Judge tells Florida prison system: You can’t harass inmates just for complaining
A federal judge granted a protective order on Monday to inmates suing the Florida Department of Corrections and its secretary, Mark Inch, for what they say are unconstitutional isolation practices.
The inmates — housed in isolation at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution, Florida State Prison, Lowell Correctional Institution and the Reception and Medical Center, a prison hospital — filed for the protective order. They said they experienced intimidation and reprisals from prison staff for getting involved in Harvard v. Inch, the case brought against FDC by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Florida Legal Services and the Florida Justice Institute.
“Retaliation and threats of retaliation of any kind relating to an inmate’s participation in the ongoing discovery and/or civil litigation will not be tolerated,” U.S. Judge Martin Fitzpatrick wrote in his order.
Since September last year, the inmates have testified about corrections officers eavesdropping on their meetings with legal counsel, denying them necessities like food and offering incentives for them to forgo participating in the case.
Mindy Lethco, a 42-year-old inmate at Lowell, said that she heard a lieutenant threaten another inmate with a disciplinary report if they spoke with the case lawyers. Such reports could result in increased time in isolation housing. As a result, “I felt very nervous and afraid myself to talk to the group of attorneys,” Lethco said. “Our few privileges are all we have and I was very afraid at the thought or chance of losing the few privileges.”
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The intimidation that Lethco describes is not at all limited to Harvard v. Inch. In a recent report, the U.S. Department of Justice found that staff at Lowell has sexually abused inmates at Lowell for years. And one of the reasons it has continued is because Lowell “deters prisoners from reporting staff sexual abuse due to the threat of retaliation,” DOJ said. That includes being placed in isolation, or confinement, for reporting sexual abuse.
Jhony Milo, a 39-year-old inmate at Florida State Prison, said that before he took a meeting with lawyers about Harvard v. Inch, corrections officers threatened to beat and starve him. He said, “One of them told me, ‘when you go out there, just keep your mouth shut. Let them know nothing is going on.’ ”
“I didn’t get either of my meals that day,” Milo said. The officers also questioned him about what was said in his meeting with the lawyers and denied him his next shower, he said.
Dillon Gresham, 30, a transgender woman housed in isolation at Santa Rosa, said she was also denied food after she met with lawyers and that before she met with them, corrections officers had placed her in a shower cell for almost seven hours — fully restrained in handcuffs, a black box, and leg irons — to deter her from going.
When she filed a grievance, she said a sergeant came to her cell door. “He said he read my grievance and it did not matter who I told or what I did,” Gresham said. “He told me everyone will always believe him over me, he was untouchable, and I was making a mistake for writing him up.”
Though FDC says it provides grievance procedures as a way for inmates to file complaints about how they are being treated, Dan Pacholke, a prison consultant who has toured prisons nationwide, conducted at least 93 inmate interviews for Harvard v. Inch at Florida State Prison and Santa Rosa, and said inmates consistently told him that nothing ever comes of the grievances they submit.
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During his Santa Rosa visit, he said 17 staffers watched as he spoke with inmates.
“I left both facilities extremely concerned about the likelihood that the staff would retaliate against inmates with whom I spoke,” Pacholke said.
“The Santa Rosa Inspection is the only time I have worked with a legal team where I called them the day after the inspection on my way home from the airport because I was so concerned that the people participating in this lawsuit would suffer from retaliation.”
In his order, Judge Fitzpatrick addressed a memorandum Inch sent to FDC employees in February last year that said the department has a “zero tolerance” for retaliation of any kind.
Fitzpatrick wrote: “This memorandum at least tacitly admits that retaliation is an ongoing threat despite the existence of a grievance process that is intended to prevent such retaliation. Otherwise, why would there be a need for such a memorandum at all.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2021 at 1:11 PM.
