Shakedowns

Shakedowns are a common occurrence in prison, and they are tough on all the people in the neighborhood. Join Sabrina to learn what a shakedown is, how it impacts EVERYONE on the inside. (And hear what happened to the penguin...)

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Time Markers:
(1:07) What is a Shakedown?
(4:17) Facility Wide Shakedowns

(7:06) Contraband is Everywhere

(9:26) The Contraband Must Be Found

(13:12) What is a Shakedown Like for Residents?

(14:46) The Penguin Story

(20:41) Expressing Yourself While Incarcerated

(24:57) Sometimes Empathy is Tough

(29:30) Here’s Where Penpal Encouragers Come In

(34:15) Where Do We Go From Here

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT: We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version) Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

Time Markers

(1:07) What is a Shakedown?

(4:17) Facility Wide Shakedowns

(7:06) Contraband is Everywhere

(9:26) The Contraband Must Be Found

(13:12) What is a Shakedown Like for Residents?

(14:46) The Penguin Story

(20:41) Expressing Yourself While Incarcerated

(24:57) Sometimes Empathy is Tough

(29:30) Here’s Where Penpal Encouragers Come In

(34:15) Where Do We Go From Here

Welcome to the PrisonCare Podcast!

I’m Sabrina Justison, founder of PrisonCare.org, equipping compassionate people to support the often-invisible people groups who make up a prison neighborhood - the inmate residents, correctional officers, staff, administration, and the families of all of these folks.

Join me for this week’s episode, and be encouraged to think, care, and respond as we explore the challenges facing prison neighborhoods everywhere.

Let’s support positive prison culture from the outside, because EVERYone on the inside matters.

Hello friends. Welcome to the PrisonCare podcast. I am your host Sabrina, the founder and executive director of PrisonCare Incorporated and today, we are going to get All Shook Up. Oh, Mmm. Yeah. No, not that kind. We're going to talk about shakedowns. 

(1:07)

Do you know what a Shakedown is? I didn't know what a Shakedown was until a couple of years ago. All of this is new for me. If you don't know my story, please go back and listen to some of the earliest episodes of the PrisonCare podcast. The our story one, the co-founder story and that will give you a framework for where I'm coming from. I am the mom of an incarcerated individual and I knew nothing about prisons, paid no attention to them, didn't have a clue until five years ago when my son was arrested and sentenced. 

So it's okay if you don't know the stuff it's okay to just be learning alongside me because there's all kinds of things that are still very new to me that I'm still in the early stages of learning about. All right. So we're going just to learn together. It’s going to be good for everybody. 

Shakedowns. So simply put a Shakedown is a search of an entire prison facility; every cell, every nook and cranny of every cell, the personal belongings of every incarcerated individual, and in some cases the light fixtures, the switch plates or outlet covers on the walls, under the mattresses, inside the mattresses, under the rim of the metal toilet. Yeah, everywhere everywhere. So a Shakedown happens on an individual cell when there is a suspicion of Contraband. Okay. At least this is my understanding and if you are Corrections professional and you hear me saying stuff and you're like, “well not exactly, Sabrina." Oh, please please please contact us. Drop something in the comments, send me an e-mail: Sabrina@prisoncare.org. Okay, I'm a learner in this process. A learner. I want to learn. So if you know more than I do and I've got something scrozzled, please correct me. I mean do it kindly cause you know, you don't want to like crush my little spirit. But yeah, please straighten me out. 

Okay. So my understanding is that a Shakedown of an individual cell or even an individual section of cells happens when there is a suspicion of Contraband, when someone has indicated that an incarcerated individual or a group in many cases, if there's been gang activity surrounding Contraband and they have specific concerns about specific people's cells, they search them. It’s called a Shakedown I think just because of the nature of the search it's not a neat and tidy respectful careful search. They don't take things and look at them and then put them right back where they found them. It tends to be a lot of grab, shake, pull apart, turn upside down, toss it back down, and the person whose stuff it is gets to put their cell back together later, okay. It's usually left a mess. I don't know if I don't know if staff are told to do it that way or whether in the interest of time, they just end up doing it that way because there's not enough time to do it more carefully than that. I don't know.

