Jason's Prison Journal

By Jason Renard Walker, Minister of Labor, NABPP What’s there to hide? From the beginning of my arrival at the Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Texas, it became obvious that this prison was no different than any other I’ve been to, given the overt racism and slave-like treatment. But as the days passed, I soon learned that, unlike many other prisons, prisoner deaths and subsequent cover-ups was the norm. So normal that investigators (OGI) only spoke with prisoners who saw…

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By Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prison writer As the year 2016 comes to a close, I am constantly reminded about a prisoner, 31-year-old Alton Rogers, a black male, who was found unresponsive and covered in bed sores in his cell on January 18, 2016. He died at the Northwest Texas Hospital here in Amarillo, Texas on January 19. He’s the third prisoner in the past three years, to die as a direct and proximate result of medical neglect, deliberate…

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Odd as it seems, seeing prisoners left for dead or killed by guards is nothing new to me. The reason this may seem odd is that each death was during my seven-year stint in solitary confinement, and I was a prime witness or in earshot of a direct witness. It seems that the Ad-Seg Transitional Program (ASTP), where I am now, is no exception where the killing of prisoners is concerned, as I was recently in the proximity of another….

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Federal courts have spoken extensively on the harm sensory deprivation causes, with Texas leading the pack in terms of harm caused. It is internationally known what the cause and effects are from just sitting in solitary confinement, so no need to elaborate there. But what has recently come into question (and has been briefly spoken on in recent years) is a revolutionized form of sleep deprivation that’s much worse than 24-hour lighting or the screaming of the mentally ill. This…

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While this Texas prison, Clements Unit, has well over one-thousand documented mentally ill prisoners, its not considered a psych unit at all. In fact it has one small ward that has a program for mental health patients and that’s it. Very rarely do you find a prison guard or medical staff member that’s willing to use integrity across the board when it comes to handling and caring for the mentally ill. Since 2013, three well-known mentally ill prisoners have died and two…

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