankful that my attempts to end my life were unsuccessful. Nine of my fellow prisoners committed suicide. I knew them all. Their scars were deeper than eyes can see. May they all rest in peace.

Peace within is something I have long prayed for, and I am learning that it comes with accepting the truth. Now, after 25 years, the truth is coming to light in my criminal case. For 19 years, the court and prosecutors have withheld critical expert testimony from two psychologists who testified during my 1999 competency hearing and who said I was incompetent to stand trial. I had no control over my actions when I snapped and stabbed a marshal and a witness in the middle of the courtroom in full view of the jury.

All charges from the courtroom assault were dismissed March 2, 1999, after the competency hearing. That was the first time my mental illness was ever brought into court.

Through treatment, I have learned that I have a lot to live for. I want my story to help others, and I hope to start a nonprofit that will focus on providing a voice for the mentally ill in prison and on the outside. The organization will provide a platform to turn their stories and artwork into books and short films. Writing has become therapeutic to me. I have received over 100 certificates and left behind the 100 assaults. I speak to other prisoners about what I have lived through. I have tried taking my GED test seven times, but have failed. I will keep trying until I pass.

Postscript: Cunningham is currently held in the D.C. Jail’s Central Treatment Facility, where he is awaiting a court’s decision on several motions related to his case.

During his time in CTF, Cunningham says he has tried to call attention to what he says is inadequate mental health treatment for people held in the jail. 

He recalls one particularly acute example where a woman was booked into jail after the psychiatrist left for the weekend. He says the woman was screaming in her cell and refused to eat because she claimed she was allergic to the food. It appeared to Cunningham that the woman was in the midst of a mental health crisis that was going unaddressed. By Sunday, he says, she had defecated on herself, and jail officials then moved her into solitary confinement.

Cunningham says he has tried to step in and fill the dearth of mental health care with what he calls “mental health safe zones.” He facilitates informal group sessions with fellow jail residents about past traumas and talks about the importance of seeking treatment, to the extent that it’s available. He talks with them about traumatic brain injuries and the influences that the carceral environment can have on a person.

“Don’t start thinking that the way we’re living is normal,” he tells those who gather for his sessions. “The way lots of people are living is not normal—with drugs and guns and stuff.”

He also shares his story with the group in the hopes of getting others to open up. One man spoke about being the survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Cunningham says.

“Getting these guys to open up about mental illness is what I’m trying to do,” he says. “I’m showing them the power we have among ourselves.”

Another problem facing people who attend his sessions is a distrust of the doctors who are available and the stigma around mental health, especially for Black men. “It’s not talked about enough,” he says.

“These young guys open up to me. They say, ‘I don’t want to live,’” Cunningham says. “They’re not getting no mental health treatment, and a lot of them don’t trust these psychologists.”

Cunningham says he wants to start a nonprofit focused on improving mental health treatment in jails and prisons. He’s also currently working on a skit about the illegal use of restraint chairs—another form of abuse that he has personally experienced.

Click here to listen to Cunningham talk about his experience with restraint chairs, in a recording on Prison Radio, a project of the nonprofit Redwood Justice Fund. He’s also spoken about other issues. 

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

Greg Bolden was cleaning out his mother’s house in Clay Terrace 25 or 30 years ago when he came across an old school assignment she had saved. His drawing of a rubber duck, on old newsprint, transported him back to Ms. Charles’ first grade classroom.

“I was like the duck, man, that was the ultimate rubber ducky,” Bolden says.

Standing in front of his mother’s closet, Bolden, then about 16 or 17, didn’t think much more of the drawing and put it back in a box. His mother has since died, the house was renovated, and the drawing is lost to time.

It didn’t mean much to him back then—just another school assignment. But the moment stands out in his memory now as a crossroads of sorts. The drawing was a fleeting reminder to the teenage Bolden of his natural artistic ability that he was leaving behind.

In 2006, Bolden was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. He was convicted and sentenced in 2008, and went on to serve more than 16 years of a 31-year sentence. He was released in July 2022 under the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, which allows people sentenced to long prison terms for crimes committed before the age of 25 to ask a judge for a sentence reduction. Some successful motions result in the release of men who have been locked behind prison walls since they were teenagers. The law, initially approved in 2017, follows the growing understanding of how young brains develop and what that means for their culpability.

During his 16 years as Inmate No. 03676-007, Bolden returned to the pastime where as a child he showed a natural ability. Behind bars, he studied other artists and honed his craft. He lists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Henri Matisse, and Harry Ellis, an incarcerated artist, as sources of inspiration.