(04:17)

But there are facility-wide shakedowns that happen periodically. Some of this is just to maintain compliance with state regulations or for the private prisons, the corporate regulations as well. They have to, they have to do this periodically in the facility as a whole. 

Now, if you think about a facility that has over 1,000 people serving their prison sentences there, it has maybe as much as 1,800 or 2,000 people incarcerated there. It's a lot of personal property to go through. It’s a lot of cells to search. That's a lot of shaking down to do. 

When a facility wide Shakedown has to happen, it is kind of traumatic for everybody in the facility. It's certainly hard on the residents and in a few minutes I'm going to, I'm going to do a little bit of personal storytelling. J's facility went through a Shakedown and not too long after it he talked with me some on the phone about the personal impact that it had on him. And maybe someday we'll do an interview episode where we talk about Shakedowns with him. But for today's episode, I'm going to share with you some of the things that he talked about at that time. 

But let's start with the staff. So, first of all, nobody wants their cell shaken down. So you are not making the residents happy when you come onto the tear and announce that, that's what's happening. They have to cooperate with it or they have to accept it, at least. But they don't like it. So, from the time that you're told that, you have to go and shake down a particular section of the facility or the whole facility you know that people are going to hate it and be miserable and probably be horrible to you in whatever way they can think of to be horrible to you. So it's like your worst day at work and you know it going into it and you're just dreading it. 

All right, in addition there are lots of people who do not have Contraband, who are very compliant, who are working really hard on themselves, who are… they’re the kind of people where you're like, “yeah, if I was allowed to, I think I'd be working on establishing some good rapport with that person because I see that person trying to improve the culture.” You have to shakedown their cells too. 

(07:06)

And this is tricky to talk about but it's important. You're probably going to find something there that technically speaking is contraband. Because there are a whole lot of things that have been labeled Contraband when really it's because like a couple of people one time, 11 years ago, managed to do something bad with it in a strange specific context. And so since that time, nobody's allowed to have it ever for anything. 

Maybe we'll do a whole episode about Contraband. Actually, I'm sure we need to do a whole episode about contraband. You would be amazed at some of the things that are Contraband. Like too many books. There's a limit to how many books you are allowed to have. And if you have too many, you’re in violation. So you know you're gonna have to shake down the cells of people that are not the problem.  They're not. They’re not causing the problems. They're setting culture within the prison in a positive way but you're going to shake down their cell anyway and you're quite possibly going to find something there that you have to take. That's hard. That's hard. 

And yet, if you don't do it, you're not doing your job. You're not compliant. You're playing favorites. You’re on thin ice. So you go into work knowing that you're just going to really take off a whole lot of people. Even people that typically don't have an issue with you and you don't have an issue with them. But you're going to go through the private stuff and you're going to create a problem for them because you have to. It’s lousy, it's miserable. Okay. But then how about the people that are causing problems, that do have the dangerous Contraband that do have the evidence there that started this whole thing, right? That caused the facility-wide Shakedown, that that things have been found and observed and its weapons, or it's drugs or its cell phones, or what have you. You have to go into their cell. You have to go through all their stuff, you have to tear their stuff apart and you have to find it. And the Rumor Mill is really effective inside a prison. 

(9:26)

So a lot of times residents know, a Shakedown is coming. It's not, it's not typically a surprise. I'm sure some of them are a surprise but typically they know it's coming and they find places to hide it. They find someone else, who isn't specifically a suspect, and they threaten them and force them to let you hide it in a light fixture or something in their cell. So, now you've got the problem of going into the cell of a suspected violator, offender and then not being able to find the Contraband that you have been tasked with finding. Well, not only are you going back to your boss and saying, “sorry couldn't find it,” but you also know it's still out there. It is still going to cause problems on the tear. It is still going to cause problems in the yard. It is still to cause problems in the day room.   And yeah, that's not making you feel safe at your job. That's not making you feel like you're in control of what you need to be in control of that will provide for safety.      And then final thing, you go into the cell of someone who is suspected or who is not suspected, doesn't matter and you find Contraband and it's maybe like really bad Contraband, you know, weapons drugs, cell phones, and you take it. Is violence going to follow? I wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't want to walk into a cell and find that somebody has made a weapon and take it. Because what if they've made two weapons or four weapons and I only find one or two. That’s a tough thing, man. It is a tough thing to be a correctional officer and to have to go and do cell searches whether you find Contraband or not. It's tough day at work. 

