November 18, 2014
The guards here in the isolation unit shake our cells down every single day, usually while we're at the chow hall so they can search through many of the cells quickly and efficiently. Due to the overwhelming number of isolation inmates overflowing into other units as well as this one, the vast majority of our cells are very quickly and very briefly swept through by guards, with a minimal search that consists of turning a couple of our personal items over and flipping our mattress. Yesterday we had a guard that was not one of our regular shift guards on duty in our unit. This guard had a black eye which lead the inmates to assume another inmate gave to him, this happens more often than one would think, more commonly in prisons other than Madison, yet it still happens here from time to time. During our one hour out in the dayroom yesterday many of the inmates were laughing and joking about this guard’s black eye, stating that he probably got what he deserved. I sat back, watching and waiting for something to happen, for some kind of response from the guard, but nothing happened. We later discovered that his revenge was in the shakedowns. Coming back from dinner chow we could see a few different cell doors wide open, looing inside I could see that they were completely trashed. As I approached my cell I could see that it was also trashed. The guard must have thought that my celly, or I was one of the guys making fun of him, yet neither of us were. No matter, this kind of treatment is just another part of being a prisoner of the state, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. I try not to take it personal when things like this happen, but it's hard when everything you own is thrown around a cell like garbage, mixing in with my celly's personal property, leaving us with the rest of the evening cleaning up a mess, trying to make this cell livable once again.
Steven Dybvad
