By Jason Renard Walker

Following a call to action I circulated in effort to get my confiscated legal materiel back, some readers filed an ombudsman complaint. On October 2 2025 three women from the ombudsman office came to the prison to visit me.

Instead of there being an investigation to determine why everything was illegally confiscated in violation of AD 03.72 and why my legal property wasn’t documented as being confiscated, a coverup ensued. 

A friend who spoke to several officials within TDCJ’s bureaucracy was told by one of them that the reason they took the legal property was because it was not in a legal box. In contradiction she says they told her there was too much stuff to search and they weren’t about to spend time looking in it for legal documents (only a tiny fraction is not legal documents). What I want readers to dwell on is the reason they say they took the legal property and their reason for not wanting to document that they actually took legal property. And regardless of their disdain for excessive property, there is no policy that gives them the right to confiscate anything and avoid documenting the legal property because it’s personally daunting. 

A Black female guard (officer Darnell) who wasn’t involved angrily confronted me after the ombudsman meeting. She claimed that “they” put her under investigation because I was accusing her and another Black staff (sergeant Johnson) of messing me over. Not only had I not involved them, it seems as if whoever questioned her and Johnson did it to create animosity between us and to use their denials as if they were the actors, that way those really involved (Lakin, Bazan, etc) aren’t held accountable. 

As most readers may already know, on September 25 Lieutenant Lakin (at warden Light’s and major Bazan’s discretion) ordered guards to confiscate seven bags worth of my legal and personal property because it wouldn’t fit in a small crate they used to measure how much property I can have. Not only was the crate left in front of my cell after they shook it down. Lakin left and they carried on searching the rest of the cells without using it, which suggests I was targeted. 

What compelled me to seek help from supporters was the manner in which they deliberately violated their own policies, put other prisoners in danger to further the violation, and threatened to gas me and use the cell extraction team if I didn’t let them illegally do me the same way by: 

1) Having handcuffed prisoners sit unsupervised in a chair and directly in front of the cell of a known psychopath that has a recent history of stabbing an inmate and assaulting a guard while they search the cell. 

2) Using the prisoner’s blanket to drag their property across a germ-infested floor that hadn’t been mopped in a month and search through it on the filthy unswept floor. 

The confiscated property wasn’t inventoried at all and documented according to their Administrative Directive ‘AD 03.72’ which states that confiscated legal property is supposed to be inventoried, documented and stored separately from the personal property and on a special form, not the Prop-08 “Disposition of Confiscated Offender Property” form they used to generally document that they took “7 bags of books and manilla folders.” In fact on section 2 of the Prop-08 form it specifically states “legal material shall not be confiscated using this form.” And things such as manilla folders and books are supposed to be counted and  their contents detailed. 

Let’s not be mistaken they can’t illegally confiscate my legal property, then double back and refuse to document what they took because they are too lazy. 

By allowing them to do this I can’t prove I have legal property, or challenge getting it back because there’s no documentation it exists. 

I ask readers to phone zap the Executive Director and others until they document my legal stuff and let me challenge to get it back.

Jason Renard Walker 1532092 

Powledge unit 

PO Box 660400 

Dallas, Tx 75622 

Jason Renard Walker is a prison journalist that has published articles and essays in various print and online media outlets since 2016. His work can be viewed at: www.jasonsprisonjournal.com You can also purchase his paperback book ‘Reports From Within The Belly Of The Beast: Torture And Injustice Inside Texas Department Of Criminal Justice’ available on amazon.com