Amir Fatir #137010
Delaware Correctional
Center
1181 Paddock Road
Smyrna, DE 19977
Mr. Carl Danberg
Commissioner
Department of Corrections
245 McKee Road
Dover, DE 19904
August 2007
Dear Commissioner Danberg,
As you may recall, I was fired from my computer analyst job at
Central Supply in September of 1995, the day before my Pardon Board hearing, for allegedly being under criminal investigation for accessing
the internet and running a business via the internet.
None of these charges were true and had absolutely no basis in
reality whatsoever but were the products of the fantasies of Security Chief Barry Hawlk and then Internal Affairs Investigator Laurence
McGuiggan (now deceased).
You represented the State in the 1983 federal civil action that
grew out of the series of harassments visited upon me for filing against prison officials, for vigorously protecting my constitutional rights and
for obeying the legitimate chain of command and the orders of my
supervisor.
Now that you are commissioner, you may have a better appreciation for the various lines of command that, back then, all
correctional parties pretended to fail to comprehend.
As a prisoner employee at the Food Service Division in Central
Supply the chain of command went from the Commissioner (then Stanley Taylor) to the Bureau Chief of Industries and Services (Joyce Talley) to
the Food Service Direction (Robert Wolfson). My supervisor was Robert Wolfson who ordered me not to grant access to any of his computers to
anyone, “especially Barry Hawlk.”
So it was quite curious that the day Mr. Wolfson goes on vacation, who pops up to “order” me to grant him access to the computers
but Barry Hawlk.
Barry Hawlk had no authority to order me to do anything pertaining to Central Supply. He was the Security Chief for DCC, but
was not in authority over Central Supply for Central Supply was not under DCC. This is not very complicated and, as Commissioner, I’m sure
you will fully comprehend various authorities even seemingly overlapping ones.
Hawlk should have taken any request he had to the appropriate
authority – i.e., Commissioner Taylor, Bureau Chief Talley or Mr. Wolfson. By attempting to give me an unauthorized order he placed me in
the middle of a power struggle that should not have had anything to do with me.
Were I to disobey my supervisor and do what Hawlk told me to do
then I’d be fired for insubordination to Mr. Wolfson. But if I directed Hawlk to take his concerns to the appropriate chain of command then I’d
be an “uppity so-and-so” and punished with “criminal investigation,” which is actually worse than outright charging because law enforcers can
use “investigations” to get around basic process protection such as
having specific charges lodged and the opportunity to defend oneself and face ones accusers.
Somehow Hawlk got you and Attorney General Jane Brady to play
along. Yet the result of a year and a half “investigation” was that the Attorney General’s office had to finally rule that no charges could be
filed and no evidence of impropriety existed.
Despite the truth cited above and the official finding, I am still being punished as if I’d done something wrong or illegal.
Officials within of your Department continue to operate as if I did some foul deed instead of the opposite – that I was the target and victim of
some official foul deeds.
It has come to my attention that Treatment Administration Ron
Hosterman, Warden Thomas Carroll and a Deputy Warden recently stated and agreed that “we can’t let Amir get certain jobs because of what he did
with the computers.”
I am still being punished for doing nothing wrong and for, in
fact, saving this Department many thousands of dollars by developing fully inventory, payroll and billing systems and writing the code and
restoring crashed systems for a paltry $0.65 an hour. In addition, I
created, developed, managed, trained and supervised all the programs in Minimum Security and most of the ones which had been in Medium Security. During my years of working for this Department more than 16 hour days
we had the lowest recidivism rate and featured programs which became models for other states and which even got tough-on-crime President
George Bush, Sr. to give us an award.
I was recently denied a job in the prison laundry by an Officer
Lee because “you can’t trust Amir around computers.” It is my belief that Ron Hosterman used the same bias to stop me from getting a job in
the education building despite my qualifications and despite my
excellent work in educating inmates in Arizona in Adult Basic Education, G.E.D. and finally on computer applications in Central Arizona College.
I strongly believe that had I been Caucasian, instead of being
attacked, vilified and punished, I would have been promoted to a position of something like “Bureau Chief of Treatment.”
