Shane Crum – Victim of Injustice

Earlier this year, when the outbreak of covid-19 first became a national issue, Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio made international news. I wrote several e-mails to my friend, who turned them into a blog. The administration here was making some bad decisions which led to over 90% of the inmate population getting infected. Among those decisions was the moving of inmates who tested negative into a lock by themselves. This may seem like a great idea, but they could not say which inmates were infected and who still tested negative. The experts on TV were telling everyone who tested positive to “shelter in place”, and here we were moving inmates all around the institution. At one point, it got so crazy, that inmates who had tested negative, were placed in locks and cells with inmates who tested positive. I wish this were the only issue back then. It had all the appearances of an attempt to infect the whole population.

As inmates began to get passed the virus, the administration began doing some things that made a little more sense. They emptied out a small lock, that housed around 70 inmates, to make a quarantine lock for people transferring in and out of the prison.

Here we are again. A larger more rapid outbreak of covid-19 is gripping the country. You would expect our administration to have learned some valuable lessons. However, that is not what we have found.

The institution began transferring inmates into the facility, but they did not place these inmates into the quarantine lock. No! They placed them right into general population. Some of these inmates told the staff they were sick. When they arrived, they told medical they were sick. When they went to their perspective locks, they told the inmates near them they were sick. It took staff a couple weeks to react to this. Now we have 3 locks on lockdown, and they are to remain that way for God only knows how long.

The inmate population in Marion are being used as medical guinea pigs. First to test how the virus spreads, and now on how long the antibodies stays in the human body. We are not test subjects. We are human beings. Many of whom had just made a terrible mistake and are here because of it. Some, like me, who have been wrongfully convicted, and must make the best of the situation.

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In one of my posts, I discussed the issue with the inmate rules of conduct procedures. Well, that is not the only problem with how inmates are treated in these institutions. The inmate grievance procedure is every bit as corrupt and dysfunctional.

Inmates utilize the grievance procedure to address serious issues such as staff harassment, biased policies and procedures, and living conditions. Sounds good, right? Not so quickly.

It does not matter what the inmates say, the staff will never disagree with their co-workers, and they always say inmates lie. So, whatever we have to complain about, the staff do not care, and will ignore our pleas. This is yet another example of just how sadistic most of these people really are. Notions like right, wrong, truth, and justice are not within their limited intellect.

In August, I was moved from my cell (I had been living in for over a year, and through the staff attempting to kill us with covid). The reasoning was that our unit sergeant wanted two inmates, who are cockatiels handlers, on the top range in case the birds got out. I have nothing against the birds. Nevertheless, I have not received a conduct report in over 18 months, and I have not been bothering any one. It would be different if I had done something wrong, but I have not.

I began talking about speaking to the unit manager chief. A couple of days later, this infantile sergeant came in, had a corrections officer shake my cell down, and stood at the front of the lock screaming to everyone this was happening because I “went over her head”. At that point, I had not, but she just made sure I was going to. This is what we call retaliation. I spoke to my unit manager, who told me, “you can write her up, but nothing will happen because I will hear the complaint and it would be your word against hers”. So what good is this unit manager? Truth is, this happens all the time to inmates.

This is a type of oppression that no one else would ever tolerate. Contrary to popular opinion, inmates still have rights. Freedom of speech is one of them. Ask Georgetown University. What do you think will happen if inmates no longer have a way to address their greivances? If inmates continue to be treated in such ways, what do you think they will be like when they get out of prison? What do you think this would do to you psychologically?

If these staff do not want to do their job for any reason, then they should not be allowed to keep a job. What good are they doing just sitting behind a desk, and not giving inmates the benefit of doubt? They will readily admit just how screwed up their co-workers are, but refuse to do the right thing when it comes to disagreeing with them. That unit manager, for that matter most of the staff here, never have anything good to say about this intellectually challenged sergeant. This woman has such nicknames as,” ghetto barbie”, “ghetto chicken”, and “soul train dancer” among staff and inmates because of how ignorant she acts. This woman does not have any social skills, is incapable of interacting with humans, and has a bad habit of screaming in your face just because you have asked a simple question. I am left wondering. The administration here know what problem she is, and knew it before they gave her a position of authority. So, how did she get the job, and better yet, why does she still have it?

