When Luigi Mangione Came to Our Prison

A dispatch from SCI Huntingdon in Pennsylvania, which was briefly part of the biggest crime story in the nation.

by Vaughn Wright January 23, 2025

This story is a Kite, a special category dedicated to first-person reports that rely heavily on a writer’s first-hand observations and experiences. Read more about why PJP uses this category here__.

Well before Luigi Mangione became a temporary resident here at State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, he and the crime he is alleged to have committed were topics of speculation among the prison population.

Through the prison grapevine, I learned that Mangione was being held in D-Rear, or the rear of D Block, a part of the prison where death row prisoners used to be housed.

Rather than the orange jumpsuit that is standard issue in here, he was wearing a “turtle suit,” a blue padded getup used primarily for prisoners vulnerable to committing self-harm. 

Every time he was escorted from his cell, D Block got locked down. During lockdowns, all prisoner movement is prohibited.

Within 48 hours of Mangione’s arrival here, cable and broadcast news had set up shop outside the prison. That evening, Ashleigh Banfield, the host of NewsNation’s “Banfield” show, placed a curious kind of spotlight on this prison. 

During that nighttime interview, Banfield realized the prisoners on E Block were watching her show when they shouted and blinked their ceiling lights in response to the conversation she was having from the studio with Alex Caprariello, her reporting colleague in the field. So she started posing questions directly to the prisoners, who responded both vocally out of their windows and visually with their cell lights.

I haven’t heard voices here raised in such raucous unison since 2018, when the Philadelphia Eagles won the 2017 Super Bowl. Though it was hard for Caprariello to hear anyone shouting from C Block, where I live, I suppose people relished the moment to have a voice. 

The day after the NewsNation “interview” with E Block aired, the prison’s deputy superintendent threatened everyone in the unit, particularly the guys on the street-facing side, with time in the hole if they yelled from their cell or blinked their lights for the media again.

You’ll notice in subsequent NewsNation interviews outside E Block that guys were still vocal, just not so much with the lights, to avoid being traced back to a particular cell. The deputy superintendent’s threat was all the act-right motivation they needed. Freedom of speech suppressed? Check.

Mangione’s notoriety likely softened the amount of oppression the guards here would usually dispense because they wanted something from him. They wanted stories to share with coworkers and friends and family. Everyone wanted a piece of the biggest crime story in the nation.

Now, nearly 2,000 of us are part of that story. No matter what, Mangione is and will forever be an SCI Huntingdon alumnus. His brothers here will intently follow his case as it moves forward through the criminal justice system, all the while telling anyone who’ll listen, if it had been them, what they would have done to keep from getting arrested in the first place.