I don't know if you've ever thought about that before. And I'm sure that there are some COs out there, not the best of the best who like the power trip that comes from going in and finding something and taking it, even if it's something really minor just to prove to them that you can. Because anytime you come in a Cell, you have the right to take. If you find anything that is a violation, you have the right to take it and it reminds them of who is boss. There are some that totally love the Power Trip. But there are a whole lot more that just want to keep their workplace safe. That just want to stop the gangs from terrorizing people. That just want to stop the resident on resident violence. Not even coming into whether the staff are in danger.    And yeah, they're doing it just because it has to be done. But it makes a really difficult day at work. I think we should have compassion for those officers. I think we should have to think about it. I think that if our society says we want the bad guys kept away, locked up, not in my apartment building, not in my neighborhood… Then we have to think about what that is doing to the people who are keeping them locked up.

Because it's kind of our fault that they're having to do it, right? We've said somebody's got to do it and I'm not gonna. So that means somebody else has to, right? I just think that we have some responsibility for thinking about that. 

(13:12)

Now let's flip it around to the other set of uniforms, okay? And let's talk about for the residents. What a Shakedown is like. So sometimes it's a matter of you go and stand at your door and wait for them to shake down your cell. And sometimes it's really quick. They’re in and out in a few minutes. And sometimes, for whatever reason, because they've been given a tip or whatever, it is a very very in-depth Shakedown and it takes an hour. And we're talking about a cell that's the size of like… I don't know eight by ten if that… 7 by 10. And so that's pretty thorough, that’s pretty in-depth if it's taking that long. They're going through every little nook and cranny. They are rummaging through your personal letters and photographs from family and loved ones. Things get ripped. Things get accidentally trashed even when a CO is not trying to be a jerk. Things get trashed when a CO is trying to be a jerk too. That's just the hard truth, right? Some people are having a bad day. 

In addition, the rules about what constitutes contraband are open to interpretation. Obvious things, right? If there's a weapon like, dude, it's contraband obviously, right? If you find drugs, it's contraband, right?  

(14:46)

So let me let me do a little bit of storytelling here. So J’s facility sometime back went through a Shakedown. And it was a Shakedown in the wake of an act of violence that put the whole facility on lockdown, so that means that everyone was confined to their cells. Pretty much round-the-clock. They were coming out every third day for half an hour in small groups, right? Get a shower, make a phone call. And then back in for another two-and-a-half, three days. That means that all of the food is being delivered to the cells.  Nobody can go to the chow hall. Chow hall is not a thing, it's not happening during a lockdown. So the food has to be delivered by staff to each individual cell. Under those conditions the staff are simply stretched too thin. They cannot do all of it in most cases during a lockdown staff are working 16 hour shifts very regularly and they're exhausted.

So residents who live in incentive pods, who have by their good behavior over an extended period of time who’ve earned the right to live in incentive housing are sometimes asked to volunteer to help with preparing the food in the kitchen and getting it ready for delivery. And those basic things, basic maintenance, that has to keep happening for the facility to not shut down to not. You know fall apart where people starve and where security systems break down and all that. You know, there's a certain amount of work that simply has to happen and so sometimes residents in incentive pods are given the freedom to come out of their cells but only to do these tasks. 

