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.”