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Letters from Iowa State Penitentiary

Two letters, to help you walk a mile in the shoes of a prisoner.
#1:
No Outside Treatments Allowed
Towards the end of January a long awaited package was delivered to an inmate at Iowa State Penitentiary, it was his long sought Anger Resolution course from a church publishing house. The inmate was forced to look beyond the walls of the prison for help because virtually no treatments are available behind the walls at I.S.P. and the ones offered are highly restricted and kept from most inmates. So the inmate sought out help and found it at from a church in Missouri, there was only one problem and it wasn’t money. It was the mailroom at the prison. The staff working in the mailroom cited a misapplied rule, that deals with correspondence between two people not publications sent from the publisher, as the reason for denying session one of the course.
Oh well right, the mailroom may have been wrong or even if not when proper appeals were made things would get straightened out. Surely the administration would step in to help an inmate seeking to better himself at no cost to taxpayers, wouldn’t they? No, they would not, they would not so much as lift a finger to help this inmate obtain his Anger Resolution course. Appeals were sent out to the treatment director but he merely turned a cold shoulder, appeals to the warden were sent right back to the mailroom which made the mistake in the first place, without so much as a glance at the problem.
So now I write and appeal to you, Iowa, should this get swept under the rug? Should this man not be allowed to better himself and society because the course was more than 10 pages big? If your reading this in a newspaper or on the internet write or call in and give your opinion or write or call the prison. Write to John Ault Jr., I.S.P., box 316, Ft. Madison, IA 52627 or call 319 372 5432.
#2:
Inmate Cited and Charged for Preventing a Federal Crime!
On 3-30-09 at approx.10:00 pm Stg. Michael Rea a prison guard at Iowa State Penitentiary, at Ford Madison Iowa violated 4 department of corrections policies and numerous federal postal laws when he confiscated a confidential letter belonging to an inmate who wishes to remain unidentified. The very fact that Sgt. Rea touch the letter violate 2 policies, one being that all inmate mail is to be handled by second shift only, not third shift (which is the shift Sgt. Rea works) and secondly all confidential letters are to be signed for by either a Lt. or the unit counselor and Sgt. Rea is neither.
To make matters worse Sgt. Michael Rea then read the letter, mocked it author and throw it in the trash in front of a whole range of inmates in an attempt to prove he can do it to any one of us. Now, poliicy clearly states that a confidential mail may not be read without an order from a court of competent jurisdiction. The reading of confidential mail without an order from the court is a federal offence, this time being perpetrated by a D.O.C. employee. Furthermore the destruction of any mail without consent of the owner is also a federal crime.
These unjustified and illegal actions would gone un-noticed had it not been for the actions of a number of inmates, who made enough noise to alert the Lt. on duty and cause him to come and investigate. The Lt upon hearing what Sgt. Rea had done ordered him to take the letter out of the trash. The Lt. took possession of the letter and various other documents and open his own investigation to the matter. The Lt. find no fault in the unnamed inmate mailed out the letter the next day and returned the other documents.
However, Stg. Rea did his best to cover his actions by writing to “reports” (formal charges in the prison system) so that the inmates would not be allowed to access the internal grievance system which automatically goes into a c/o’s file. The charges against the unnames inmate were dismissed but this author being this author being the other individual charged was found guilty by Administrative Law Judge Paul Gager. ALJ Gager has a history of making illegal & unconstitutional judgments against the white minority here in prison.
Written by: James Bryan Cloyed

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