Heather Mack (right) with her mother, Sheila Von Wiese, on a flight to Spain in 2013. Mack, a Chicago native, was convicted of killing her mother with her former boyfriend while in Bali. After serving time in federal prison in Chicago, Mack has been transferred to West Virgina. (Provided photo) 

After nearly three years of confinement in the stark Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, Heather Mack has been transferred to SSF Hazelton, a women’s prison in West Virginia.  

On Jan. 18, the Chicago native was sentenced to 26 years for conspiring with her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer to kill her mother while on vacation in Bali in 2014. Mack, now 28, served seven years of a 10-year sentence in Indonesia before being released and deported to the United States.  

Journalist Andrea Dixon, who accompanied Mack on her 30-plus-hour flights to the United States in November 2021, said Mack was elated at her release and fully expected to travel to California with her young daughter, Stella, to live with a family friend. Instead, upon stepping off the plane, she was arrested by the FBI.  

Mack’s stay at the MCC was extended roughly seven months, reportedly due to an internal investigation into her improper involvement with a female prison guard. The MCC is notorious for its stark interior, with no direct sunlight from narrow, angled cell windows, and limited opportunities for outdoor exercise, which is available only on the facility’s rooftop area. 

Dixon said Mack had been anticipating her transfer, saying, “She’s looking forward to being able to be outside and walk around.”  

But Mack’s excitement may soon fade. For years, the Hazelton women’s facility, known as SFF (Secure Female Facility) has had a reputation for being a particularly tough place to do time.  

Located in the mountainous northeast corner of West Virginia, near the community of Bruceton Mills, the prison is roughly 60 miles south of Pittsburgh.  

Official descriptions of SFF Hazelton paint a neutral picture of life there, noting that the facility has

Heather Mack, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison for conspiring with her then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, to kill her mother while on vacation in Bali in 2014, was transferred to SFF Hazelton, a women’s prison in West Virginia. (Federal Bureau of Prisons photo) 

dormitory-style units and cell blocks with two-person bunkbeds. The Bureau of Prisons and other sites refer to “a large recreation yard, as well as stationary exercise equipment, organized and informal games, sports, physical fitness,” and a variety of other activities and pastimes.  

But other sources tell a story of grim living conditions inside the prison. According to a 2020 report by The District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, inmate capacity for Hazelton SFF is 384, but housed 502 inmates. And for some time prior to 2024, most inmates were triple bunked in spaces designed for two people. 

A 2023 update by the DCCIC notes that the prison no longer triple bunks prisoners, but the facility is even more overpopulated at 517. There continues to be many complaints about subpar physical conditions and mistreatment and neglect by staff.  

At sentencing, Judge Matthew Kennelly formally recommended to the Bureau of Prisons that Mack, who has several mental health conditions, “be designated to an institution where she may receive appropriate psychiatric care and treatment.” 

However, one Hazelton inmate, Cynthia Young alleged in a 2023 open letter that medical care at the four-prison Hazelton complex is “beyond lacking,” with one medical doctor for the entire 4,000 inmates. 

Another inmate, Lisa Biron, who has been in three other federal prisons, said that while there were deficiencies at each of them, “nothing has come close to the disfunction I have experienced at SFF Hazelton. This is truly a rogue female facility.” 

The prison formally states that it has five psychologists on staff, but has also acknowledged it faces ongoing challenges in maintaining adequate staffing in several areas.  

Young, who is serving 19 years on a drug conviction, wrote a seven-page open complaint letter in 2023. She said the prison’s physical condition is “very poor,” with mold, leaks, flooded rooms and cracks in walls. The ceiling in the room holding equipment for video calls is collapsed, she said, and “the door has been locked indefinitely, due to maintenance or lack of it.”  

She said a faulty boiler regularly fails to provide hot water for days at a time, and that at one point, bed sheets were used as shower curtains. 

Young said the prison mail system is poorly run, resulting in personal items being lost, and “extreme delay, tampering, destroying or losing” of legal mail without any required documentation. That, she said, has resulted in legal appeals being denied for being “untimely.”  

Young accused prison guards of being rude and using “degrading and derogatory terms” toward inmates, including racial and sexist slurs. 

“We are constantly locked down, restricted to our cells behind locked doors, with no access to hot water, computers, phones, law library, etc.,” Young wrote. Feminine hygiene products, she said, are frequently unavailable. 

Young also complained about a lack of quality food, with “no fresh fruits, etc.” and that “the kitchen is constantly running out of food. The portions keep getting smaller and smaller. If your unit is last to be called for (meals in the cafeteria area) you don’t get even half of what was supposed to be served.” 

Young has since been transferred to a prison in Danbury, Connecticut. 

Biron, a disbarred attorney who is serving 40 years for child pornography crimes, sent a four-page typed letter in March 2024 to numerous federal officials outlining her complaints about conditions at Hazelton and requesting an investigation. She has since been transferred to a prison in Tallahassee, Florida.  

Biron alleged that Hazelton officials often reject inmate requests for ARs, or administrative remedies, “for wrong reasons, rather than working to address the issues …” Specific complaints included a purportedly passive-aggressive counsellor who Biron alleged takes pleasure in placing incompatible individuals together in two-women cells. Other complaints include the unavailability of properly fitting bras, extremely thin mattresses, inadequate time to eat meals, and a commissary that has “molded, expired food.”  

The male prisons, Biron alleged, get the pick of the best food before the women’s facility.  

Biron also complained of getting her last three haircuts utilizing mustache scissors due to the prison hair salon “having been closed for months.