When I began my incarceration back in 1996, the staff were professional, non-biased, and knew the O.A.C.s and O.D.R.C. Policies that governed their jobs. In essence, they knew the rules they had to follow. Gradually, this changed, and in no way for the better. Today, staff members like sergeant (correctional counselor) Stephanie Craft are of the false belief they can do what ever they want to inmates. I wish I could tell you she is among the few who act this way. Truth is, the old guard is slowly disappearing.

These staff mistreat inmates in every possible way they can, and then act incredulous when the inmate calls them on it, or asks their superior to intervene. It is rather amazing just how bewildered they are that “an inmate” could ever question anything they say or do. How dare they! If you actually have the heart to stand up for yourself, staff like Craft begin threatening you, having their peers harass you, will try to get you fired from your institutional jobs, moving you to the locks where all the chaos is, and a host of other things.

With the political climate being what it is out there, I do not think this social change should end with just the police departments. It should not stop with the judicial system. It should include the overhaul of the penal system as well. Many of these staff are sadistic, and think they were hired to punish inmates. I have even heard other staff say things like, “they can do what ever they want!” O.D.R.C. has empowered these staff to not only feel as they do, but to get away with the mistreatment of inmates.

If you want to defund something, defund the Department of Retaliation and Coercion. I am sorry, I meant to say Rehabilitation and Correction, or was that a Freudian slip? While it would likely make prisons unsafe to cut their budgets, if done correctly, the state could be forced to release inmates and reduce prison populations overall.

There are people (not animals) who have spent as many as 4 decades in these places. I have seen inmates so old and frail they could never be a threat to society. Even with a geriatric provision in the state law to release these very inmates, the state still refuses to do so. I still can not comprehend why people are so ready to save a whale, a plant, an animal, but be so willing to throw away another human life as if it were meaningless. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

If you need another reason, because you are not sold on releasing inmates, the money they waste should persuade you. Once an inmate has been denied parole, it can cost the state millions of dollars a year to keep them locked up. Keeping these older inmates cost tens of millions in health care alone. Wouldn’t this money be better spent educating our youth, and diverting them from the judicial system altogether? This money could be better spent educating inmates to prepare them for when they come home. To prepare them for a successful re-entry. There are so many better things we as a “civil society” could better use the money wasted just to throw away inmates? Think about it! Millions of dollars spent, to throw away a human life. It would definitely put an end to our society giving authority and a voice to those who just want to inflict pain on others.

Dealing with the parole board is an agonizing affair. You can spend months, if not years, preparing. Taking all the re-entry approved programs the state has to offer. Obtaining support letters from family, friends and potential employers. Then, the day finally comes for you to speak to them. They immediately begin to ask you questions about the crime you were charge with and the subsequent trial. It is at this point you realize, all they want to do is retry your case in the hearing, and they fully intend on giving you more time. Nothing you have done through the years of your incarceration matters. Not the community service hours you have amassed, the educational course you have taken, the career preparedness programs, nor the self improvement programs the state gets money for providing to inmates.

This is the experience of every inmate who ventures into a parole board hearing in the state of Ohio. However, this situation is made even worse on those who (like myself) have claimed actual innocence. The parole board expects an inmate to admit guilt, accept responsibility, and show remorse. Imagine being forced to admit to something your are innocent of, or accepting responsibility for something you did not do, or to show remorse for a crime that never occurred; just to regain the very freedom that was stolen from you to begin with. Now imagine just how many people have already do so. I am clearly not one of them.

