Officers at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, ransacked an incarcerated writer’s cell and confiscated her typewriter a week after New York Focus published an article she wrote criticizing the prison system, the writer said. The officers “commented on my journalism career” during the confiscation, she said.
Sara Kielly, a journalist incarcerated at Bedford Hills, reported last week that the prison system has “systematically violated nearly every facet” of a three-year-old solitary confinement reform law. Kielly drew on her experiences as a jailhouse lawyer representing fellow incarcerated women during disciplinary hearings, as well as interviews with incarcerated people and a former prison employee. Her article describes how Bedford Hills has denied people access to legally required representation and punished them for infractions without evidence, among other deviations from the law.
This week, after Wednesday’s morning roll call, Kielly returned to her unit to find corrections officers raiding people’s cells. Two officers searched her quarters, she said. During the raid, she showed the guards the permits she had for her personal items, including her prison-approved Swintec typewriter, for which she’d paid $350.
But according to Kielly, the guards told her that the typewriter would be “confiscated,” along with all of the other typewriters in her unit, which is reserved for incarcerated people who participate in programs and have a good behavior record.
In a statement, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the state prison system, denied any connection between Kielly’s article and the raid on her unit. “The search had nothing to do with anyone publishing articles,” a spokesperson said. “Incarcerated individuals regularly write for publications and websites.” They said that the search was related to “a contraband issue” for which an investigation is ongoing.
Kielly asked officers why they were taking her typewriter. They replied that the prison’s deputy superintendent for security and an unnamed “commissioner” had directed them to confiscate all the typewriters owned by incarcerated people, she said. According to Kielly, the security staff referenced her journalism but insisted that the confiscations were merely orders from above, and that she was not “the target” of the raid.
DOCCS has shown hostility to incarcerated journalists before. Last year, DOCCS quietly enacted a directive that would have effectively blocked incarcerated journalists and artists from publishing their work outside prison walls, New York Focus reported. After outcry from advocates and national press attention, the department rescinded the policy.
“I knew retaliation was a risk when I went into this work,” Kielly said in a statement forwarded to New York Focus via prisoners’ rights advocates. “I will stand tall, head held high, and shoulders back proud as hell, because this just means that I hit them where it hurts.”
After the officers left Kielly’s unit, it took her more than four hours to clean the mess they had made in her cell, she said.
“We do what we can to hold them accountable,” she said. “I will continue to do this work no matter the consequence or conditions of my confinement.”