It’s no secret that prisons aren’t the safest place and that certain populations of people are more susceptible to violence in prison. Anyone with common sense knows convicted sex offenders, pedophiles, and LGBTQ+ inmates may not fare particularly well in prison, particularly in the context of sexual violence.
I had to write a law school memo and brief that cited a bunch of cases where absolutely terrible things happened to prisoners who were outcasts in their particular prison environments.
Vulnerable prisoners who were subject to violence included a White guy in a predominantly Black prison, a Hispanic guy in a prison full of Aryan Brotherhood members, a small Muslim guy with a mental illness in a Virginia prison, multiple convicted sex offenders of minors in general prison populations, and well, you get the point.
It’s no secret being a correctional officer isn’t an easy job. But no matter what crime the prisoner was convicted for, the Eighth Amendment protects against “cruel and unusual punishments” and when a prison does fail to protect a vulnerable prisoner who then suffers substantial injuries, the prisoner can file for civil damages under federal law if prison officials were deliberately indifferent to the risk of harm.
Even with horrifying injuries and terrible fact patterns, one case was particularly unusual.
The tax guy
Our class referred to Scott L. Howard as “the tax guy,” but he described himself to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals as a “a non-violent offender who is openly homosexual, of slight build, [and] unusually vulnerable to predators” and stated that he “has no history of institutional behavior problems.”
According to Alan Prendergast at Westword, a daily news site in Colorado, Scott L. Howard was originally from Tennessee, where “his sexual orientation was a poor fit with the prevailing Baptist culture.”
At 21, he was arrested for stealing a friend’s computer. But Howard would eventually become known for his tax crimes. Howard was convicted of tax code violations, but he said that he was involved in major financial fraud. Prendergast notes that in the late 1990s, Howard used Trojan programs to steal data from corporate websites and then submitted payroll requests from outside agencies corporations used to issue paychecks. Before Howard got caught, he would move on to another corporation. Sometimes, he even left the city he was staying in.
He would be caught in 1999 after he was caught making a mistake — his zip code didn’t match the zip code on the check request. He tried to issue himself a $40,000 check but got caught and arrested. He was sentenced to eight years in jail, but even in jail, he did not stop trying to fraudulently make money. Howard claimed a bogus $17,155 tax refund from the IRS, and the IRS paid it. He got greedy and tried to claim $1.2 million the next year but then got caught, which added years in federal jail to his prison sentence.
Howard thought he was smart and savvy enough to stay out of trouble as a gay man in prison, given his experience in various jails. But in late 2004, Howard was transferred to the Fremont Correctional Facility, which was the least supervised and lax prison he’d ever been to, with older and nonchalant correctional officers. Prisoners at lunch frequently had black eyes. For Howard, this was especially a problem because he had a reputation among other inmates for his past financial crimes.
One prison official told Howard: ‘This is prison. This is not a playground. If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have come here.’”
Howard’s biggest tormented — a white supremacist group
The gang that gave Howard the hardest time was the 211 Crew, which is a notorious white supremacist prison gang in Colorado. The 211 Crew took a particular interest in Colorado, and eventually sexually assaulted him numerous times.
Members of the 211 Crew asked Howard about “all that cash” he had scammed from the federal government. The 211 Crew read news articles about his crimes and thought Howard was some kind of financial guru, which Howard denied. But that didn’t matter.
Gang members found out Howard was gay when they intercepted his mail to try to find any money order receipts. Instead, they found a gay magazine Howard received from a friend.
One 211 Crew member known as Ghost told Howard, according to Prendergast, that “homosexuals had to pay rent.” This involved him sending money to addresses Ghost ordered and buying canteen items.
The demands rapidly escalated, with Ghost demanding Howard make a money order of $500, which Howard pushed back against because it was too much money. Ghost punched Howard in the stomach, and continued to attack Howard whenever he couldn’t meet Ghost’s demands.
When Howard continued to not be able to meet the 211 Crew’s demands, Howard was forced to perform oral sex on a 211 Crew member. After the sexual assault, Ghost told Howard, “Don’t you say a fucking word to anyone, or I’ll fuck you up.”
