When Prison Grievance Systems Fail: Retaliation, Abuse, and the Illusion of Justice Behind Bars

Chris Dankovich writes about the prison grievance system that’s supposed to give the incarcerated a means of addressing injustices, without retribution. But what happens when your grievance falls on deaf ears?

It’s been exactly 31 days since La Jefa was transferred out of the veterans housing unit while my prison grievance against her was investigated. Now she’s returned with a vengeance.

“I’m not saying any names, but for the inmate who wrote me up, I spanked that accusation,” she announces to the whole unit. “Now I’m coming for you, and I’m on all bullshit!”

My mouth goes dry. In the year that I’ve been housed here in the veterans unit, I’ve tried my best to keep a low profile. I’ve been free of disciplinary infractions, I’m enrolled in the programs I need, and I have a job that pays $40 a month, which I really need. The last thing I want is a high-ranking staff member with a vendetta against me. I’ve seen how this movie ends.

One Month Prior: What Led to My Prison Grievance

The day room in the unit is loud and hectic, as normal. Most of the guys are gathered around the television, making a ruckus over the NFL game playing. Others play cards, slam dominoes, converse in groups, or bounce back and forth between their cells and the microwave, putting their evening meals together. I’m lathered head to toe in soap, getting my evening shower before lockdown.

Suddenly, there’s a commotion in the pod. I peek out of the curtain and see the guy who sleeps in the cell next door to mine, an Army vet, rolling around in the middle of the floor, flailing his arms as if he’s swimming and making snow angels. He’s high on K2, I tell myself before turning back to my shower. Others begin crowding around him and laughing.

Minutes later, La Jefa barges into the pod. When she sees my neighbor tweaking out on the floor, she orders everyone to go into their cells. It’s not quite lockdown time yet, but we all know what’s going to happen. Drug use is a serious infraction. She’s about to put my neighbor in handcuffs and put him in the hole.

After clearing out the day room, La Jefa turns her attention to the showers. Four are occupied, including the one I’m in.

“Who’s that in the showers?” she shouts.

“Clardy, cell 237” I yell. The other three guys also shout their names and cell numbers.

“Y’all need to get out of those showers and lock down!”

“I’m rinsing off right now,” I respond. “I’ll be out in a second.”

“No, you’re coming out of there right now!” she barks.

I ignore her and resume rinsing. Emergency or not, I’m not expected to just hop out of the shower while I’m naked and run to my cell, right?

Wrong! La Jefa leaves my neighbor writhing on the floor, and in seconds she’s standing directly outside the shower staring at me. “Come out!” she demands.

“Yo, I’m butt-ass naked and covered in soap,” I explain. “I told you I’ll be out in a second.”

“Come out of there right now, or I’m charging you with disobeying a direct order!”

Exposing myself to a female staff member is also a disciplinary charge, I tell myself. I feel like she’s trying to set me up. Then I notice that the red light on her body camera is flashing, which means it’s recording. If she tries to accuse me of anything, at least there’s video proof.

Looking directly into the camera I ask, “So to be clear, you’re giving me a direct order to step out of the shower right now while I’m completely naked?”

“That’s right,” she answers.

Here goes nothing. Dripping water and soap suds, wearing nothing but my birthday suit and a pair of flip-flops, I step out onto the tier.

As I stand there unsure what to do next, La Jefa just looks at me with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. Though everyone is locked in their cells, they can see me as clear as day. Now I’m the one being mocked and laughed at by the whole pod. Every second that passes feels like minutes.

“That’s right, when I say do something, you do it,” she taunts. “Now you can finish your shower, and when I come back you better be done.” She swaggers off to finish tending to my neighbor, who’s still rolling around on the floor.

The embarrassment I feel is indescribable. What was the point of that? To flex her power? To prove a stupid point? To humiliate me? My thoughts are so scrambled, concentrating on finishing my shower is a chore.

The more I stew on this incident the more it bothers me, and the more determined I am to do something about it. All throughout the unit are posters about the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). They tout the VADOC‘s zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment and sexual abuse by both inmates and staff. Surely a female officer forcing me out of the shower and then staring at my naked body is a violation of that policy. The following day, I file a prison grievance, and La Jefa is temporarily assigned to a different unit while my prison grievance against her is investigated.

One Month Later: After My Grievance

How is she back? I wonder. What about the zero tolerance policy? No one’s even responded to my grievance yet.

I take La Jefa’s comment about “coming for” the inmate who wrote her up as a threat. I’m that inmate. Just to be safe, I file another prison grievance for the threat. This way, the administration will be aware of her intentions, in case she attempts to fabricate a charge against me, plant contraband in my cell, or take some other vindictive action.

Somehow, both of my prison grievances wind up on the assistant warden’s desk. To the first one, he replies that after conducting an investigation, it’s been determined that La Jefa did not order me to exit the shower while naked, and therefore my grievance is unfounded. To my second grievance, he replies that he asked her if she’d threatened me and she denied the accusation; therefore, my prison grievance is unfounded.

Whoever conducted the investigation hadn’t reviewed the body cam video or simply asked any of the 87 other inmates in my pod—who’d all witnessed the incident—if it had indeed occurred. Did the assistant warden really expect La Jefa to admit to threatening to retaliate against me for filing a prison grievance when DOC policy expressly prohibits that? Of course she denied it!

Two weeks later, she retaliates anyway by firing me from my job and kicking me out of the veterans unit. I file a third prison grievance in which I note that I literally gave a heads-up that she was coming for me, and now she’s done just that. Again, the assistant warden shoots my grievance down with a comically ridiculous rebuttal. “This was not retaliation,” his response begins. “Staff can move inmates and terminate their jobs at any time and for any reason.”

I know that’s BS, but just to play along I send him a request form asking what the “reason” was for the actions taken against me. Not only does my request go ignored, before the week is out, I’m ordered to pack up for transfer. This time I’m moved to a different prison in a separate district of the state.

As I stroll around the day room of my new, unfamiliar housing unit—in a foreign region of Virginia, surrounded by faces I don’t know—I can’t help but feel naive for believing that the prison would hold La Jefa accountable for her actions. For believing I’d get a semblance of justice for the way she abused her power to humiliate me. For believing zero tolerance actually meant zero tolerance. How foolish of me.

In the end, she’s left in the same unit with the same authority, probably more emboldened to violate the next inmate’s rights without fear of repercussions. I, on the other hand, am left with anxiety that follows me around, hanging over my head like a dark cloud. I feel it whenever I’m in the shower and I hear the entrance door to the housing unit pop open. It suffocates me whenever a female staff member enters the unit and announces, “Female on the floor!” It sends my heart racing any time I leave the chow hall and there’s a female officer waiting outside to pat me down.

Sometimes I wonder: Had I been a female inmate who a male officer forced to exit the shower naked while he stared at my body, would this incident have played out the same way? Would a gender reversal have made the incident more of a violation? Would it still be me being punished, instead of the officer? I don’t think it would.

If you’d like to read more by MarQui, check out Sent to Solitary After My Suicide Attempt in Prison

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