Last week, the mother of a prisoner, drove six hours from Missouri, planning to visit her son, likely for the final time. This mother has a terminal illness and is three months past her life expectancy according to her healthcare providers. When she went through the metal detector, it went off. She told the prison employees she had a rod in her back and they told her she could not see her son. That is just purely evil.

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Background: Gary White was a county commissioner in Jefferson County, Alabama. Good friends with Les Siegelman, he introduced Les's brother, [former] Alabama Governor Don Siegelman to Richard Scrushy, a local Republican businessman. Because of this, White became inextricably intertwined with Siegelman, who was one of the biggest targets of the Rove-directed, heavily politicized Department of Justice [DOJ].

Scrushy and Siegelman were later indicted and convicted on charges stemming from that relationship. According to affidavits provided by Gary [and Judy, who was also in the room] White was asked to perjure himself before a Grand Jury in order to make the case against Siegelman and Scrushy. White refused and the very next day, the DOJ started delivering subpoenas to build a case against him. White is serving ten years and has been moved most recently to Federal Prison in Arkansas. [BOP is Bureau of Prisons.]

This is installment #31. [Links to entire series at end of article*.]

My guest today is frequent OpEdNews contributor, Judy White. Welcome back to OpEdNews. What's on your mind today?

Judy White: Last weekend I visited Gary on Saturday, June 7th. As always, it was a heartbreaking experience, but only for those of us who actually have a heart, which apparently does not include prison employees.

JB: What are you referring to, Judy?

JW: Many of us try to honor and respect our mothers as a way of life, not just on Mother's Day, which was just a month earlier. Prison employees never respect anyone, least of all the sick, frail and elderly, with women being their primary target for abuse. I am confident that each and every mother of Forrest City prison employees would feel ashamed of her son/daughter if she were aware of how they MIStreat mothers and the elderly in general. I was and I am ashamed of every one of them, and I am even more ashamed of my government.

Last Saturday morning, an elderly woman, the mother of a prisoner, drove six hours from Missouri with other family, planning to visit her son, likely for the final time. This mother has a terminal illness. She is three months past her life expectancy according to her healthcare providers. When she went through the metal detector, it went off. She told the prison employees she had a rod in her back and they told her she could not see her son.

That is just purely evil.

The elderly mother did not have a "medical card" with her to explain the metal rod supporting her spinal column. But, really, so what? According to my conversation last summer with the associate warden, if the metal detector goes off when a visitor - any visitor - goes through, the prison employees are supposed to use the hand-held scanner to determine the problem area then perform a limited pat search to determine no weapon/contraband is being smuggled in. That's all, and how hard would that be? How hard would it be to stop unduly and unlawfully harassing visitors who happen to LOVE someone who got sent to prison (including all the innocent and wrongfully prosecuted and imprisoned)? How hard would it be to stop prison employees from hurting people? The metal detector was set at an extreme level that day to stop even tiny bra hooks and to cause women in particular to have to go through over and over or even remove their bras. Of course, that further benefited the sadistic prison employees in their mission to stop, slow down, limit and eliminate visitors as much as possible.

No senior level prison employee was summoned - no duty officer or lieutenant or anyone at all - as required before refusing a visitor. The heartless, brainless prison employees manning the "processing" desk summarily denied this sick elderly woman her last chance to see her son. Her son was also denied his last chance to see his mother.

The cruelty of this poor mother being turned away was clear to all of us, as she openly cried, heartbroken, while trying to hold on to the wall to keep her balance as she tried to put her shoes back on to return to her car and leave without getting to see her son.

The BOP should be so proud.

JB: Hardly. What else is on the agenda today?

JW: Together with doing everything possible to prevent prisoners from being exposed to human beings - family and friends coming to visit them - prison employees withhold, delay, interfere with and even steal or discard mail being sent to and from prisoners.

JB: Aren't you exaggerating?

JW: Of course, under federal law, any such interference with the mail is a criminal act for which the criminal committing the crime should be prosecuted, fined and imprisoned. BOP also has written policies requiring prison employees to deliver mail to prisoners no less than 48 hours after delivery to the post office box where prison employees are supposed to pick it up daily, and requirements that mail from prisoners is to be taken to the post office every business day. We have established these violations and the prison employees' pattern and practice of ignoring federal law, but clearly, prison employees are exempt from the laws that apply to the rest of us. Isn't that a wonderful example for people who are in prison because they were convicted of violating a law, to experience and witness every day complete lawlessness by government employees with no consequences?

