While you're in federal prison # Working with staff Start from one assumption and most of this follows: staff will do the minimum required of them, and when they do not, there is no meaningful recourse. The premise ## The operating condition That is not a complaint and it is not cynicism. It is the operating condition. Nothing happens because it ought to happen. Things happen because someone asked, and then asked again, and wrote down when they asked. Discretion ## Why the rules are applied literally Bureau employees are not paid to exercise judgment, and exercising it is a risk they carry personally. If someone bends a rule for you and it goes badly, that is on them. If they apply it rigidly and you are inconvenienced, that is on nobody. So discretion runs one direction: toward no. The person in front of you usually is not being obstinate. They are declining to be the person who authorized an exception. The practical consequence is that you should never frame a request as an exception. Frame it as the ordinary application of an existing rule. "Can you make an allowance for me?"A question with one answer. "The policy says this is done at this point, and I am at that point."A different conversation. Officers ## Correctional officers The officers (a uniformed guard) who work your housing unit are, for the most part, reasonable people being paid to supervise adults. It is a job, not a calling, and most of them would prefer an uneventful shift. The rules for dealing with them are simple. Respect them and they will generally respect you. There are two reliable ways to get on the wrong side of an officer, and neither is the one people expect: - Making their job harder than it needs to be; - and being an obvious kiss-ass, which reads as an angle and is noticed by everyone. Most officers have one or two specific things they care about. One wants the unit quiet during count (the daily headcount where everything stops). One cares about where you are standing when the doors open. One cares about laundry, or the microwave, or the television volume. These are idiosyncratic and mostly unwritten. Learn them and follow them. It costs you nothing and it buys the only thing worth having here: being remembered as someone who is not a problem. That reputation pays out in small discretionary ways, and small discretion is the only kind an officer has. It is not a friendship and you should not mistake it for one. Officers cannot help you with your sentence, your release date, your programming, or your case. Asking them to marks you as someone who does not understand how the building works. Who else is watching ## There is a second audience Every interaction you have with an officer is being watched by people who are not the officer, and they are reading it differently than you are. Being visibly friendly with staff — long conversations, private ones, the same officer repeatedly — reads as informing. That suspicion does not require any evidence to take hold, it travels faster than any correction, and it is very hard to walk back once it exists. So adopt one practice from your first week: when you need to talk to staff about anything beyond a passing exchange, bring someone from your car (your social group inside) with you. The reason is not protection. It is a witness — a person who was standing there and can say what was and was not discussed. It costs nothing, it is entirely ordinary, and it forecloses a problem that is far easier to prevent than to repair. **Be pleasant with officers. Be brief. Do it in the open.** The unit team ## What a unit team is Your unit team is the small group of staff assigned to your housing unit who manage your case. Knowing who does what will save you an enormous amount of wasted frustration, because most anger inside comes from asking the wrong person for something they were never able to give you. - **Case manager.** Your record, your sentence computation, release planning, halfway house (the halfway house before release) and home confinement (finishing a sentence at home under monitoring) referrals, transfers, and your visiting list. The most consequential staff member in the building for you. - **Correctional counselor.** Day-to-day unit administration. Job assignments, forms, phone and contact lists, commissary (the prison store) problems, general questions. - **Unit manager.** Supervises both. Your first escalation point when the direct ask has actually failed. You will meet with them at a scheduled program review, commonly called team. It happens on a regular cycle, more frequently as you get closer to release. It is where your progress is reviewed and where decisions get recorded. The ask ## Working your case manager **Your case manager will not do anything you have not asked for.** This is the single most important sentence in this section. It is rarely personal. Caseloads are large, there are no meaningful performance metrics attached to your outcomes, and nothing bad happens to anyone if your paperwork sits for four months. The cost of that delay is borne entirely by you. How to ask, in order of how well it works: - One request at a time, stated in one or two sentences; - in writing, through the inmate request system, so a copy exists; - with the policy reference if you have it; - followed up on a fixed schedule rather than whenever you get anxious; - and never in front of an audience. Do not open with a threat to file a remedy. Filing is a real tool, but using it early spends a relationship you will need for years and gets you categorized as a problem. Escalate to the unit manager only after a direct request has genuinely gone unanswered, and be able to say when you asked and what you were told. Have the person outside call the unit team as well. Two points of pressure on the same request work better than either alone, and a call from outside creates a small amount of the one thing staff actually respond to, which is visibility. The remedy process ## What the administrative remedy process is actually for There is a formal grievance process. It begins with an informal resolution attempt, proceeds to a written complaint to the warden, and can be appealed to the regional and central offices. It is slow, and outcomes tilt toward staff. Use it anyway, but use it for the right reason. Its realistic value is not that you win. It is that a dated, written record now exists showing what you asked for and when, and that record is what makes anything later possible. Which is why you keep your own log of dates, names, and what was said. Without it you have an argument. With it you have a file. The short version ## Four rules Cheat sheet - **Be unremarkable to officers, and be seen being unremarkable.** - **Be specific and persistent with your unit team.** - **Ask the right person, in writing, one thing at a time.** - **Write down what they said and when they said it.** None of this is difficult. It is just relentless, and almost nobody does it, which is precisely why it works. Keep reading — part 7 of 9 ### [What conflict costs](/going-in/while-youre-in/what-conflict-costs) How fights start varies by where you are. What a fight costs does not, because it is set by policy, and the arithmetic is worth knowing before you are standing in it. For your people ## Hand the rest of this site to your family You will not be able to look things up once you're inside. They can, and this is where: [everything written for the one waiting](/for-families) — a twelve-part guide to mail, visiting, money, and your release date, plus their own FAQ and checklist. Alongside it, a [guide to every facility](/resources/facilities) with [email alerts when visiting stops](/lockdown-alerts/subscribe), the [support group directory](/resources/support-groups), calculators for your release math, and [free answers](/contact) when they have questions. Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you. **Need help with this? Just ask.** These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. **Answers are free** , and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer. [josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Inside%20question) I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.