PART I: BACKGROUND
When I realized the world as I had known it was about to change drastically, I was finishing up my final year of college. My suitemates and I were struggling to follow the chaos of the news. Meanwhile, the sporadic email updates from our university regarding the COVID-19 outbreak only heightened the stress. Before we knew it, we were forced to pack our things and evacuate the campus, all within two days of receiving the frantic email that would send us home. Those moments could only be described as a frenzy of rushing bodies, school supplies, and an eerie vacancy that lingered on campus after students and faculty left. If you ask around, most people can remember where they were or what they were doing when the pandemic first became a reality to them.
Not even two weeks later, William Barr, Attorney General at the time, filed a memorandum (a formal message written to inform or remind people of important rules or decisions) concerning multiple Federal correctional institutions including FCI Fairton, a minimum security prison and detention center. As the world raged on trying to navigate the complexities of the pandemic, the deaths, the destruction as well as the impact of systemic racism and health disparities in our country, prisons all over the U.S. were forcing incarcerated people to mass produce hand sanitizers and cleaning products. As the world seemed to be catching on fire (and at many times it actually did), as protests raged on, I often thought of what was happening behind bars.
How was the pandemic affecting the people who had been pulled away from their families and stripped of their social ties and support systems? Questions like this led me to email David, co-founder of The Remedy Project. I met him about a year before my final year of college. I remember being so inspired yet infuriated by his story. I was in awe of how far he had come and what he had accomplished as a formerly incarcerated individual, but angered by the glaring injustices that made his story so full of unnecessary struggle and hardship. Shortly after, I started working for The Remedy Project as a writer. When David told me to write about a man named Ian Resnick, I had no idea what it would take to tell his story, and no idea how much telling his story would mean not only to me but to Mr. Resnick and his loved ones who have suffered in innumerable ways at the hands of the prison system.
Ian Resnick, an incarcerated individual at New Jersey’s FCI Fairton at the time, was serving an 18-year sentence for a property crime after a 2010 conviction. He was directly impacted by not only the pandemic but the memorandum issued by Barr on March 26th, 2020 (and another on April 3rd 2020), which sent a reminder to correctional facilities to ensure home confinement was prioritized given the COVID-19 pandemic and regulations laid out by the CARES Act. Unfortunately, Mr. Resnick became infected with COVID-19 like many others in prison. Though he was asymptomatic, his past medical history of high blood pressure and a 30+ BMI made him a high-risk contractor according to the CDC. This was also the case given the high rates of re-infection and the concern for the emergence of new strains at the time.
Based on his placement in FCI Fairton and his violence score of 1, he should have been qualified to go home. He was carrying out his sentence at a minimum security prison camp, a prison without walls, which means judging by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) criteria, he was not considered dangerous or a threat to society at large. Also by this time, more than half of his current sentence had been completed. Unfortunately, despite all of this, Mr. Resnick was denied a home confinement referral due to a past conviction of a violent offense that had taken place nearly three decades prior. As I looked over an April 13th, 2021 memorandum from Andre Matevousian, Sonya D. Thompson, and Michael Smith— assistant directors of the Correctional Programs Division, Reentry Services Division, and Health Services Division, respectively—it became clear to me that there should be no reason why Mr. Resnick should have been kept from returning home, given that others like him were able to. Offenses that need to be considered to make or break someone’s right to a home confinement referral should have occurred within the last 12 months, and the FBOP and prison staff were punishing him. And what did they do to someone who abided by the rules and regulations of his unit and caused no trouble? One word comes to mind. Retaliate. The actions of FCI Fairton and multiple divisions of the FBOP violated Mr. Resnick’s 14th Amendment rights, and they jeopardized his safety and well-being.
The FBOP even admitted in their April 3rd memorandum that they had not adequately protected their “inmates” from COVID-19. All that is asked of the FBOP is to simply, at minimum, uphold their regard for human life and well-being, to protect and serve. Incarcerated people and those of us working with the Remedy Project do not expect perfection, but we do expect that they make sure to rectify problems efficiently and listen to the cries of those who have been incarcerated under subhuman conditions. Given their power to change the very fabric of the prison industrial complex, this is not a tall order. It is the FBOP’s responsibility to follow through and make sure the facilities they have listed in the memorandum, and others like them, are also doing right by their incarcerated individuals. Just stating the rules is not enough.
