The Man Who Turned On the Heat

Author: Jacs

I was working in the tier at Telfair when I learned what cruelty really looks like.

The tier is a special lockdown unit in several Georgia prisons. It’s for major punishment. The inmate may have committed violence against someone, killed someone in prison, or too often the prison administrator just uses it to get someone out of the way — hide them. Most of the people in tier are in rooms by themselves. The ventilation system is restricted and the windows have a black metal plate over them so no light comes in the room. A side effect is that this metal plate gets extremely hot in the summer when the sun hits it.

I was an inmate. Staff never work, they just open doors. Inmates do all the heavy lifting.

It was July, incredibly hot — 95 degrees outside and who knows inside those cells, probably 110 or higher. Everyone there was complaining about the heat. The inmates were complaining because the heaters were also on and giving off heat. The officers never go around to check on anyone, but I did, often.

I told the officer that the heat was on in the rooms and people were going to die. She said she would talk to someone. I reminded her several times that day.

Finally the Unit Manager over the tier came in. His name was Mr. Beasley — Jacob Beasley. The officer remembered to ask him about turning off the heat, maybe because I was there. When she told him the heat was on, he got short with her and said he knew that. He had it turned on on purpose. These men are supposed to be punished and I’m making sure they are.

That might not be an exact quote, but it’s pretty much what he said.

I was in shock. How could someone be this evil?

There wasn’t anything I could do. I talked to the officer, there wasn’t anything she could do. I talked to several people about it back in the dorm. Some told stories they knew about him. I don’t remember their stories but they were all horrible.

This man quit the GDC not long after that and I was relieved. He went to work in construction for his father or something like that. But a year later he came back. Couldn’t handle a real job and a real life I guess.

Years later he became warden of Smith State Prison. Warden when that camp was so violent and when a staff member was shot by an inmate with a gun. That should have ended his career, but not in the GDC. It just got him promoted.

He’s now the warden at GDCP — Jackson — the largest state prison. And he’s causing havoc there.

I think about those men in those cells that day. The metal plates heating up in the sun. The heaters running. No one checking on them. And the man in charge saying he did it on purpose, that he was making sure they were punished.

That’s the man running the largest prison in Georgia now. The same man who couldn’t make it in construction. The same man who turned on the heat because he wanted to.