Idaho Prison Blog

In an interesting turn of events, an administrative assistant (warden's secretary) turned Grievance Coordinator at the ISCC has lessened the need for prisoners to exhaust administrative remedies when it comes the requirements to file a grievance for each incident of an event. Investigators at the ISCC intercepted an outgoing email (an article destined to be posted on this site) from Dale Shackelford on 1/24/21. Per SOP, officials were required to provide proper Notice of the confiscation, with information as to why the communication was denied, who made the decision to intercept the communication, and the justification (according to SOP 503.02.01.001*) for the interception. Instead, Shackelford received an email which stated simply that the email had been censored - and in a note provided: "cannot use staff information in social media post." This was clearly a violation of Shackelford's First amendment right to freedom of speech/media (especially where this blog has b...

  In response to an official grievance, (#IC 210000024) the Warden at the ISCC recognized the Idaho Prison Blog as a political site, "used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view" thereby cementing protections to the site guaranteed under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In January, 2021, prisoner Dale Shackelford was found guilty of harassment by the ISCC Disciplinary Hearing Officer (DHO) for words contained within a post on this site (WHEN A GUARD HATES A PRISONER - OR THE GREAT TORTILLA CAPER - THAT NEVER WAS ) wherein Shackelford described circumstances and actions of staff surrounding his firing from the prison job he held for 2 years. The guard* who wrote the disciplinary report against Shackelford stated in his claims that he was being harassed because he (the guard) was the only person to whom Shackelford had emailed a courtesy copy of the article. When Shackelford proved to the DHO that courtesy copies of the article were ema...