“A Tale of an American Political Prisoner”

Part 8.3: The DC Gulag; Washington, DC

–Marshals and Mismanagement–

by: Jessica Watkins (X: @J6ssicaWatkins)

A True Story; 100% verifiable with Text Messages, Emails, Video/Audio, Court Documents and Testimony.

It took a month or more before the representatives of the US Marshals finally came to C2B to inspect the state of things. Frankly, I had given up on them. I assumed our “peaceful protest” situation was appeased by fixing our phones, and that the CO’s had lied to us about getting the US Marshals coming to visit. This happens a LOT. The guards will lie to your face with total earnest sincerity; they will tell you anything they think you want to hear, so that you will shut up and leave them alone. If you complain about the food – they will promise you that the moon will turn into cheese, and that you’ll be able to buy it on Commissary next week for $4.55. Their lies will get very complex; detailed and specific. But it will be a complete fallacy. Anything, if they think that you will believe it and shut up and go away. I assumed the issue of the Marshals coming to visit was that sort of situation. But… eventually, the US Marshals DID come. Speaking of, let me give you a bit of background here. Anytime that a person is taken into Federal custody, they are considered technically as “in transit”. You can’t be remanded to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons yet – because prison is a punishment reserved for the guilty. We were Indicted Defendants, but still the presumption is legally “innocent until proven guilty”. So we are innocent until a Trial Jury finds us guilty or a Plea Deal is signed. So, until either of those occurs, the inmate is “in transit” and technically under the supervision of the US Marshals at a jail under Federal contract.

The US Marshals delegate the housing, food, medical, laundry, religious, and mail needs to the Staff of the jails under Federal contract. So while we are technically “booked” into a jail, we are under the purview of the US Marshals. Those Federal contracts dump VAST amounts of money into the pockets of the jails. I heard (don’t quote me) that the jails are paid something like $250 per inmate per day. And so if wrongful deaths occur, or the jails mistreat us (the beating of Ryan Samsel for instance), or don’t feed us properly, etc… well, it reflects poorly on the US Marshals. It’s their duty to ensure we are not having our Rights violated, and are being housed under safe and sanitary conditions. If the offenses stack up, the Marshals can file the requisite complaints in order to pull the Federal contract from the jail, and then the jail loses a LOT of money. Like A LOT A LOT. So let’s do some math shall we? There were roughly 40 or so J6 Inmates, at $250 per day is $10,000 per day. Now, multiply that times 365 days. (250 x 40 x 365 = 3,650,000). Yup. More than Three and a half MILLION dollars put into jail pockets per year, courtesy of JUST the J6 inmates (nevermind the ACTUAL criminals in GenPop). They made a LOT of money beating us, macing us, mistreating us, malnourishing us, medically neglecting us, and locking us in cells for days and weeks at a time. The costs to take care of an inmate are so miniscule that it’s practically laughable. There was very little they needed to spend in the budget for us. So what was the $250 per day divided between? Housing, Laundry, Utilities, Food, Medical. Of these categories, very little was actually spent on Inmates daily. Certainly not $3,650,00 per year worth. So while the Marshals are ultimately responsible, it’s the jail that delegates how that money is spent. And naturally, they didn’t spend it on us, they spent it on themselves. On the very people treating us like s***. Meanwhile, the jail cut every corner possible on our housing, medical and sustenance needs.

The cost of a cell? The facilities are ancient, and the building was paid off years ago. So “rent” is practically zilch. Also, Washington, DC has mad money for the jail in their annual budget. It was paid off long ago. We have almost NO power needs; lighting and chargers for tablets. Our clothes consist of only 2-3 orange jumpsuits, 3 pair underwear, 5 socks, 3 t-shirts (replaceable twice per year). Water is probably expensive in the DC area, but being a City utility, they probably get a discount. Food? The budget per meal, per inmate is $1.17 per tray. In other words, out of the $250 per day, each inmate is fed only $3.51 worth in food. The money they were spending on us inmates is negligible. The vast quantity of money for the jail budget was reserved for facilities and staff payroll. Facilities are things like painting and maintenance (always neglected). The Infrastructure like TV’s, Surveillance Cameras and so forth are purchased once and then owned forever until they break (rarely purchased). They purchased almost no new Infrastructure that I saw. This means that the majority of the money was soaked up by the Staff. If the Staff wanted to earn Overtime, earn Raises and Annual Bonuses, well… facilities and inmate needs took second fiddle to lining their own pockets. So the Federal Budget? Yeah. It was very important to keep that spigot wide open so the staff could continue earning the roughly $150,000 per Correctional Officer, per year. Yeah. That’s a real number. So while the guards that beat us and mistreat us make 6 figures per year, we lived in squalor. And it showed, not just to Marjorie Taylor Green, but to the US Marshals.

When the US Marshals came to visit us in C2B, the jail got nervous as f***. The J6 Pod was a gravy train for the jail, and they didn’t want us to get shipped out. We were a nice paycheck, and their necks were on the line. Whatever came out of the Marshal’s audit would end up in the news. The Marshals knew this, and asked the jail staff to leave us be while we were being questioned. We told them EVERYTHING. About the beatings, about the bad food, the black mold running in rivers out of the vents, the rats and the mice with parasites on them and the bugs in the food and vents, the lack of hygiene (namely the cutting of beards which was obviously not being done), the Solitary Confinement, we told them everything. They were very kind, very knowledgeable, and very concerned about what they were hearing. They took all the information down, and when their inspection was complete, the US Marshals found the Jail was TERRIBLY in contempt. The facility was so dismal, that the US Marshals ordered that 400+ inmates needed to be transferred out of the DCDOC to another jail. The J6 Pod and our report was congratulated widely by these inmates, and when J6ers eventually met them, they were treated like heroes. The “sit-down” protest we staged had paid off in ways we had not intended. The J6ers had rescued those 400+ inmates from their miserable conditions. The jail to which they were sent was a resort by comparison. A resort that we would never get to experience. We were left in our miserable cells in our poorly aging jail, with overpaid staff that hated us (worse now) and hoped we were stabbed in prison. But although the J6 guys would not be leaving C2B… soon a J6 girl would be.