Hi everyone. I am sorry it has been so long since I last checked in with you. As most of you probably know, I was transferred to a new prison to participate in a program that would take a year off my sentence when completed. That journey should have been a simple 4 hour drive, but since I was denied a self transfer furlough the trip took 30 days, two cross country flights, three states, and cost the tax payer well over $10,000 before I finally arrived a couple hundred miles from where I started. It took me over a month to decompress after the nightmare that is the BOP transit system (you can read all about it in the next installment of Notes From The Inside) and just as I began to settle in here at FCI McKean we received some terrible news. Yesterday we were told by the Warden that the program I travelled all that way for had been "deactivated" and very soon I - along with 70 others in the program - would have to go through the transit system all over again to be sent somewhere where the program was still active. When I first arrived here other inmates warned me that things were rotten here at McKean. What is supposed to be a 9 month program averages 12-16 months here. One of the DTS officers who runs the program was suspended pending investigation and assigned to the mailroom, and many guys had missed their release dates and were forced to spend longer in prison. Why in the world did the BOP spend all that money transiting me and others to a program that was clearly dying on the vine?! So now the BOP is going to waste around $700,000 shipping all of us around the country. The ridiculous thing is they do not need to shut the program down at all. They have all the pieces in place to push the current participants through. The frontline staff (case managers, counsellors, DTS, etc) are largely empathetic and competent. The failure is one of institutional mismanagement and leadership. A lack of engagement with staff by Regional and institutional leadership has hamstrung staff and inmate alike. Recognizing those institutional failures would require government workers take accountability or be held accountable. Never going to happen! Instead, the taxpayer will be on the hook financially, we'll be shipped out like cattle, and the yokels who couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery will keep their jobs and find something else to screw up. @leamuirleyn has written to BOP leadership asking them to reconsider shutting the program down and instead send over a temporary leader who can shepherd the current participants through the program. This would save the Bureau and the taxpayer significantly. It is a longshot but one has to try. So that is the latest update. I have no idea when or where I am going to be shipped. Thank you everyone for your letters, books, prayers, and continued support. It means a lot. Until we speak again... Keonne @realDonaldTrump @OfficialFBOP @BOPDirector @BOPDepDirector @JusticeOIG @MarshallProj @PrisonPolicy