Category: Prison vocabulary

Civil suits concerning the summer heat in Texas prisons, and the negative health effects related to that heat, have resulted in work and living restrictions for prisoners sensitive to the heat.

Most of the time when someone says they have a heat restriction, they are referring to work heat restrictions. It is important to understand that these restrictions do not govern housing in temperature controlled areas.

After a suit (Cole v Collier, settlement here) concerning excessive heat was won against TDCJ, new policies were implemented, including a policy for setting a “Heat Sensitivity Score” (HSS, or heat score) for “Cool Bed Priority” prisoners. A discussion of this policy can be found in Sain v Collier here.

Persons who meet qualifications based on medical conditions and prescribed medications are to be given a heat score of at least one point (P01, no heat sensitivity would be P00). The conditions include:

1. Heart and medical disease;
2. Mental health disorders;
3. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease;
4. Developmental disabilities;
5. 65 years of age or older with certain conditions or prescribed certain medications.

The discussion in Sain v Collier here provides further specifics about these qualifications.

We don’t know as much as we need to yet about these heat scores and how they are being assigned, but we hope to learn more in the future. Currently, when someone is advocating for housing in temperature controlled areas, we are asking them to find out what their heat score is, which should be a code ranging from P00 (no heat score) to P05 (highest priority).

You may see people incarcerated in Texas describe their line and custody class as something like G3/L1. G3 is the custody class, which we discussed last week. The L1 in this example is a line class.

Line class has to do with how one earns good time, which affects the amount of time one actually serves.

Line class ratings range from L3 (lowest, earning no good time) to L1. Most people enter prison at L1.

There are also S line class ratings from S4 to S2. The S is short for SAT, which means State Approved Trusty.

Line class is explained on pages 8 and 9 of the handbook published by TDCJ, but there is also a more simple overview at this Texas Criminal Appeals Blog entry.

LOP means Loss of Privileges. We don’t see this one too often, and so it can stump people when they do see it as it isn’t always clear from the context what this might refer to. An LOP generally is the result of a disciplinary case. Sometimes loss of privileges are also described as, for example, 45/45/45, which means 45 days loss of access to three types of “privileges” such as recreation, commissary, and out-of-cell time or access to certain property.

This is a very common term for an appointment with someone on staff, often administration or medical. Someone may say that they have a lay-in for their hormone injection every two weeks. The term can also refer to a small piece of paper called a Lay-in Pass that has the time, date, name, location, and other pertinent information about the appointment. We also see the term used to refer to a guard coming to escort them to the appointment. Someone might say they were supposed to talk to Safe Prisons, but they were “never laid in.” An alternate term for a guard escorting them is “pulled out,” as in being pulled out for a lay-in.

SSI is a very common abbreviation. It stands for Support Service Inmate. Sometimes you will also see SSIs described as janitors, but SSIs can work in other support details as well, such as johnny sack (sack meal) distribution.

A janitorial SSI position can be a sought-after job because it allows the SSI access to other prisoners, sometimes across multiple housing areas. This can be an opportunity to pass along information and kites, and for trade, all of which can benefit the SSI both in status and in property.

“Stunting” generally refers to a false claim or staged issue to achieve some goal. Sometimes a person may talk about themselves or others “stunting off a unit.” This could include a range of actions from making a false claim of endangerment to a claim that consensual sex was rape to paying someone to assault the person stunting. Some people may also call self-harm to get a move to an isolation cell or transfer to a mental health unit stunting, but that seems to be a less common usage.

UCC in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system stands for Unit Classification Committee, and SCC is the State Classification Committee. The UCC is extremely powerful at the unit level, and is responsible for monitoring safety and determining custody classification changes. Trans persons are supposed to be reviewed twice a year for safety concerns by the UCC, but often this is a pro forma review simply to check off a box. UCC also makes recommendations for safekeeping designation.

Recommendations by UCC for safekeeping, unit transfers, and other issues are forwarded to the SCC for approval.

A “jacket” is something one is known for, like a reputation, but often with negative connotations. One common phrase is “snitch jacket,” which means that a person has a reputation for providing information to prison officials. We recently had someone discuss having a friend who is trans as giving him a jacket that brought about abuse for being friendly or affiliated with LGBTQ persons.

A jacket can follow you from unit to unit via prison communications networks. Your jacket can mean that you have problems at a new unit almost as soon as you arrive.