Bolden says his journey to becoming an artist in prison started when a job in the art room opened up at FCI Bennettsville in South Carolina. He had been working as a janitor cleaning the showers, and when he got the job teaching in the art room, other prisoners and guards began to recognize his talent. Eventually they started asking if he took commissions.

At first, Bolden says, he accepted payment in the form of art supplies. He grew his collection with donations from guys who were getting transferred or released, and he soon had everything he needed—canvas, brushes, paint, pencils, pastels. Anything he could get his hands on.

But sometimes Bolden had to get creative in the way that living inside a prison requires. At FCI Bennettsville, Bolden was feeling inspired after reading about ancient Egypt and studying Basquiat and his depictions of ancient Egypt. He made his own primer using white latex paint and chalk that the prison used to line the athletic fields outside.

“So I mixed me a little concoction, and I primed a cardboard with that. And I had one of my buddies give me some paint, and a little brush and a small diamond paint knife like this one,” he says holding up a similar tool from his basement studio during a FaceTime interview with City Paper. “I just used that, man, and I went to work.”

The completed piece, about 40 by 30 inches, features two Eyes of Horus, lotus flowers to represent eternal life, and a sundial. It’s one of his favorites, he says. It represents resurrection and rebirth.

Soon, art became more than a pastime. It was his business (he would charge $50 to $85 for commissions depending on the size of the piece).

“Art was my freedom,” Bolden says.

“Instead of me always having my hand out for family members to support me, when I reached out, it wasn’t empty,” he adds. “I had something to contribute. And that was a blessing, man, to be able to do something that I love and get paid for it and not resort in violence, not having to take anything from anybody.”

That violence, Bolden says, was a fucked-up, everyday reality inside those walls.

“It was really not too far from the environments that we grew up in,” he says. Violence, guns and drugs were all around him as a kid on the outside. Inside, it came from other prisoners and from guards, and in the form of shake downs and lock downs. The brutality often fell along the fault lines of race, religion, and gang affiliation. Being Black in prison comes with its own unique set of burdens, he says.

“That shit is a lot to deal with even if you’re not a person who is involved in anything violent,” Bolden says. “Sometimes just going day to day, to commissary, just going through an average day in jail, it can end up bad. I’m talking about [even] the most pleasant individual in there, that shit tests you, and it calls you to be a certain type of way … and if you allow yourself to drown in it … you’ll find yourself in a worse situation than you were coming in.”

Surrounded by violence, Bolden started to realize the flaws in his own thinking. It exposed the images of success and masculinity that he had learned growing up as destructive and fraudulent: the flashy cars, the jewelry, and the women.

“We try to grasp and imitate and emulate these individuals we see in the streets, who we think are fly and [demonstrate] who we’re supposed to be as men,” he says. “But not seeing down the line that this person went to jail for that or died or got robbed.”

In that journey, art was also his refuge. It kept his mind and his hands busy. His work also earned him credibility with the officers. 

“These officers, they belittle you, they demean you,” he says. “They run up in your cell and totally demolish all your motherfuckin’ property regardless of what it is, [whether it has] sentimental value, just because they can do it and out of spite because that’s the type of shit that they’re on.”

Sometimes, he says, officers who didn’t know him—usually rookies—would come through his cell and destroy or confiscate his work. But eventually he started making a name for himself with his art. His work earned him respect.

“I always wanted them to look at me as I was,” he says. “I didn’t want you to look at me as no number or no inmate. … I saw myself as something different and something better, and the way I conducted myself, that’s the respect I wanted to demand from people.”

Since his release, Bolden has thrown himself into his craft. Once the product of a family broken by drugs and poverty, he now works as a security guard and has a family to take care of—he got married while he was in prison and his youngest daughter is 10. He’s currently in the middle of creating a mural for a public charter school in D.C. and is selling more of his work online. 

Bolden stays connected with other returning citizens (he was listening in on a meeting of the Free Minds Book Club when I interrupted him for our interview). Ten months after coming home, he’s still focusing most of his energy on building a new identity for himself.

“I’m just really really soaking up the job of being home, being free, and being in a really really good, healthy space in my spirit, in my mind, and with the people who I deal with and my family,” he says. “The things that I create in this new space, in my new element, they’ll be beyond the things I’ve created in the process of my incarceration.

“Every moment of the day, if I’m not sleeping or working, I’m strategizing, thinking about what I’m going to create,” he adds. “I’m comin’, Ryals.”

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.