PART II: BRUTALITY
An unfortunate and great tendency for those in power and even community members is to homogenize incarcerated people, to lump them together in their minds. They are perceived as all bad, violent, or not worthy to be a part of society, with little consideration of the diversity that exists within a single prison like FCI Fairton alone. Incarcerated people have dreams, hopes, and ambitions of their own. Along with the communities and support systems they were connected to prior to entering prison, they have their own worries, doubts, and fears. Imagine how these worries and fears have been further heightened for someone like Ian Resnick. So when faced with concerns or worries, it is one's right to bring those concerns to the attention of someone who has been granted the power to do something about it. Therefore, Mr. Resnick´s decision—and a right one, we might add—to file a BP-9 administrative remedy, or Civil Rights Complaint, accusing FCI Fairton Staff of discriminating against him after wrongfully and purposefully denying him access to home confinement, seems not only fitting but just. Submitting such a complaint to your prison counselor should not be a headache or fear-inducing; it is an incarcerated person´s right to bring to the attention of his or her overseers any hindrances to their flourishing and right to living within the confines of the prison facility. This complaint directly involved the Camp Administrator, Ms. Masters, the woman responsible for running the prison camp for the Warden; in this case, the person who was supposed to sign off on Mr. Resnick´s home confinement denial. Since his complaint was wrongfully rejected by the Warden’s office and Ms. Masters, Mr. Resnick again in concordance to the legal rights of any person behind bars, filed a BP-10 appeal, rightly accusing Ms. Masters of said wrongful rejection to his previously filed BP-9.
“I am not worried about what you file,” Ms. Masters spat at Mr. Resnick as she returned to him his rejected BP-10 on September 20th, 2021 at approximately 10:30 am. Is this not a blatant contradiction of her behavior thus far? Not even a full 10 minutes after this unfavorable interaction, Mr. Resnick arrived at his bunk to find the same Ms. Masters struggling to adjust storage boxes and containers under his bed, for which he kindly assisted her in doing so. Her response? A lecture. She lectures Mr. Resnick on being inspection ready and proceeds to inspect all 50 or so other bunks in the dorm which Resnick shared with many others. At 11:07 am the same day, Ms. Masters and the Unit Officer entered the gym where Resnick was located, pulled him aside, and Ms. Master pulled out something from her back pocket that he did not recognize. “Why was she holding someone’s cell phone and what did it have to do with me?” he thought. “I found this under your bed,” she stated. “I have no idea who it belongs to, it’s not mine,” Mr. Resnick replied and added, “when exactly did you find this phone? Because you didn’t say anything earlier.” Ms. Masters, without a response or explanation, ordered Mr. Resnick to pack his belongings because he was being placed in the SHU. The SHU, standing for Special Housing Unit and commonly referred to as solitary confinement, is a highly secured and isolated area of the prison that restricts movement of an incarcerated person as well as their interaction with others. Given that this type of housing is supposed to be designed for those who pose as threats to themselves or others, we can clearly see this punishment was cruel and unusual.
A couple hours later at approximately 1:09 pm, Ms. Masters, far from thinking about her actions and what traumatic effects they might have on Mr. Resnick, was busy producing two versions of an incident report. The first was dated, signed, and delivered to Mr. Resnick that night around 7:40 pm by Officer Fernandez. The second, the one that was later used against Mr. Resnick was dated, signed, and delivered on September 22nd, 2021 by Officer Fernandez, at approximately 1:07 pm, two days after the incident in question had taken place. In the incident report, Ms. Masters explained how she allegedly discovered a cell phone stuck to the bottom of Mr. Resnick’s bunk during a routine inspection of the completely open dorm (that everyone has access to), leaving out of course that Mr. Resnick was present at the completion of her search of his bunk.
At around 9:15 am on October 14th, 2021, Resnick was called to a meeting with the DHO, or Disciplinary Hearing Officer, to be held accountable for the infraction detailed in Ms. Masters incident report. After going over his rights – ironic, isn’t it? – the DHO convinced Mr. Resnick to withdraw his request to bring in Swope and Romano, two fellow dorm mates, as witnesses to confirm that he was in fact present at the end of Ms. Masters’ search and to confirm that no phone was found. The DHO then asked Mr. Resnick if the delaying of the incident report was of any harm to him, and to that Mr. Resnick replied. "No," given that he was in the SHU during this time. From there, the DHO used this as an opportunity to excuse Ms. Masters’ violation in delaying the report despite his legal obligation to protect Mr. Resnick´s rights at that moment in time. Mr. Resnick proceeded to truthfully explain the details of the incident: he informed the DHO that he was present at the completion of the inspection, he did not see a phone being found, and even if it was found, his bunk was located in a dorm shared by many others. Mr Resnick continued to explain how the phone could have easily belonged to any one of the many people who had access to his space, and it was clear that his efforts to defend himself had fallen on deaf ears. It is a longstanding practice at the facility for incident reports regarding easily accessible belongings to be dismissed for this reason.
