The Maximum Security U.S. Penitentiary Experience: “Bloody Beaumont”

All prisons in the federal prison system are not equal. On one end of the spectrum, you have the Club Fed camps. And then there are the maximum-security U.S. Penitentiaries. A maximum-security federal prison is designed to house the worst of the worst—a high concentration of the most violent, problematic, dangerous criminals in the nation. 

A ONE-WAY TICKET TO HELL

But let's back up a little. Before a federal offender is sentenced, he (or she) spends time in a federal pretrial detention center. During the entire two or so years that I spent at the pretrial detention center, I heard one thing over and over—you do not want to go to the Beaumont Penitentiary (USP), aka Bloody Beaumont.

Guess where I was going?

It was going to be a long 30 years.

A SENSE OF IMPENDING DOOM

During the 12-hour bus ride to the Pen, I was shackled and chained. At that point, I thought about requesting my last meal.  

Of course, it was a rainy day. I will never forget how I felt as that bus pulled up to the prison. 

A fairly pretty Case Manager interviewed me. As she was looking down at my paperwork, she said, "Soooooo, you were an investment broker of some kind.  Hmmm. What are you doing here?” 

This struck me as odd. Exactly—What am I doing here? I wanted to yell. She proceeded to look me up and down, and then, with a worried face, said, "Oh, boy. You're really green." She actually looked worried for me. This was a bad sign. She then advised me not to borrow or accept anything from the "whites." 

At that moment, I wanted her to take me home with her. Maybe we could start a life in Beaumont. Kidding. 

After intake, there was a long walk to the housing units. As the new inmates—fresh meat—and I walked the plank, about 2000 inmates beat on the Plexiglas (facing the prison yard) at the same time. They call it the Thunderdome. This was our welcome. Things felt a little dicey.

A NEW WORLD

Walking into the housing unit was surreal. Culture shock is a mild way to put it. I now know what a wild animal feels like when he's faced with a bunch of predators. I just remember how fast things were moving—like, fast-forward fast. There were about 200 inmates inspecting us, the new guys. Everyone was in their own little group. You had the white gang members, the white non-gang members, and about ten different gangs made up exclusively of Mexicans or African-Americans, or Native Americans. Remember, unlike a state prison, federal prison is composed of people from all over the country. Everything was racially divided—everything. The problem was that I was the alien life form, and they were trying to figure me out. I could see their brains turning.  

First, was my living assignment—the selection of a bunkmate. It was Rick. Rick had just done seven years at the SuperMax prison in Colorado after murdering his former cellmate. 

You read that right.

THE MAYHEM ENSUES

There was a beat down on my way to dinner, so we all had to hit the dirt. After the victim of the brutal attack—who was lying unconscious in the dirt—was carted away on a stretcher, the mass feeding continued. This was such a typical event that it wasn't even given a second thought: The beatdown ensues, we hit the dirt, the pepper spray is used, the attackers are debilitated, cuffed, then carted off to solitary confinement. They clean up the mess, cart the victim off, and depending on how bad the beatdown was, the victim would go to the prison infirmary, the Intensive Care Unit, or the morgue. Sitting there eating my meal, I was in shock. The whole thing felt like I had walked into some wormhole and entered an alternative reality. It was a whole new world—a world of savages.

It was like a movie, a bad prison movie. 

I figured that I would just immerse myself in the law and in other books. I figured wrong. That night—my first night—as I was walking across the yard to the Education Department (where the law library is), a mini-riot broke out. I say a mini-riot because it was only about 50 inmates (rather than 1000 or 2000) beating and stabbing one another. At the Pen, if you don't hit the ground and stay on the ground, you will be shot. There are towers all over the prison yard with sharpshooters. They also throw concussion grenades (that make a very loud bang) and flash grenades and release pepper gas. It felt a little like a warzone. It was chaos. Two different gangs were at war.  

40 DAYS OF BOLOGNA SANDWICHES AND SINK BIRDBATHS

This prompted the prison to go on 24-hour-lockdown, during which all prisoners are confined to their (tiny) cells 24 hours a day. Sometimes this lasts a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, or months, during which one must shower in his sink, and he is fed through a little hole in the door—bologna sandwiches three times a day...oh, and an apple and a bag of chips. This allowed my new roomie—Rick—and me to spend some quality time together. Rick liked to eat pills and draw and paint. As long as he was subdued with pills and had his artwork, he was as cool as a cucumber. And he loved his mother. He was desperate to get out before his mother died. Rick wasn't so bad. In fact, sometimes he was just plain pleasant.

He was fascinated with me. We are from different worlds. He got a kick out of me buying bottled water from the prison commissary. It blew his mind that I would buy water. 

But the violence never stopped. 

THE HOLE: A PRISON WITHIN A PRISON

After I was attacked by a toothless guy covered in nazi tattoos (who was dating his aunt), I was promptly sent to the hole, a.k.a., solitary confinement. One second I'm minding my own business, the next second some toothless inbred with a brain the size of a squirrel steals from me, then attacks me; and so I defend myself.

Things went from bad to worse. 

Given the length of this blog, I cannot even begin to talk about the lunatic that they eventually put in my cell while I was in solitary confinement. Think of it like this: you are in a tiny bathroom that has two steel bunks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And they throw a clearly mentally ill psychopath in with you. I would rather have been in that room with a rabid dog that was foaming at the mouth. Somehow, he had managed to procure a razor blade. Throughout the day, he would make ambiguous statements about cutting my throat while I slept. The guy was mentally ill. I was really getting the full prison experience, that's for sure.  

BACK TO GENERAL POPULATION 

After four months in the hole, I was released back into the general population.

I was actually well-liked and respected after that. I never tried to be like them. I never tried to fit in. I was always me. And that went a long way. I forged some friendships with some bikers and other guys. I found a flaw in a prominent Outlaw Biker's 60-year sentence for a bombing (regarding a rival Biker gang) in Chicago. His sentence was ultimately reduced significantly. I also befriended a high-level member of the Dixie Mafia.

Still, Penitentiary life was grueling: beatdown or stabbing, lockdown, end of lockdown; beatdown or stabbing, lockdown, end of lockdown; repeat. 

HOPELESSNESS SETS IN

I just remember being really tired all the time. I threw myself into studying law and other subjects and working out. I ate healthy and read and kept to myself. But I was always tired. I honestly felt like I had no soul or spirit. The daunting reality of spending the next 30 years in prison just overwhelmed and zapped me. I didn't have any contact with the outside world. I isolated myself. It was easier that way.

SOFTBALL SEASON AT THE PEN

I joined the softball team. I figured some team sports and male bonding, outside of violence, would do me some good. 

Softball season was short-lived. A large-scale riot kicked off. That was fun. 

After that lockdown ended, my softball coach (Chris, a white supremacists gang member from Utah) murdered our second basemen. This was in the summer of 2014. Here's the news article. Chris got the death penalty for the murder:https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/white-supremacists-sentenced-death-murdering-fellow-inmate-texas-prison

Life became predictable. There was no escaping violence. I would be eating lunch and someone next to me would be stabbed and then beaten; I would be studying law in the library and someone three seats down would be brutally attacked; I would be sitting in the medical clinic and someone would be beaten within an inch of his life; I would be running the recreation yard and someone would get their head stomped in until they stopped moving. It was all becoming very normal.

After enduring the nightmare that is Bloody Beaumont for quite some time, I got curious about why I was being housed there. So I dug in and learned how the custody scoring works. Turns out, I wasn't supposed to be there—I knew it!

After having survived one of the most dangerous and volatile maximum-security prisons in the United States, the medium-security prison felt like a breath of fresh air.