So during this lockdown at J's facility, sometime back, he volunteered to work in the kitchen. He had done that in the past during Covid. He had a background working in restaurants before he was incarcerated so he's good in a kitchen and they knew this. So he was working in the kitchen. He was getting up at 2:00 in the morning and he was heading right down to the kitchen and he was working from 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. until whenever they managed to get everybody fed. So on the particular day, that his cell was shaken down he worked 13 hours in the kitchen voluntarily for no pay. And when he came back at the end of his kitchen shift, his cell had been shaken down while he was in the kitchen. And his celly was there for it and it was, it was a mess. Mud had been tracked in. J and his celly try to keep a very clean cell. They are both very neat and tidy. They also have a dog kennel in their cell because of J being a puppy trainer and so they have very limited space and so they're really, really diligent about making the best use of that space possible. Keeping things clean and keeping things neat. And there was just crap everywhere.  There was dirt tracked in. There were things taken apart and then just left in pieces. And J was exhausted and he was mad. He was mad. He said, “I worked 13 hours.” He said to me, "I worked 13 hours in the kitchen to help you guys do your job to keep the facility running. And I don't mind that you shook down my cell. I understand it was a facility-wide shake down and you had to look and there was violence. And so they're looking for anything that's going to be an ongoing problem. I get it. But dude, like I came home and now I have to clean because everything's such a mess.” And then to top it all off his penguin was gone. 

J loves Penguins. If you ever write to him, send him a little drawing of a penguin. He'll love it. He'll love it. He loves Penguins. He's always loved penguins. And some time ago a guy that he had gotten to know in the prison had made a little stuffed penguin for him in a hobby craft thing. You know, they have certain craft supplies that they're allowed to get ahold of and certain kinds of things are allowed to make and some of them they send home and some of them they keep and give to friends. 

Well, the rules in this facility are that you are allowed to keep one hobby craft item permanently as your own, just your personal thing to hold onto, right? And this penguin was J's one Hobby Craft item. And he really loved this penguin. It reminded him of the friend who had made it for him. It is the only penguin that he has with him at this point in his life where he used to have, you know, a little penguin collection, not live Penguins. Although he would have loved that. When he was kid, he used to ask if we could get a penguin. They took his penguin. They took his penguin. They said it was Contraband and his celly said, “but that's his one Hobby Craft item.” He went to bat for him. He's got a great celly who went to bat for him. He said, “that's J’s one Hobby Craft item. He's allowed to have that. That's the only one he has. You've been through his stuff. There's nothing else here.” And they said, “take it up with your captain later" and they took it. And of course there is no taking it up with the captain later because by the time J got back, much less by the time he gets to talk to his captain days later, you know, the Penguin’s in the dumpster somewhere. The penguin’s already at the landfill. 

(20:41)

It sounds dumb, right? It's a penguin. But it's not. See that's the thing, when you're incarcerated you are so limited in any expression of individuality any expression of your personality, you are dressed the same as everyone else. You are referred to by your d.o.c. number or by your last name only. You eat when you're told to eat. You shower when you're told to shower. You are so limited in any expression of individuality. And so when you do have that one or two, whatever the rules are in your facility, but that allowed thing that's special, that's you. That's not what your Celly is into, but you are. You put a lot of worth on that item. 

When you have a letter, that was the last letter that you received before grandparent passed away, it’s really important to you that that letter doesn't get torn because that is the only connection that you had to your grandparent’s life, death, and funeral. The funeral that you didn't get to attend. The time that you did not get to bond with your family in the wake of that. And so that letter or that bulletin from the memorial service or whatever it is, but that's your one piece of you and that loved one, who's gone now. 

Small things take on huge significance. And when they are taken or damaged or destroyed in a shakedown it is deeply painful. Most of us on the ice outside have too much stuff.    And we are forever trying to figure out which pieces of our stuff we can move along and get rid of and move to somebody else who needs the stuff, right? Don't just throw it out. Find somebody who can use it. But my goodness, we have a lot of stuff.

But when you're incarcerated, your stuff is limited to your box or your duffle depending on how you have to pack your stuff in that facility. There's a, there's a set amount of cubic footage that you're allowed to have. And once that's filled, you can't have anything else until you get rid of something. So if you have books, a lot of people have a couple of favorite titles and then any other book that anyone has sent to them, they read it and then they donate it to the library or they read it and then they give it to someone else because they can't keep it. They will run out of space too quickly. Right? 

Shakedowns are really hard when you are a resident. It is one more violation. You know, we had an episode where we talked about the violation that comes with a strip search. And with how regularly people are strip-searched and how demeaning that is and how dehumanizing that is. When you only have a small amount of stuff that you can call your own and that has any flavor of your personality to it, or your identity before you came to prison. When that is messed with during a Shakedown, it's another form of violation and it's another demeaning experience, and it's another dehumanizing experience. 