When I went into the parole board, they stated they knew I was going to claim to be innocent. They started asking me about my case, and then about tickets I received. At one point, each of the board members would ask me questions individually. One of the board members started to ask me about the evidence against me. I told her there was absolutely no evidence against me whatsoever. She replied,” there are a lot of inmates in prison who do not have any evidence against them.” I said,”don’t you think that is a problem?” Another board member began just trying to ridicule me, and could not help but to show his disdain for me because of my charges. It did not matter what I said. I was never going to get a parole from them. They even knew about my website www.unfair-justice.org. They even brought it up in the hearing. Someone (Bob Chatelle) who was a complete stranger to me a year ago, believed in my innocence so much that he created the new site (www.shanecrum.org) to help me.

At the time, I had several certificates for programs I had taken; one of which was for 4815 community service hours I had accumulated. I even told the board that I do not take programs for them, but that I take the ones that benefit me personally. I started inmate groups who’s purpose was to prepare long term offenders for release. I have taught as many as 8 programs myself. I was trying to make an impact on my environment. None of this mattered to them. The reason inmates in Ohio are paroled only 7% of the time is due to the “Truth in Sentencing Laws”. These laws require that inmates serve up 85% of their time before being considered for release, and does not bother with petty little facts like; rehabilitation, employability, or the inmates sincere willingness to be a productive member of society. Never mind the ones who continue to not only state their innocence, but can prove it to everyone except the court of law.

Everyone always talks about rehabilitation, but no one seems to want inmates to have anything of value. There can be no greater contradiction. The vast majority of inmates will, at some point, be released. The question everyone should be asking themselves is, “do we want inmates to have everything they need to be successful, or do we routinely poke at and antagonize them so they are like wild animals when they come home?” Keep in mind, many of these inmates will become your neighbor or a neighbor to someone you know and love. Personally, I would hope our self described civil society demand we treat every person with dignity and respect. Yet, I keep reflecting on something Thomas Paine once wrote,”A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

For many years now, I have continually wrote proposals to allow inmates to obtain “stand alone” laptop computers. I know of many inmates who have spent the last 20 or more years in prison. They could not begin to tell you anything about operating a computer. If they were released today, they would be at a great disadvantage, and something of a social pariah. I am one of those people myself. A stand alone computer is one that is not connected to the internet in any way. Other options are to have institutional servers the computers could be connected to, and enable inmates to access the information they need from that server alone (by CAT5 cable or a limited wifi unit similar to the current JPay and GTL systems being used now).

Simply allowing inmates to learn how to utilize current computer operating systems makes them more employable, prepared for daily life, and able to communicate with others. Additionally, computers enable inmates to keep large amounts of information. Inmates who are working on their cases have thousands of pages of trial transcripts and documents that could all be loaded onto the laptop. In fact, many of the courts are going paperless, but have to send paper versions of everything to inmates. This could simply be e-mailed to them. Photos, music, personal letters and e-mails, educational materials, and a lot more could be stored on a laptop. This would drastically reduce the amount of property inmates possess.

With the technology of today, this can be accomplished without hazarding the general public. So, you may ask yourself, “why is this not being done in prisons today?”. The reason is simple. Large billion dollar conglomerates, and the politicians they pay for, have not figured out how to make money from it. The phone companies charge horrendous amounts for the calls inmates use to stay in contact with their families. JPay, charges inmates and their families for e-mails, music that is free to the general public, and games you can download for free to your cell phone. The worst part is, these systems are anything but reliable. The so-called tablet they sell us costs over $150, but out there they are around $20. I bet if a tech company was to analyze one of these tablets, they would find software that throttles the battery, and causes the tablet to malfunction. We get “Critical Updates” to them that can either wipe out all of the information they contain, or make them completely unusable. To fix the problem, your family has to purchase a new tablet for you. Would you stand for this treatment?

Judging others seems to be a special pastime in prisons. Staff and inmate alike pass judgment on people for the wrong reasons. Yet, they never want the maggot things they are doing to be seen by others. These staff and inmates even think of themselves higher than they should. It reminds me of high school in a way. You and another classmate both like a girl, and the only way for the other guy to be noticed is for him to poison your name and character. He has to talk bad about you just so he can shine for a second. Then his true nature comes out when everything is said and done. I usually phrase it as,” A nobody trying to be a somebody to a bunch of nobodies.”

