7 ms·

I got “paid” $0.18/hr. in a federal complex in Colorado to make bologna sandwiches and other slop for other inmates on lockdown. They took out over $1/hr. (the

I got “paid” $0.18/hr. in a federal complex in Colorado to make bologna sandwiches and other slop for other inmates on lockdown. They took out over $1/hr. (the difference expropriated from remittances I received from family) to put toward “restitution”. Slaves break even. This was closer to being held for ransom. I feel a deep sense of shame to reside in a country where the majority of the populace is fine with it. Some with a shit-eating grin.

p3rls 3y ago
Why would you even show up for 0.18 cents? Could you have collectively gone on strike with the other prisoners? Would that have been held against you for sentencing? I thought federal prison was the "nice" one. I'd imagine you could just write in a notebook and sell it as a blog/book after prison and do better but everything I know about that environment was learned from Tim Robbins in Shawshank.
- moralestapia 3y ago
  It's forced labor, they don't have a choice.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Yes they do, I’m not aware of any prisons in the US where you have to do the work it’s just it looks good to a parole board.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      and if you don't you just get to sit in a box and stare at the wall all day.
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      You not being aware of it doesn't mean it doesnt exist. > Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/27/slavery-loophole-unpaid-labor-in-prisons https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/27/slavery-loop...
    - egberts1 3y ago
      Gotta love those ignorant commentators. Absence of evidence never equates with a fact that none exist. Hence science is never final, just the facts.
    - mchannon 3y ago
      In the federal system, inmates are offered “GCT”, Good Conduct Time, where they get released from 15% of the sticker price time of their bid. It’s subject to revocation. That makes for a powerful carrot. Refusal to work is one of the prohibited acts an inmate can do (called a “shot”) to get it taken away.
      - callalex 3y ago
        It sounds like your issue is actually with current sentencing guidelines, not mandatory labor then.
        mchannon 3y ago
        It's not either/or. I have numerous issues with both. Would be happy if more Americans had issues with either.
- mchannon 3y ago
  I’ll dispense with the 18 cents vs. 0.18 cents lecture. Work stoppages can and have occurred, but the CO’s had sufficient expertise, staffing, and paid overtime to prevent anything newsworthy from happening. Generally unfair treatment or conditions were the cause of stoppages, none of which occurred during my tenure. Collective punishments for evidence of smuggled contraband (which was ubiquitous) were more common. Numerous jails I did time in transit (appx. 7 over 100 days) had worse conditions than the FPC I did the majority of my time in. The problem with Shawshank as applied to the modern day is that the newsman Andy sent the warden’s financials to no longer exists to receive it. There is no independent investigative media in the U.S. anymore and the likely outcome of the movie, set today, would have been the warden continuing to commit his atrocities, unencumbered by public scrutiny. I think a screenplay and movie will be the vehicle I tell this story with. Print isn’t exactly dead but movies are a more effective vehicle for change in this day and age.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Feel free to reach out to me if you need anything at all at any time.
    - mchannon 3y ago
      Tried andrew@kemendo.com but it got bounced. Maybe you could ping me at my email address?
      - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
        I gotchu - sent thanks
mista2nith 3y ago
[dead]
Georgelemental 3y ago
What were you locked up for?
- mchannon 3y ago
  This is not a facetious response. I honestly don't know. The jury foreman didn't know either, so he asked the judge to clarify, which she didn't. (I have copies of the notes they exchanged). The jury didn't want to come back the following Monday, so they voted guilty on all counts, even though they didn't know what the counts were. The judge later declared that I had pled guilty, then revised her order that I was found guilty by jury of X on a series of dates she pulled out of thin air. Then in her next order it was not X but rather Y. I don't think it's a stretch to say she didn't know either. One explanation is that the prosecutor kept changing her mind as to what the charges were, in three separate overlapping indictments, and played a trick where she'd supersede an indictment but argue the charges from the illegal one she superseded. This case stinks to high heaven. Just the way America likes it. And check out dirtyprosecutor.org for proof she forged the federal magistrate judge's signatures on the search warrant. Finding a reporter interested in this matter is 100x harder than finding someone to help you open the cage to buy laundry detergent at Walmart. First they hide, then they literally run away screaming from me rather than do their job.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    I'm sure you thought of it, so this is a question - to learn the reality of it - and not a suggestion: What are your thoughts on appealling to a higher court? Or a habeus appeal?
    - mchannon 3y ago
      My public defenders appealed two limited issues, one evidentiary and one to do with the government using a drug forfeiture law where no drugs were involved or alleged. There were at least sixteen better grounds (most involving their own ineffective assistance). The 10th circuit hearing was one of the first audio recorded and made publicly available on the website and indicate just how moronic the panel was. They denied the appeal in part and remanded the part of about the drug forfeiture back because they couldn't make sense of it. I fired my counsel and got assigned another mercenary attorney to reargue the forfeiture bit two years later. Supreme court flushed the case, as they do most. In the interim while at large I filed a habeas action (2255) within the scope of the court's own rules and they deliberately disregarded their own rules in order to deny it unless it was limited to 1/10 of its original length. Appealing that matter was fruitless, so rather than being left without options I filed an abridged version. On the day of self-surrender, I traveled to Vermont to file a habeas action (2241) in custody of the D.Vt. within the second circuit, which had a reputation for being less corrupt (not less enough, unfortunately). 2241 got denied because by the time the judge got reassigned I had been moved into the ambit of the first circuit and thus they tossed the case (I was moved back into the second circuit shortly thereafter). 2255 got denied by the trial judge, of course. Quite a few years later the 10th circuit flushed it by ignoring half of it and deliberately misstating facts and misinterpreting facts and pointing to procedural incantations present within my original briefing but not within the 1/10 length I was illegally limited to. Oh yes, that mercenary attorney I fired later too, but not before I went to watch her argue. She argued well, but pearls before swine. Later that day, on the Southwest flight home, I sat next to the 10th circuit judge on both cases (random coincidence) and asked him if he'd ever met someone whose life he'd ruined with one of his rulings, and now he had. As soon as we landed this 70-something old man ran off the plane faster than anyone I've ever seen, and went to tattle to the secret service to get me in trouble (though I did not threaten or attack him), but afterward, wouldn't recuse himself from the case, for which his vote was the deciding vote, 2-1 against me. The rest of the circuit gave him a pass for his ex parte conversation with me. The amount of daylight between circuit court judges and gangsters (and I've come to know both) is far smaller than most Americans could possibly comprehend. There are always more appeals I could file. Until they get an attitude adjustment from mounting public or political pressure on the judiciary, it's wasted effort for now. Americans are quick to outrage but easy to distract and sedate.