Now, for the residents who are trying to build a more positive culture in their prison. For residents like J, like Dylan and others that we have great relationships with on the inside who are committed to making a change. For people like that, they get one extra layer of suffering that goes around a Shakedown. And you probably wouldn't guess what it is. But it’s empathy for the staff.

(24:47)

When J was working in the kitchen that day… the day that someone was in his cell going through all of his stuff and taking his Penguin. At that same time, he was loading up a food cart with little Styrofoam boxes of all the meals and there were a couple of case managers who were having to work very long, double shifts to help get everybody fed because of the lockdown. And he saw them talking to each other and he saw them crying because they were so exhausted. And they were so emotionally worn out. There had just been a violent incident in their workplace. One of their colleagues had been assaulted. So they're feeling afraid at work. They’re thinking, "why am I even working in this place, anyway?" And they haven't had more than a couple of hours sleep in several days and they're loading up food carts to deliver food when they’re case managers. That's not their job. They’re not usually, you know doordash drivers, right? Delivering food is not their job but that's what they have to do right now because nobody gets fed otherwise. And they’re just kind of right on the edge. And he saw tears and he felt so bad for them and he said to me, on the phone, "Mum, they are fried. They don't want to do this Shakedown. They don't want the facility be on lockdown any longer than is absolutely necessary and it has to stay on lockdown until the facility wide Shakedown is complete. That's the rule from the warden. They don't have anything left to give.” 

So he feels empathy for them. Right? He feels compassion for them. He sees what they're carrying… this weight. He knows that they don't want the Shakedown. And then he comes upstairs and he finds that whoever did the shakedown while he was in the kitchen took his penguin, left to cell a mess. And he's so angry and yet he can't even just let himself be angry because he's in this funny in between place. He feels compassion. He feels empathy. He recognizes what the lockdown and the Shakedown are doing to staff as well. 

There is an emotional cost. There’s a weight that you have to bear when you choose to be a positive Culture Creator. When you choose to be an acting change engine as J likes to call it… when you decide circumstances being what they are and me being who I want to be, this is how I'm going to live my life. And I'm going to seek mutual respect. And I'm going to build rapport. And I'm going to seek ways to pour encouragement and mentoring into the people around me.  And I'm going to see the humanity in each individual that I come in contact with. 

If you've chosen to do that, it costs you something when you have a situation like a Shakedown    because you do feel for the staff too and I guarantee that there were some staffers who felt for the residents whose cells they were shaking down, who had compassion on them, who realized, “I am going through all of this person's stuff and this person just lost their dad and their grieving and I'm going through a stack of family photos and they are just cringing over there thinking, “Oh, don't rip my stuff. Oh, please don't screw up my stuff. Please don't mess up my photos.”” Whatever. Right? This is a system that requires a freezing over, a stony quality to survive it.

You have to stop caring about the others. The other uniform. You have to stop caring about them if you're going to take good care of yourself because it is costly to see them as human too. That's heavy. There's got to be a better way. I don't know what the better way is. I'm not saying shakedowns are a bad thing. Contraband, Contraband is a nightmare. That’s why people are dying and addicted inside prisons. I get that.

(29:30)

So what can we as compassionate people on the outside do?   Well pen pal encouragers, strangely enough have a really wonderful role to play in this. When you are in relationship with someone through correspondence and you hear their  frustration, their experiences with having their cell shaken down. Especially if you hear them trying to be fair about it, trying to recognize what it cost the staff as well. When you, when you read those things from them and their letters, you can be that dry shoulder to cry on. You can validate that sense of loss that they have. You can say, “I am so sorry this must be so very difficult. It must feel like one more way that your identity is being taken away from you and I am sorry that you had to endure that. I want you to know that I care about your penguin.   I want you to know that I care about your family photos.   And I hear you trying really hard to be fair to the staff who did the Shakedown. And I just applaud that. My hat is off to you. So much respect, so much respect for you for recognizing that this cost them something too. That this is hard for them to that. They didn't want to be doing this either. That this was hard on several different individual human beings for slightly different reasons, but this is hard on all of us. And I hear you recognizing that and I think that you're doing amazingly tough and important work, emotionally relationally and in terms of your communication skills, by choosing to see people in the other uniform as individual humans. By choosing to speak about them that way.”

