Life in the Segregated Housing Unit
The SHU, short for “Segregated Housing Unit,” is where you go for a number of reasons, including disciplinary segregation, administrative segregation, quarantine, and sometimes, when you’re new to the compound.
The most common reason a federal inmate might find themselves in the SHU is for disciplinary reasons. This can be from getting into a fight, being caught with contraband, or another occurrence that resulted in receiving an incident report.
In the SHU, you do not get regular access to the phone. You will get two phone calls per month for 15 minutes.
There’s often no rhyme or reason to when you get the phone; it just comes down to whatever cell yells the loudest. Literally.
While you’re in the SHU, it’s 23 and 1. That’s 23 hours locked down, one hour for recreation. Usually, that hour takes place in the very early morning.
Some SHUs, such as the one at the Butner complex, have showers in the cells, and you can use it whenever you like. When they don’t have a shower, inmates will oftentimes be taken only three times a week to get a shower.
Typically, the food is worse than usual.
You don’t get regular commissary.
You’re limited to the bare essentials and some protein items, and there is no access to email, TRULINKS or anything else.
In most cases, you can’t even get books or other things sent to you in the SHU.
You may get letters and can buy stamps/postage at the commissary, but generally, you can only go every other week, and your options are limited.
The bottom line is, it sucks. The experience will vary from inmate to inmate depending on what security level and what complex we’re talking about. The BOP doesn’t follow uniform guidelines on what the SHU experience looks like. But no matter what, the misery already felt while incarcerated will be multiplied several times over throughout a stay in the SHU.