p3rls 3y ago

Why would you even show up for 0.18 cents? Could you have collectively gone on strike with the other prisoners? Would that have been held against you for sentencing? I thought federal prison was the "nice" one. I'd imagine you could just write in a notebook and sell it as a blog/book after prison and do better but everything I know about that environment was learned from Tim Robbins in Shawshank.

moralestapia 3y ago
It's forced labor, they don't have a choice.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Yes they do, I’m not aware of any prisons in the US where you have to do the work it’s just it looks good to a parole board.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    and if you don't you just get to sit in a box and stare at the wall all day.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    You not being aware of it doesn't mean it doesnt exist. > Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/27/slavery-loophole-unpaid-labor-in-prisons https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/27/slavery-loop...
  - egberts1 3y ago
    Gotta love those ignorant commentators. Absence of evidence never equates with a fact that none exist. Hence science is never final, just the facts.
  - mchannon 3y ago
    In the federal system, inmates are offered “GCT”, Good Conduct Time, where they get released from 15% of the sticker price time of their bid. It’s subject to revocation. That makes for a powerful carrot. Refusal to work is one of the prohibited acts an inmate can do (called a “shot”) to get it taken away.
    - callalex 3y ago
      It sounds like your issue is actually with current sentencing guidelines, not mandatory labor then.
      - mchannon 3y ago
        It's not either/or. I have numerous issues with both. Would be happy if more Americans had issues with either.
mchannon 3y ago
I’ll dispense with the 18 cents vs. 0.18 cents lecture. Work stoppages can and have occurred, but the CO’s had sufficient expertise, staffing, and paid overtime to prevent anything newsworthy from happening. Generally unfair treatment or conditions were the cause of stoppages, none of which occurred during my tenure. Collective punishments for evidence of smuggled contraband (which was ubiquitous) were more common. Numerous jails I did time in transit (appx. 7 over 100 days) had worse conditions than the FPC I did the majority of my time in. The problem with Shawshank as applied to the modern day is that the newsman Andy sent the warden’s financials to no longer exists to receive it. There is no independent investigative media in the U.S. anymore and the likely outcome of the movie, set today, would have been the warden continuing to commit his atrocities, unencumbered by public scrutiny. I think a screenplay and movie will be the vehicle I tell this story with. Print isn’t exactly dead but movies are a more effective vehicle for change in this day and age.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Feel free to reach out to me if you need anything at all at any time.
  - mchannon 3y ago
    Tried andrew@kemendo.com but it got bounced. Maybe you could ping me at my email address?
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      I gotchu - sent thanks

