Posted on 10/08/2019 10:09:14 AM PDT by Red Badger
With a camera hidden in a hollowed-out Bible, peeking through the “O” of the word “Holy,” and a pair of rigged reading glasses, Scott Whitney secretly filmed the world behind bars, inside one of Florida’s notoriously dangerous prisons.
For four years, the 34-year-old convicted drug trafficker captured daily life on contraband cameras at the Martin Correctional Institution. He smuggled footage dating back to 2017 out of the prison, and titled the documentary “Behind Tha Barb Wire.” The video — given to the Miami Herald — allows the public to see with their own eyes the violence, rampant drug use and appalling conditions inside the prison.
As the Herald previously reported, Florida prisons have gone to great lengths to withhold video footage and other documents from news outlets, as well as family members of inmates who have died in custody.
To keep from releasing records, the agency has cited medical privacy laws and legal exemptions; sharing video footage specifically, it said, could jeopardize a facility’s security system and endanger prison personnel.
Whitney’s film, perhaps, underscored other reasons Florida’s Department of Corrections is keeping videos and records under wraps.
“We finna show y’all ... how we live in here that y’all ain’t seen,” said one inmate participating in the documentary.
From scene to scene, Whitney’s footage revealed an unkempt and decaying environment and demonstrated how little the officers care about their responsibilities or the inmates.
In one nighttime video narrated by Whitney in a hushed voice, a guard passed by his prison cell carrying a flashlight, yet never glanced inside. He remained oblivious to Whitney, who was openly filming at the time.
“They don’t check to see if we’re living, they don’t check to see if we’re safe,” Whitney said.
The video confirmed that homemade weapons and violence are hallmarks of life at Martin Correctional Institution, which the Herald said had 31 deaths in the past six years, including five homicides. Whitney modeled a makeshift stab-proof vest for the camera in one scene; in others, prisoners held a homemade knife and a “lock-and-belt weapon.”
The film documented mold covering the kitchen and mice popping in through crumbling walls. It also memorialized Hurricane Irma in 2017, when inmates from other prisons were transported to and housed at the facility, sleeping on the floor.
Most saliently, though, it captured the widespread drug use inside the prison.
“You got the war on drugs on the street, but once we get here you don’t care about the drugs,” he said to the camera.
Scene after scene showed inmates slumped over, stumbling to the ground, dragged across the floor and “twaking out.” One man lay face down in a pool of his own blood and another was rolled out on a gurney.
The culprit, Whitney said, was K2, a synthetic cannabinoid also known as “twak;” the Herald listed the drug as the most frequently confiscated contraband and the leading cause of overdose deaths.
Whitney continued, “You know you might not wake up any day you smoke that.”
The Florida Department of Corrections Office of Inspector General has opened an investigation into the video.
The agency wrote in an email to The Post on Monday: “The Department uses every tool at their disposal to mitigate violence and contraband within our institutions. Correctional Officers are diligent in their efforts to search inmates and common areas to eradicate weapons and remove dangerous and illegal contraband. At the forefront of our priorities is an agencywide effort to recruit and retain correctional officers statewide.”
Inmate-produced footage is extraordinarily rare, even more so when its trafficked out of a prison, Ron McAndrew, a prison consultant and former warden, told the Herald.
While gruesome and graphic photographs from inside prisons in Alabama and Mississippi were leaked and posted online earlier this year, the first example of footage from a contraband phone making its way online, he said, was in July at another Florida facility. A prison captain and two guards were arrested and fired after a video of officers beating an inmate was uploaded to YouTube.
Under Florida law, contraband cellphones can result in new felony charges and add prison time to an inmate’s sentence. Or, there’s the threat of solitary confinement — a fate Whitney has experienced, the Herald reported.
On September 19, Jordyn Gilley-Nixon, a prison reform advocate and former inmate, uploaded two minutes of Whitney’s footage to YouTube. Since then, prison officials have housed Whitney in isolation. If he’s released from solitary confinement, Whitney, whose drug trafficking sentence ends in 2040, promised to continue filming.
Sometimes you can follow the law your entire life and still end up in prison through no fault of your own. (See: William Richards)
Not saying the author of the videos is innocent or that following the law isn't a good idea. Just that following the law isn't always a guaranteed way to stay out of prison.
You can't frisk inmate visitors without having guaranteed info that a certain person will be carrying it in on a certain day, and you have to get pre-approval from the head office, which in NY State is the Commissioner's office in Albany. In my 25 years as a female in uniform, I only strip frisked two female visitors who were visiting inmates at Auburn prison. You can not touch them, just order them to lift this, and that, bend over, squat and cough, according to the Departmental and court ordered guidelines. That was back in the 80's, and I've been retired since 2003, so that could all have changed by now...for the worse, which means strip frisking visitors may not happen at all anymore.
Do the inmates get searched after a visit?
Some prisoners are beyond hope and need locking up no doubt, but if you send some criminals into a world that requires brutality and savagery to survive, how are they going to react to the world outside of prison, since we can’t lock up every criminal for every crime forever?
Conjugal Visits and the
Escapee sex.
*ANY* use of a weapon in the commission of a crime should be the death penalty.
Any use of violence upon another human to deprive them of life, liberty, or property, same.
I can say the same about some cops I know...The job does not attract the best of humanity...
Following the law won’t always keep you out of prison.
See: Paul Manafort
There is an aspect of the people attracted to the job and then there is the psychological effect of being given the power. The is a famous psychology experiment where college students were randomly divided to play roles as prisoners and guards. They had to stop the experiment because many of the students assigned the guard role were turning abusive and the students in the prisoner role were suffering very negative psychological effects.
Those were otherwise normal college kids. Imagine what you get when you select guard from the subset of people who want the job and everyone figures the prisoners deserve what they get.
“ Who are caught in in the political system of not having enough money and resources. Which leaves taxpayers to cough up more and more tax dollars for inmates.”
Drugs being smuggled into prison is not a result of there not being enough tax payer dollars being spent on prisons.
Bttt
Who is responsible for preventing drugs from entering prisons?
It is also difficult in such and environment to maintain the kind of sanitary conditions we would expect in commercial establishments. If I were a prison guard, I doubt that I would be endangering myself by sticking my head under sinks to see if the inmate who was paid $0.30 per hour cleaned it perfectly.
The drugs that are present are more of a result of the visitation policies that prisons are often forced to have. The only institutions I have been in without drugs and contraband have tele-video visitations. If prisoners are allowed to hug their friends and family, drugs will be transferred. In addition, poorly paid guards sometimes participate in smuggling because of bribes or threats against their family members.
Finally, as bad as the video was, I think that something similar could be produced in most urban junior high schools as the "video highlight reel" of four years of filming.
I have a problem feeling bad for the criminals locked away in prison. Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.
Absolutely Except in self defense. And protection of family friends life liberty And property
One thing I love about FR...seeing both sides like when people like you chime in with real life experience. Thanks
People WERE different back then - even the criminals! Although I wonder if back then folks found themselves in prison for lesser crimes than today?
But yes - times have changed. A thread awhile back talked about how unsafe Minneapolis is. My mom as a 3rd grader would ride the trolley alone into downtown for piano lessons, and afterwards would then walk by herself the several blocks to her dad’s shop at night. (Late 1920’s)
Although she and her sisters, around that same time period, also identified a “flasher” that flashed them on their way home from school. The cops caught the guy, and turned out he was a serial rapist/killer!
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If that is accurate, there should be no drugs in prisons.
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