Dear Comrades: Halloween Visit
Dear Comrades,
We left off with me promising you a story about a visit at Upstate Correctional Facility on Halloween in 2023. To me, the story is not even really a story, unless of course you want to talk about how these prison administrators and COs think their holier-than-thou-I-can-do-whatever- I-want-to-whoever-I-want attitude extends to incarcerated individuals’ families. Well, then, it’s a story. The fact of the matter is the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) website said that Upstate Correctional Facility, which only allows visits on weekends and holidays, was open for visits on Halloween even though that’s not traditionally a day DOCCS would consider a holiday. Yet when visitors showed up, the COs said there were no visits and told everyone to go home. Of course, not following policy, procedure, or the law is nothing new.
Normally, this kind of arbitrary refusal to follow the rules goes unchallenged because most people interacting with the system do not have the knowledge, means, or time to challenge it. It’s also a part of that subservience mentality they try to instill because, to them, it’s okay for citizens to drive hours to come see their loved ones only to be denied at the door for no reason. They can’t do anything about it, so they better not say nothing about it. That’s just the way the COs expect it to be.
However, my wife Emily was one of the visitors that day, and the first thing she said to the other visitors was, “No. Don’t listen to them. We’re getting in.” She gets on the phone, places a few calls, and by 10:30 AM DOCCS Commissioner Martuscello had told her to go back to the lobby to get processed for the visit. Unfortunately, no other visitors stuck around to find out if my wife was crazy or not, so we were the only ones on the visit floor that day. When I tell you that they were maaaaaaaaad, boy look. When Emily went back to the lobby after the Commissioner told her to, the door was still locked.
The COs begrudgingly opened the doors but did not process her until around noon. They didn’t come get me until close to 1:00. Mind you, this whole time, I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is that my wife is not here yet, and I’m thinking something happened to her. When they do finally come get me, they don’t even announce it over the loudspeaker like they usually do because they don’t want anybody else to know I’m getting a visit. And when I get to the visit floor, they send me back and write me a disciplinary ticket for having “altered state-issued pants,” the same pants I had been wearing to visits since I got to Upstate, before finally allowing me to see my wife.
What we can always see with prisons is a sickening pattern of offenses and then retaliation anytime you question the legitimacy of such an offense. Particularly in these rurally located jails, especially those not located downstate, they have these local officers so culturally different from the incarcerated individuals they are assigned to oversee that a lot of them tend to look at everyone who does not look, walk, talk, and act like or bow down to them as “who the fuck do you think you are,” especially someone like me. So although the altered pants issue is nothing new in general, it was an avenue to both express those beliefs and retaliate against me simultaneously.
The thing is, when incarcerated individuals were wearing the oversized pants that they gave us hanging off our asses during the baggy era, it was a problem. They said they didn’t want to see your ass, and I can be objective and support that perspective. The weird thing is how long it took them to actually put belt loops on the pants, but I won’t even get into that. Now that the style has changed, however, to pants that actually fit and those same super baggy pants that they give us are being “jailhouse tailored” so that they’re not hanging off our asses, that’s a problem too. But what’s the real issue if they fit? The issue is that now, instead of looking sloppy, we look presentable, and that seems to make them even madder than when the pants were sagging. To them, we’re animals, and we should look like animals. Anything that softens our look or in any way humanizes us is unwelcome, and they can arbitrarily write you a disciplinary ticket for looking better than them. In my case, not only do I always look better than them, but I had incited their wrath simply because they were forced to follow their own procedure for visitation and didn’t like it. Meanwhile, I didn’t even know what was going on.
After that Halloween visit, the whole jail was on fire with me. I had turned into Mr. October in November, and when the Commissioner threw that stupid altered pants ticket away (after Emily told him about it), it was like everybody wanted to bite my head off. Luckily for me, seven days later, my time in that facility came to an end. Part one of the Upstate Correctional Facility saga was over, but the Clinton Correctional Facility saga was just about to begin.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be dropping short Dear Comrade letters filling you in on the ways I’ve been targeted over the past several years and keeping you posted on my current journey as I approach my release in the fall of 2027. Please join me, get to know me, and give me your feedback. You can send messages to derek@weareunchained.org, and our team will make sure your notes get to me. Your thoughts matter.