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The Reagan Federal Penitentiary Guards (so named for Fandom) are the overarching antagonists of the Criminal Minds episode "Lockdown". The guards are a group of dirty federal correction officers who brutalize inmates at the prison to force them to get into bare-knuckled fights with each other, resulting in the manslaughter of Devon White. Several of the guards are later killed by inmate Patrick Butler and an alliance of accomplices to draw attention to the network, and more violence ensues in an escalating war within the prison.
Biography[]
Reagan Federal had a history of prisoners' rights violations, including inmate Sam Pritchett's books being stolen by the guards. What happened for far too long for what it wasn't worth was the guards formed an alliance to create a "fight club", where they fixed fights between the inmates at the prison, where the guards would place bets using manipulated accounts on which of the inmates would win the fisticuffs. They upped the ante when pitting Butler and Devon against each other, in part possibly because Butler and White were intimate with each other. Butler was ordered to take a guard's nightstick and bludgeon Devon, which Butler reluctantly did, but to the unintended extend of killing Devon. One of the uninvolved guards, Tom Polinsky, walked in on the scene, causing the leader, Dale Shavers, to threaten to kill his family if he reported them all the guards cremated Devon in the basement furnace, and as a consequence, Butler and Polinsky turned their grudges and terror against the guards into a plan for vengeance.
Polinsky worked with Butler and several other inmates to give Butler access to the guards involved in the ring and slowly kill them as a message to the rest of the ring. Butler shanked Rudy Hightower and Keith Rivers, leaving socks in their mouths, resulting in the BAU being called to solve the crimes. Butler's next target was Randall Jefferson Jones, a serial rapist and prison snitch answering directly to the ring, who threatened Pritchett into silence about his experiences with the ring. Butler cornered Jones in the showers, raped him, and drowned him in the shower water after he turned the temperature to scalding hot. Every single one of the victims had their fingers broken, three on one hand and four on the other, as an allusion to cell 37, in front of which Devon was murdered. Shavers threatened Polinsky again during the investigation, and when he found out Butler was then killer, he took Butler to cell 37 and demanded he name his accomplices. Butler refused and said the FBI would punish Shavers, followed by Shavers bludgeoning Butler to death and lying it was "self-defense".
When the FBI found out Polinsky was the guard working with Butler, he revealed the existence of the ring. As Shavers heard it all on security cameras, he went to a prisoner named Weeks and told him to lead a riot Shavers would facilitate to get Polinsky and the agents killed. Shavers unlocked the cells and had the inmates kill a guard, severely shiv Polinsky, and take two agents hostage. The riot failed, as a sniper killed Don Black before he could murder them all, and SWAT detained all the remaining inmates. Shavers locked himself in the control room and shot himself dead once he was cornered and gave up.
Trivia[]
- The network is inspired by the Corcoran State Prison "gladiator fights" ring, a network of dirty prison guards forcing inmates to fight each other, shooting them with rubber bullets when they refused. Investigations were conducted, but none of the suspects in the case were convicted.
