Dear Readers- ⁉️warning this may be graphic or triggering to some.
I just heard York CI is on a 5 day lock down. And honestly my PTSD kicked in. I know I’m home now but I remember what those lock downs were like and my heart ❤️ is with the people who still have to be subjected to them.
For anyone who doesn’t know what a lock down inside a prison is- let me fill you in. It’s usually a surprise to the incarcerated people. You could have a visit on the way that night and suddenly your told the facility your in is on a lock down. So now your devastated because the family member you were so excited to get to be able to see you probably haven’t seen in a long time. He’s gonna drive up to this prison, which is probably in a remote place and out-of-the-way for them expecting to see you and when they get to the gate, they’re gonna just be turned away and told that the facility is on a lockdown.. you know the person that’s coming isn’t gonna understand what a lockdown is or what it entails and they’re gonna be so upset that they aren’t being let in to see you. Meanwhile, you sitting in your room, crying because your heartbroken.. or maybe you had a phone call planned that you now can’t make and you know your family or your children are expecting you to call . You know they’ll have no way of knowing what happened to you or why you didn’t call and that they’ll be freaking out worrying, but there’s nothing you could do to notify them Or maybe you are in college or school and now you can’t attend. You go from being able to eat lunch and dinner in the chow hall sitting at a table to being fed in a styrofoam tray, eating in your cell right next to your toilet and possibly your roommate occupying that toilet taking a number 2. They can’t leave, you can’t leave both of you stuck in this room with no escape for lack of a better word. For the first few days of lock down you are forced to either take bird baths in your cell sink or to not be clean at all. If you took the bird bath remember your in the cell with your roommate in full view not a lick of privacy and to further that trauma just a bit you have a window on your cell door that you can not cover, not even for a second without getting a tampering with safety and security class A ticker which will land you in solitary confinement for sure. So you don’t cover it and your exposed and if a male guard walks by and he happens to see you, rest assured he will write you an indecent exposure ticket or in some cases he will stare at you. It’s a 50/50 shot.
But don’t worry I haven’t even gotten to the worst part. A lock down is usually happening because it’s a routine or scheduled facility search or it’s an unplanned spur of the moment one. Like the time an old warden who’s no longer at York was being escorted on a facility tour and lost her coffee mug, or the time the medical unit lost a pregnancy baby monitor. They actually strip searched all of us in those instances. what’s a strip search you ask? More than what you might think. When a guard or group of guards gets to command you to get BUCK naked. Off with the bra and underwear too. And if that’s not enough they command you to open your mouth lift your tongue while they inspect the inside of your mouth, you are commanded to shake out your hair and lift each breast, then you are Forced by threat of a ticket for not complying or tampering with safety and security to bed at the knees bend over and spread your buttock, and then commanded to cough. I guess their hope is- if you have any thing concealed it will come flying out and they’ll make their big bust and somehow be promoted or pat on the back. They don’t only search for missing coffee mugs or huge baby monitors but just for the general shake downs as well. “Like we really don’t know what we are looking for but just incase you stuffed anything up there” and that’s not the half of it mind you half of these strip searches are done right before they kick us out of the cell and tear it apart. They look through everything, every item on our cell. they ruin our art work, they read our journals,
Pull apart our bedding and confiscates anything they think we should not have. Then they leave your cell in a big heap of a mess, your and your cell mates items in a big pile in the center of your floor and then once they complete your unit and you watch out the window as they cart your friends off to seg or maybe even it’s you getting carted off to seg yourself. Usually the strip search happens while the room search is happening. First the boon squad comes with their batons and shields and escorts the tier to the gym while making you stand with your hands behind your head or behind your back, they command single file and silence and threaten you with seg all the way to the gym. Then they make you sit in rows on the floor. The people who are disabled have to beg to talk to a Lieutenant so they can get permission to have a chair brought to them instead of sitting on the floor, but in a lot of cases, the guards won’t even let that happen and they’ll make them sit on the floor. Then they’ll call you up bro by row and that’s when the strip searching will begin and still you have to be absolutely quiet if they catch you talking you risk going to and at that same time there’s other guards in the unit where you came from searching yourself so you don’t even get to see what’s happening to your room.. when you get back to your room that’s when you see the disaster that the guards have left behind. It’s very rare that they don’t destroy your room. Mind you these are your only possessions in the entire world. They take extra uniforms they take extra blankets. They take extra pillows. They take food.
It’s like I don’t know if you could imagine going out and coming home to your house entirely ransack but the only difference is we’re sitting in the gym and we know that someone is in our Cell ransacking it and we’re told to shut up and be quiet and not only are we made to be quiet, but then we’re being strip, searched and looked at an examined butt naked. And in a lot of cases, like I said, we haven’t even been allowed to shower.
So yes, ladies and gentlemen, readers of this and I heard tonight that the women at work around lockdown it definitely brought me extreme amount of trauma and definitely triggered PTSD for me and made me very sad. I worry deeply for the women in York. I have been home for 10 years and I am praying that the way the the current guards conduct themselves is in a way more human way. I’m praying that the women are being treated with dignity and respect. But I fear that they are not.
Sincerely,
Tracie
Please share if you want the world to understand what goes on in the vailed society we call “correctional facilities”