I am currently being held at MSDF [Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility], a facility that I have become familiar with over the years for petty rule violations of my extended suspension. In Feb. 2010 I was released from a minimum security prison in Milwaukee County, which is also the county I reside in. I was released with a good paying job, which I had the opportunity to gain while I was still incarcerated. I had been out of prison approximately two months, with a place of my own & still faithfully going to work every weekday & weekends (when needed).
How I ended up in MSDF
Then I was locked up for a dirty urine analysis and eventually ended up at MSDF and was served revocation papers immediately with no chance of being offered any type of alternative at all. Being naive and young I signed off for 14 months and 5 days. I was still in custody at MSDF when I was staffed to RCI and put on a waiting list to be transferred. I never made it to RCI because I was kept an inmate at MSDF and placed on a SO CALLED (state POS) until the duration of my stay.
Conditions are unjust and inhumane
In that 14 month span, my experience at the facility was unjust and inhumane. Instead of being a minimum/medium security facility, it is made as if it is a maximum/super maximum, and it is also operated as such. There are no windows, no outside recreation, absolutely no sunlight, and all air is recycled. I am naturally dark skinned, and by the time I was released, I was several shades lighter than my original skin was.
Filthy and crowded
Upon arrival to MSDF, there is no orientation unit, and no sort of rule books given to inmates. Which basically permits the staff to do whatever they want to. If you have scheduled dayroom time, you are not even allowed to use the library or law library until the last ten minutes of your dayroom, on a 50 man pod. Also they permit 3 men into 2 man cells, which makes living conditions inhumane, being that there’s a toilet and sink also in the room and the third man has to sleep on the floor. And the cells and the showers look like they haven’t been cleaned or sanitized in years. From the last time I entered this facility, and to this day, nothing has changed, but the faces of staff. In fact it has gotten worse.
Back to society, with no job, no housing
In 2011 I was released, even though I was revoked and just completed 14 months in MSDF, I was immediately placed on the bracelet. I had lost everything I had and had to move in with my mother. I found myself having a hard time adapting to certain things in my community and fell victim to self pity, which led me back to using marijuana and repeating a cycle.
closemsdf.org 