By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on September 22, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
Sean “Diddy” Combs is in the “Hole” at the federal detention center in Brooklyn, New York. Here is what daily life looks like for Diddy in detention:
Diddy is not wearing his designer clothes and eyeglasses. He is wearing a prison uniform and a pair of nasty, used prison-issued underwear. Diddy can change underwear following each one of the three showers he is allowed to take per week.
Diddy is handcuffed whenever he is taken to the shower. He is escorted to the shower by two guards, each one of whom must hold one of his arms. The face clothe and towel provided to Diddy are just as nasty and unsanitary as his prison underwear. His shower stall is a small, filthy, unsanitary coffin-like cell with a nozzle for the water. He cannot adjust the water’s temperature.
The toilet in Diddy’s cell is metal and it can only be flushed from the outside by a guard. Until his toilet is flushed, Diddy must endure the smell of his urine and bowel excrement.
Despite bullshit presidential campaign slogans about “America First,” the Bob Barker Company in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina uses its 29-year business monopoly with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to supply all 122 federal prisons, detention centers, and transfer facilities with the low-quality, high-price, foreign-manufactured goods that Diddy uses in the "Hole" every day. These items include toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, shaving gel, body wash, soap, deodorant, handwash, shampoo, conditioner, grooming products, combs, brushes, nail clippers, lotion, hand sanitizers, toilet paper, over-the-counter medicines, inmate uniforms, underwear, socks, shoes, sheets, blankets, towels, wash clothes, writing paper, pencils, mailing envelopes, and a host of other foreign-made products on the commissary list. The sacred monopoly contract between the BOP and the Bob Barker Company cries out for a federal criminal investigation. Yet, nobody will touch it.
Diddy’s family and friends cannot call him on the phone. Diddy may only call individuals who are on his list of approved contacts. Because Diddy did not have advanced warning of his arrest, he probably did not memorize the phone numbers of the family and friends he wants to call.
Diddy may write family members, if he has their mailing addresses and stamps. They may write him, but their correspondence must conform to a litany of strict BOP rules governing incoming inmate mail or it is rejected.
The BOP falls under the supervisory jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney General. No Attorney General since Janet Reno has had the “balls” to reform the federal prison system. Fans of former Attorney General Eric Holder, the first Black Attorney General, should know that he did absolutely nothing to improve the nasty, filthy, and overcrowded conditions of the federal prison system that now houses Diddy.
Diddy's commissary pledges are extremely limited and will not begin until an inmate account has been set up for him, which could take weeks.
If Diddy becomes mentally unstable during his stay in the "Hole," detention facility officials will simply strap him down on an evaluated slab and assign inmate orderlies to sit outside his cell door to watch him all day and night through the small window in his cell door. They will use force to feed Diddy, if necessary.
BOP officials will disrespect Diddy’s lawyer because most lawyers do not raise hell with trial judges about the horrific conditions their clients experience in federal detention centers and prisons.
My Experience in the “Hole” was Somewhat Different from Diddy’s Because I was Prepared for It.
The BOP placed me in the filthy, rat-infested, black-mold-spewing, dirty drinking water "Hole" at three of its facilities from May 2020 to March 2021 and January and February 2022. Their stated goal was to stop me from (a) writing and publishing my articles on corruption within the federal criminal justice system and (b) helping inmates win their freedom. I never stopped writing and publishing these articles.
BOP officials let me out of the "Hole" only AFTER senior management officials determined that I could not be "broken." Each time I was released back into the general prison population, I was applauded by inmates and prison guards alike.
There were three reasons why I was able to survive my time in the "Hole.” First, I had survived the longest and loneliest 3 years of my life when I desegregated the University of Alabama's law school from 1970 to 1973. At the time, the university was infested with hardcore racists who exhibited their non-stop racism to those of us who were desegregating the law school. My challenging experience at the law school gave me the inner strength I needed to survive 3 years of the harshest treatment anyone could mete out to me anywhere.
Second, in 2012, I visited the tiny cell where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison in the “Hole.” Mandela slept on a thin mat on a concrete floor and used a bucket for a toilet. Mandela survived this inhumane treatment and became president of South Africa. The memory of my visit to Mandela’s cell enhanced my inner strength throughout my ordeal in the "Hole."
Third, I stayed very busy in the “Hole” writing dozens of articles for publication on my Internet platforms, including “The Miracle at USP Atlanta.” The officers who guarded me made sure these articles were mailed out to my editor for publication.
I also handled the legal work that freed over a dozen prisoners from the “Hole” and dozens more from the prisons that housed me. The last of 48 inmates I freed during my three years of captivity as a federal prisoner is Alphonso Woodley, Sr., a former inmate at the Federal Prison Camp at La Tuna, Texas who was subsequently transferred to a federal prison in Kansas.
On June 30, 2024, Forbes Magazine profiled Alphonso Woodley’s landmark case. The BOP miscalculated Woodley's release date and held him in captivity beyond his release date . The Forbes article explains how and why a brave federal judge in Kansas ruled in Woodley's favor. Woodley’s case has cleared the way for the release of thousands of wrongfully detained federal inmates.
This level of activism from the “Hole” showed prison officials that they NEVER had power over my mind; they only had custody of my body. “Freedom” is a state of mind. It is the absence of fear. I was NEVER in the prison of fear.
All of my heroes in the international civil and human rights movement were imprisoned for far longer periods of time than me. Some of them were tortured in prison. Some were assassinated after they were released from jail. Imprisonment in the “Hole” is survivable when your mind is strong and your spirit is free.
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