Bellefonte, Pa. – On November 24, 2023, prisoners at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hanging there, they were told it was a joke. By December 4, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates” and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” (For perspective: Rockview’s prisoner population is 45% black.) In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richards be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance over two months later by February 5, 2024 under the guise that it was “being investigated”. However, the sergeant and Cos are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions except getting moved to another block.
As of March 10, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending copies of the grievance. Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, which continue to be dismissed by the administration at Rockview.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, the staff and administration at SCI Rockview continue to dodge public accountability. In fact, the prison has a history of fostering systemic racism, like in 2013 when admin blocked a Muslim prisoner from wearing religious garb. Kerry X. Marshall, then incarcerated at SCI Rockview, sued and six years later the courts determined that the prison had violated his religious freedom.
This incident is coming at a time when in 2023, 11 prisoners died in custody. Seven people died amid an outbreak of legionnaires disease, and four people died while in the RHU (punitive solitary units with very little public oversight). Unfortunately, there is a well-known pattern of premature death at SCI Rockview. Most well known is an incident in 2012, when COs killed the prisoner John Carter during a “cell extraction” while he was in the RHU, in what other prisoners described as “turning his cell into a gas chamber” using ‘non-lethal’ weapon OC pepper spray. Carter’s family never received justice for what the prison did to him, and PA DOC never acknowledged or reprimanded the guards who killed him.
In short, prisoner demands to investigate the hanging of nooses as a hate crime, terminate Sgt. Mosser and CO Richards, and mandatory therapy for CO Kirchner, need be taken seriously.
See below for a copy of the grievance and the denial.
Contact: abolitionist-study@protonmail.com
