What In The World Is Going On At Fort Dix?

 Okay, there were stories when I was at Fort Dix of people seeing two pairs of feet in the showers. That the showers were disgusting. Often blocked, with water coming back up from the drain; condensation (or worse) dripping from the pipes above. These are places for an assignation of utter desperation. Not that there were no gay men - I knew several of them - and there were also the GUMPS (Gay Until Make Parole; when I first heard the term I tried fitting into Forrest Gump.), but there is a strong, deep, and wide homophobia. Keep men banged up together long enough, and some start fearing they are succumbing to "unnatural urges". I cannot understand P Diddy's prison 'overrun with inmates having mass orgies in showers at night' (Irish Star) as being about the prison I was in for 11 years. Maybe it is about the west compound; I was in the east.  There was one couple who were kicked out of the leisure library and the the chapel's video library for doing what Lauren Boebert did in a theater. There was a story that one of the COs came upon two inmates having full contact congress in one room in the Education Building; it was given as the reason for it being available only by permission when it had been open. The CO being somewhere on the autism spectrum got a sympathy from me and several other people - it had to be a traumatizing sight. Considering how Sean Combs partied, I do not see where he should be making complaints.

 But besides all that, there is a Correctional Officer stationed in the first floor of the unit buildings. Not all of them actively patrolled. Some should have, it might have improved their health. They would stay in the office watching who knows what on their computers. Yet, nighttime was a good time to catch someone with a cell phone. People would fall asleep in their bunks with phones in their hands. I recall a story of someone being caught in a bathroom stall - being heard on the phone. I always wondered if the prisoner was doing FaceTime on his phone and got a little too noisome.

There are also counts during the night. Now, these are patrols by the unit CO and outside staff. They want to make sure everyone is tucked in and having sweet dreams.

Then I read Corrections Officers Leaving Federal Prisons in Droves for ICE (ProPublica) and BOP union seeks restoration of collective bargaining through new lawsuit. I saw one or two Correctional Officers that I thought had any talents justifying their salary. They also quickly departed the fold. The Fort Dix staff was lazy when they had a contract; without one they probably became even more so. I can see some of the guards I knew with firearms, and it is not good for the citizenry. For ICE, it will be a good thing - officers who already have a dislike of people will transition well to ICE.

The federal prison system is corrupt. It corrupts its employees and inmates alike. Not that anyone will want to reform it - they will look too soft on crime. But it needs reform so people can tell the difference between criminals - those in blue BOP uniforms and those in the tan of convicts. I used to say I stuck in a place with crooks, and then there were the convicts. It was far easier to trust the convicted than the representatives of law and order.

(There was one story of a female CO who had no problem getting into a convict's locker and eating his food.)

Anyway, there is another reason for the lack of prison reform at the federal level: the American people take a vicarious thrill from the degradation imposed by their government on fellow citizens.

sch