mista2nith 3y ago

[dead]

Georgelemental 3y ago

What were you locked up for?

mchannon 3y ago
This is not a facetious response. I honestly don't know. The jury foreman didn't know either, so he asked the judge to clarify, which she didn't. (I have copies of the notes they exchanged). The jury didn't want to come back the following Monday, so they voted guilty on all counts, even though they didn't know what the counts were. The judge later declared that I had pled guilty, then revised her order that I was found guilty by jury of X on a series of dates she pulled out of thin air. Then in her next order it was not X but rather Y. I don't think it's a stretch to say she didn't know either. One explanation is that the prosecutor kept changing her mind as to what the charges were, in three separate overlapping indictments, and played a trick where she'd supersede an indictment but argue the charges from the illegal one she superseded. This case stinks to high heaven. Just the way America likes it. And check out dirtyprosecutor.org for proof she forged the federal magistrate judge's signatures on the search warrant. Finding a reporter interested in this matter is 100x harder than finding someone to help you open the cage to buy laundry detergent at Walmart. First they hide, then they literally run away screaming from me rather than do their job.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  I'm sure you thought of it, so this is a question - to learn the reality of it - and not a suggestion: What are your thoughts on appealling to a higher court? Or a habeus appeal?
  - mchannon 3y ago
    My public defenders appealed two limited issues, one evidentiary and one to do with the government using a drug forfeiture law where no drugs were involved or alleged. There were at least sixteen better grounds (most involving their own ineffective assistance). The 10th circuit hearing was one of the first audio recorded and made publicly available on the website and indicate just how moronic the panel was. They denied the appeal in part and remanded the part of about the drug forfeiture back because they couldn't make sense of it. I fired my counsel and got assigned another mercenary attorney to reargue the forfeiture bit two years later. Supreme court flushed the case, as they do most. In the interim while at large I filed a habeas action (2255) within the scope of the court's own rules and they deliberately disregarded their own rules in order to deny it unless it was limited to 1/10 of its original length. Appealing that matter was fruitless, so rather than being left without options I filed an abridged version. On the day of self-surrender, I traveled to Vermont to file a habeas action (2241) in custody of the D.Vt. within the second circuit, which had a reputation for being less corrupt (not less enough, unfortunately). 2241 got denied because by the time the judge got reassigned I had been moved into the ambit of the first circuit and thus they tossed the case (I was moved back into the second circuit shortly thereafter). 2255 got denied by the trial judge, of course. Quite a few years later the 10th circuit flushed it by ignoring half of it and deliberately misstating facts and misinterpreting facts and pointing to procedural incantations present within my original briefing but not within the 1/10 length I was illegally limited to. Oh yes, that mercenary attorney I fired later too, but not before I went to watch her argue. She argued well, but pearls before swine. Later that day, on the Southwest flight home, I sat next to the 10th circuit judge on both cases (random coincidence) and asked him if he'd ever met someone whose life he'd ruined with one of his rulings, and now he had. As soon as we landed this 70-something old man ran off the plane faster than anyone I've ever seen, and went to tattle to the secret service to get me in trouble (though I did not threaten or attack him), but afterward, wouldn't recuse himself from the case, for which his vote was the deciding vote, 2-1 against me. The rest of the circuit gave him a pass for his ex parte conversation with me. The amount of daylight between circuit court judges and gangsters (and I've come to know both) is far smaller than most Americans could possibly comprehend. There are always more appeals I could file. Until they get an attitude adjustment from mounting public or political pressure on the judiciary, it's wasted effort for now. Americans are quick to outrage but easy to distract and sedate.