Getting back to last Saturday, after visiting Gary I took mail for him to the local post office, mail that was complete with tracking - and did you know when your mail has a tracking number, you can have notifications sent to your phone or email? I use those features constantly! That tracked mail was placed in the postal mail receptacle - there is no post office box with the assigned number - on Monday morning at 8:10 a.m. The post office opens at 8:30 and prison employees normally go to the post office around 9:00 or a little after. They took possession of my mail to Gary Monday morning, but as of today (Friday), the fifth day of prison employees' possession of my mail to Gary, they still refuse to deliver it to him!

By the way, what I mailed to Gary last Saturday included a print-out of our last interview published at OpEdNews.com. And you and I have previously discussed the prison's censorship of these interviews, including the disappearances and long delays before delivery when I have sent copies to Gary.

But that isn't all. We have established that the prison employees withhold and delay Gary's mail to me, too. At best they are now only taking Gary's mail to the post office sporadically, two or three times a week rather than daily, and there is an entire week's worth of Gary's letters to me that have simply disappeared. We know the USPS moves mail from Arkansas to Alabama - I took a photo of one of the mail trucks I often see while driving to and from prison.

In the meantime, the kids and I have sent Father's Day cards to Gary in time for him to receive them by Thursday before Father's Day this weekend, but those, too, have been withheld and not delivered to him.

Through such tactics, the BOP makes it almost impossible for prisoners to maintain the very ties that are leading factors in whether or not they end up back in prison.

JB: Sadly, rehabilitation does not seem to be their goal. This behavior sounds more like a vendetta against Gary and the other prisoners. Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Judy. Regards to Gary. Happy Father's Day, indeed.

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* Judy White series, in its entirety:

Judy White Fights For Incarcerated Husband's Access to His Prescriptions October 13, 2010

The Feds and the Prisoner's Wife - Do Unto Others... as You Please October 27, 2010

Come and Get It! Prisoners Served Expired Food, "Not for Human Consumption" November 10, 2010

Judy White's Giving Thanks for Prison Visit: It's All Relative November 29, 2010

No Heat in the Cooler: More Tales from Edgefield Federal Prison December 16, 2010

The Devil's in the Details: More Tales from Edgefield Federal Prison , January 11, 2011

Hello Kitty Mysteriously Disappears from Prisoner's Mail at Edgefield , January 24, 2011

Edgefield Prison's Commitment to "Maintaining Family and Community Ties"? March 6, 2011

Winter in July? Trying to Stay Warm in Edgefield Prison July 6, 2011

Neglect at Edgefield Federal Prison Causes Inmate to Lose Toes September 27, 2011

Bureau of Prisons "Disappears" Federal Prisoner Just In Time for His Birthday December 29, 2011

Magic Behind Bars: The Case of the Disappearing 600 Pound Chicken February 22, 2012

Are Federal Prisons Finding it Hard to Let Go? April 24, 2012

Happy Father's Day! and the Justice Department's War On Families June 16, 2012

Federal Prison's "Camp Cupcake" - Putting the Fun[ny] in Dysfunctional August 14, 2012

Gary White and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week , November 29, 2012

Scrooged! Millington Federal Prison Camp's Version of Christmas Spirit , December 24, 2012

The Bureau of Prisons, The Flood and Your Tax Dollars At Work , January 27, 2013

Revenge of the BoP: OpEdNews Censored in Two Federal Prisons , February 17, 2013

Warning: Incarceration in US Prison May Prove Hazardous to Your Health , February 23, 2013

Battling Injustice: the BOP and Corrupt Judges , June 18, 2013

Ties that Bind: How the BOP Undermines Families, Part One , July 27, 2013

Ties that Bind - How the BOP Undermines Families, Part Two , July 30, 2013

Anti-Crimson Tide Discrimination? September 15, 2013

Inmates Stick Their Necks Out to Cast Light on Recent Prison Death November 11, 2013

Forrest City FCI: Where Visitors, Civil Rights and Human Dignity Are Unwelcome December 14, 2013

Forrest City Federal Prison: Where Prisoners Don't Have a Prayer January 7, 2014

Here They Go Again! Watch BOP Make Up Infractions On the Fly February 22, 2014

Inside the Polygon of Club Fed - Where Severe Weather and Sadistic Federal Prison Employees Are a Nasty Brew April 30, 2014

BOP: Not Only Cruel and Unusual - Insensitive, Vindictive AND Just Plain Ridiculous June 6, 2014

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.