Idaho Prison Blog

On 5/1/2022, Keefe Commissary Network (KCN) increased all commissary item prices by 8.5% - equal to the increase in the consumer price index - in accordance with §17.4 of the commissary contract with the Idaho Department of Correction. Additionally, on that same date, they discontinued several items, including many of the best-selling and easily sourced inmate food staples such as flour tortillas, pickles, black beans and saltine crackers. Not content with the already exorbitant markups, unjust enrichments and limitation on price increases authorized by contract, KCN decided just to discontinue selling many items (within contractual authority) - then reintroduce the exact same items (most sourced from companies owned by Keefe Group) - with the exact same item/order numbers, at well more than 100% markup, effectively pulling an end-run around the limitations of the contract. This is nothing more than consumer fraud and cannot be allowed to stand. If you have concerns about the exorbitan...

On October 20, 2022 a sign-in memorandum was posted in housing units at the ISCC - on altered official stationery taken from an office area - which read: MANDATORY VETERAN'S TRAINING 10/24 @ 2:00 PM - MILITARY VETERANS ONLY Name/Room and Bunk / IDOC Number / Branch of Service When questioned, housing staff had no idea where the memos came from, who posted them, or why. After inquiries up the chain of command as high as the Shift Commander, nobody had any idea of the source - or the meaning - of the memo/sign-up list which appeared to mandate that any prisoner who is a military veteran be present at some undisclosed location in 4 days for some sort of undescribed training. Once the F block Sergeant arrived on the unit and reviewed the posted document, he too was perplexed, and declared the memo void. The sergeant then instructed the memos be removed from each of the tiers. It is still unclear how many other housing areas in the facility had these fake orders posted. Later, after a b...

Less than a decade ago, the IDOC, Idaho politicians and the public were up in arms when it came to light that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, now CoreCivic) administrators at the Idaho Correctional Center (now the Idaho State Correctional Center) were allowing gang members to make rules and decisions for other inmates just to keep the peace. After an investigation, it was found that officials not only allowed these so-called "shot-callers" to keep others in check - usually under threat of violence - they were getting special treatment for their service to the facility. Once the state took over operations at the ISCC, the inmate-over-inmate supervision was said to have stopped. It never did, and it's getting worse. After having received written and oral notifications on more than one occasion and from more than one source that a (self-described) gang leader recently moved onto a housing area, immediately declared himself the shot-caller for the tier, checked paper...