Transcript
Perry Patterson Texas [NO TITLE] Greetings. I wanted to add to my last essay with this very important issue of being imprisoned. BEING in prison is the worst punishment possible for a judge/jury to impose. It is the loss of anyone's most valuable possession - FREEDOM. The loss of freedom means we can not go to comfort family in crises or as they are dying. We can not work to support our families financially or attend birthday parties, weddings or graduations. This is the punishment that was deliberately imposed on us. However, prison guards and staff impose their own extra punishments mostly without justification. Prison guards curse at prisoners and degrade prisoners with threats and extremely abusive language. This weekend a female prison guard cursed at every inmate that was standing up in the dayroom (wiping the tables clean), she called them "bitches" and "punks" yelling very loudly. A prisoner was talking with his 9 year old daughter on the phone so he very politely stated so and nicely asked the officer not to curse to the level his daughter could hear it through the phone. The guard deliberately ran over close to the phone and began yelling even louder now calling that inmate a "BITCH" and telling him to "SHUT THE FUCK UP" trying to entice him into violence. Guards also frequently issue disciplinary cases that are unwarranted to retaliate or punish prisoners and even just to make quotas imposed by their superiors. I have personally heard sergeants state "there ain't enough inmates on restriction in this section. I'ma have my officers write up some cases." One night a guard came to my door looking distressed and actually asked me and my celly which of us would let him write a bogus case. Me and my are religious and do not get into trouble so we both asked the guard why he wanted to write us cases when we were innocent and would be punished with loss of contact visits, commissary purchases, phone calls, dayroom, recreation and lose eligibility for special occasions, (such as Day with Dads - a program that allows children to spend a day with their incarcerated fathers) and even some prison jobs are voided when a prisoner gets a disciplinary case. The guard was very distraught (very rare) about having to write 25 cases as a 'quota' set by his lieutenant (who happened to be a defendant in my lawsuit and is no longer a prison guard). I wanted to deride the guard for being willing to write up innocent prisoners but he explained he'd just finished his O.J.T. "On Job Training" and that he and his family depended on his job here. I then felt so sorry for the officer that I told him the best advise I could think of, I said "hey, as you walk around counting or doing your security duties, don't you hear those young prisoners cursing at you for nothing?" He answered yes while shouts of "get out of here ho! and bitch as laws on one row!" I told him to write them up instead randomly writing up innocent prisoners. He immediately smiled and began noting the cells of youngsters standing at their doors yelling/cursing. As a prisoner I did not want other prisoners to 'catch cases' but at least no non-trouble-making prisoners were going to get cases for offenses they didn't do. We are literally told when we can use the toilet, get a drink, to stand up, sit down, eat, sleep, work, call our loved ones, write our loved ones and even when to shower. With that much loss of freedom we don't need or deserve the extra punishments imposed personally by individual guards and prison staff. Sometimes it's only the deprivation of a meal or medical care (see my lawsuit Patterson v. Stanley, 547 Fed. Appx. 510 (5th Cir. 2013), but all personal attacks by those employed to incarcerate and protect us are deprivations of humanity that create a hopelessness that prevents rehabilitation and encourages anger and hatred. Transcribed in 2017.
