Idaho Prison Blog

First, you can now reach this site at www.idahoprisonblog.org as well as at idahoprisonblog.blogspot.com. Second, thanks to all the longtime visitors to this site - I really appreciate the thoughtful (and sometimes not so thoughtful) feedback. This is a site everyone should be comfortable visiting - for any reason - personal or professional. Please keep sending your suggestions, criticisms and other input. This is your site too. Finally, we're adding new regular content to the site. This content will copy and present to the public emails sent to IDOC inmates over the preceding couple weeks or so. Most of these emails will include notifications of commissary items which are out of stock, messages from the Director (which are not as frequent as they once were) and JPay information. Interestingly, these emails are often not sent to IDOC staff, so they will be able to view them here - on this site - for the first time. The emails will reflect the date stamp on the email itself, not nec...

For years, the Idaho Correctional Center (now the ISCC) was synonymous with inmate-on-inmate violence, staff indifference, favoritism, and corruption. The press dubbed the prison facility "Idaho's Gladiator School", but when the state took over the prison from private prison contractor Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in 2014, things began to settle down a bit, but lately, the facility is once again turned to mayhem as the daily norm. Today, administrative favoritism for specific inmates has raised the level of frustration of line staff and prisoners alike at the ISCC to record levels. "Investigative" lockdowns (which are in fact nothing more than attempts at creating peer pressure to prevent fights on units) are bringing some areas of the institution to a boiling point, and most staff love it. "This is our bread and butter,"' recently commented one female officer who had just responded to a fight where pepper spray was deployed. "Keep...