Bootleg film shows Florida prison in all its danger, squalor. An inmate shot it on the sly BY ROMY ELLENBOGEN
Scott Whitney, inmate No. U21924, filmed a documentary on the Florida prison system and nobody knew.
At least the guards didn’t.
Over a period of years, the convicted drug trafficker used specially rigged, almost cartoonishly oversize eyeglasses fitted with hidden cameras and a hollowed-out Bible with a lens peeking through the O in HOLY to capture the gritty, ugly, violent world inside Martin Correctional Institution, one of Florida’s more notoriously dangerous prisons.
The video was smuggled out of the prison and given to the Miami Herald.
Whitney filmed men brawling or ready to swing locks at each other, inmates passed out on synthetic drugs, mold covering the walls of the kitchen like a coat of dark paint, easily accessible drugs smoked in plain view, makeshift knives traded for a few dollars’ worth of food and other scenes from daily life in a Florida prison.
He also captured the scene during Hurricane Irma, when inmates evacuated to Martin slept on cots on the floor or on top of long, cafeteria-style tables.
To get a more realistic glimpse of life behind bars, you’d have to be convicted of a felony or be one of the officers along the wall.
The Florida Department of Corrections has gone to serious lengths, spending taxpayer money in court, to prevent the Miami Herald and other news organizations from accessing footage from prison surveillance cameras. It has claimed the release of those images would jeopardize security by revealing the layout of a compound and the location of cameras. The fact that a prisoner could record scores of hours of video — right under the noses of corrections officers and for four years — is astonishing.
Whitney calls the documentary “Behind Tha Barb Wire.” He is the vice president of the endeavor, which drew up a contract and had inmates sign release waivers.
“We going live behind the barb wire, we risking our lives for this man,” one inmate says in a snippet of footage. Although the corrections officers were seemingly oblivious to Whitney’s film project, inmates were not. They speak openly to the camera.
Scott Whitney concealed a camera inside his Bible. He used it to record life inside Martin Correctional Institution. The lens peeked through a hole inside the letter O in the word Holy.
Although Whitney had been filming since 2015, only clips from 2017 onward were successfully smuggled out. He gave the Miami Herald permission to post them online.
The Department of Corrections was asked multiple times to comment on this story but did not do so before online publication. After the article appeared on the Miami Herald’s website, the department sent an unsigned statement, which read, in part: “The department is aware of the video and takes this information seriously. The FDC Office of Inspector General has an ongoing investigation into this video.”
“The department uses every tool at their disposal to mitigate violence and contraband within our institutions,” the FDC added.
The statement expressed dismay that the Herald did not share the video in advance. (It was blurring faces of inmates to protect the prisoners from possible retribution.) The Herald had informed the department that a snippet of raw video could be viewed on YouTube.
For a device that is considered contraband, there are a lot of cell phone cameras inside Florida prisons. According to the FDC, roughly 9,000 cellphones were recovered in the most recent 12-month period. The vast majority of the phones are coming in through corrections officers and other staff, who can make big daily profits by giving them to inmates, who sell access to others, said Ron McAndrew, a prison consultant and former warden.
However, he said footage shot by inmates and spirited out of the compound is extremely rare. He said the first real example of that was at Lake Correctional Institution in July, when a video from an inmate’s phone posted to YouTube captured corrections officers beating an inmate. Four officers were arrested after it was posted.
Having a contraband phone in prison can result in a felony charge, according to state statutes.
“There is always the threat of prosecution,” McAndrew said. “Being rearrested, having the state attorney drag you on the coals and add some years to your sentence.”
A prisoner at Martin Correctional Institution handles a homemade knife, one of the countless contraband items circulating in the prison.
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