RAY BROOK — FCI Ray Brook is under lockdown for the second time this year after two simultaneous fistfights among inmates in different units on Saturday night triggered an investigation.

Jason Brannen, vice president of AFGE Local 3882, the union representing FCI Ray Brook’s corrections officers, said the fights happened after inmates had been locked in for the evening on Saturday. The medium security prison entered lockdown on Sunday morning.

“There were some personal injuries, nothing life-threatening,” he said.

The BOP is doing an internal investigation to see if these are isolated incidents or connected and part of a larger issue, but they still don’t have answers, he said. He said the administration has started interviews and investigators have not received the clarifying answers they want from the inmates.

Union secretary Brittney Brannen said the prison does not usually lock down for all fights, but when there’s an appearance they might have been calculated, they do lock down for security.

“The fact that they happened in different places at the same time leads them to believe there may be more involved,” Jason said. “It is cause for a safety concern.”

He was not sure how long the lockdown will last for, but said currently, it is indefinite.

“What we were told was that the lockdown will last as long as necessary to ensure safety,” Jason said.

During lockdown, visitation closes, inmates are fed in their cells and given showers every 48 hours.

“Everything is slowed down for safety and security,” he said. “We’ve gotten pretty routine with our lockdown procedures, unfortunately, considering this is our second one since the start of the new year.”

Work usually done by inmates is taken on by COs, and he said people are getting overtime.

“It does create a lot of work,” Jason said. “It’s tiring, it’s frustrating, for staff and inmates alike.”

The unexpected lockdown is tough on families of inmates, too.

A woman whose son is incarcerated at FCI Ray Brook, who asked to not be named for fear of retribution, was visiting her son over the weekend. After a “great visit” with him on Saturday, her family arrived on Sunday morning, but were told the prison was locked down yet again and that visitation was canceled. They had traveled from six hours away and stayed in a hotel in Saratoga, because she said all the local hotels were booked for Winter Carnival.

“So Saturday when we left the prison, we drove an hour away to sleep just to drive an hour in the morning … to be turned away and drive over six hours home,” she said.

The mother also said she met a family of four who had driven three hours to visit their loved one, but were turned away because of the lockdown.

This lockdown comes just two weeks after a nearly-three-week lockdown which started on Jan. 2 after a package of drugs, cell phones and chisels, dropped inside the prison property by a drone, was discovered. The previous lockdown ended only two weeks earlier. Visitations resumed on Jan. 20 and the lockdown ended officially when inmates were let out on Jan. 22.

Jason and Brittney said these frequent lockdowns cause stress on staff.

In September, one member of the Bloods gang attacked another member of the band from a different region 20 to 30 times with a makeshift weapon formed from sharpened metal with a handle made of string. The inmate who was attacked did not have any actual puncture wounds but had minor injuries. This triggered a lockdown then.

Darrell Pilon, the fomer president of AFGE Local 3882, said last month that there are currently 67 officers overseeing 680 inmates. BOP metrics say the prison should have 114 officers. Pilon said this is not adequate staffing, but it is also not uncommon with the “longstanding staffing crisis.”

“Staff is exhausted,” Brittney said. “We don’t have the staff as it is. We’re very short-staffed.”

Jason said tensions can run high in prison where a lot of people live in close quarters.

“Part of it is just the environment we work in, but I think the other part of it is, tensions are high right now amongst the inmate population over ‘the actions of administration,” he said. “It seems like be bureau as a whole is changing direction.”

He said the union has concerns about inmate accountability and said that punishment for breaking the rules is not being enforced as fully as it could be, creating an environment where he said inmates know they can get away with things

“It’s snowballing to a point where I think it’s becoming more common,” Jason said.

He said this can also be frustrating for inmates who were on good behavior who get locked down for something they didn’t do.

The mother of one inmate said she was frustrated with the inmates fighting causing disruptions for the others living at FCI Ray Brook.