Interview: Retaliatory Harassment & Intimidation of Westville CF Whistleblower Faheem Shabazz

Faheem Shabazz is facing repression for speaking out about covid-19 at Westville Correctional Facility! Please be prepared to act in solidarity with him to prevent further repressive action!

Faheem (Jerry Smith #129911) is caged at Westville Correctional Facility, in Westville, IN. He is incarcerated on technical parole violations, and was denied parole in March 2020. He had been released on parole in January 2018 after serving 18 years, on a 16 year sentence (32 serve 16). He was incarcerated in adult prisons since age 14. In January 2019, a year after being released on parole, his parole officer had him arrested and re-incarcerated on 2 technical violations, for not communicating enough and missing meetings. 

Faheem struggled to keep a job while he was out on parole, due to discriminaion against people with criminal records in the job market, and exploitation in the temp services industry which is one of the few industries that  hires formerly incarcerated people. The fact that in order to get to work one needs a car in Northwest Indiana made life even more difficult, as Faheem was ripped off by a used car salesman, and the car he purchased with the help of friends broke down over and over again during the brief time he had it. For these reasons, Faheem sometimes was unable to pay his phone bill, and was stuck without either communication or transportation. 

When Faheem did manage to call his parole officer, the officer would rarely answer, and his voicemail was constantly full. Faheem had finally secured a reasonable job at Walgreens and had been working there for several weeks when he was arrested on a parole violation warrant.

Since being re-incarcerated in January 2019, Faheem has taken multiple voluntary education and rehabilitation courses, and he worked as a lay advocate at Indiana State Prison prior to his security level being lowered and being transferred to Westville CF. At Westville he was in Business Tech before being abruptly transferred off that unit with no explanation. 

In November 2019, Faheem was falsely accused of two major conduct violations and spent three and a half months in lock-up. He went on hunger strike and IDOC Watch coordinated a call-in campaign, causing the conduct reports to be dropped. He was released back to general population in early February 2020. 

Since the covid-19 outbreak began, Faheem has been blowing the whistle on the mismanagement of the pandemic at Westville CF, which has had the highest rates of Covid-19 of any IDOC prison. According to most recent statistics from IDOC, 85% of those tested at Westville are confirmed to have the virus, a slight decrease from 92% in April. Only 208 of the 3100 people caged in the dorms at Westville have been tested for covid-19 to this date.

Recently, Faheem has been suffering retaliation at the hands of Westville CF staff for speaking out. He was shaken down twice in under a week. The first time they claimed that they had heard from a reporter that Faheem had a cellphone he was using to do interviews, which is not true. He has done all of his interviews on the prison phone, as any brief investigation of his phone records would immediately reveal. The second time they shook him down, correctional officers and National Guardsmen trashed the dormitory room where Faheem and several other men live. He was also taken into the guards’ locker room in the basement, off camera, to do a urinalysis screening (piss test). In the locker room, the guards forced him to strip naked, spread his buttcheeks, and cough, as part of the urinalysis screening. Later, when Faheem went to get his medications, several officers came out of the staff room and just stood there staring at him, in an obvious effort to intimidate or provoke him. The retaliation started when Faheem went to get some water from the day room for his dorm, which is allowed even under lockdown because there is no water or toilet in the dorm. A guard got angry with him for going to get water, and accused Faheem of threatening him because Faheem requested to speak with a superior officer. Faheem was transferred to a different unit, after being forced to sit in a cage for several hours. 

ALL of this RETALIATION and HARASSMENT VIOLATES IDOC POLICY & PROCEDURE, THE US CONSTITUTION, and INDIANA CODE!! IT MUST CEASE IMMEDIATELY!!

Please listen to the audio recordings below, of Faheem and one of the other men in his dormitory, testifying to the harassment and intimidation they’ve been experiencing.

Faheem when he was out on parole in 2018