Prisoners Say Routine Use of Lockdowns Has Led to More Violence and Suicides

Mitchell Bolder, a 60-year-old Black man known to his friends as “Rusty,” died by suicide on June 25 at the federal penitentiary in Victorville, California. Local media reported that he was “found unresponsive,” and “prison staff quickly initiated life-saving measures and requested emergency medical services. Despite continued efforts, Mr. Bolder was transported to a local hospital and later pronounced deceased.”

But that is not the full truth.

In the run-up to Bolder’s suicide, the entire prison of 1,176 incarcerated men had been locked down, meaning Bolder and the other prisoners were confined to their called cells for 24 hours a day (with showers allowed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), according to three men imprisoned at USP Victorville who spoke to Truthout.

“I’ve been here since April of 2023, and we’ve been locked down most of the time,” Marcus Santiago said via the prison email system, CorrLinks. “We’re locked down because we’re short of staff, or when a couple of people get in a fight.”

June 25 was one of those days. Throughout the morning, says Santiago, Bolder repeatedly tried to get the attention of the unit counselor and correctional officer, asking to see the psychologist. Robert Lockwood, also in custody there, said via email that the prison psychologist had taken Bolder off his medication — he’s not sure why. But what was clear to everyone who knew Bolder was that his distress was due in part both to the incessant lockdowns and staff’s refusal to transfer him to a different cell, away from his incompatible cellmate.

“Imagine being trapped in your bathroom for weeks on end!” says Santiago. “That’s what it’s like, since the toilet is right in there with you. But it’s worse, because you’re trapped in this tiny space with another individual. No time outside, no programs, no psychologists making the rounds like they’re supposed to. You pretty much just lie in your bunk all day. I pass my time mostly reading, but that gets old after a while. So, you jump off the bunk, walk around the cell a little, do a few push-ups and then jump back on the bunk. Over and over again.”

As staff passed out breakfast trays (a task they must perform when prisoners are locked down), Bolder repeatedly pressed his duress button and, when that was ignored, banged on the door. P.D., an eyewitness to what unfolded who fears retaliation and thus asked that only his initials be used, told Truthout via email that staff said they were “busy with breakfast” and turned the alarm off. When Bolder threatened to kill himself, the counselor reportedly replied, “What are you waiting for?!”

Not long after that, at about 1:10 pm, Bolder stabbed himself in the chest, then slit his own throat. Only then, say his fellow prisoners, did the unit officer and counselor finally call for emergency assistance.

When the medics arrived, they tried to help Bolder. But P.D. says the officers insisted on dragging Bolder out of his cell by his feet in order to cuff him first. At that point, he appeared lifeless, although his death was not pronounced until he got to the hospital.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the prison’s “suicide reconstruction report” has been filed by Truthout, with no response to date. Jack Donson, a former Bureau of Prisons (BOP) case manager and now executive director of the Prison Education and Reform Alliance (PERA), which is staffed primarily by former BOP employees and helps public defenders, family members etc. navigate the system, says, “If this is indeed an accurate description of staff’s response to a suicide, then the officers directly involved, particularly the one who said ‘What are you waiting for?’ should be prosecuted.”

However, he adds that as bad as it sounds, it’s not unusual for staff to ignore duress buttons. “People in prison set off those buttons so often, for trivial reasons, that staff don’t pay attention to them like they should.”

Lockdowns Have Become Go-To Response

The toxic dynamics that led to Bolder’s suicide are not unique to Victorville. Many federal penitentiaries are locked down a significant portion of the time. When a journalist writing for Truthout asked how many BOP facilities went on lockdown more than once during 2023, agency spokesperson Scott Taylor replied that the data was not available. In separate correspondence, Ben O’Cone of the BOP Office of Public Affairs stated that “all individuals have access to medical care, food and water.” That simply wasn’t true for Bolder.

Given the growing frequency of prolonged lockdowns — which have become routine at many facilities — family members have a legitimate interest in this data.

Further, unlike for the Special Housing Unit (what is traditionally known as solitary confinement), no policy or guidance is publicly available that governs wardens’ application of the torture tactic of solitary confinement to the “general population.” When the BOP’s public affairs department was asked whether there are any such rules, it responded that it could not provide details “for safety and security reasons” — a rationale frequently cited by the BOP and is also a convenient way to duck transparency and accountability.

Donson agrees that more guidance from BOP headquarters on lockdowns is needed to assure more consistency and accountability. Currently, he says, these decisions are mostly left up to the 122 individual wardens. “Rogue wardens can currently lock down for periods just short of what triggers a requirement to report to the region,” explains Donson. “Staff use the term ‘modified’ lockdown when it’s not complete, yet there seems to be no specific policy on that.”

Lockwood agrees that policy and oversight are needed so such crucial decisions don’t depend on whether you have “good staff or bad staff.” “Staff aren’t all bad; some are really decent,” he said. “For example, for a little while we had a warden who actually responded to an administrative remedy [grievance] I filed. But he was temporary, and now he’s gone. That happens a lot; a warden will come in for several weeks and then leaves. Thus, there is nobody in charge and staff that are bad apples do what they want.”