Finally, he tried to explain to the DHO that Ms. Masters was most likely retaliating against him after recently receiving a BP-10 appeal, which cast her in a negative light, hence her motivation to falsify the incident report to teach Mr. Resnick a lesson. Unfortunately, instead of considering Mr. Resnick´s defense in its entirety, the DHO partially recorded it in his own report, finding Mr. Resnick guilty and hardly considering his defense at all. Unfortunately, things did not improve for Mr. Resnick as the DHO sanctioned him to 41 additional days in prison after his sentence was complete and 30 days in the SHU in the meantime. Finally, only three out of four pages of the DHO report were delivered to Mr. Resnick, and unfortunately, it was the fourth page that provided him his legal right to know who his DHO actually was, the date the report was completed, as well as the date and signature of the person who delivered it to him. Any complaint that Mr. Resnick could make regarding his hearing would therefore be insurmountably more difficult to process given all of the missing information. And so the vicious cycle of filing a complaint and being retaliated against continued, unperturbed by what is right or wrong, truth or fabrication.
PART III: WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Though I experienced shock and sadness looking through Mr. Resnick’s case folder, I could tell from his correspondences with other Remedy Project members that he wasn’t, and that could only mean that this kind of treatment within the walls of the prison system was and is far from new to him. I still could not shake the burning question of “why”? Why must Mr. Resnick and his family be subjected to such cruel treatment and blatant disregard of their humanity? Retaliation. Retaliation is the only fitting word for what prison officers and the DHO were engaging in. Resnick knew this well, especially given the fact that part of his complaint emphasized prison officials’ violations of his own rights. It turns out that because of the remedy, we helped him file, Masters and Fernandez set him up to teach him a lesson and discourage him from working with the students of the Remedy Project. Ian Resnick is and was therefore being punished multiple times over. Not only did he get COVID-19 in the worst place he could have gotten it (given the trend of lacking medical treatment and aid in prisons across the country), but he was wronged doubly because the federal government and prison officials are forcing him into confinement that would compound his poor health condition. Was losing over a third of a million people since the start of the pandemic not enough? Must death and destruction continue, especially under the watch of those who have sworn to protect and serve?
I was deeply troubled combing through conversations between Mr. Resnick and advocates at The Remedy Project. Instead of hope for improvement of his current condition, instead of support and encouragement, Mr. Resnick was met with Ms. Masters’ abrasiveness upon his attempt to have his complaint formally recognized and addressed. It is shameful that her excessive and unnecessary use of that power consistently kept Mr. Resnick, and likely others, from exercising their civil rights. She then went on to say that The Remedy Project knew little of the administrative remedy process and told him to stop filing them altogether. She even asked him to alter his BP-9 document, by removing her name from it, even though he mentioned her directly only to state who was rejecting all of his complaints. It is clear that above any desire to see Resnick’s claims heard, Ms. Masters saw his efforts as an annoyance, and she was clearly more concerned about her name and title above anything else. Instead of stepping on his hopes, she could have lifted him up. Instead of slandering and undermining the knowledge of students like us who are assisting Mr. Resnick to ensure that his voice was heard, she could have kindly offered advice or explanation as to what should be improved so that his administrative remedies could be swiftly processed. Instead, Mr. Resnick was framed and thrown into solitary confinement for continuing to file administrative remedies, even though it is his civil right to do so and he has not behaved in a manner to deserve this treatment and punishment. As students of The Remedy Project, we refused to overlook this. We have communicated with and read the stories of too many people whose voices have been silenced, and we will resist any efforts to make any human being and their needs invisible.