Staff are suppose to be professional and non-biased. The standards of employee conduct mandate they treat every inmate with the same respect. Often, they are the ones who both encourage and enable inmates to harass, fight, and steal from other inmates. This of course keeps the inmate population divided against itself. Please do not give them more credit then they are due. They are not smart enough to have done all of this for that reason. They do it because they are a vindictive and sadistic lot, looking to inflict pain and discomfort where they can.

It is the inmate population that surprises me. Almost every inmate has a story about how the courts have done something atrocious to them. However, they believe the courts got it right with all the people they want to judge. All the child molesters have to be guilty. These same inmates will falsely accuse other inmates of being child molesters based upon appearance alone. They just want someone to judge so they can feel good about what they have done. The gossip they spew is just like the school girls use to do. They sit around and talk about who is “cool” and who is not. How they are a part of the “in crowd” and others are not. I would have thought such things would have been left in their high school locker.

Stealing from family, robbing friends and neighbors, murdering, beating wives and girlfriends, and turning accomplices into the police are all accepted practices as long as you are not one of those guys over there. It appears far too many inmates thoroughly enjoy living in chaos. The inmates and staff can have this place and all it contains. They are the kings here. Just let me go home where I can live in peace.

It is more tiresome than anything. Their opinions would have to matter first, before it could ever be damaging. I do wish many of these inmates and staff would read this. They should know they are not as important as they believe themselves to be, and that they have made some serious mistakes in their lives they do not wish to be judged for. The worst thing in all of this is to be continuously judged for something that never even happened. The wound that just will not heal.

When an inmate is accused of breaking an institutional rule, the incident is written up by the charging staff member as a conduct report (a.k.a. “a ticket”). Minor offenses are handled by a hearing officer, which is a unit sergeant. Major offenses are referred to the Rules Infraction Board (R.I.B.) by the unit sergeants. Whether a ticket is handled by a hearing officer or R.I.B., the inmate has the right to call witnesses, present evidence, and a few other things much like a court of law. Among the reasons this is so important is that the Parole Board can deny parole to an inmate for rules violations, educational programming can be denied, inmates can be rejected for institutional work assignments, and judicial releases can be turned down by judges.

The reason I am talking about this is because, over the years, this whole process has become increasingly biased against inmates. Unit staff, consisting of the Unit Manager Administrator, a Unit Manager, Two Case Managers and Two Unit Sergeants referred to as “Corrections Counselors”, are supposed to help inmates and address the inmates’ problems and concerns. Now, Unit Managers are directing their Unit Sergeants to find inmates guilty of rules infractions without ever hearing the inmates version of the events. In some cases, inmates are being found guilty of tickets with no evidence a rules infraction occurred. Not even video evidence. Staff, any staff, can write conduct reports on inmates for no other reason than they dislike the inmate, and the inmate can be found guilty. There are even those staff members who do this just to satisfy their sadistic need to punish inmates beyond what they have received by the courts. No evidence, no witnesses, and no chance to clear their names. Unit Sergeants are accusing inmates of rules infractions and telling regular corrections officers to write the conduct report which will be heard by that same sergeant. Of course they are going to be found guilty. The appeal process for all of this is even handled by staff members who will blatantly tell the inmate off record they will not refute one of their coworkers. I was even told once that inmates are never credible, and all staff members will be believed above any inmate.

Let me be perfectly clear. Not all staff are involved in this activity, and some are fair minded. The problem seems to be that the majority of staff engage in this behavior, and there is no recourse for inmates. The fair ones are so very few and far between.

In 2016, I was given a conduct report in which I demonstrated the charging staff lied in the report. According to Policy, this entire ticket should have been thrown out and the offense dismissed. I was found not guilty in part and guilty in part. I lost my institutional job, thrown out of the apprenticeship program I was in, and the Parole Board made a big deal about the situation during my hearing in 2018. Fact is, I am still being rejected for inclusion in many things due to this false ticket I received.

Inmates are treated like this in prison, and they lose all sense of fairness. They return to society with the idea that no matter what they do, they will be accused of any and every thing and found guilty. Imagine the hopelessness and despair this causes. The disenfranchisement. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections is failing to lead by example.

