Jason Ludke (Part 7)
Fragments of a future narrative
He was at USP McCreary when he first wrote me, in May 2022. The penitentiary is high-security, secluded in a remote Kentucky county—one named for a Confederate soldier who served, twice, as the state’s governor.
Researching Jason’s case, I began to learn how peripatetic prison life is. “Remind me where you’ve been in?” I asked as we drove through Milwaukee.
“FCI Terre Haute,” he began. “And I went to Big Sandy. And Lee County, and McCreary.”
“That USP Lee prison,” Jason went on, referring to the high-security facility in far western Virginia, “really needs some kind of investigation done on it.” He described a violent encounter with a CO, or Corrections Officer, there.
It happened about a week after he arrived—in the SHU, or special housing unit, where solitary confinement typifies life. That practice is widely criticized. “Solitary confinement is torture. U.S. prisons should stop using it,” the Washington Post editorial board stated bluntly last year.
“I get fucking handcuffed behind my back,” Jason recalled. “I get brought to the SHU. [The CO] punched me in the side of the face, and the side of the fucking—ribs, calling me derogatory things,” he went on. “Talking about, You a chomo. You a fucking sand nigger. Terrorist. All this kind of shit.”
“I tried writing some letters out to Judge Adelman, my sentencing lawyer, and they never even got the shit,” he concluded. But he felt doubtful about this self-advocacy. “Who’s the public gonna believe—an alleged terrorist, or a correctional officer?”