Also, it is important to recognize that when a person is put in the SHU, the person he or she drastically loses access to phone calls and email. In “gen pop” or the general population of people in a particular camp, a person is permitted to send emails anytime from about 6 am to 9:30 pm. However, when Mr. Resnick was thrown into solitary confinement, he lost eight or more hours in the day where he could communicate with loved ones, or anyone on his contact list for that matter. He was restricted to a single phone call a week, and that was only if he had been able to record any of the addresses or contacts prior to being put in the SHU — which was unlikely given the quickness with which he was thrown into solitary confinement — he would have no way of contacting them. This caused great emotional and psychological stress and harm upon Mr. Resnick, his family, and his loved ones. Knowing that he was being punished and held under harsh conditions, especially after hearing stories and testimonies about what life was like in SHUs over the years, it is hard to fathom the trauma they all must have gone through and are still going through given that Mr. Resnick’s health has been compromised by COVID-19. His well being should have been equally important to the DHO and prison officers, but it was clear that this was far from the truth.
Ms. Master’s intentionally omitted important details from her incident report to hide incriminating evidence. Also important is the fact that Resnick was present for the completion of the routine inspection after which he helped Masters reorganize his belongings. Had she found something as serious as a cell phone under his bed, she would have completely called off the inspection and called for backup or reinforcements to lock him up immediately rather than finishing the inspection of all other bunks. When Ms. Masters claimed she found the phone under Mr. Resnick´s bed, she had 24 hours to complete the incident report and hand it off to a Lieutenant who could deliver it to Resnick. Any delayed report should have been dismissed by the DHO. What is worse is that there is no punishment for DHOs who violate the rights of incarcerated people as most people don't know when their rights are being violated. And for those who know and raise the issue, DHOs tend to take the side of the staff over said incarcerated individual due to the "us vs. them" and "punish at all costs" mentalities that are founded on the belief that only incarcerated people do wrong, not the staff. What's worse, staff members often protect one another at every level and at any cost.
PART IV: THE HOPE OF THE REMEDY PROJECT
Our team at the Remedy Project made sure to keep in contact with Mr. Resnick as his situation was constantly changing and his formal complaints were consistently being rejected. However, after the previously mentioned unfortunate interactions between Mr. Resnick and Ms. Masters, and similar interactions with other prison officers which occurred at the end of August 2020, we did not hear from Mr. Resnick again until December of that year. After finally hearing from Mr. Resnick for what seemed like an eternity, we would come to find that he had been thrown in the SHU for the past four months.
Given the abrupt nature of it all, we were thankfully able to keep in contact with Mr. Resnick’s aunt, and Ian was able to talk to her himself to let her know what was going on. Even though Mr. Resnick tried to put a positive spin on his situation to ease his aunt’s mind the last time they spoke, he knew that this move was more than a geographical change, because it would break up his “bid time”. Think of bid time, like the time it takes you to assimilate to a new place, job or progression of life. At any time, prison staff, the Unit Team, or the Warden could decide to move an incarcerated person to a different location. This is no small feat. Now that Mr. Resnick is forced to leave, he will be taken out of his comfort zone. At his current camp, he has a process, programs he is a part of, friends he has made, a job, and more. Not to mention he is closer to his aunt and community. Moving him to a higher security prison that houses serious offenders who are deemed problematic to society, will turn his life upside down. And the additional 41 days? This means that after completely serving his total sentence, Resnick will have to serve an additional 41 days immediately afterward. Imagine that. Imagine being punished for exercising your right to speak up about being mistreated behind bars.
At the previous prison camp, he was not categorized as a threat. As a camp member, he could be a grounds person, or work in the food halls and have other duties he would perform for staff inside the medium-security prison. He would no longer be able to do that once moved to a higher security facility. Now he would have to start over and become accustomed to a new environment and its stricter regulations. He would have to leave his friends and acquaintances behind and get to know new people, start a new program, -- that is, of course, if the new facility offers the programs he was previously a part of -- a new job, and the list goes on. His routine would be upset and this uprooting was not only stressful but harmful. This is also what happens when a person is sentenced to solitary confinement for a prolonged period of time, and Mr. Resnick, unfortunately, experienced both being moved to a new facility and confinement.
What the Remedy Project is trying to do is force the powers that be to reckon with the system they have not only created but perpetuated. We refuse to allow the voices of those behind bars to be overshadowed or diminished, and we believe that by sharing stories like that of Ian Resnick and many others, we can equip students of all kinds with the tools to resist the evils our society has grown accustomed to, evils our society no longer questions. The harms must stop, and lucky for you as well as our brothers and sisters facing brutality behind bars, there is so much that you can do to help us make sure that one day, it finally does.