After Howard failed to meet another debt, Ghost gave Howard an option: get shanked by a 211 Crew member or perform oral sex on another member. Howard had to choose the latter option, as most people would.
Howard’s reports that went unaddressed
Howard eventually went to see his case manager to report the threats from the 211 Crew and to report him being coerced and sexually assaulted. However, he didn’t want to be labeled a snitch. The walls of his case manager’s office were thin, leading to anyone being able to hear conversations inside the office.
The case manager dismissed his concerns, although Howard did his best to be discreet. He was told to “get along” with other prisoners since gay people generally had issues in prison.
Howard didn’t want to call his parents since phone calls were being monitored, so he had a friend outside the prison call the warden to get him transferred. He met with another case manager and told him details about the sexual assaults. The case manager transferred Howard to another facility, the Sterling Correctional Facility.
However, after a few months, when Howard was moved to a lower security facility, he ran into other 211 Crew members, some of whom were friends with Ghost.
Howard reported his precarious status immediately, but his claims went ignored. The case manager responsible for handling his case said Howard had to name the names of people who were specifically threatening him. The case manager also said Howard had to provide a taped statement.
However, for obvious reasons, Howard did not want to list names because he didn’t want to be labeled a snitch.
The case manager told Howard he filed too many complaints and was “a very needy inmate and is a strain on a case manager after awhile.”
Howard was soon made to perform financial scams for 211 Crew members. Howard was soon transferred due to a change in his security classification.
But even in his new unit, he was sexually assaulted again by a 211 Crew member, after Ghost told the Sterling chapter of the gang to “make him cover debts with his ass.”
The violence only escalated. The 211 Crew had a member of a Vietnamese gang sodomize Howard.
Some 211 Crew members even threatened Howard’s parents, and somehow knew their names and addresses to make their threats seem legitimate.
He would continue to perform financial scams for the gang, but he decided to finally name names to leave Sterling. Howard met with IRS agents, and other officials, who also dismissed Howard because they thought he only made allegations of sexual assault after tax fraud materials were found in his prison cells. Additionally, an inspector general said there was no DNA evidence.
But Howard would be transferred to numerous facilities, none of which had favorable outcomes. He was eventually transferred to a Jefferson County jail in Colorado. One prison official called the Colorado Department of Corrections after Howard reported another sexual assault.
“The guy’s a drama queen..Don’t worry about it,” the prison official was told.
Resolution and takeaways
Howard eventually filed a lawsuit for a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim for the deprivation of his civil rights while in the Colorado prison system. The prison officials sued filed for summary judgment, which is when a judge can make a judgment for one party without a trial.
Summary judgment was granted by the district court but then vacated by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Tenth Circuit found that Howard presented evidence that prison officials knew he was sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, and continued to face threats of future assaults. The Tenth Circuit also found that Howard had a “reasonable explanation” for not identifying who particularly was threatening him or not providing a taped statement because it would “subject him to retaliation from other members of the gang.”
Howard would quietly win a civil rights lawsuit settlement of $165,000. It is only a very small silver lining in light of the terrible and traumatic things Howard experienced in prison, as Howard still suffers from PTSD and reacts viscerally when he encounters White men with shaved heads.
“This has turned into my fight…I know a person at Fremont who’s going through the same thing right now and is being ignored. I really didn’t seek this, but I can be a voice for those who aren’t being heard,” Howard said.
Scott L. Howard’s story is a case of absolutely egregious indifference from prison officials. But there were plenty of other cases I read where courts granted summary judgment for prison officials when they could have easily prevented a prisoner from being seriously physically or sexually assaulted but failed to do so. Generally, as long as correctional officers did the bare minimum of something and didn’t actively put the prisoner at risk, courts sided with them.
But we as a society have an obligation to make sure prisoners are treated humanely and don’t have to go through what Howard went through, particularly vulnerable prisoners like those suffering mental illness, minorities, and LGBTQ+ prisoners. It might be unpopular to say this, but even those we condemn as a society — murderers, child molesters, rapists, and cops — also don’t deserve to be subject to prison violence.
I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a correctional officer in a very understaffed facility, but no matter what someone did, prison alone is enough punishment.
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This post was previously published on CrimeBeat.
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