I request that you instruct DCC officials to cease defaming my
name and character by repeating false statements about me and any computers for I did nothing wrong and the very “top law enforcement
agency” in the state can verify that fact.
I was not charged with even an institutional disciplinary for
the simple fact that there was nothing I could be charged with or convicted of even on an institutional level, not even so much as a 24
hour loss of privileges.
The computers upon which I worked had no modems, no telephones
and no accounts with any internet provider or server. Since then Warden Snyder had but a third grade education, be might be able to be excused
for failing to comprehend that the things I was being accused of were absolutely
impossible. But, for the life of me, I cannot comprehend how a man of your erudition, education and intelligence could fall for
something that was a physical and technological impossibility.
There is a remedy for the gross injustices I have suffered and
which I continue to suffer and that is for you to give me back my job at Central Supply and that you reimburse me for all the pay I have missed
since that improper firing. I would request that the pay be made with appropriate interest and that my outside-off grounds work status be
restored.
While some courts have held that inmates have no inherent right
to jobs, we do have a right to protection from officials punishing or retaliating against us due to our engaging in a constitutionally
protected activity. Furthermore, I have the right to the same procedures such as the classification process, being charged and the
right to defend myself against those charges that every other inmate in Delaware possesses. To deny that right to me violates the equal
protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
I also request that the Attorney General’s investigation and
finding be copied and provided (with instructions to read it) to each member of the Executive Committee at DCC and the various Bureau Chiefs
in your Department.
Apartheid Hiring Practices in the Delaware Correctional Center
The effort to deny me employment is symptomatic of a larger,
more insidious problem of racial bias in hiring at the Delaware Correctional Center.
This prison is about 80% African-American. Yet the “better”
jobs have overwhelmingly been given to white inmates whether or not they meet the qualifications.
Examples of blatant apartheid employment practices can be easily
seen in Motor Pool and the prison law library which has one Black paralegal and five White inmate paralegals and one White state employee.
But the problem is not limited to Motor Pool and the law library. It is pandemic and is rooted in the discriminatory hiring of
staff. There are no Black Bureau Chiefs; DCC has no Black Deputy Wardens, Treatment Administrators and Education Principals. I am
unaware of even any job supervisors in DCC who are Black.
The all-white “good old boy” network has trickled down to the
inmate body of white inmate employees who ask their white supervisors to hire their white friends whenever a job opens up in this whites only
boys club.
Black prisoners are treated like dark-skinned “untouchables”
caste of apartheid India. They are afforded nothing but menial labor jobs like kitchen and janitorial work.
If you aspire to a full term as Commissioner when the Minner administration ends, I strongly urge you to bring a rapid end to the
racist apartheid practices of the Delaware Correctional Center and the Delaware Department of Correction.
It is unlikely that a new govenor would appoint a commission who
comes with the baggage of having supported or turned a blind eye toward racial discrimination and apartheid practices in the prison system under
his command.
Despite having opposed each other in the past, I am open to a
new relationship that would benefit the population as a whole. You and the News-Journal have both (I’ve been told) expressed a willingness to
consider new ideas on how to improve circumstances such as long term prisoners being held for decades, recidivism, etc.
The people you have asked for ideas cannot provide them for they are of
the same consciousness that created the current quagmire in the first place.
The ideas and programs I created and ran – off a zero budget
and, for about a year and a half, with zero recidivism – were extraordinary and revolutionary at the time because they reflected a
consciousness, paradigm and worldview that is the antithesis of the
diseased thinking that fostered both “street” and “official” criminality
that pervades this nation and this state. DCC in large measure continues to stumble along off the fumes of the programs I created to
this day. Yet those programs were only a brief introduction of what was possible to do.
If you desire to truly engender transformation among prisoners
in an outstanding and remarkable way, I am willing to discuss meet with you. I desire nothing from you for you have nothing to offer me. It is
however, my karmic duty to aide in any sincere salvage operation whose objective is to salvage a population whose prospects are otherwise
hopeless.
Sincerely
Amir Fatir