PART I: BACKGROUND
When I realized the world as I had known it was about to change drastically, I was finishing up my final year of college. My suitemates and I were struggling to follow the chaos of the news. Meanwhile, the sporadic email updates from our university regarding the COVID-19 outbreak only heightened the stress. Before we knew it, we were forced to pack our things and evacuate the campus, all within two days of receiving the frantic email that would send us home. Those moments could only be described as a frenzy of rushing bodies, school supplies, and an eerie vacancy that lingered on campus after students and faculty left. If you ask around, most people can remember where they were or what they were doing when the pandemic first became a reality to them.
Not even two weeks later, William Barr, Attorney General at the time, filed a memorandum (a formal message written to inform or remind people of important rules or decisions) concerning multiple Federal correctional institutions including FCI Fairton, a minimum security prison and detention center. As the world raged on trying to navigate the complexities of the pandemic, the deaths, the destruction as well as the impact of systemic racism and health disparities in our country, prisons all over the U.S. were forcing incarcerated people to mass produce hand sanitizers and cleaning products. As the world seemed to be catching on fire (and at many times it actually did), as protests raged on, I often thought of what was happening behind bars.
How was the pandemic affecting the people who had been pulled away from their families and stripped of their social ties and support systems? Questions like this led me to email David, co-founder of The Remedy Project. I met him about a year before my final year of college. I remember being so inspired yet infuriated by his story. I was in awe of how far he had come and what he had accomplished as a formerly incarcerated individual, but angered by the glaring injustices that made his story so full of unnecessary struggle and hardship. Shortly after, I started working for The Remedy Project as a writer. When David told me to write about a man named Ian Resnick, I had no idea what it would take to tell his story, and no idea how much telling his story would mean not only to me but to Mr. Resnick and his loved ones who have suffered in innumerable ways at the hands of the prison system.
Ian Resnick, an incarcerated individual at New Jersey’s FCI Fairton at the time, was serving an 18-year sentence for a property crime after a 2010 conviction. He was directly impacted by not only the pandemic but the memorandum issued by Barr on March 26th, 2020 (and another on April 3rd 2020), which sent a reminder to correctional facilities to ensure home confinement was prioritized given the COVID-19 pandemic and regulations laid out by the CARES Act. Unfortunately, Mr. Resnick became infected with COVID-19 like many others in prison. Though he was asymptomatic, his past medical history of high blood pressure and a 30+ BMI made him a high-risk contractor according to the CDC. This was also the case given the high rates of re-infection and the concern for the emergence of new strains at the time.
Based on his placement in FCI Fairton and his violence score of 1, he should have been qualified to go home. He was carrying out his sentence at a minimum security prison camp, a prison without walls, which means judging by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) criteria, he was not considered dangerous or a threat to society at large. Also by this time, more than half of his current sentence had been completed. Unfortunately, despite all of this, Mr. Resnick was denied a home confinement referral due to a past conviction of a violent offense that had taken place nearly three decades prior. As I looked over an April 13th, 2021 memorandum from Andre Matevousian, Sonya D. Thompson, and Michael Smith— assistant directors of the Correctional Programs Division, Reentry Services Division, and Health Services Division, respectively—it became clear to me that there should be no reason why Mr. Resnick should have been kept from returning home, given that others like him were able to. Offenses that need to be considered to make or break someone’s right to a home confinement referral should have occurred within the last 12 months, and the FBOP and prison staff were punishing him. And what did they do to someone who abided by the rules and regulations of his unit and caused no trouble? One word comes to mind. Retaliate. The actions of FCI Fairton and multiple divisions of the FBOP violated Mr. Resnick’s 14th Amendment rights, and they jeopardized his safety and well-being.
The FBOP even admitted in their April 3rd memorandum that they had not adequately protected their “inmates” from COVID-19. All that is asked of the FBOP is to simply, at minimum, uphold their regard for human life and well-being, to protect and serve. Incarcerated people and those of us working with the Remedy Project do not expect perfection, but we do expect that they make sure to rectify problems efficiently and listen to the cries of those who have been incarcerated under subhuman conditions. Given their power to change the very fabric of the prison industrial complex, this is not a tall order. It is the FBOP’s responsibility to follow through and make sure the facilities they have listed in the memorandum, and others like them, are also doing right by their incarcerated individuals. Just stating the rules is not enough.
