THE FIX: Seth Ferranti, The Fix’s incarcerated correspondent, is currently in the “hole” at FCC Forest City, a federal prison in Arkansas. In a letter, he describes being held under 23-hour lockdown in the Special Housing Unit, in a six-by-nine-foot cell, since June 27. He is under investigation for an as-yet unspecified reason—but says that he believes that it is “retaliation” for articles he has written about addiction and recovery in prison. “The Bureau of Prisons doesn’t like what I have been doing for The Fix,” he writes, “so they have locked me in the hole under the pretense of SIS investigation. They have not notified me what I am in here for yet, but I have violated no rules, only written for publication.” The SIS (Special Investigative Services), he explains, “is like the FBI in here. They investigate prison rule violations.”
Ferranti has been in prison since 1993—when at the age of 22, he received a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense. He has been in recovery from addiction for 10 years and has written regularly for The Fix since May 2012. He first informed us of problems related to his writing four weeks ago, saying he’d been “pulled up” by staff for failing adequately to disguise the identities of some sources in his recent article, “What Long-Term Recovery Looks Like From Prison.” At his request, some identifying details in that story were then removed… (more)
EDITOR: Note 25-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense! The sentence, perhaps mandatory under the law, is the bigger crime.