-Shane

My family and I have been trying to prove my innocence since the very beginning. My Mother lost almost everything she had in this fight. As a last ditch effort, my Mother, Sister, and Cousin all got together and created a website which contained all my case files to find the help we needed. At some point, we would finally find Bob Chatelle, who has been helping me look for supporters. The hope remains the same, and that is to find the help we need to prove my innocence. We are definitely not sitting still, and we continue to search every day for what we need. Now, we are reaching out to all of you to help us in any way that you can. If all of you were to help, then it would only be a matter of time. If you can not help, maybe you know someone who can?

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I never believed I would spend the rest of my life in prison. Even today, somewhere deep in my heart, I believe I will go home. So, I spend almost all of my time in here either doing everything I can to prove my innocence and go home, or preparing myself for my eventual release. Almost everything I do is a variation of those two things. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (O.D.R.C.) does not have programs to fit what I will need when I get out. So, I am forced to learn on my own. I want to own a farm that is 1400 acres or bigger. I have been studying “Aquaponics” and other alternative farming methods. A lot of what I want to do would be considered “living off the grid”. There is still a lot for me to learn.

***

The inmates here at M.C.I. have a “Lifer’s Community Garden” in which we grow food for local food banks. We average about 6000 pounds of produce or more every year. Inmates who are serving life or long term sentences can volunteer to be in the garden. I am one of the volunteers chosen this year. Working in the garden gives me peace of mind. I really enjoy doing it. It is therapeutic and is an incentive for constructive behavior. It is more than a means for us to give back. For some inmates, it is all they have to look forward to. The issue is, the same as any other positive program in prison, there are staff adamantly opposed to it, and we are always having difficulty finding the resources necessary to continue our support of the food banks. I think every prison should be doing this. I view this activity as practice for my future. A way to refine my trade craft.

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Optimism is not something O.D.R.C. promotes among inmates. Neither is happiness. I have had other inmates ask how long I have been incarcerated, only to be amazed to learn I have been here 24 years now. I certainly do not carry myself like an inmate who has been locked up a while. They tell me that I appear much more lighthearted, lucid, and easy-going. My sister says something similar to this when she mentions all the trauma I have had in my life. I believe people are the sum total of the experiences they have had. Whether they were good or bad. To regret one experience is to regret who we have become. Sure, there are things I wish would have gone differently, but I learned from those ordeals as well. These experiences are now a part of who I am.

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I honestly doubt that the incarcerated men and women throughout the U.S. would admit it, but there are a great many things to fear in prison. There are those things they overly dramatize in the movies, of course, but those happen a lot less frequently than society really knows. The greatest fears of inmates are the ones almost no one talks about. The fear of being in these cells when you lose a Mother or a Father, a grandparent, a wife, a husband, or a child. Not being able to say good bye the way everyone else takes for granted. How about the fear of dying in prison alone or just the plain loneliness the majority of inmates face. You can not escape the loneliness, and I have lost family members during my time. I can not listen to Travis Tritt’s song “Drift of to Dream” without a tear welling up. It is these fears that dramatically affect prisoners long after they leave prison.

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“THE FOOD!” “Oh my God!”, the food is inedible at best most of the time. I have heard people say inmates eat better than school children. I have a test for you to conduct. On any given day, and without warning, switch the lunch meals from one prison and a local school. You will see just how terrible prison food really is, and the school kids will NOT eat what we are forced to consume. The inmates will love you for it though. Aramark, a for profit company, prepares our meals. They do not always meet the daily caloric values, but they never even come close to meeting the nutritional needs of inmates. Inmates consistently show signs of malnutrition, but they contend we are getting the recommended daily calories. All of this also leads to higher medical costs within the prison system. Simply feeding inmates good nutritious food would drastically reduce medical costs and be far less expensive in the long run.

Our friend Bob Chatelle posted about Shane today on his personal blog.

In this post, he quotes several of Shane’s emails about COVID-19 in prison.

Please take the time to read Bob’s post.