PART II: BRUTALITY
An unfortunate and great tendency for those in power and even community members is to homogenize incarcerated people, to lump them together in their minds. They are perceived as all bad, violent, or not worthy to be a part of society, with little consideration of the diversity that exists within a single prison like FCI Fairton alone. Incarcerated people have dreams, hopes, and ambitions of their own. Along with the communities and support systems they were connected to prior to entering prison, they have their own worries, doubts, and fears. Imagine how these worries and fears have been further heightened for someone like Ian Resnick. So when faced with concerns or worries, it is one's right to bring those concerns to the attention of someone who has been granted the power to do something about it. Therefore, Mr. Resnick´s decision—and a right one, we might add—to file a BP-9 administrative remedy, or Civil Rights Complaint, accusing FCI Fairton Staff of discriminating against him after wrongfully and purposefully denying him access to home confinement, seems not only fitting but just. Submitting such a complaint to your prison counselor should not be a headache or fear-inducing; it is an incarcerated person´s right to bring to the attention of his or her overseers any hindrances to their flourishing and right to living within the confines of the prison facility. This complaint directly involved the Camp Administrator, Ms. Masters, the woman responsible for running the prison camp for the Warden; in this case, the person who was supposed to sign off on Mr. Resnick´s home confinement denial. Since his complaint was wrongfully rejected by the Warden’s office and Ms. Masters, Mr. Resnick again in concordance to the legal rights of any person behind bars, filed a BP-10 appeal, rightly accusing Ms. Masters of said wrongful rejection to his previously filed BP-9.
“I am not worried about what you file,” Ms. Masters spat at Mr. Resnick as she returned to him his rejected BP-10 on September 20th, 2021 at approximately 10:30 am. Is this not a blatant contradiction of her behavior thus far? Not even a full 10 minutes after this unfavorable interaction, Mr. Resnick arrived at his bunk to find the same Ms. Masters struggling to adjust storage boxes and containers under his bed, for which he kindly assisted her in doing so. Her response? A lecture. She lectures Mr. Resnick on being inspection ready and proceeds to inspect all 50 or so other bunks in the dorm which Resnick shared with many others. At 11:07 am the same day, Ms. Masters and the Unit Officer entered the gym where Resnick was located, pulled him aside, and Ms. Master pulled out something from her back pocket that he did not recognize. “Why was she holding someone’s cell phone and what did it have to do with me?” he thought. “I found this under your bed,” she stated. “I have no idea who it belongs to, it’s not mine,” Mr. Resnick replied and added, “when exactly did you find this phone? Because you didn’t say anything earlier.” Ms. Masters, without a response or explanation, ordered Mr. Resnick to pack his belongings because he was being placed in the SHU. The SHU, standing for Special Housing Unit and commonly referred to as solitary confinement, is a highly secured and isolated area of the prison that restricts movement of an incarcerated person as well as their interaction with others. Given that this type of housing is supposed to be designed for those who pose as threats to themselves or others, we can clearly see this punishment was cruel and unusual.
A couple hours later at approximately 1:09 pm, Ms. Masters, far from thinking about her actions and what traumatic effects they might have on Mr. Resnick, was busy producing two versions of an incident report. The first was dated, signed, and delivered to Mr. Resnick that night around 7:40 pm by Officer Fernandez. The second, the one that was later used against Mr. Resnick was dated, signed, and delivered on September 22nd, 2021 by Officer Fernandez, at approximately 1:07 pm, two days after the incident in question had taken place. In the incident report, Ms. Masters explained how she allegedly discovered a cell phone stuck to the bottom of Mr. Resnick’s bunk during a routine inspection of the completely open dorm (that everyone has access to), leaving out of course that Mr. Resnick was present at the completion of her search of his bunk.
At around 9:15 am on October 14th, 2021, Resnick was called to a meeting with the DHO, or Disciplinary Hearing Officer, to be held accountable for the infraction detailed in Ms. Masters incident report. After going over his rights – ironic, isn’t it? – the DHO convinced Mr. Resnick to withdraw his request to bring in Swope and Romano, two fellow dorm mates, as witnesses to confirm that he was in fact present at the end of Ms. Masters’ search and to confirm that no phone was found. The DHO then asked Mr. Resnick if the delaying of the incident report was of any harm to him, and to that Mr. Resnick replied. "No," given that he was in the SHU during this time. From there, the DHO used this as an opportunity to excuse Ms. Masters’ violation in delaying the report despite his legal obligation to protect Mr. Resnick´s rights at that moment in time. Mr. Resnick proceeded to truthfully explain the details of the incident: he informed the DHO that he was present at the completion of the inspection, he did not see a phone being found, and even if it was found, his bunk was located in a dorm shared by many others. Mr Resnick continued to explain how the phone could have easily belonged to any one of the many people who had access to his space, and it was clear that his efforts to defend himself had fallen on deaf ears. It is a longstanding practice at the facility for incident reports regarding easily accessible belongings to be dismissed for this reason.