Such constant changes and uncertainties, along with the lockdowns, are a toxic mix, Lockwood says. “I believe some guys kill themselves out of both despair and as a kind of revenge against staff. We have no recourse anymore against staff who neglect or abuse us, because the so-called administrative remedy process doesn’t usually work,” he said.

He explains that when incarcerated people try to file a grievance, they encounter roadblocks every step of the way (like when the forms are conveniently “lost”) or staff retaliate against them (for example, by conveniently “finding” a knife in their cell). And even if prisoners can complete the process, he says, they often don’t get relief and must go to court — which requires expertise and money.

Organized actions by prisoners, such as work stoppages or petitions, are strictly prohibited by the BOP. In fact, when individuals at the federal prison camp in Montgomery, Alabama, protested the institution’s miscalculation of their First Step Act benefits by refusing to eat in the chow hall, prisoners there told Truthout by email that more than 50 of the participants have been transferred out so far in retaliation.

“We are tired of being locked in our cells 24 hours a day while we are neglected by medical and mental health staff. It’s hard to even get our medications refilled,” says Lockwood. “The food portions we get are small, we can’t exercise or have visits, we can’t even buy anything from the commissary (prison store). On top of that, we are blatantly disrespected. So, we kill ourselves because we know the one thing staff hates is for us to take our lives. Why? When someone kills himself, staff … must answer to management.”

PERA’s Donson agrees that at some BOP institutions, lockdowns have become a go-to response, particularly for the claim of staff shortages. According to a Government Accountability Office document obtained via FOIA by PERA, the BOP had 35,753 employees and 158,479 adults in custody as of July 11. In 2005, the agency had fewer employees (32,735) and more prisoners (159,505). “There needs to be more public data and analysis of the claim that lockdowns are necessary due to staff shortages,” says Donson. “So far, I’m not buying it.”

Donson’s skepticism seems to be supported by the BOP’s own assertion that 91 percent of its funded positions are filled. But even if there is a critical shortage of correctional staff, as prison-level employees have long claimed, one solution would be to release more prisoners. Terrica Redfield Ganzy, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, argues that more elderly and sick prisoners could be released without risking public safety. Yet, during the height of COVID, federal prison wardens denied or ignored more than 98 percent of compassionate release requests, forcing incarcerated individuals — even those who are very ill — to file with the courts, which takes time and requires filing fees. And today, U.S. Sentencing Commission data shows that even the courts denied 86 percent of petitions for compassionate release last year.

Cellmates Aren’t Always Better Than Solitary

One answer by the BOP to the concerning number of suicides is to eliminate single-person cells, in the belief that cellmates are a protective influence. In its report on prisoner deaths in four categories (suicide, homicide, accident and unknown factors), the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice concluded that, “Suicides comprised the majority of these deaths, and more than half of the inmates who died by suicide were housed in a cell alone, which increases their suicide risk.”

Yet members of the More Than Our Crimes network, composed of about 2,000 individuals confined in federal prisons, say the opposite is often true. Federal prison cells were designed for single-person occupancy, with “double-bunking” beginning in the 1990s to reduce costs and increase available space. Today, bunk beds (a common cause of injuries) are the norm.

“Would you rather see a homicide than a suicide?” asked DeAndre Smith, who is housed in the medium-security prison on the Victorville campus, via CorrLinks. “Try being locked into a small bathroom with another person you may not even get along with, for sometimes days on end. Having a cellie [cellmate] can be more dangerous.”

Donson says it’s not practical to call for single-occupancy cells, but agrees that cellmates don’t prevent suicides. It is wrong to assume that one will protect the other, and they aren’t always in the cell together in any case. Bolder was a case in point. His cellmate was working in the kitchen at the time, since food preparation is considered exempt from the lockdown.

Still, an example of what can happen when cellmates are at odds with each other occurred at USP Tucson in January. According to Cory Perry, who is confined there, the prison had been on lockdown for a month. The cause? A prisoner deliberately punched a guard so he’d be sent to solitary — and away from his cellmate. During the lockdown, the cells were shaken down, with the prison guards confiscating large amounts of personal property.

“How does punishing all of us for the act of one person produce any positive result? All it did was send guys who are already fucked up that much closer to the edge, whether it’s suicide or violence,” said Perry via email. During the lockdown, another prisoner killed his cellmate.

“You can only push people so far until they break. That was the fourth time in eight months that someone died due to violence,” says Perry. “And their solution is to keep locking us all up? This place is a powder keg waiting for a match.”

Author’s note: Robert Lockwood now reports that a new warden has taken over at USP Victorville and, so far, is limiting lockdowns to individual units. “We go to chow at 6:30 am, like we are supposed to, we have work call at 8 am, and so on. In the past, even when were weren’t locked down, we never knew when they’d call moves so we could go medical and programs; sometimes never. And right now, they just called us to go to commissary (the prison store). We haven’t had commissary for a month!” He is cautiously optimistic, if the warden stays and “gets rid of the bad apples.”