You can encourage all of those things. That’s values-based language, right? Virtues based language. I say that wrong all the time. Virtues based language. Where you're talking about mutual respect, where you're talking about validating grief and loss but also applauding the decision, the choice, to not blame the others for a situation that is really difficult for all of you. You can be that dry shoulder for them to cry on. You can be that voice of respect and admiration. They are not experiencing a lot of voices of admiration and respect in their life. You can be that voice. You can fill their tank back up so that they have what it takes to continue behaving that way for the next Shakedown. You can be the extra strength that they need. You can have their back so that they can continue to choose to set culture, to increase positivity, to refuse to just buy into the toxicity to the US versus them. You can be their backup so that they don't run out of the energy to keep living life that way. It's going to be better for everybody.

It's gonna be better for the staffers. The staff are going to see that in them and they're going to know okay, this is a spot right here where this person is, is a spot where I am not in danger right now because they see that I didn't want to take their penguin, I just had to. I don't feel threatened by them because I see them trying to see as a person so I can take a full deep breath right now instead of being so afraid that we're right on the verge of violent incident that I can't even catch my breath. 

You forget, when you're a penpal encourager that you're not just having a positive impact on the person you're writing to. And you're not even just having a positive impact on them and their friends. You are having a positive impact on every correctional officer who comes in contact with them.  By strengthening them, by helping build their character, their resilience, their hope. By building those good things in them, you are helping every staff member who will come in contact with them. You can support positive prison culture from the outside and you can do it because everyone on the inside matters. 

(34:15)

So shakedowns, there you go. Now you know a little bit about shakedowns and now hopefully you have been encouraged to think about them from both perspectives and to recognize the difficulties that are there and maybe just maybe you've been inspired and challenged to say yes, I'm going to do it. I'm going to become a penpal encourager. I'm going to adopt a prison and I'm going to start writing to somebody and I'm going to ask them for a couple of names of other people that might like to receive letters of encouragement. And I'm going to do this because I care. I care and I can't fix the big system, but I can do something in response.    Do it, do it learn more. Go to prisoncare.org. Check out the resources we have there for free, pdf downloads. Lots and lots of how-to in simple steps, in little bite-sized pieces. It is not overwhelming, not when you've got a couple simple little PDFs guiding you through the process. There are videos that are linked there. There's other episodes of the podcast that you can find. There are mental Wellness Resources that you can just print off and send in to someone on the inside who needs some help, improving communication, or improving sleep, or finding healing through writing. There are more and more of those Wellness Resources being created all the time. They are free, they are always going to be free. We just want you to print them off and send them to somebody on the inside who would be encouraged and helped to have them. You can find out on the website how you can become a financial supporter of the work that we're doing, how you can help fund the learning that is going to change the face of corrections as the next generation of policymakers finish their degrees and move into the industry. 

We are absolutely convinced that those young minds in the criminal justice Department, in the sociology Department. That the young adults who are studying those things, they can be  ready to step in and set new policy, a more positive way forward, serious reform that is going to make life better for everyone touched by the prison system. We believe that they can be ready for that with just a little bit of help and encouragement during their undergraduate and grad school years. And we're doing that at PrisonCare Incorporated and you can be a part of that. You can learn how to become a financial supporter of that work. Also at the website, if you are interested. Sign up for our email list if you haven't done that before. We don't send out a whole lot of emails so you are never going to feel spammed for sure. But every once in a while, there's something special that will show up in your inbox and makes you that much more connected to other people who have a similar heart. Thank you for that heart. Thank you that you care enough to be listening to this episode. Thank you that you care enough to want to make the difference inside a prison.  Everybody on the inside does matter and I thank you so much for caring. 

Thanks for listening to the PrisonCare podcast. Be sure to visit us at prisoncare.org. PrisonCare, equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside because everyone on the inside matters.