Finally, he tried to explain to the DHO that Ms. Masters was most likely retaliating against him after recently receiving a BP-10 appeal, which cast her in a negative light, hence her motivation to falsify the incident report to teach Mr. Resnick a lesson. Unfortunately, instead of considering Mr. Resnick´s defense in its entirety, the DHO partially recorded it in his own report, finding Mr. Resnick guilty and hardly considering his defense at all. Unfortunately, things did not improve for Mr. Resnick as the DHO sanctioned him to 41 additional days in prison after his sentence was complete and 30 days in the SHU in the meantime. Finally, only three out of four pages of the DHO report were delivered to Mr. Resnick, and unfortunately, it was the fourth page that provided him his legal right to know who his DHO actually was, the date the report was completed, as well as the date and signature of the person who delivered it to him. Any complaint that Mr. Resnick could make regarding his hearing would therefore be insurmountably more difficult to process given all of the missing information. And so the vicious cycle of filing a complaint and being retaliated against continued, unperturbed by what is right or wrong, truth or fabrication.
PART III: WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Though I experienced shock and sadness looking through Mr. Resnick’s case folder, I could tell from his correspondences with other Remedy Project members that he wasn’t, and that could only mean that this kind of treatment within the walls of the prison system was and is far from new to him. I still could not shake the burning question of “why”? Why must Mr. Resnick and his family be subjected to such cruel treatment and blatant disregard of their humanity? Retaliation. Retaliation is the only fitting word for what prison officers and the DHO were engaging in. Resnick knew this well, especially given the fact that part of his complaint emphasized prison officials’ violations of his own rights. It turns out that because of the remedy, we helped him file, Masters and Fernandez set him up to teach him a lesson and discourage him from working with the students of the Remedy Project. Ian Resnick is and was therefore being punished multiple times over. Not only did he get COVID-19 in the worst place he could have gotten it (given the trend of lacking medical treatment and aid in prisons across the country), but he was wronged doubly because the federal government and prison officials are forcing him into confinement that would compound his poor health condition. Was losing over a third of a million people since the start of the pandemic not enough? Must death and destruction continue, especially under the watch of those who have sworn to protect and serve?
I was deeply troubled combing through conversations between Mr. Resnick and advocates at The Remedy Project. Instead of hope for improvement of his current condition, instead of support and encouragement, Mr. Resnick was met with Ms. Masters’ abrasiveness upon his attempt to have his complaint formally recognized and addressed. It is shameful that her excessive and unnecessary use of that power consistently kept Mr. Resnick, and likely others, from exercising their civil rights. She then went on to say that The Remedy Project knew little of the administrative remedy process and told him to stop filing them altogether. She even asked him to alter his BP-9 document, by removing her name from it, even though he mentioned her directly only to state who was rejecting all of his complaints. It is clear that above any desire to see Resnick’s claims heard, Ms. Masters saw his efforts as an annoyance, and she was clearly more concerned about her name and title above anything else. Instead of stepping on his hopes, she could have lifted him up. Instead of slandering and undermining the knowledge of students like us who are assisting Mr. Resnick to ensure that his voice was heard, she could have kindly offered advice or explanation as to what should be improved so that his administrative remedies could be swiftly processed. Instead, Mr. Resnick was framed and thrown into solitary confinement for continuing to file administrative remedies, even though it is his civil right to do so and he has not behaved in a manner to deserve this treatment and punishment. As students of The Remedy Project, we refused to overlook this. We have communicated with and read the stories of too many people whose voices have been silenced, and we will resist any efforts to make any human being and their needs invisible.
