Not Home Yet: The BOP Ineptitude Strikes Again

Wow, has it really been since October that I've written? I have so much to say and I am so overwhelmed with despair that when I think about writing it out, I become discouraged and just can't.

In my last post entitled "Covid Scare", I was talking about waiting for the RRM to process Tom's referral to home confinement under CARES Act provisions. I had so much hope at that time since we had been told that he was approved. And we were just waiting for the RRM office to give us a release date.

After Tom was released from quarantine, he was told that when it's time for him to leave, he would not have to go through another quarantine because since he already had COVID, he was "safe" for 90 days. Where they came up with that timeframe, I have no idea, but it was good news for us because being in quarantine is pretty much hell, depending on where they decide to house the inmate. When Tom was in the chapel, it wasn't as bad as being in the cell of the main prison. But it was still awful and we could have no contact other than letters. And I've already written about how the BOP delays the mail.

After weeks and weeks, Tom finally got his release date of November 18th. But it was given to him under a pall of uncertainty. Case Manage Alvarez said something cryptic like the RRM didn't approve him for home confinement and he'd have to stay at halfway house. But I thought, "That can't be right. The WARDEN is the decision maker. He has the sole authority to approve CARES Act home confinement and the RRM does not have the authority to overrule the warden." Our prison consultant concurred. There is nothing in BOP policy that gives the RRM that authority. He recommended we let it play out and at least Tom would be out of the prison.

So, on the 29th of October, Tom was ordered to leave work (he worked at the Unicor facility on the prison grounds) and go back to the camp where he was told to pack his things, he was going to quarantine. That's TWENTY DAYS before his release date. He told them, "But I was told I wasn't going to have to quarantine again because I already had COVID." They told him, "There's a new law and you have to quarantine." Well, that was a lie. There was no new law. What we found out later was that they wanted to bring some new inmates into the camp and they needed Tom's bed. Since COVID hit, the camp has been at about half capacity. The prison receives fund for each prisoner. So they're hurting for money.

Tom was sent to the main prison to spend 20 days in quarantine in a small cell. Thankfully, he was able to call me quickly and tell me that he wouldn't be able to talk to me until the day I came to pick him up. Also, thankfully, he was able to tell me the date and time that I was to pick him up. The prison staff was supposed to call me and tell me that, but nobody ever did. 

For the four months that Tom was at the prison, he spent 48 days of that time in quarantine. The prisons are using COVID to inflict all kinds of cruelty on the inmates with impunity.

I picked him up on the morning of the 18th and we drove to the halfway house in Tyler, TX.  Now, mind you, he's supposed to only be going there to check in and possibly get an ankle monitor. Then he was supposed to have been able to go home. But when we got there, they said he had to live there and he could not go home.

We were devastated. Well, *I* was devastated. It's what Tom expected all along, but I refused to believe that the BOP could have been that incompetent. Why would I refuse to believe it when I had seen their incompetence and cruelty for four months, you might ask yourself? Well, I had to have hope. I had to have one little small grain of hope that Tom would be coming home with me that day. That's what got me through those four months of not being able to touch him, those last 10 weeks of not being able to see him at all, and those 20 days of not being able to talk to him at all.

So I drove home alone in tears that day.