Also, it is important to recognize that when a person is put in the SHU, the person he or she drastically loses access to phone calls and email. In “gen pop” or the general population of people in a particular camp, a person is permitted to send emails anytime from about 6 am to 9:30 pm. However, when Mr. Resnick was thrown into solitary confinement, he lost eight or more hours in the day where he could communicate with loved ones, or anyone on his contact list for that matter. He was restricted to a single phone call a week, and that was only if he had been able to record any of the addresses or contacts prior to being put in the SHU — which was unlikely given the quickness with which he was thrown into solitary confinement — he would have no way of contacting them. This caused great emotional and psychological stress and harm upon Mr. Resnick, his family, and his loved ones. Knowing that he was being punished and held under harsh conditions, especially after hearing stories and testimonies about what life was like in SHUs over the years, it is hard to fathom the trauma they all must have gone through and are still going through given that Mr. Resnick’s health has been compromised by COVID-19. His well being should have been equally important to the DHO and prison officers, but it was clear that this was far from the truth.
Ms. Master’s intentionally omitted important details from her incident report to hide incriminating evidence. Also important is the fact that Resnick was present for the completion of the routine inspection after which he helped Masters reorganize his belongings. Had she found something as serious as a cell phone under his bed, she would have completely called off the inspection and called for backup or reinforcements to lock him up immediately rather than finishing the inspection of all other bunks. When Ms. Masters claimed she found the phone under Mr. Resnick´s bed, she had 24 hours to complete the incident report and hand it off to a Lieutenant who could deliver it to Resnick. Any delayed report should have been dismissed by the DHO. What is worse is that there is no punishment for DHOs who violate the rights of incarcerated people as most people don't know when their rights are being violated. And for those who know and raise the issue, DHOs tend to take the side of the staff over said incarcerated individual due to the "us vs. them" and "punish at all costs" mentalities that are founded on the belief that only incarcerated people do wrong, not the staff. What's worse, staff members often protect one another at every level and at any cost.
PART IV: THE HOPE OF THE REMEDY PROJECT
Our team at the Remedy Project made sure to keep in contact with Mr. Resnick as his situation was constantly changing and his formal complaints were consistently being rejected. However, after the previously mentioned unfortunate interactions between Mr. Resnick and Ms. Masters, and similar interactions with other prison officers which occurred at the end of August 2020, we did not hear from Mr. Resnick again until December of that year. After finally hearing from Mr. Resnick for what seemed like an eternity, we would come to find that he had been thrown in the SHU for the past four months.
Given the abrupt nature of it all, we were thankfully able to keep in contact with Mr. Resnick’s aunt, and Ian was able to talk to her himself to let her know what was going on. Even though Mr. Resnick tried to put a positive spin on his situation to ease his aunt’s mind the last time they spoke, he knew that this move was more than a geographical change, because it would break up his “bid time”. Think of bid time, like the time it takes you to assimilate to a new place, job or progression of life. At any time, prison staff, the Unit Team, or the Warden could decide to move an incarcerated person to a different location. This is no small feat. Now that Mr. Resnick is forced to leave, he will be taken out of his comfort zone. At his current camp, he has a process, programs he is a part of, friends he has made, a job, and more. Not to mention he is closer to his aunt and community. Moving him to a higher security prison that houses serious offenders who are deemed problematic to society, will turn his life upside down. And the additional 41 days? This means that after completely serving his total sentence, Resnick will have to serve an additional 41 days immediately afterward. Imagine that. Imagine being punished for exercising your right to speak up about being mistreated behind bars.
At the previous prison camp, he was not categorized as a threat. As a camp member, he could be a grounds person, or work in the food halls and have other duties he would perform for staff inside the medium-security prison. He would no longer be able to do that once moved to a higher security facility. Now he would have to start over and become accustomed to a new environment and its stricter regulations. He would have to leave his friends and acquaintances behind and get to know new people, start a new program, -- that is, of course, if the new facility offers the programs he was previously a part of -- a new job, and the list goes on. His routine would be upset and this uprooting was not only stressful but harmful. This is also what happens when a person is sentenced to solitary confinement for a prolonged period of time, and Mr. Resnick, unfortunately, experienced both being moved to a new facility and confinement.
What the Remedy Project is trying to do is force the powers that be to reckon with the system they have not only created but perpetuated. We refuse to allow the voices of those behind bars to be overshadowed or diminished, and we believe that by sharing stories like that of Ian Resnick and many others, we can equip students of all kinds with the tools to resist the evils our society has grown accustomed to, evils our society no longer questions. The harms must stop, and lucky for you as well as our brothers and sisters facing brutality behind bars, there is so much that you can do to help us make sure that one day, it finally does.
